In The Garden

Hey guys, Keith, with the Garden Supply Company. Today I wanted to talk to people about all the things that you can do that are close to the garden center. Basically coming over and spending half a day spending the afternoon at the garden center. And in that thought centering it around lunch or going out and getting a drink or.And we've got some really good places around the garden center and, it's, I've been there 25 years, so I frequent all these places pretty often. I thought it that's true. Every time I go to the pizza place, I run into Epic. Exactly. And right down from the pizza place is Phil's Cigar shop, Tobacconists of Cary. I thought I would I would feature some of these businesses, and I think that they're a good combination for swinging over to the garden center and meeting a friend hang out at the garden center, go get lunch or go get lunch and then come take a stroll around the garden center.It's something fun to do a place to. Down, right on the corner of Cary Parkway and Old Apex Road. There are some great businesses. There's a small pharmacy, that's a local business, Bee Well Pharmacy that I frequent pretty often when I need something for, or vaccination or whatever happened to happen to be doing.It's a great little pharmacy. Kinda off-topic, but the tobacconists, if you're a cigar smoker he does a great job. He's got a huge selection. He'll bring in new stuff pretty consistently and fills a wealth of knowledge as far as what he's got in there and grab a cigar and then hit Salvio's Pizza. Salvio is just like two doors down. Yeah. Two doors down Salvio is, it's. It's an old-school pizza place it's been there.As long as we've been there, I think it's about 25 years old. It's my and my family's favorite pizza place in Cary. The other place that I had dinner there or picked up dinner there from last night is the Tangerine Cafe. I walked by for 15 years, for some reason or another. And one day, I was like, I'm tired of Salz. I've been there. , I'd been there two or three times in a short period of time. I'm gonna check this place out. And it's a kind of Asian fusion. Unbelievable food. Great soup, great calamari, all kinds of just great food. I would recommend popping in there. They're just doing takeout right now. Still, it's a great spot to pick something up and bring it over to the garden center.Find a little table or a bench and have your lunch. On the other end of the world. We've got the Abbey Road Tavern and Grill. They're known for their burgers. You can sit out there and have a nice lunch, meet somebody over there.Just a casual environment, And then down the road on Maynard. There's Big Mike's BBQ. And then there's Great Harvest Bread Company. Great harvest bread company is always just a nice fresh sandwich. They've, bread's baked this morning. They do all kinds of typical sandwiches and then And then, and they'll let you sample stuff while you're there.And then you can take a little bread home with you, but both of those are good, really good stops. Pan a day, pick up some food, bring it to the garden center, and do a tailgate. It's a good spot to eat and check out some of these local businesses.I think it's really important that people support local businesses.

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 story, and then it may be exaggerated. I don't know where he saw somebody that went into a house and they were cutting the bees out of the house. They found the queen. He said the guy put the queen in a cage, and he put it in the back seat of a Buick LeSabre. And the B's filed into the Buick LeSabre to be with the queen.And that's what happens. That is the way this works. That's why there are so many forms and cars. And then he said that guy got in the car with a [00:08:00] pseudo. And proceeded to drive down the road. And he said the bees were flying after Victor. I bet. That's what happened in this situation. I'm looking at a Google picture of a beekeeper approaching a cop car.That's been like completely swarm. Bee Expert: the cop was probably like, yeah, we'll grab the queen. Keith: We'll throw it in the back of the squad.Bee Expert: I Keith: I just want to know why there aren't any pictures or videos of what my dad saw. He's got a phone.That is precisely the way it works, though. If you can find the queen and the queen to not necessarily easy to find and in a hive, but when you're doing cutouts like Jason was talking about, that's when I'm high, I've had swore. It's located itself into a house and a.You've got to complicate it because that involves the construction and genetics. Do you guys charge if you've seen us warm on a branch, so we'll come to get a swarm that the cutouts are a lot more specialized? Jason used to [00:09:00] do a fair amount of them, but if you're typically partner with a carpenter.And it's a thousand or $2,000 process could be $5,000 depending on, where they've gone in and what kind of woodwork you're coming that dealing with the structure. Bee Expert: You don't want to damage somebody's house. You want to be real careful and be insured and Keith: know what you're doing.So it's, that's a, it's a more, it's a lot more complicated, but again, it's, that's worth saving those bees and getting them out of the house. The other part of that is if you were to spray them in the place, All the resources are still there and the holes potentially still there. And if the hole isn't there, they will find another hole because there's a boatload of honey in there and pollen.So they'll, and they can smell like you've killed the queen in the house. They can smell where the queen that they can. They can sense where the queen is. She's given all Fairmont. Dead or alive for years, they can come. So for years, they'll come back to the location, and you'll have another swarm there and another swarm there.So they need to be cut out, cleaned out, [00:10:00] primed, and then sealed up correctly. Then not have another swarm in that location. But, give us a shout. If you see us warm garden supply company and see any bees, your Bee Expert: concern, you don't know what they are. They could be yellow jackets, Hornets. Let us know, and we'll figure it out. Keith: take a picture, send it back.Or reach out to a bee club. And or your county, they've usually got a list of people who'll pick up hives or swarms. I didn't know that they weren't local to our area and needed maintenance. It's like a., And like cattle raising come out, roaming around.Do you, should, you should call whoever is missing. You should have somebody to pick them up. Bee Expert: off. The not native to north and south America came across with Keith: your European crumbs in Bee Expert: Columbus and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Keith: She'll need maintenance. They do all right until next time. Swing by and look at the hives at garden supply company and enjoy spring.

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 nucIt 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, it's okay, it's going to be $195 later in the season, or it's going to be $225 early. It's versus, versus the cost of a package, it's just almost it's it seems like a no brainer to go with the nuke on top of that. Just success rate as well.Absolutely. It's 99%, with the nuke and a hundred percent, if you're managing it, if something happens to, with the queen and you've got to replace a queen, you've still got a healthy nuke, and you've got resources. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was the availability of nukes.And when you start a hive, everybody's always started hives in the early spring. It's an April through May timeframe because that's when packages are available, and that's when bees are building up, and they're getting ready to go into the major flow in north Carolina's tool [00:08:00] Poplar.So they're getting ready to go into the flow. You can build a package of bees in the spring, and you can end up with a healthy hive, but with the new. There's no timeframe, except for late fall, early winter, our, through the winter the rest of the year, you can put a new can.And Bee Expert: packages are only available in the early spring. And that's about it for four packages. They're done. So your opportunity to expand your colonies is done at that point. They can be—pretty much throughout the active season. So up until late, early fall, late summer, which allows you all that extra advantages.Of trying to expand your colony through the earth, your apiary through the Keith: year. And then they're ready once they overwinter. They're ready for the honey nectar flow. So, if you put a colony in September and fed it, make sure that it's treated and cared for. You'll be making honey coming into the spring.That's correct. Yeah. That pretty much sums it up on nukes and [00:09:00] packages. Both of them are good ways to start a hive. But I think if you've got a little more money to spend, you'll save money by doing a nuc. Bee Expert: You will.Keith: Okay, perfect. We'll stop by and talk to Jason at the store. Follow us on Facebook. Come by and check out. Bond brothers have a hive at a garden supply company. It's part of our host to hive program. If beekeeping's not something that you want to do yourself, sign up for a host to hive program, and you can get involved. You can see hives. You can get into the bond brothers hive at the garden supply company.And then later on, if something you want to adopt and bring home, Bee Expert: you'll get honey from those two. We guaranteed honey from the host-type program. Yeah. Keith: So our host, the hive program, was one of the only ones you can get. You get honey out of. So it's a kind of a guaranteed program.Bee Expert: You're on the lookout for swarms as well. Keith: You have swarms. Swarms are now for sure. They're middle of spring. You'll start to see swarms and reach out to the garden center. If you see one, we'll [00:10:00] either come pick it up or get somebody to pick it up. So it's not just it. Save those bees until next time it's Keith Ramsey, Jason at garden supply company.

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 it's covered up, and you're not looking at it and then, or deciduous tree, and you can't see it, and then wintertime rolls around, and you remember it. And then you forget about it as long as the tree leaves that back out, but that's a good time to transplant a deciduous plant and then come back in and come back in and do something.That's evergreen that you're going to have year-round. We were just figuring out the bones and the garden and taking care of some of that stuff. We'll see you next time.

[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 tomato root. And then you've got tomatoes going into up until frost or after for.So you can do things like fried green tomatoes, and that kind of thing, which is just fun, and green tomatoes will last, you know, well into the winter. So, you know, you put them in your cool drawer in the refrigerator or a back room, you can put a green tomato on the window sill and have it ripen up.So that's a nice way to have tomatoes going on into the wintertime. And then the last date, the second excellent season crop, is around August 15th. Cool-season veggies. It's the coldest part of the year. And the hottest part of the year is when you're planting them.[00:08:00] So it just doesn't make, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to most people, and it's, and it doesn't feel comfortable to be out there in the garden, but it's not a long project, and it's, it's fun to reap the rewards later on. So August 15th, you know, again, you're taking out some of your older, older plants, things that have spent some of the cooler season stuff.You might have cucumbers that have dwindled. You rake that stuff up. And then go ahead and start getting your broccoli and, having a good broccoli crop going into the wintertime again is another, another one. That'll last a long time, and you don't have to cut it all at one time, get your cuttings, and then come back in a couple of weeks later.You don't want it out there. Broccoli or cauliflower. You don't want out there is a hard, hard freeze. So it'll go down to about 25 20. So what 26 degrees. But I wouldn't go, you know, wouldn't let it go a whole lot cooler than that. And then you just kind of reap the benefits going into the fall.From there, we're starting that season over again. It's a perfect [00:09:00] growing season in North Carolina. And, and for those who haven't done gardening, start small and start in a bag. We're doing a lot of soft bag gardens. You can grow potatoes in a bay. You can grow.All the lettuces and cools these and stuff in a bag larger bags, you can do peppers and tomatoes. So for those people that don't have the space or that haven't gardened before, it's a great way to start a small garden. So get out there this year and enjoy veggie gardening. Stop in. If you have questions, we've got tons of people to help you out.And we'll see you soon.

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 starting to turn red, but all of a sudden the foliage turns yellow and you can see red berries and then the following two drops. And you've just got a big display of berries on top of the standards, which is really pretty another perennial plant that I always love to plant is Aram, and Aaron's kind of a, it's a, it's an anomaly of a plant. [00:08:01] . The foliage starts coming up. It's a perennial plant and the foliage starts coming up in the fall when everything else is dying back. So you'll have these deeply veined leaves almost like a hostile-looking plant. So you've got this, tropical leafy plant coming out of the ground in the fall when everything else is dying back. [00:08:20] So it's a nice plant to add to a hostile, a hosta garden, or a shade guard. And then in the summertime, when all the other plants are coming up, its foliage is dying back and it'll bloom, and then it produces this Berry stock and the Berry stock stays on top of the plant on, on, on the stem, and just dries onto the stem. [00:08:40] And then usually you'll end up with new plants coming up from those berries. But it's a super neat plant for the winter. And then the other annual plants there, aren't a lot of annual plants for the wintertime. Not, summertime's definitely winning when it comes Daniels, the main annual plant that you put out is our pansies or vials. [00:08:59] And pansies have always had a name of being, the week or the not so strong, but pansies hold up better than anything. They're super easy in the wintertime. They can take the cold, they can handle a fair amount of dry. Viola's or even better than that, a little bit smaller flower. [00:09:16] But they'll give you a ton of color. Looking at the landscape, coming up with where you've got holes and evergreen plants and counter first, and then for any meals in front of those where you've got some holes from losing your summer perennials, and then finishing off when, and when I plant pansy beds, I usually try to plan. [00:09:35] I'll pop up one plan in here or there occasionally. But I usually try to plant decent-sized beds for them. They're inexpensive to go in. They make a serious difference in the winter landscape and they give you a focal point. Gardens are never going to look pristine in the wintertime. [00:09:51] You always feel like you're missing something leaves are gone or plants are dormant. It's not quite as exciting as the spring of. So it kinda distracts your view. It gives you a focal point of nothing but the color and they'll and if you keep them fertilized and keep them watered they will carry your garden through the winter.

 [00:00:20] Keith: good morning with black Friday, right around the corner we were trying to come up with ideas for our family just to create new traditions. And move away from commercialism. And it seems right now there's a backlog of products coming in and a shortage of this and that. [00:00:51] And when you stop and think about it, it's like half that stuff we really don't.  [00:00:54] Joe: Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. If all that stuff doesn't make it for Christmas. What's going  [00:00:59] Keith: to happen, who's even going to want it. Exactly. I'm like, I'm really not going to buy a lot of gifts for people. [00:01:06] I'm going to do things for people I'm going to cook for them, or I'm going to plant a tree for him. Do an amaryllis bulb or something like that. Something that's, that's a little bit longer lasting and that one's more of a  [00:01:17] Joe: memory. I like I have a woodshop in. Last year. I didn't get to do it much this year or two years ago, I built everybody in the family's gifts and it was a blast. [00:01:26] Keith: Exactly. , it means a whole lot more save any  [00:01:29] Joe: money. No, you don't get  [00:01:31] Keith: to save any money. You're not necessarily going to save any money, you go out and you buy a bunch of presents and a bunch of gifts or a bunch of toys for a kid. . You know what I mean? [00:01:39] They use them for what they, the kids going to find their favorite toy out of 25, and that's what they're going to play with. And the rest of them end up at Goodwill or pass down to other family members or neighbors or whatever. But if you plant a tree for a kid and you involve the kid in planting a tree, you've taught him something, you've spent time with the kid. [00:01:56], it's, there's just a whole lot more value there in my opinion. And that, my parents, planted a tree when I was born. Every time we went back by the house, it was, that tree was still growing in front of the house and it was always a topic of conversation. [00:02:07] So it was always a connection to that house. And it was a connection to what my parents had done for me when I was.  [00:02:13] Joe: That's pretty common or I think it used to be people would plant a tree when they move into a house, so they could kind  [00:02:18] Keith: of right. Track, watch it grow. Yeah. And, plant in a like a one-foot Japanese maple when your baby's born and seeing it grow to 12, 15 feet, as your child grows and it's something that's long-lived and it's, it's a great  [00:02:32] Joe: memory and the kids probably that's my tree when they're out. [00:02:34] Keith: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's. A friend of ours had, they've got four boys and they, they planted a tree for each one of the boys. They would argue over which one, their parents, they thought that parents liked this one more than the other one because the tree was better.  [00:02:50] Joe: It was a better tree. [00:02:57] Exactly.  [00:02:57] Keith: But there was much discussion over why they got that tree. So that was that's one thing you can do planting a tree or baking cookies with kids or that kind of thing, starting any kind of a tradition, but black Friday is always boggled my mind. [00:03:13] I've never participated in. It just seems like a rush to buy something that would have been discounted or this it's going out a date or that's last year's product. And it's not really necessarily a discount as it's marked down because it's last year's product.  [00:03:29] Joe: I wonder if so it has less appeal to me now than it used to. [00:03:32] And I was younger because it was a family tradition. So what you're saying is we'd go out on good Friday and shop, and then Amazon came around, and then the family moved to. And I don't go good Friday shopping yet.  [00:03:42] Keith: Yeah. I've literally never done it. And so it's a, it's interesting to me, but I, every year I'm like, maybe I should, maybe there's something I'm missing, but I don't think so. To me, I think it's almost like this year. To fix the supply chain and to revamp your viewpoint go out and buy something locally, shop at a local place, or go to a farmer's market or a small independent store and just skip the black Friday spending put that money in, invest that money or invested in the community and buy local. [00:04:10] My family, over Thanksgiving, we always my mom was in the florist business and so she always, we always make Rees and it's my uncles and aunts and cousins and we're all just clipping stuff out of the yard. And we make Christmas reads and it's just a creative thing to do. [00:04:26] And everybody's hands-on and it's. But any kind of crafting project or, something you can do with family and be able to, just to enjoy life and make memories more than buying more crap that it's going to end up in the dump.  [00:04:40] Joe: Yeah. I like the idea of them having an experience. [00:04:43] It might seem like it's less cause it's not around as much, but at the same time they might be the things that your family members end up treasuring  [00:04:49] Keith: the most. Something, take pictures while you're doing these projects or having an event. Our host to the hive is a way that I think a lot of people do gifting. [00:04:57] They'll a husband or a wife will buy host to the hive. For a spouse or a family member. But it's, it's a way that you're giving back to the environment. , you can participate in beekeeping and involve your kids in the whole nature of it. [00:05:09] And it's hands-on learning. You can get out and you can get into a hive and see the bees. Lauren all about bees and not have to own a high of yourself so that, doing something like that something that's pretty hands-on and, but the host diet program,  [00:05:23] Joe: you   [00:05:24] Keith: also get honey. Exactly. And there's a lot of host of hives out there. They range in price from $400 to about $2,000. And the interesting thing about our host to the hive is it's the cheapest. But we also instead of some of the hosts, the hives will be 1200, $1,400. And if you get honey in your hive, you get. [00:05:46] If you don't. And what we do is we average the honey out. We'll harvest the honey and everybody ends up with 10 jars of honey. You end up with 10 pounds of honey, which is more than most people would use in a year. So it gives you honey, that you could gift as well. [00:05:59] But it's a sure way of getting honey if you're a beekeeper there are years that you don't necessarily harvest honey. So we work really hard to make sure that the bees are, moved around and in areas that there are nectar flows and stuff like that. So it's a pretty successful way, to keep bees and actually make sure that you're getting honey every year. [00:06:19] And it's good local honey. So it's, it makes a difference in your health and your, the cold season or allergies or that type of thing. But the other thing that, that, on a list of things that people could do is, working, just working in the garden with kids getting them involved in the garden. [00:06:33] Hands-on, it's a good mental health thing to do. People are stressed out this time of year going into the holiday season and being able to just get out, put your hands in the dirt. It releases every time you touch the soil or releases serotonins, that kind of. [00:06:46] Make you relax. And most gardeners will, that just, they know that for a fact, they know when they go out and they start gardening that instantly they have a relaxed, calm feeling about it. Involving people that haven't done that and getting them in that Addicted to that kind of gardening and out and being out in nature and seeing green stuff. And one of those projects that you could do is pollinator gardens, either planting seeds is a really inexpensive way to do it. Get a packet of seeds and prep that soil. Yeah, and literally just scatter the seeds. [00:07:16], if you involved kids, they scattered the seeds and then they come back out and they get to see the seeds germinating and slowly growing on. And then, it's a long-term process. It's three or four, five months, six months a lifetime, of watching the seed grow and then the plant mature and then flowers come and then the pollinators start to land on those plants and hatch out new, young and whatnot. [00:07:38] The other thing that, what people can do it, and there's no, absolutely no cost to it is, prepping for the holiday season, getting family pictures and that kind of thing. Come into the garden center and bring your phone. One of our staff can take a picture have your family stand in front of the Christmas display or out in fall colors and snap, a few pictures, spend time with the family, just being out and about either a garden center or a farmer's market or. [00:08:04] Pumpkin patch, Christmas tree, lot, that kind of thing. It's a great way to spend that afternoon and get some good pictures in. I think back to the supply chain, I think if we just stopped spending for a minute maybe we could fix the supply chain, slow the slow, everything down and enjoy life. [00:08:21] And things might just come back to normal.

Keith: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. I wanted to talk to everybody about the seasonal look of plants and the misconception that plants are gonna look the same all the time. I think when people look at a magazine, they see a hydrangea for some reason or another, and they think that hydrangea is gonna look.The picture year-round and then they get the hydrangea planted, they come out and they look at it and they realize it doesn't have blooms this time of year and they plant it and they wait for it to go into bloom. And it goes into bloom and it's an absolute, amazing show of color, especially the second, third, fourth year and every year thereafter.But then we get into our summer heat and Everybody starts worrying that, their plants and dying and but [00:01:00] I get the feeling that everybody thinks that plants are supposed to, they're like, it's like it's plastic.And like they're supposed to look perfect all the time. And there's a certain amount of acceptable spots on the leaves and brown tips. And by the time we get to July and August, that people are flooding the garden center and they want a solution, and the brown spots, they're, some of them are or water spots where the leaves have been burned.Some of them, are light fungus issues. Brown tips that are just, it's been too wet or too dry. And you can't control the, you can't control the rain or the drought scenario we're in. Joe: And if you miss it a couple of episodes back yet, Steven on, and he was talking about how you guys recommend people bring in clippings or pictures and you can help diagnose absolutely Keith: and we want to do that. What I wanted to talk about today was just, not, you want to worry about a plant if you really think it's in decline, if it's losing stems or if it's, and there's always things you can do to improve the plant, but somebody will come in with hydrangea and it's got brown [00:02:00] tips and it's got black spots on it and the blooms are drying up and is it okay?And it's perfectly okay. It's just what you're supposed to see. By late August or early September, October. I'm totally disappointed in the plant, and it's, there are four seasons for every plant, and when we have in North Carolina, we have four perfect seasons. The spring that plant's going to be coming off of winter sticks, and you're going to see these buds open up and they're beautiful green leaves which.Produce beautiful, blue, pink, puffy flowers, most of the summer. And then as this flower starts to spend and we run into the hotter part of the summer, the leaves start to kinda crumble and they're not looking at their perfect stage. And that's when people come in and they're in a panic But I've felt like people needed to take a step back and think about what a plant is supposed to look like.And, early on I had a customer come in and, we'd sold them a red maple and a. [00:03:00] Young couple, and this is 20 years ago, but they, they said, we bought this red maple from you and it's done great all summer and it was beautiful, dark green. And now all of a sudden it's turning red and it's, it's an educational process.And so you have to say the red maple part is that it turns red in the fall, so just educating people that, plants are going to change through the season and kind of, but and not, the red maple part that's the peak of the maple.That's as good as it gets, the next question would be all the leaves are falling off of it. And it's not a, it's a deciduous tree, it's not evergreen. But just to lower your expectation. Of what a plant can do for you? All in the fall.All year long, in the wintertime, some of the most like a high drank back to the hydrangea is an amazing plant, but it sticks in the winter time, there's nothing but sticks, so kinda know that's coming and plan for it, so you put some evergreen plants in front of that and then put those behind. So when these sticks are coming up from behind the evergreen plant, all plants are different hydrangeas bloom off of old wood. [00:04:00] So you even them up and you take that, it's going to be the buds that come off of the old wood that is going to create the bloom. So if you cut your hydrangeas to the ground, you're not going to have blooms the following year.It really depends on the plant and that's where coming in and getting advice, make sense. And when people come in, you want to. If it's a hydrangea and it's got spots all over it, if it's got a spot here or there's really nothing to do, the leaves are going to fall off and you can clean the leaves up and that'll rectify the situation for next year.If it's out of control then maybe it adds a little bit of a fungicide something like triple action. That's going to it's natural and it doesn't affect the bees. But the biggest thing is, it's rectified the insect or disease problem and then fertilize at the appropriate times, and fall is a great time to fertilize.A lot of people, do most of their gardening in the spring, it's just kinda natural. Everybody wants to be out there doing it. But if you do fall fertilization, you're fixing that plant for next year. Basically, you're giving it the food and the nutrients and everything.It needs to really be as good as it's going to be next year. And that's, that was [00:05:00] the next piece of this scenario. People want a solution to their problems. They've got black spots on their plant and you sell them triple action. And triple action is going to do a nice job of not allowing the black spots to spread, but it's not going to remove the black spots or the lines in your eyes, it's not going to make them go.So it's people come back in a month later and they're like, it's not getting any better. And then you have to say, it's not going to get any better until spring. When the new leaves come out, so it's, that seasonal expectation of what you can do and what you can't do.And when something's got when the leaves are eaten up or they're eaten up by an insect or they've got a disease on them and you spray them, you're removing that disease and you're slowing down the damage that's done on the leaves, but you're not going to fix those. And you have to wait for that next season.Every plant loses foliage at some point during the. So you got to wait for that plant to push out new foliage and fertilize it. And, so it's going to be as [00:06:00] happy and healthy as it can next year. And then be ahead of it next year. If a plant gets in the same insect problem every year, it's planning ahead and making sure that we get that under control azaleas are classic for a late.The lacewing do all their damage in May and June and 90% of the customers come in and come in wanting to do something in September and October because they've gotten back out in the cool weather and they're looking at it and they're like, oh my God sounds eating up my, and nothing's going to get fixed until the new foliage comes out next year and you're actually applying a systemic and that in the spring, To prevent the lacewing from eating the leaves in the, in the early spring, it's a, you Joe: want to help people avoid, you don't want to hit that plan out and put a new plant, right?Exactly. You want more plants, but your money on more plants, but Keith: that one's going to come back. It's going to come back. It's going to do well. And a lot of times with our, with warranty scenarios, people are like, the plant looks terrible. I want a new one. And, that's the worst thing in the world to do is getting into a cycle of replacing a plant because the customer thinks it [00:07:00] looks terrible.Joe: Yeah, insects are bold or those situations could be recreated Keith: exactly the same spot. So you got to treat those. Yep. Yeah. And you've got to plant this hat, it's halfway rooted in. The foliage doesn't look great. It's just patients, patients in setting your expectations. So I just, I thought that was a good educational piece, for customers is, set your expectations, understand the plant cycle and then just don't worry quite as much and enjoy more time in the yard. So the next time.

Keith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, today, we're going to talk about thinking outside the box. And when I say thinking outside the box, getting outside of the box more like it max bean or house a box, be in our house, it's get up off the couch and get outside. It's a great way to relieve stress and in the time of COVID or flu or anything else breathing fresh air just in general.Good for you. And at the Joe: time of this recording, it's fall. Finally. Keith: Exactly. Getting out when it's when the temperatures are right Time to put the pumpkin on everything. Exactly. The pumpkin in your coffee, pumpkin, you can rub it on your body. Every everywhere you look, it's pumpkin-flavored something.Pumpkins just fear fall. I think they are scared for sure. Yeah. So getting outside in the fall, [00:01:00] getting outside in the spring just creating a space an outdoor room, basically. I think is important someplace where you can get out, and you can really enjoy life. And do you know, light gardening sometimes?Being outside doesn't have to be yard work and hard work. Sitting in a chair, pulling a few weeds, having a cup of coffee, sitting down in the evening, having a cocktail. Joe: You mentioned in an earlier podcast the Japanese saying of bathing yourself in green. And there's something to like just a peaceful state of mind for when I go sit outside, and I can see all the plants in the backyard, and everything's green everywhere.It is just a lot more peaceful. Keith: it is for sure. And it doesn't take a lot of time to get those rewards. A small stroll through the backyard or sit outside for a few minutes. This time of year, we'll get our fire pit going.And I'm burning pine and sometimes just twigs and sticks and pine cones that are out in the yard. So sometimes it's not an Oak hardwood-based fire. So sometimes it, it's a fire that burned for 15 minutes, you sit there and have a cocktail or have a cup of coffee or something and It's really [00:02:00] relaxing to have Joe: a couple of guys over.And I like to call it, offer up burnt offerings as a friend of mine used to say a little bonfire in front of your mouth. Exactly. Then a Keith: campfire. Yeah. And if you're going to be smoky, you might as well have a cigar. Yeah. Yup. Absolutely. Sometimes creating that space, and when you think about it from a room perspective, it doesn't have to be. It could be your straight up the full backyard, a couple of chairs in front of a fire pit.All you need. But sometimes creating a room-based feeling. You've got this space. It's totally private screen plannings on one side so that you're not seeing that neighbor add an offense or an, or a trellis and some vines. So that you actually create a small intimate space that you can invite people into, or you can go out and have a little sanity from your wife, from your kids or your neighbors and your job, what are some Joe: good growing vines that make sense that won't take over your entire yard?Keith: Kudzu, no katsu now that's the one that does take over the neighborhood, Joe: [00:03:00] my entire backyard. And it's climbing in my trees. And I had some guys over, and we were smoking cigars, and one of them was the head of the. Neighborhood HOA. And he was like. You should really trim those. Those are going to kill your trees.So now my trees are covered in a vine that is dead leaves in the middle of like perfectly everything else is Keith: green and terrible. Yeah. So there's all the calamitous are nice. They bloom in the spring and summertime. It's a nice small vine. There's an evergreen Clematis. That's more medium to large.It's got a nice tropical evergreen folly. It's one of my favorites. And then it blooms in the spring. It's got one-inch white flour. That's fragrant. And usually, when somebody has one, and it blooms, we'll sell one to their neighbors because the fragrance is so nice. And it wafts over into the neighbor's yard.It's that large of a plant. Do you need to keep Joe: them a certain distance from your house because they will climb your house? Keith: Certain vines have will actually attach themselves to the house, IVs cross vines, another one cross, the vine is perfect, but it will [00:04:00] attach itself to the house and the building.Some people like Joe: that, look, it's Keith: bad for us. I don't think it is anymore. It depends on the type of side, and you wouldn't want to put it on Mason, night's siding or something like that, the brick with brick or some of that stuff, it's okay. On a wood fence, it's going to be okay.It's probably going to. I don't think it's going to shorten the life of the fence. But once you go with that, look, you're probably going to have to stick with that look kind of thing. It's hard to power wash the tentacles that are going to hold on. And the air routes that are gonna pull to hold onto them, to the fence.But people with pergolas, Joe: is there any vine that people like, though? Yes. Keith: So grapes are great on pergolas because they hang down from the pergola, and you can pick them. They're messy. They can be messy. Yeah. The evergreen Clematis is a great one. I've got an evergreen Clematis that comes up about 10 feet and goes over about 10 feet.So it's a pretty large vine. It'll cover a garage. If you did a little small pergola over a garage, it'd come up over a garage, and a half and [00:05:00] go all the way over and all the way down the other side, one buys. You don't need one on each side. Yeah. Typically I would recommend one on either side if there's that option, but it will go all the way over and hang down on the other side.So it's a decent size. Joe: vine. Oh, there's something like really coolest sounded about going outside on your pergola and just eating grapes, though. Yeah, Keith: Yeah, absolutely. And the whole edible landscape thing is nice. Blueberries are one of those things you could use as a privacy hedge.But they create a border. They give you good fall color. And then they produce tons of fruit. I've got a friend that's got 20 blueberries, and she probably picks 30 pounds, 40 pounds of blueberries a year. It's absolutely ridiculous amount. What do you Joe: recommend here in our area for, by way of hanging plants, Keith: hanging plants?Mixed hanging baskets are always good. When you get three or four different plants and if one of them fails for too dry or too hot, the other three maybe, finding that that's what they're looking for. So when you have one that doesn't do as well, and you've got three or four in there, the hanging basket kind of keeps on growing up.[00:06:00] You're constructing your Joe: outdoor room. You got maybe a trellis with some vine. You got some other plants. a couple of walls. How do we get Keith: So the, we've got screened plants, things like our providers or tea, olives a plan that's gonna get, eight to 12 feet tall.You could trim it as a tight hedge or let it grow out more leafy. They create your walls. You've got a trellis, you've got a screen planting along one side, and it doesn't have to wrap all the way around. It's not as you don't want to create a box and block yourself in, but create that wall where you're getting some privacy, maybe even from your house, where you can slip away from your teenage kids for an hour.Yeah, block a neighbor out that's gotten. It was too noisy or too nosy. The step of walls, we've got a product. It's a ground cover product called step a bull. There are probably 12 or 12 or 15 plans. That you can use as a ground cover. You're, you either have a stone patio or gravel,in my backyard, I've got a huge area where a fire pit is. And instead of putting flags down or [00:07:00] pavers down, I've used, just used granted pea gravel. So it's a nice base to walk on. It's dry. It's not. You could do the same thing with mulch, but you're replacing the mulch every year.And then I've got ground cover. I've got step bubbles around the edges of it, and they're creeping into the center. The step bubbles are nice because a lot of them are evergreen. They flat out. They're pollinator-friendly. So they've got when they flower, and they attract different pollinators.Such things like that kind of green up the base and all the bulls' steps. Some of them will handle light traffics. A mum will handle heavy traffic, but if you're putting them in a pathway, something someplace where you're really going to walk all the time, A lot of times, you'll need stepping stones in within them.But then the step of bulls will grow in between the stepping stone. So it's a neat product and just creates the whole floor or the situation. And then. As far as the ceiling, adding large shade trees, something that's going to spill over into that area. That's going to give you some ceiling effect a wrap-around secure to do to that area.[00:08:00] the things Joe: that's great about our areas. We have a lot of established old trees. And I don't know why it's so fast. It's almost as fascinating as staring at the fire as just sitting down and looking up at a tree when it's windy. Oh yeah. I find myself losing, oh, another one, 10 minutes. Yeah.What happened? There was nothing. Maybe I was watching a squirrel. Keith: Yeah, absolutely. And we do have. We've got in this area, we've got beautiful trees. They are taking some trees out. But the nice thing about our area is they always require a buffer.In those buffers, you've got a decent amount of native trees that, Joe: and I know our areas, especially the city of Cary, which is regardless of the company, is very excited about trees. My friend is one of the guys pouring concrete and the new downtown Kerry park. And he was saying that they're having a hard time getting qualified drivers because the city told him that there's like a $50,000 fine.If they damaged the trees, they were up. If you run into him like you have to plant one of the same size and breed, which for a tree that [00:09:00] size would be, we Keith: It would be more than $50,000 probably. Yeah, they take their trees seriously. And the buffer zone seriously, and when you drive through the town, I was driving through the other day, and that was, I was literally thinking about.How amazing the buffer's ends are that the planning department at the town of Cary has done a phenomenal job with that. The setbacks and the buffer zones allow you to drive through town and see green, native trees. Creating that ceiling effect that we're talking about over the road, you can drive through parts of town and, they'll turn them back, but then they come straight back out over the road, and that's that ceiling effect that I'm talking about.And a lot of people have that naturally. And then other people don't, you when you get into an outdoor room, a lot of times you don't want to block that out over if you've got a hot tub in your backyard or you've got an area use. I want to see the stars when there's a clear night, sometimes it's not like seeing the stars outside of the city, but when there's a clear night, and you can sit out there and look up at the stars, you don't want to block, know, you want some of that opened it, the sky feeling and plants do better.A lot of times when [00:10:00] you've got some sunlight coming down, even in the middle of the yard. I just thought that was an important piece to get outside. It's not as much about the space or the amount of money you're going to spend in your backyard, but with whatever space you have, if you go out and buy three or four $30 plastic chairs and create a fire pit.I think everybody's wound tight these days. I think COVID and the economy and the pace we live in, and I think that's a good cure for this fall. I think I'll wrap it up by taking 15 minutes and get out into your backyard and enjoy the outside this fall.

Keith: [00:00:00] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. These days, everybody that comes to the garden centers has deer or rabbit problems, and a lot of times, these problems'll follow a cycle. The rabbits get really out of control, and they're eating all the plants. The Hawk population only increases, or the Fox population will increase.And then there'll be very few rabbits.. right. Joe: now, in my neighborhood, the rabbits are winning. Keith: Yeah, absolutely. It's like some scary movie or something. There are rabbits everywhere. Joe: Yeah, I'll pull into my driveway at night, and the light will shine, and it will be three or four rabbits scatter like cockroaches. Keith: I've got a little beagle that loves to chase rabbits, squirrels and. The rabbit poop on the front sidewalk, I think, is just they're just messing with him, really. He's asleep, he's locked up, in the house, and they're out there eating all our plants.[00:01:00] Our neighborhood Joe: definitely does have a set of Hawks. There are two or three that in one of them is pretty. And I got a tiny dog, and yesterday the big Hawk landed on the railing to go downstairs where my dogs go outside, off the back deck. Wow. We sit in there. Like I saw that little dog, Keith: I wouldn't think right now a dog would even be of any interest. There are so many rabbits out.But, they're they, when people come into the garden center, and they've planted these plants, and they've lost all these plants, do you know the neighborhood rabbit? And there's Joe: certain plants that rabbits really they're probably the expensive ones. Yeah. Keith: It's always they're going to start with their favorite plant, and they work they'll work their way down, so it's you'll find these plants that, they're rabbit resistant, or they're not rabbits aren't supposed to like them. And once all the rest of the plants are gone, they're going to eat that one too. Yeah. You're trying to get people good advice. And eventually, the advice runs out.Joe: No, really like certain vegetables, but if it's served and it's the Keith: only food exactly. I want something green, and all there is Joe: spinach. Keith: a piece of bacon in it.You put bacon [00:02:00] on anything, and it tastes good. Deer are another thing. The population of deer and the more houses that go in, the more the deer gets squeezed. There are all kinds of things you can do to deter deer and deter rabbits. Repellents are one of them. They, you're spraying the plant down.You need to do it consistently. Every time we get torrential downpours or a week's worth of rain, you need to go out and reapply. And you also need to reapply when the plants are coming out of the ground in the spring. They're the size of a baseball when they get to the size of a beach ball. If you haven't resprayed it, the repellent has been diluted basically by the size of the growth of the plant.So you need to add more, more repellent. The other thing you can do is you can do fencing, and you can do it. A fishing line is a good deterrent for deer. You can run fishing lines just around trees in your yard. And when they're walking along, you can put flagging tape on it when they stop for the flag and tape, they see the fishing line, and then they won't pass through that.They don't like the deterrent. Being tangled up in fishing lines. Yeah. It's a good way of doing it [00:03:00] inexpensively and then Joe: nothing worse than walking through a spider web. Keith: Exactly. And especially this time of year in the fall, October timeframe, there are spiderwebs everywhere. It seems like they're saving up a meal for the winter, we carry several repellents, but I must garden as a repellent that we carry that it's made in chapel hill. It's a local, small company. It's all organic. It's a product that I absolutely love. I love the owner. I love keeping things local and spending money. It's been, I must Joe: like I M U Keith: S T I must garden.It's been widely tested. There are lots of things. People always have solutions for everything that you can a bar soap mothball, all these other things. The thing with mothballs is, they're poisonous. My parents used to use mothballs on hostas to keep rabbits away. They turn around, and I've got a mouthful of mothballs, so I get my stomach pumped when I'm two or three years old. So the quick, cheap approach isn't necessarily the best.No, but they do work. Joe: [00:04:00] hostas all over the place. Like it was just too much. And I'm not a giant fan of the plants. I would have paid rabbits to eat those hostas, but they wouldn't touch them. Keith: That's the way it works. Now, the other thing is, when the population is right, they're not coming into your yard like the deer literally walked down my side. They don't do a lot of damage because I've got so many plants that they'll nibble here and nibble there.And when the population gets to a point. A new neighborhood comes in as those deer get squeezed into another, an older neighborhood out of the woods that's happening all over our area. It's happening all over our area. We've been recommending bow hunters actually because we're removing some of the population, and we don't have wolves in our area. Joe: I think I saw an email from the game department about that. Keith: Yeah. So it's we've got a list of bowhunters that we can recommend to people and, you find a nice, safe place on an acre or bigger. A five or 10-acre area in a town or around town is ideal. You find it you find a good bow hunter, and they [00:05:00] remove three or four deer.You're affecting the population over time. And it kind of, it's almost a, must it without removing some deer you've got here that are going hungry. Now, they're they're crossing the road more often, then you're removing deer by a car accident is the Joe: solution the same.Keith: I don't know what the solution is for rabbits beagles, a good solution for rabbits. I've gotten ours trained where they walk in a circle because we've got one of those dog fences. It's a beacon in the house, and it sends us, sends a signal out a certain distance. And when the signals running out, that's when the dog gets zapped.So the dogs know their circle. They never get zapped that rabbits, know, the dogs are. So they come out of the woods, and they make this circle all the way around our yard until at nighttime. And then they come right into the circle. And now the dogs are inside you. Now the animals get pretty darn smart trapping rabbits, I guess maybe and, have a heart trap and moving them to a different location.And, or a beagle, a beagle, a good scenario, some little yappy dog. [00:06:00] Fencing, there's all kinds of deer fencing, fencing. Your entire yard is an option. But it's, it's a little bit more expensive option and Joe: it wasn't traditional fences. Rabbits are going to go right under like vinyl fans. Keith: like a vegetable garden, you'd need a metal fence. And the deer fence that you can use is a fairly inexpensive plastic fence that you can't see in the distance. So it's not doesn't really break your vision into the woods.Joe: I see many people who have done it before tried to put chicken wire and the gaps under their fence to keep out the right. If you Keith: can, if you can, create a barrier down low that will help with rabbits, for sure. But then you get a couple of rabbits in the fence.Yeah. Yeah. I finished Joe: it. And then I was like. Finally, I was sitting out on the deck the weekend. That's where I got the. And all fixed up and all my little fences underneath my fence. And there's a fricking rabbit in the yard. Yeah. It's I don't know. Keith: You don't want to see two rabbits in the yard.Mr. And Mrs. Rabbit just moved into your fence, gardens. Fencing works better for deer than for rabbits. If you're talking about a vegetable garden, a small area, [00:07:00] you can certainly fence that's out rabbits. There are a lot of granular products you can use.I must garden does mole involve granular, and they do a Deer and rabbit granular, but that works really well. It's easy to put out, and it's not like a, it's not like spray. It's more of a scent-based product. So they come in, smell the garlic and some of these natural things, and move on.And that works really well. Moles and voles are obviously other major issues. And they're doing damage under the ground, which makes it a little more difficult. There are a couple of different things you can do. You can do, like a vibrating steak. Some of the wind-based vibrating sticks will keep bowls and moles moving on.They think there's a predator out there, and they'll steer clear of that area. There are battery-operated ones that work as well. And then there's poison peanuts and poison worms that you can put down in the ground, and you're getting rid of the population, but the malls and bowls and rabbits, both the malt, they multiply so fast that's where it turns into an issue of deer at least or having young once a year.So the population doesn't get as [00:08:00] crazy until you see development as we have right now, and it just gets much worse. The other thing you can do for moles and voles is had 'em permit till or sand. When you see surface holes from Vols, you can add sand to it. The sand kind of hourglasses down into the ground, creating an environment where they can't create a cavity in the ground.Cause the sand keeps sliding down. So putting sand around a plant, that's got a vole problem. It just fills those cavities, and the voles will move. And then when you're planning, there are products like vole king, which is a wire basket you roll around the root ball plant. And then you plan it within the basket. It's a stainless steel basket. So the roots grow out of the stainless steel basket. The Vols will still get outside of that basket and trim roots back, but they can't get all the way to the base of the plants. They're not going to kill the plant and then permit TILs, an old stamp.The permit has expanded slate heated, and it pops and expands, but it's got a lot of jagged edges. So people will mix that in with soil and plant the plant in a bed of a permit. And that keeps voles out and [00:09:00] keeps plants pretty on the healthiest. But, I think removal and a lot of, in many ways and limiting the population taking away some of their habitats and when you've got rabbits if you don't have piles of brush where they can hide and multiply.They're going to move on and move into the neighbor's yard or head into the woods or whatever. Suppose you've got a yard. It's got a lot of covers. They're gonna, they're going to find a place, and you're gonna continuously have rabbit problems. But we have had a lot of people take us up on the bow hunting scenario.I'm a hunter, and when you've got a responsible adult that's been hunting for years, if you can give them a small corner view, yo. And they can put up a stand or put in a blind and start to remove a deer here or there. You're not taking a lot of deer, and many times, venison, deer, and meat go to people who need it. I took two deer last year, and we took the meat, and we actually put it on Facebook marketplace. And We had 25 people that came to pick up meat this summer. It was up on the Virginia border. And there were many people [00:10:00] who showed up to pick up free venison, and it was all ground and ready, packaged, and ready to go. So it was fun to feed the neighbors. Joe: What about possums. Keith: Possums are supposed to be good. They're always picking up that they look great. They're not pretty animals. Oh. They're always picking up whatever meat scraps, dead animals, whatever.They're not great. If you're trying to go after your veggies are what year now they're going after your chickens. Maybe if you're, if you're raising chickens in the backyard they're they like to kill a chicken, but supposedly they eat and remove a lot of ticks.That's part of their appetite. It's something new I've heard. Yeah. That's something new I've heard in the last few years. I'm like two ugly creatures, meet in the woods, the possum wins. Anyway, so there are, the larger possum population you have, supposedly the fewer pics you have.But it is a creepy looking Thanks for listening today. We'll catch you on the next podcast. 

 [00:00:20] Keith:   [00:00:33] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. I've got Steven Petrilliac here who works with Garden Supply CO as well. He manages our nursery. Today, we want to bring people up to speed on the art and the science of landscape design. The importance of getting good advice before you start to spend money and make sure that the money that you're spending is investing money in your property and not just throwing it down the drain. [00:00:59] picking the right plant for the right location. There's so much science behind plants. There are plants that need to be in the shade, but need to be wet. There are plants that need to be in the shade. that need to be dry. There are full sun plants. [00:01:13] There are plants. That'll cover both of those ranges, but if you go in and you invest in 10 or 12 plants for a screen planning and you put a full sun plant in the shade, in the end, you've basically got nothing. And then just, getting good sound advice, working with a professional somebody that you know, is going to back up what they're, if they're installing it or if they're making recommendations that they're going to guarantee those plants and follow through. [00:01:36] I had a customer the other day that actually did the consult with us and ran into somebody in the neighborhood, decided they were going get a second quote from them, got the second quote. And it was the exact same price as what we were had quoted, but the guy was there and we've done multiple projects for him. [00:01:54] And they're a really good customer, he just decided to pull the trigger. He liked the guys, he seemed nice. The guy came in and put in a few plants. He spent a couple of thousand dollars and the plant dies when he called them back for the warranty, he didn't warranty it. [00:02:09] They don't warranty plants, it's we sell bees and because bees are flying insects, we don't warranty them, plants are main business and we feel like that, know, if you get the right person, the right plan and you get it in the right spot, that we can warranty it. [00:02:23] And we do warranty, all of our trees and shrubs for a year. He came back to us and he was, very discouraged. He couldn't understand why this got in warranty, his plants. And I explained to him that, they're living beings. , it is easy to lose them. [00:02:36] If it's not part of their business model, then they may not be able to afford to warranty, or they just may not want to warranty, but, picking the right person to do the job and then getting the right advice. I think  [00:02:49] Steven: there's a lot of factors that come into play when determining the right plant for the right spot. [00:02:53] Like you said, if you're going for a screening plant and you're not well informed on how large the thing is actually going to get. There are some screening plants where you just want to have a drug, that's going to get 10 to 12 feet tall. So you wouldn't need something like larger growing arborvitae and that is a lot where people have come in and chosen something or a spot because they liked the color or they liked the texture. [00:03:14] And it performs well where it is, but it gets to a point that has just completely outgrown its space. And then you've got to start back at square, one again.  [00:03:21] Keith: When you're talking about, a screen or a privacy hedge picking the right spacing is another thing. [00:03:26] It's 10 feet works as good as seven. But it's going to be three or four years longer. Three feet, the plants they're going to crowd each other out and the root zones are going to compete. You can take a Burford Holly or a needlepoint, Holly, and you can put them three to four feet on center and the plan will thrive in that environment. [00:03:44] You take something large, like arborvitae and you cram them together and they're going to age out twice as fast as they would. You've spent twice the amount of money going in, and it's going to last half the time, even though it's a perfect plant, maybe for the location. all of these factors and it's so inexpensive to have a landscape designer come out when you start factoring in, it's going to be a fraction of the cost of the whole project, it's always bothersome me when you pull up into a neighborhood, And somebody's piecemealed it. They put a plant here and a plant there, my yard tends to be that because I'm a plant person and I collect plants and I want one of these and one of those, a lot of times a new plant will come out and I'll plant three of them in the yard so that I can test them out. [00:04:24] And I can actually give people definitive answers about that plant, but when somebody is doing design work, we're not recommending putting in a hundred different types of plants. We want to do it more like you paint a house, you pick a couple of colors or  [00:04:36] a piece of stone and a piece of Hardy board, and then this color, and then a trim color, you want it fairly simple so that it's big and it's bold and it's impactful.  [00:04:45] Steven: And that's where I think going back to the spacing is important. Not only of course, with screening or head rows, any bed that you're planning. [00:04:52] I always stress to the customer over planning as an issue. You might want all this color, you might want all these different things. But before long it's easy to get overwhelmed and overcrowded in the garden. And next thing you're leading yourself to failure. So I always tell people, get all your bones in and that gives them the opportunity to come back seasonally and, find new things that they can add to the garden. [00:05:12] And of course, yeah, we can go ahead and do a full-blown design. That's. Turnkey done. You don't have to add to it cause you got plenty of customers that just want to come in and they want their yard redone. And that's great, but doing it little pieces at a time and having somebody give you the right advice on the spacing so that you don't end up, killing yourself, trying to maintain it,  [00:05:30] Keith: and as far as the cost goes it's, it's a fraction  [00:05:33] if you do a $3,000 landscape install, it's less than $300 to do an on-site consult at your house. So it's 10% of the cost, but it's everything. As far as the outcome of the project you wouldn't build a building without having an engineer or architect look at it. It's the same kind of scenario. [00:05:51] You're throwing money away when you don't have a good plan. You look at it, if it's a six or $10,000 job, it's you're down to three or 4% of the cost of the whole project and it's a project that's going to work, landscaping's never a hundred percent even if we're putting in, say like a hedgerow, We get one plant that's too close to a large tree and either gets too much shade or it gets too much root competition and it doesn't do as well as the others, but getting the right plant in the right place, we can usually make adjustments to that plant. [00:06:20] More water, more fertilizer a little more light and we can have that plant come back around, but there's nothing a hundred percent about it. It's not as cut and dry as painting a house. And that's why it's even more important. To really get that advice. When Steven was talking about spacing, one of the things that you're, when you're talking about costs, he's talking people out of buying plants, you come in, you get advice, you look at a picture and he's saying, no don't put 10 plants in that space, put seven plants in that space, or put five plants in that space and give it a little time and wait because you'll be happier over the course of 10 15 years. And there are plants that have a 10 or 15-year life lifespan. [00:06:55] There are other plants that you're planting forever. You put a Japanese maple and you really want to pick the right spot and then, and not have it overgrowth the space.  [00:07:02] Steven: going back to the, what you mentioned about the warranty is. For garden supply, in particular, it's nice to have that physical location for them to come back to. [00:07:11] You're not chasing somebody down making phone calls, trying to see if they're gonna respond to you, but, after we help you with a design or planning, you've got a place to come back to. We've got a lot of employees that have been there for a long time. We'd become friends with the customers and just knowing that there's that relationship that they can trust. [00:07:28] Oh, Hey, something's going on? With the design that we did or the install that we did and it's not hard to come back and find us and get the help they need.  [00:07:36] Keith: that's a big piece of where, the customer, I was saying that was having an issue with even getting a hold of when you're dealing with very small company and there are great small companies out there that this is not an issue. [00:07:46] But when you're dealing with a very small company, There may be one person. That's the salesperson that also works on the install crew and they're the warranty person. And I'm not saying that's a negative all the time. Sometimes that can be a real positive, but when that person's extremely busy, Getting back to the warranty when you're in income, survival mode is not an easy scenario. [00:08:07] Going back and cleaning up the mess of something that didn't go well is not as easy. And we've, we've been around 25 years. We've kinda gotten to the point where we've ironed out most of those scenarios and we've got, a warranty email, we've got a warranty person. [00:08:21] It doesn't cost them any money to replace a plant when it's, it hasn't gone well, sometimes we'll have customers that'll come in and they're like the plant doesn't look as good as it was when it went in. And you have to explain to them that plants decline sometimes before they actually flush, they're losing foliage so that they can grow roots. [00:08:36] It's not the paint on your car. It's not a vehicle. It's got to make adjustments in the environment and then it's going to push things out. So sometimes we're talking people into waiting longer to have that plant go ahead and flush out because the plant's already there and it's already rooted in. [00:08:50] It's not a dollar and cents thing. It's just, it makes sense for the customer. Yeah. Yep.  [00:08:56] Steven: Same thing I dealt with the other day and, the customer came in and is great. Myrtle was leaning. And honestly, it just needed to be staked up because it's a younger plant. The blooms are heavy, it's leaning over. [00:09:08] And he was really set on just going ahead and replacing it. It's already been in the ground for six months and I said, if this was at my house, There's no way I'm going to give up on that plant. Just we'll have to go back out there, rip one out, dig a whole new hole and then go through another six months of waiting to see what it's going to do. [00:09:23] Cause most likely it's going to end up the same way you give it some time. Let it get established and it'll recover pretty easily.  [00:09:29] Keith: A big piece of it is just having people, like Steven said earlier, people ask me all the time. [00:09:33] They don't necessarily know I'm an owner. But they'll ask me how long I've worked here. And if I liked working here and I'm like, I've been here 25 years. I don't think I'm going anywhere, Steven's been here. . 13 or 14. years. [00:09:44] We've got a pile of staff that has been there 10 to 20 years. And having  [00:09:49] Steven: that onsite location, I've got a lot of customers that can come in that have gotten designs done by other companies, great designs. But they come in with their lists and they go, we don't know what any of these look like. [00:09:59] So from start to finish whether you have a design already done or we're doing the design, or it's your first time at the garden center. Year-round, we stock up probably heavier than most, any nursery that I go to. And I do make it a point when I traveled to stop by any other local garden centers and check them out. [00:10:15] We really pride ourselves on having all the inventory. We can have year-round so that when you come in looking for something or need the advice, you can put your hands on it, and see exactly what we're talking about  [00:10:26] Keith: because in North Carolina, 12 months out of the year. There's really not a time that you can't do something outside. [00:10:33] There are certain plants we might recommend waiting until the fall or waiting until the winter. But we plant 12 months out of the year we probably lose more plants for over-watering than under-watering. So going into the summertime, you can always add more water to a plant and you can't necessarily take it away. [00:10:47] When you're showing people plants and you're showing them inventory, and you're going through a plan, There, there might be, 15 really great plants that fit one situation. I need a two, two to three-foot plant for full sun in a dry location. [00:11:01] You could show them easily, 10 to 15 plants. Just because somebody came up with a design and they put a plant in that location. That doesn't mean you're going to love it. And we show people, plants all the time and I'll say, this is a love it, or hate it plant. And they're like, I hate it. And I'm like, perfect. [00:11:18] Let's move to the next one. Now we're looking at, from a design standpoint, I've shown them another plant that will fit that same environment. And they're like, I love it now. I'm like, okay let's make sure that. Texture and color, and everything go with the other two plants that are surrounding that. [00:11:34] So you make a few adjustments to the landscape and they, and the people really end up it's like going into a fabric store, going to a furniture store. You're not going to know until you see exactly what you won't just be in there and having that plant right in front of you and being able to take plants and move them around and show them. [00:11:51] Steven: giving the customer multiple options relates also to, these companies that are growers that do really good at marketing. And they've put this really cool name on a newer plant. But what they don't know is there are probably five or six other plants that are hard for the most experienced horticulturalists to tell the difference is, one it's just a name. [00:12:09] They'll come in and they're pretty set on the design that they've got and they want that exact plant, but being open to the suggestion of, this is the same plant with a different name, everything's the same about it. Because you can't possibly get every single cultivar that's out there. [00:12:24] Being able to find the substitutes that match the plan that they bring in is something we're really good at.  [00:12:30] Keith: So to wrap it up, I think it's key to not move forward until you've gotten good advice. If you don't know plants and design, you don't understand the science behind them. [00:12:39] Just go, if you don't get help from us, get help somewhere,  [00:12:43] 

[00:00:20] Keith: And I brought in Steven Petrilliac who manages our nursery and we were talking about all the number of things that people are bringing in this summer leaves and brown spots on them and insect problems and plants that have been overwatered and underwatered. So we thought we would talk about that today and give people options as far as what they can do. [00:00:55] One of the things that we always recommend doing is taking pictures, bringing in samples. We can usually diagnose a problem. And then make recommendations as far as how to rectify that. What kind of things have you been seeing in the nursery, Steven? [00:01:07] This time of year, we're seeing a lot of fungus and disease bacteria. Viruses can be another issue. There's a lot of stressors right now, we go through one of the driest Springs on record to now, I think 10 or 11 inches above what the average is, which can really get plants stressed out and confused. [00:01:24] So a lot of the pictures people are bringing in yellowing leaves, spots on leaves dropping off trees. And I think a lot of the causes are. Related to the weather conditions under fertilizing or over-fertilizing is another issue that can lead to those problems. [00:01:39] We always recommend either bringing in cuttings or sending us pictures or bringing in pictures. We can properly diagnose the issue give them the right treatment and go from there.  [00:01:49] Keith: One of the things that, we've talked about a number of times is watering issues over-watering, and under watering and how, it sounds like we're clueless when people ask, if, we think it was overwatered or underwater, and it's the same kind of. Look over water, the plant doesn't have oxygen and takes up water. [00:02:04] So it does have a drought. You're sitting there looking at a plant and it's sometimes it's, it's just it questions and just be able to figure out. Exactly the issue is, but right now over-watering is always one of those things. It's a little harder to rectify because it's more of a planning issue, a height that the plant, elevating the plant in the ground. [00:02:22] Sometimes it's raising that plant up or diverting water from around that plant. With heavy clay, it's almost like having a bowl and you get that plan in there and it's hard to have that water to drain off.  [00:02:33] Steven: And I think a big factor too, is, a lot of times customers can come in with issues and they feel like they might need to be defensive. [00:02:41] The biggest thing for me is for them to be completely honest about whatever the issue is. So if we ask, how often you're watering, tell us the truth right off the bat. We want the customer to be successful with everything. Whether it's a plant that they got from us or they didn't get from us. [00:02:56] So a lot of times they'll try to find a way to tell you that they're watering it the way that they think you want them to water it. So they'll tell you they've watered it, two or three times a week. And then, the next thing is well, how long are you watering it for, do you go out there and spray it with a sprinkler for a few minutes, or especially newly planted plants need to be deeply watered less often as opposed to constantly watering for short amounts of time, I feel like that's  [00:03:21] Joe: when I go to the dentist and he's have you been flossing? [00:03:23] I'm like, you see my mouth? Why do we gotta play this game, man?  [00:03:29] Keith: And you're like, yeah, I floss every day, twice a day. I floss in the morning. I philosophy lunch. We do get a lot of that. And it's, I think people want to do the right thing and they want to feel like they did the right thing, they don't want to be part of the failure in the process, but, educating people to water correctly or to plant correctly is what we're there for. And then when something's not working out, if they can bring in pictures and bring in cuttings, we've got like a huge staff of people. And if you're not in our neighborhood or right in our area, go into I think sometimes go into a Home Depot or Lowe's, those guys don't necessarily know horticulture. [00:04:06] They don't understand the science behind the plants and so going to a local garden center. In our area, a garden hut, a Logan's a Homewood for the garden state, one of the local garden centers, that's got people that are really knowledgeable about plants and, it takes quite a few years to be able to look at a plant in the landscape Or look at a picture or look at a leaf and really be able to diagnose, and typically, a lot of times it's not definitively, it's 90%. [00:04:33] This is, it's an over-watering scenario. [00:04:35] Joe: So you mentioned earlier, you get a lot of fungi because there's been so much rain lately. How do you treat that? What's the treatment look like?  [00:04:41] Keith: for So there's, it's given the plan a little bit more light sometimes it's true. [00:04:46] It's treating it preventatively with a fungicide. That's another thing that I see people come in and they'll say and this kind of bridges to the whole pollinator scenario. A lot of the pollinator problems are chemicals and pollutants and things that are going on in the environment. [00:05:00] But people will come in and they'll show you a picture of a bottle. And they're like this work and, homeowners don't understand the difference between an insecticide and fungicide. It's something to spray on a plant and, and, or a, an insecticide that's made for something that you're gonna use in your home or an insecticide that you're going to use on your plant. [00:05:17] Can I spray this on the plant? No, absolutely not. It's for spiders, in your house. And then, just understanding the difference between a fungicide and insecticide in or a systemic. There's foliar systemic, so you can spray on the plant and it goes into the leaves and then there's systemics [00:05:30] You can put on the ground that the plant takes up and protects the plant from the inside out. But fungicides is what you would put on this time of year for fungal related issues on the leaves or in the  [00:05:40] Steven: roots. It's funny you say that thing about showing us a picture of a bottle. So if it's not an existing customer that we've already had in the store they're used to going to ACE hardware or Lowe's or Home Depot. [00:05:51] So many of the new customers that we have that come in and they're like I bought this and then I went back and I bought this and they got these two or three different products that they've gotten from Lowe's that they did or did not have any guidance on. And that's where I'm like, okay, going forward, just come here first. [00:06:06] Being in ahead of the game, not everybody walks around their yard every day, checking out every plant. But the worst thing you can do is just wait till the last minute and then try to play catch up.. Especially things that you've planted recently, keep an eye on, if it starts to turn color or you start to notice anything about it catching it before it's too far gone is the best thing you can do. [00:06:25] Keith: . And on that note there's a lot of insect and disease problems that a lot of times somebody will come in with a powdery mildew issue and there is that we're getting towards summertime, most powdery mildew functions really well between 60 and 70 degrees. So that's when you're going to see the problems really show up on, on foliage. [00:06:42] If it gets hot and dry. That problem will go away on its own. So sometimes you're recommending to the customer, go ahead and fertilize the plant and give it a boost of energy, but don't apply the fungicide yet. Or somebody will bring you an Azalea leaf. And if you go out and if you've got azaleas and you go out and you flip the leaf over this time of year, you'll see brown specks all over the back. [00:07:04] And it's residue from insect problems that were there a month ago. But if you go out there. And spray the whole Bush. You're just spraying the whole Bush. You're polluting your environment. It's not benefiting pollinators. It's not benefiting your dog or your kids, and it's not benefiting the plant, so you've missed that window to spray it and, so getting good information about when. Rectify that situation. And it's going to be next spring when the plant's in bloom. So Azalea's you spray as they're going out and bloom, you spray them preventatively, or you fertilize them with a systemic insecticide. [00:07:37] So that protects them moving into the season when you would have lacewing. But, knowing the lifecycle of the insect and when to spray and what to spray is just. It's going to be beneficial to the environment. It's going to be beneficial to the plant

Keith: [00:00:20] So we were talking about last week, the importance of shopping local. I think it's extremely important. It was a good conversation. We finished up last week about creating community it's a mental game-changer, it's a social experience when you know that the person that you've dealt with last week you feel comfortable with them.[00:00:54] They're a friend of yours. One thing that always blows my mind and always makes me feel really good is when I see people that haven't seen their friends run into each other in our garden center oh my God, I haven't seen you in a year. And then they stand there and I'll, I'll jokingly say, Is it in place just to catch up, however, we're supposed to be buying plants or whatever, it really, that's the best compliment in the world when two like-minded people or two people that go to church together, two people that, they went to school together, run into each other in our in, at garden supply company.[00:01:28]Or if I go out and I'm at Logan's trading. And I run into one of my customers. And it's funny because I'll be at Logan's trading and run into a customer and they're like I don't shop here that often. And I'm like, oh, I do. They're embarrassed almost that they're not shopping at  The Garden Supply Company.[00:01:43] And I'm like, oh my God, it's a phenomenal place. It's where I go when I need a break from Garden supply company. And I want a garden I'll run down to Logan's and wander around and have the same experience that my customers have when they come to us. And then I'll eat lunch at the cafe. It's a really relaxing, real-life small business experience.[00:02:06]I talked about in the last episode, stopping in the Garden Hut. I got down there and I had tomatoes. I was in between fresh tomatoes and tomatoes are like a religion to me. I can't wait for that first homegrown garden, fresh tomato, or a farmer's market tomato.[00:02:22]And I stopped in the Garden Hut and Nelsa grows all these crazy tomatoes and she grows them in her parking lot. She's got a farm, she grows them on. So people come to her for fresh tomatoes and the spring and in the summertime.  I picked up a couple of tomatoes and, that whole experience of just being there and being in a local business and picking up something that's fresh.[00:02:42] And it's I know where it was grown and I know Nelsa didn't spray toxic chemicals on it.  That feeling is amazing. And then supporting your friends and businesses. Is a key. We had talked about the local spending with respect to the fact that when you spend locally at all stays, the bulk of it stays in the community.[00:03:00]Very few of our checks go out of state. And a lot of them are as close as possible.  The nursery industry as a whole it's mind-boggling. You can go to another local garden center and ask them how they do something. How do you market, or how do you do this?[00:03:14]And they're totally sharing with information. Our industries It's an anomaly. It just it's like family. We get to a trade show and you're getting back together with all your friends and people you've known for years. And wholesale growers that we deal with I've been dealing with for 25 years.[00:03:29]The same people Landis halls, Carol plant center. He owns the farm several farms and he delivers. The plants on his truck himself, on a regular basis. And every time I see him, it's like seeing an old friend. We started growing plants and when I asked him, how do you do this?[00:03:45] Or how do you do that? he's forthcoming with that information and just shares how I can compete for, growing plants that he's selling to me, but we're still trying to buy as many plants as we can from him, because it's important to us, to maintain those relationships and[00:04:01]these people are friends. That is your community. The people that you call when you need something and boom, they're there, they can deliver it. Yeah. Yeah. I think [00:04:08] Joe: [00:04:08] you hear so much focus on community as if it's something that's more difficult than it is.[00:04:13]If only we could build community, we live in one.,[00:04:16] Keith: [00:04:16] yeah, it's not hard to do,  but if you walk into a large box store, you can make a connection there and you can build community. It's probably not likely that the community's going to stay there for you, but when you're dealing with a smaller business, the owners there. I've got Chip Ford that has worked for me on an ongoing basis. He pretty much manages me. He's been there 24 years. I've been there 25, Steven that's been there for, 15 years.[00:04:42] Katie, runs the whole thing for me. She's been there almost 20 years.  We've built a community within our business people will ask me, like how long do you think you're going to work?[00:04:51] Or when do you think you're going to retire? And I'm like I don't know that I'll ever retire completely because in the springtime when my customers are coming in. I'm getting excited because it's getting busier and sales or sales are moving along. The biggest thing is, I get to see my Fairweather friends.[00:05:06]None of my friends come out in the wintertime. It's the wildest thing, so I really truly have fair-weather friends April pops up and all my friends go out to see me, they want advice. We catch up on what they've been doing or what they're, what's happening with their family or their kids. I get to watch customers come in whose kids[00:05:22]we're riding, when we had pony rides, they'll bring a picture of them on a pony and they're applying for a job and they're 20 years old or they're 16 years old. And the community of high school kids that we've had over the years, we've taken kids from absolutely useless with no work experience whatsoever to some really good aerospace engineers.[00:05:43]I'm not saying I taught them anything about aerospace engineering, but I taught them how to work and gave him work ethic,  that's a wholly separate piece of it. All these young people that kinda, that kind of move through and that, that grow up in our local community when somebody spends money at our store,  the average is about $27.[00:06:01] That, that leaves the community. When you spend money at a large box store $57 leaves the community. You're talking about a drastic difference in as far as jobs go  52% of the jobs in America are small local businesses, which is kinda mind-blowing.[00:06:19] When you think about how many box stores are out there. So that's the value scenario. There's [00:06:24] Joe: [00:06:24] local owned businesses are not the ones that are doing the bare minimum when it comes to paying their employees are just barely hitting minimum [00:06:31] Keith: [00:06:31] wage. Exactly. They're paying better wages, but they also employ a lot more people, [00:06:35] Joe: [00:06:35] crazy stat you were just talking about.[00:06:37] So if you spend money locally on you spend a hundred dollars at a locally-owned place, $32 is going to leave the community, but 68 is going to stay. But if you spend it at a non locally owned, Plays $43 is going to stay in the community and $57 is [00:06:53] Keith: [00:06:53] going to leave. Exactly. We've got 60 to 75 employees, that in that range.[00:06:58] And when we pay them,  they're turning around and spending the money in the community. Like a larger box store, like a Lowe's for instance, which is, I can still consider that a local company but Lowe's home improvement probably has close to the same number of people on staff, in a given day.[00:07:15] And they're doing 10 times the sales. So, that money's leaving the community for sure, a lot of the product comes from outside of the area. [00:07:23] Joe: [00:07:23] This reduces climate impact because it's not it's a ton of shipping or even packaging, just all the things that go into not having to get it from the other side of the country to here to buy it.[00:07:34]Keith: [00:07:34] Exactly. So when we buy Japanese Maples and conifers, a lot of our Japanese Maples and conifers come from Oregon it's the one small category that we get from way outside of the state. The shipping cost used to be 15%. It's now 30, 35%. So that's an additional cost that the consumer pays.[00:07:53]It's still a value because it's a better product in Oregon or Washington, it's a zone seven kind of area but we're paying. 35% to ship it here. And then you've got all those emissions. You've got all, all the other additional things that go along.[00:08:10] Joe: [00:08:10] And I often find let's talk about Sam's club. You buy way more than you need. He ended up wasting a bunch of it. Cause you feel like you got a good deal. Exactly. But when you buy, as you go to the farmer's market, you don't feel like you got to buy 47 bushels, [00:08:22] Keith: [00:08:22] big salaries, I've got 40 pounds of cereal.[00:08:24] If you want any. It's a few months old and we [00:08:27] Joe: [00:08:27] buy food for ourselves. Like we buy it for a dog, yeah. A hundred-pound bags of frosted [00:08:31] Keith: [00:08:31] flakes. That's what I need.  For sure.  Yesterday I was in a place.  That the restaurants run so well that I asked him I had heard that it was a local owner and I thought it's a local owner, but it must be a chain restaurant, it's just run so well, the bartender there was amazing. The service is unbelievable. The quality of the food is unbelievable. And it's reasonably priced. The atmosphere is amazing, the whole experience and that's what you get out of a small local business.[00:08:59] So I asked the manager, is this a chain or is this something that's individually owned? And. And they said, no, this is individually owned. It was a person in Fuquay that had a business that partnered with somebody else and opened up the first one and apex and a scratch kitchen.[00:09:14]They're putting one in Carey, they're putting one in Cary. So I've got one to the right of man to the left of me. It's going to be impossible, not to have a good bloody Mary. And if you haven't had a good bloody mary, a scratch kitchen, go there and have them. They're extremely expensive.[00:09:30]And they're the best value bloody Mary you'll ever eat. It's topped with almost a meal before you get to the bloody Mary tempura fried shrimp, olives, bacon, and it goes on and on. The first time I went there the bloody Mary was $12 and my mail was 11. And it was literally the best valued bloody Mary that I've ever had.[00:09:50]People get so focused on price sometimes. I mean that they spend more money than they need to.[00:09:57] With plants it's extremely important that you get the advice and you get a good quality plant for one, one that's locally grown and that sourced locally. But you get the experience, you come in and it's a great environment.[00:10:10] And then you get the experience of the staff to get you the right plan for the right place because you can buy all the plants in the world. If you buy shady plants and put them in too much on or sunny plants and put them in too much shade or wet plants that need to be in a dry location, It doesn't matter if they were 50% off it, you are going to lose a lot of time and it's not going to be a fun, gardening experience for you.[00:10:32] And I think that same thing just goes across the board. You go buy a flower arrangement from somebody besides John at the Flower Cupboard. And all of a sudden, your flowers are wilting a week later and you're like,  cut flowers really aren't that, that great a deal.[00:10:47]You paid $20 for the arrangement. It lasted a week. Yeah. Paid 40 and it lasts three weeks. I'll take the $40 range, and I just, I think you got to buy from people that really know their trade that know their product.  You find the company or an individual tradesman that knows what he's doing. And it's a little bit more, and he has the time to get the job done. And he's got the experience bidding the job and the experience putting it down.[00:11:11] And it's a great scenario. And you get to know these people and they are your community. To me, it's a game-changer and I try to spend money locally. Anytime I can. 

Keith: [00:00:20] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. Today,  we were going to talk a little bit about buying local and all the benefits of buying local. People always talk about the financial benefits or the environmental benefits, to me, one of the most important benefits is the relationship that you have, to be able to walk into a podcast facility that's[00:00:55]owned by a local individual and that makes a difference in the community. Seeing somebody that, on a regular basis and most of the business that I do, I try to do that way. And it's not based on, financial benefit but it just feels good.[00:01:08] It's a smaller scenario. The service is always higher. Yeah, service is something that Over the last few years I think is, has just about been eliminated for most businesses. [00:01:19] Joe: [00:01:19] It seems like if you're cutting corners, it doesn't seem to be the logical one to cut, but it feels like from the chain stores, it is one of the things on the list that seems to go down in quality for sure.[00:01:29] And it could just be that it's harder to manage. I'm sure they're not purposely neglecting it, but [00:01:33] Keith: [00:01:33] still I don't know. It's years ago somebody told me there's a there are three things on a triangle. There's price, there's quality, and their service any great business can probably provide two of those pretty well.[00:01:45]You have to pick two, you got to pick two, you either have to reduce the quality. The reduce the service or reduce or increase the price. So there's a balance there, and sometimes you pay a little bit more with our business in particular. The thing that I find about service is that the service is what creates the value,  it's a science-based business and it's heavy and science and design.[00:02:07]I've got to have be pretty creative, I've got to be able to put together textures and colors and different things like that. And then I got to have the science to know that, that something's going to grow in wet or dry or sun or shade. I'm providing that customer with all that information for them to be successful.[00:02:21]That just creates a ton of value. I expect the same thing out of bond brothers. When I go down to bond brothers, I've been to a lot of local breweries where the beer isn't really necessarily that great. They're trying their best, but they haven't perfected it.[00:02:35]When I walk in there, the atmosphere is amazing. I see people that I know that are local in the community. And I know that, that it's individually owned and, and so partner and, It wouldn't have the same [00:02:46] Joe: [00:02:46] vibe if you were going down to the Miller Lite brewery.[00:02:49] Keith: [00:02:49] Yeah. And so you're, people that are from the community, the guys at bond brothers are all plant people. We do a lot of partnering with them.  We just partnered with them on a living wall and their new location on Chatham street.  I know they like plants, they know I like beer. It's a good partnership.[00:03:04] Joe: [00:03:04] It creates character in your neighborhood, as well as like you were saying, everybody like the rising tide floats all boats. If absoluteness for everybody, when you've got local business owners that are interested in what each other are doing and find ways to work together.[00:03:16] Keith: [00:03:16]  Sure. Flower, cupboards small company that I've done business with for 25 years. John, when I go in there, he's going to have the best flowers that you can source, they're not aged out. They weren't cheap. They're going to be a little bit more expensive.[00:03:31]But they last three times as long as anything else that I buy. It's a better value, he knows his trade. I grew up in a florist and. My mom had a florist. And to me, it going into a small florist means something me, but the quality and the value that, that I get out of John's flowers are pretty amazing.[00:03:46]Joe: [00:03:46] When I go to a small business where they're passionate about what they do and you're dealing sometimes with the owner or somebody that the owner is training to be passionate about something that they're passionate about. You feel like you matter more? Absolutely.  They really want to help you solve your problem.[00:04:02] That's the, sometimes when you're in a larger maybe box store type of scenario, they're trying to, yeah. They're trying to either just get done with their job. And they don't really care if you solve your problem because they're not really incentivized to or passionate about helping you [00:04:18] Keith: [00:04:18] solve your problem.[00:04:18] When you talk about the box stores, I'll watch Lowe's, which is a local company. [00:04:22] Joe: [00:04:22] Lowe's the home improvement, not the food store. [00:04:25] Keith: [00:04:25] Yep. It Lowe's home improvements. So local store, so yeah. They're a local North Carolina big box store.[00:04:30]I've watched them over the years. Perfect. The garden industry, which is pretty interesting. They've slimmed it down, dumbed it down and they do a really good job with a mixed pot or hanging basket, a throwaway plant. They charge more for it than you actually would think it's, but it's nice.[00:04:45] It's in a, it's in a shiny pot. And they figured out a little niche that works for them. But when it comes to selecting plants if you went in there and ask somebody for advice on a plant, you're probably going to fail. They just, they weren't able to do that.[00:04:57] They were never able to do that. And so they figured out a different scenario that works for them. But you're not going to get the advice. You're not going to get that enthusiastic person that knows plants. And that really wants to point you in the right direction.[00:05:09]We partner with a couple of garden centers that are in the area garden hut, Nelsa's in Fuquay. When you, when I walk into Nelsa's place, I can always find something that I like and I own a garden center. Last year I was in there and they had fresh homegrown tomatoes and I left with tomatoes in a plant that I didn't have.[00:05:28]But you can expect that kind of thing. Logan's trading is another one, downtown Raleigh very similar to our business. But totally different in a lot of ways, and a lot of our customers shop all three of those places. Yeah. And [00:05:39] Joe: [00:05:39] even when investing in garden supplies from what might be your competition, at least you feel like your money is going into the local economy.[00:05:47] Absolutely. Whereas when you're going to a box store, it's not helping your city. [00:05:51] Keith: [00:05:51] No, not at all. [00:05:52] Joe: [00:05:52] So it's and they pay some employees and that's great for. Local [00:05:56] Keith: [00:05:56] stuff, but right. So when a target comes to an area they won't come until basically, our tax base pays for their building.[00:06:03]They won't put a building up until it's free. So they get enough tax, incentives to get that started that their building is paid for. And we sure as heck didn't get that, we've paid our way all the way through.[00:06:13]I think there's enough to be said about buying local, that we ought to do a second episode on this next week. So come back and check out that episode. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:15] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. We've had a lot of questions recently about square foot gardening. This time of year is people,  have tons of interest in vegetable gardens, and a square foot garden is an older concept. It works very effectively. It gives people a grid pattern and an outline for how many plants they can put in a space.It's more intense gardening. You're gardening with excellent soil and really good soil blends. And then, high nitrogen high Fertility. And then you're getting as much yield as you can out of each square foot. Square foot gardening, there are all kinds of recipes for soil.My biggest thing is to add three or four different types of soil so that you're. I'll usually start with a soil conditioner as a base. It drains well, and it continues to decompose. It's got the right nutrient mix. And, but the drainage is the key.And then I'll go with a peat-based some based product, an espoma organic potting soil, or a Coast of Maine raised bed mix. But all of those have the right nutrients and the right mix for planting straight into. And then I always add vermiculite. Vermiculite is. It's like Micah. That's been blown out.And so Micah, they basically heat it, and it's got the perfect consistency for growing seeds in.  I'll use that to top dress, some of these things when you're going to plant lettuce seed and that kind of stuff, but the square foot gardening there are good guidelines online.As far as what you can put in a square foot. But like on an arugula plan, you're putting four of them in a square foot. So you've got four arugula plants and four arugulas. We'll keep people in arugula if you're not using it straight in a salad for, full time, year-round, almost it's a plant that will almost get Woody, and it'll grow for a year or two, and then you pull it out and replace it, but you can use it throughout the summertime.A lot of the cool-season vegetables, we'll try to bolt and create flowers. And so you want to, you basically want to harvest it often enough, so it's not bolting. Cause when it, if it bolts and produces flowers and seed, it'll eventually just die out. Because of the nature of the plan, it's a biennial or an annual most of the greens some of them. You can see if you're seeding lettuce, you could see it across the whole square foot.Basil, you can put two to four plants in a square foot. Beets and broccoli or Brussel sprouts cabbage. Some of those bigger things are one per square foot. They're really gonna, they're going to grow out, and they're going to push outside that square foot if they get really big.And you can always cut some of the leaves off the edges to create more space for other things. The other piece of a square foot garden is a cool season, and vegetables start to end. You can pull out that section and go ahead and pop something back in. If it was getting springtime, Yeah, April May start getting hot this time of year.Your lettuce starts to fail. You harvest the rest of it and eat that lettuce. Then you go in with peppers in that same space. So it's a nice thing because one foot by one foot, you can turn the garden over in the spring. And then the same in the fall, as the pepper as you harvest those last few peppers.August to September timeframe, you want to be putting a lot of the broccoli and the cabbage and stuff in, and that's a good time of year to start dropping that kind of stuff back in. You pull your peppers out, and you put your broccoli and cauliflower and that kind of stuff back in the bed.If, as far as fertilization goes, No, you can add fertilizer to a square foot garden at any point in time when I'm turning it over. I'm usually adding like an organic plant tone—Biotene to the soil and then every year. So you want to do a soil test, and then you can add the right nutrients to adjust that out.The libraries in North Carolina have a soil test.  And the garden centers usually have soil tests, and then you send it to the extension service. NC State will do the test for you for free.Or you can drop it off. It's on borough road and behind the fairgrounds in Raleigh, but getting a soil test is a great idea. And then we've gotten soil kits at the store that you can pick up there a little faster than the state does it at their own pace, just as the state does.They get as many of them, they get piles of them in at one time, and then they have to work through that whole process.  It'll basically tell you where your nitrogen is and how much nitrogen per thousand square feet to add.And people will bring them into the garden center, and we'll go through them and make recommendations. If you're using organic fertilizer, organic fertilizers are slower to make a difference in the soil. A lot of times, organic fertilizers have to be broken down by microbes.In nature, and have to have moisture and whatnot where a chemical fertilizer. And when you're talking about veggies, how always like to remind people that a chemical fertilizer, not a chemical, it's a chemical chemically produced to get the nitrogen level up to where you really need it.So I'm never worried about putting a chemically produced fertilizer in my veggie garden. I would rather have good strong tomatoes and have actually had something that works out and produces tomatoes than wait for that fertilizer to kick in. And sometimes it requires pounds and pounds. It's different. It's put a bag of fertilizer on, or put a truckload of fertilizer on, to get the nitrogen to where you need it.With organics, I always use organics in a garden because. You can build that soil slowly but surely. You can get the nitrogen where it needs to be and get away from using as many chemical fertilizers because they are readily available. Some of them are quick release.Some of them are slow release. And then when they're gone where the organic fertilizers continue to. add fertilizer to the soil as they break down Joe Woolworth: [00:06:19] good resource that you would suggest to people for recommendations or even like a grid, layouts, gardening. Keith Ramsey: [00:06:25] Yeah.There are all kinds of stuff online. There's a square foot garden book that you could take out and take a look at. One of the keys is to plant is based on the sun. And the timing of the vegetables, so if you've got tomato plants, you're going to put them, you're going to put them in the very back of the garden.If the sun's at your back, you want everything in front of those to be able to get some sun. If you have something like lettuce and try to grow it into the summertime or later in the spring, you could do it behind the tomatoes and actually use tomatoes as a screen. Or planning the rows where the sun's going to go down the row. So if you've got, if you've got a lot of tall stuff and you don't want, and you don't want them to layer the garden down towards the sun, then you can plant them, plant the rows the other direction and have the sun sung actually make it down the row.But that's a little more difficult and requires a little more space. Usually Joe Woolworth: [00:07:15] in North Carolina, Cary, specifically, which is where we are in the garden supply company, is very proud of our giant trees. Is there a better, is it good to have your square foot garden in direct sunlight or. It was a bunch of tall trees.Does that make a big difference? It Keith Ramsey: [00:07:29] really doesn't. And there's the I've got a large garden that I garden and w it gets great morning sun, and then by amount, noon, or one o'clock, it starts to get into a little more shade, but it gets filtered sun in the afternoon, and everything does well.So I would say you need four or five hours of strong sun in strong sun, I would say is, attend to. 10 to six thing, 10 to seven. If you get four or five hours in that timeframe, you're in pretty good shape.  You can grow veggies just about anywhere.They're just going to be a little thinner and maybe not quite as healthy and full.Now's a good time to get started in all with all the warm season stuff. Tomatoes, April 15th, is the last freeze date. I usually start a little bit ahead of that. I'm a little late this year. Growing tomatoes, peppers, beans, most of all that warm-season stuff is now's a great time to start.I always use April 15th as a target and then For the coolest, amazing stuff. You can plant them twice a year. I usually use August 15th and February 15th. Do you recommend Joe Woolworth: [00:08:33] people start with seeds, or should they start with plants that have been grown in a nursery? Yeah. Keith Ramsey: [00:08:37] So big seeds you are usually really easy to use.And when I say big seed stuff like beans, cucumbers, squash Watermelon.  That kind of seed, I usually soak in water, so it takes up a lot of water. I'll soak it in water for less than 12 to 20 hours, something like that. Please put it in the ground and then water it in.I always try to talk customers into cucumber seeds over cucumber plants, but we sell cucumber plants, and people will want the plants. They don't understand starting a seed, but it's really easy. It's a soak the seed. Push it into the ground, and then it comes up and comes up at the right rate.You're not dealing with a soft STEM. So it works out really well. And we've got seeds and plants, any guard, any local garden center. You'd go too. I would have a good variety of plants and see what plants are better to start. Peppers are painfully slow. And it's not worth growing them from seed for, to me.Tomato plants are not as hard, but. You can buy a tomato plant very inexpensively. And, with tomatoes, I always recommend that people tear off the side leaves on the side of the tomato and then bury it deep and the tomato and broccoli cabbage, some of the cool season stuff, or some of the only things that actually will route up all the way up to the STEM.So you'll end up with a root mass that's twice or two or three times the size of you, then if you plan it for a little hype, and then the plant takes off, and it's twice as strong, but tomatoes, peppers, most of the smaller seeds, lettuce as a soup. It's a super small seed, but it's a super easy thing to grow from seed.It's just getting the, getting a really nice seedbed going and then seeding it directly into the garden. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:15] Hey, Keith Ramsey here with In The Garden. I wanted to talk to everybody about cocktails and mocktails today. I came to this subject basically because I'm not too fond of the taste of water or the lack of water taste. we drank a lot of water in the garden center when I'm working or gardening.And I I'm bored to death with drinking water. So I started modeling basically simple syrups out of blackberries or out of we had Georgia kisses this winter.  I would muddle or squeeze the orange and then add fresh local honey to it.And I found myself drinking a lot more water, so it was a healthy thing. Okay. If you don't know Joe Woolworth: [00:01:10] what muddling is, it's basically like a wooden stick that looks like something that you would tenderize meat with at the endKeith Ramsey: [00:01:16] You just kind of smash up the fruit, break it up. Exactly.And if you don't have that, it's squeezing it.  Mash it with the end of a knife. It could be as crude as you want it to be, but and then that bleeds over to cocktails, which is also a very important part of gardening, in my opinion.And a nice, slow walk through the garden, or out working in the yard for half an hour after work when you're unwinding and There are lots of different things in the garden that you can use in mocktails and cocktails. And there are some fruit plants, blackberries, and raspberries. Both thrive in North Carolina.So when they're in season, using them fresh is an amazing thing. You've got an abundance of them. As they pile up, you're freezing them and storing them for the wintertime. So again, you can bring them back out. You can do slushy drinks with them, put them in the blender or just, muddle a Blackberry Blackberry Bazell.Basil is a fragrance that everybody loves, that it's a flavor that everybody seems to be really popular right now. And then there's Bazell sprays, which I'm not really sure if I want a rim spray that smells like myself, but it's a very current fragrance.Joe Woolworth: [00:02:17] I've never heard of that flavor combo. Blackberries and basil, to me, it's like a great seventies funk band. Keith Ramsey: [00:02:23] Exactly.Joe Woolworth: [00:02:36] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the stage: Blackberries and Basil... Do you put basil in a cocktail? Do you just put the leaf in? Keith Ramsey: [00:02:38] You can model it, or you can just put the leaf in for a slight, for more of a fragrance in the drink, and then a slight additional  flavor, so if you muddle Joe Woolworth: [00:02:45] it, it's more strong, and if you don't, it's pretty exactly like LaCroix Basil, have you, the koi water? Yeah. There's a great joke about LaCroix water. It's like the flavor of LaCroix routers. Like somebody standing two rooms away and yells at the flavor.Keith Ramsey: [00:03:01] that's exactly it. You can make a simple syrup out of all of that stuff. You can use it in your ice water, in the big cup that you carry with you during the day it makes the water a lot more enjoyable in my opinion. And then mixing it with vodkas or rums. That's a great combination, iced or doing blackberries, as more of a blender drink, figs is another one. Is a little bit on the odd flavor, not as common, but But figs make a great thing to muddle and put in a drink now, like just the whole Joe Woolworth: [00:03:27] thing, you muddle it up. Yup, Keith Ramsey: [00:03:28] yup. Or blend it. And it's a great flavor to add to something. Blueberries are another one in all of these blackberries; raspberries, figs, blueberries are all things that you can grow in North Carolina.They grow like a weed. Once you get them established and they're all organic, they're not. It's not anything you have to spray.  That makes it a big plus. Joe Woolworth: [00:03:47] What's your go-to recipe right now? Keith Ramsey: [00:03:49] This time of year, when I'm busy as can be, it's probably water with either blackberries or  Georgia kisses.  I actually made marmalade out of Georgia kisses and honey, and then I'll use a teaspoon of that in my water. So I've got that LaCroix kind of flavor. I've got a little bit of sugar or honey. And then I've got that orange marmalade; I love oranges, but Joe Woolworth: [00:04:11] yeah, it's great.Cause none of it's processed. It's not like simple syrup or anything like that. It's exactly all organic. Yup. Like whole food acceptable type of exactly. Keith Ramsey: [00:04:19] Yeah. And you're doing it, and you're doing it, adding the liquor. Exactly. And they go perfectly—three Gluck's of vodka. There are a dozen herbs 20 herbs that you can use in the same kind of scenario like lemon thyme; lemon thyme's got a great fragrance, great flavor, and then name.These are great band names. Yeah, they are great band names.The fragrance of lemongrass and the And flavor of lemongrass is amazing. Joe Woolworth: [00:04:47] Lemongrass, I'm unfamiliar with it. I've seen it like in one of those health food places where you can take a lemongrass shot with your smoothie. Keith Ramsey: [00:04:54] . It's a really strong lemon flavor, and it's where a lot of the lemon fragrant oils come from. It's an annual grass you planted in your herb garden each spring, and it grows like a weed. Like grass doesn't, then you're harvesting. As you have a need for it, and then it dies in the fall, and you have to replace it in the spring.people will dry it and use it as a dried Ingredient; pineapple Sage is another one that I'm super, super good in a drink or water. Joe Woolworth: [00:05:20] I, since I sent a garden supply company line of beverage addition coming, itKeith Ramsey: [00:05:24] might. I think it would be better, actually, if we just had a bartender stand in there.Joe Woolworth (2): [00:05:29] Yeah, they were like, you can get a, you can sit down and have a beer out Harris Teeter like you need a place to sample the delicious garden, herbs, and fruits, right? Keith Ramsey: [00:05:37] We've got Bon Brothers keg at the store so that customers can enjoy a beer. In the late afternoon, when they're walking around shopping for plants.So maybe the same thing, we just bring in a local bartender that day and have them mixed drinks with herbs and various things, and the kids will love Joe Woolworth: [00:05:52] it. They get out of the mocktails. And exactly you take your fancy waters and give them fun names. Keith Ramsey: [00:05:56] Yeah. So Stevia is a thing that I always love to hand them with kids; it's. Yeah, it's a sugar substitute.It's an herb, then. And it's, again, it's an annual, it's something you play in the early spring, but Stevie is a great thing. I like your taste in leaf, and it's that sugar flavor. Joe Woolworth: [00:06:10] So you could use it Stevia to make like carbonated beverages as well,Keith Ramsey: [00:06:13] Stevia, some of the mints and in any of your teas or any eliminates basil Blackberry lemonade is a great combination.And you can use Stevie and it, instead of using sugar, or you could use honey. You're still getting your sugars,  but you've got the natural honey and the, it helps with seasonal allergies. Joe Woolworth: [00:06:30] you. A fan of carbonated water I Keith Ramsey: [00:06:32] am, but I don't tend to use it as much as just flat water.I don't know. You can't drink it as fast when I'm out working in the yard; I'm consuming a lot of water. Joe Woolworth: [00:06:40] Any other unique flavor combos that you like? Keith Ramsey: [00:06:42] The fig I would say the fig is especially when figs are fresh, and they're in season. That's a great combination to use in combination with other stuff like a lemon fig. Adding lemons to the fig just gives it that tart. Taste, and it gives it a little. It just livens it up a little bit. That's a great one to use lemons, fig, and crushed ice. Rum drink, it's a good combination. No. Anyways, come on out to the garden center and don't be afraid to grab a plant, break a leaf off, smell it, or taste it. For years I've grown plants that I didn't use as often as I would have liked to have. You've got that great lemon time there. You've got a Mohito mint, and it's, it's growing like crazy now. I'm like, I'm really trying to go out and abuse that plan.Cut it back as often as possible and use more and have more of those fragrances in the flavors.  It's an amazing part of life when you reach down, and if you're not making a mocktail or a cocktail out of it, reach down, tear a piece off, rub it in your hand, stick it in your mask.If you've got to wear a mask all day long, Having a little lemon time in your mask is not bad. Yeah. So use it as a fragrance too. Yeah. It's a good Joe Woolworth: [00:07:53] idea. There's nothing worse right now than sneezing in your own masks. Exactly. Because you can't take it off this news. That's like the biggest foul ever.you know It's coming. And now I just have to sit in my own sneeze. Keith Ramsey: [00:08:06] You crush up a little whatever your favorite herb is and add that to your mask. I've walked around the garden center in the last few months and tear something off and hand it to a customer.And I'm like smell that, and they pull their mask down, and I'm like, you can add it to your mask. It's a great bonus. And people will actually just drop it straight in their mask. And they're like, that's amazing. That's a perfect scenario. So there's another little twist for most of these herbs and fragrant plants that another uses for them.  

Keith:   I want to talk to everybody today about our host of the hive program and bees in general. We've been doing this host-to-hive for two or three years. It's a perfect introduction to beekeeping. It's a way to keep bees long-term without having a hive in your backyard.[00:00:55]Some people are allergic to bees but are interested in and want to participate.  It's more and more of a struggle to keep bees alive anymore. There's colony collapse, and there are a few different insect problems, and there are few different viruses that bees get. Yet they're absolutely a must for the pollination of certain crops.[00:01:13] Many of the crops that we get at the grocery store need bees to pollinate those crops. We must keep raising bees and then keep splitting hives and maintaining the population we've got currently.  If you're thinking about keeping bees, I feel like it's important to start with two hives.[00:01:32] There are years when we have 40% losses, and commercial beekeepers, in general, will have 40% losses. So it's getting harder and harder to keep a hive. It used to be that. You can set a hive out, and you'd have an 80 or 90% success rate. Now we're closer to 50 50 success rate.[00:01:51] If you're not willing to keep two or three hives and study bees and really understand bees. Then host a hive is a there's a great program. You can paint the beehive, make it personal. And then we keep the hive, and we move them around to different nectar sources.[00:02:08]That's one of the issues with bees in North Carolina is the nectar sources are mostly in the spring and then very light in the fall. So you end up having to feed the bees in between to keep them healthy and happy. What we try to do is we'll put 12 hives on a trailer, and your bees go on vacation, basically.[00:02:27]We'll take them out to Asheville, beautiful view great nectar source. It's probably one of my favorite things about beekeeping is finding the perfect window. We have to close the bees up at night when it's cool. And then we have to make that Trek. And get there before the sun gets on the bees, and the bees are ready to fly, and it's too hot for them.[00:02:50]Tends to be by the weather last-minute scenario. You know where you've got a schedule and many things that you can control in your life. This is not one of them. So I'll look ahead at the schedule, and then I'll figure out a time. It looks like Thursday morning is going to be the time.[00:03:05] to move the bees. So we'll prep them on Wednesday night. And then I get to be chauffeured to, to Asheville. I'll jet out to Asheville, to a friend's farm. We'll set the bees up. We give them bear protection. Bears love both the larva from the bees and the honey as a protein source and sugar source.[00:03:25]We'll put an electric fence up around to protect them from the bears. And you get to spend the day in Asheville or the day in the night in Nashville. And then you. Head back. So how exactly [00:03:34] Joe: does the host of the hive program work? You're going to take the bees that I'm hosting out to Asheville, right?[00:03:41]What are the benefits for the people that are hosting the [00:03:43] Keith: hive? We have highs locally at the garden center and in various locations around the triangle. So if your hive is in Nashville and you want to see it hive open or want to participate in a hive?[00:03:56]We'll open it, we'll schedule a time, and we have you come out. You can either gear up, or you can match from a distance. Sometimes we'll do group events where we do a screen room. And pop a tent up. They can stand in the screen room, and we'll, we're suited up on the outside, and we'll open the hive up and, we'll do educational things with kids.[00:04:16] We'll show them the queen. We'll show them what brood is. Show them the difference between brood and honey in a frame. And it's a good way to get your feet wet if you wanted to keep bees down the road too. So you're slowly learning the process of opening the hive and how you go into a hive, and that smoke relaxes the bees and gets them to start gulping up honey in a kind of a survival instinct and make some really easy to work with.[00:04:41] So we'll give them a little puff of smoke. You don't have to give them a lot of smoke and then. And then open a high for the person that sponsored a hive to pull stuff out and, and then other people want to be a little bit hands-on, and we'll have a day where they can actually go into a hive and pull the frame out themselves.[00:04:56] I always say beekeeping's like putting your hand on a hot stove. It's you're not supposed to do it, but you're going to go ahead and test it. You know that glass unit. To make sure it's off, why would you do that? You've been burned before. Beekeeping is much the same. You're going to get stung.[00:05:11] It's inevitable, any beekeeper that keeps bees has been stung, we get nucleus hives, which are five complete frames with the queen, and we'll buy those in the spring and unload three or 400 of them.[00:05:23]There was a day that I was stung a hundred times. It's funny that when you've been stung by something. You think everything that flies stings is the same, but honeybee stings or a quarter or a half of what a hornet or a yellow jacket, or a lot of these other flying things are.[00:05:39] So they don't hurt that much. And if you're not affected by a bee sting, they don't really bother you. Once you get into the hive and you get comfortable, You'll find yourself just mesmerized by what's going on. Probably two years into keeping bees, I would find myself open a hive and pulling a frame out and just leaning on the hive, and the bees are flying all around me.[00:06:03] I dive, and almost as if you're looking at a piece of coral. A million things live in there, and they're all doing different things at different times. You can sit there and stare at that one piece of coral for 15 minutes, you can't believe that something, this new thing, just popped out of that space, and it's changing colors, and different things are going on.[00:06:25] Same thing with bees it's when I was growing up, they would, you could buy an ant colony. And you sat there and watched the ants lay eggs and move the eggs around and tunnel, and bees are probably one of the most complex insects out there.[00:06:40]It's similar to ants. They're just fascinating to watch, inside the hive or outside of the hive. When I first started keeping bees, people would say, they're so relaxing. I go out there with my coffee every morning, coffee or cocktail, and it's, and I'm like, I don't think I'm going to be drinking coffee or cocktails with my bees.[00:06:57] And sure enough, a month in, I'm standing there; I can't wait to see what's happening today because the weather's warmed up or the hives are really doing well. And you want to get a quick visit in, so you're drinking your coffee and watching the bees. Something about that[00:07:11] hum of the hive is like the yoga home. It's very relaxing, and you'll find yourself mesmerized by them. [00:07:18] Joe: So if somebody [00:07:18] wanted to host a hive with Garden Supply Company; what does that look like? What does it entail? [00:07:22] Keith: They go onto the website or come into the store, and they sign up; it's $295 a year. And then we provide them with a hive body. They can take it home, paint it. Personalize it put their kid's finger and handprints on it, or we've got some excellent artists that you bring back, amazing paintings on the hive box.[00:07:43]And then we set the hive up, usually early spring. We'll set the hive up, and then they get pictures of their hive. They get these open visits to their hive updates on where the bees are going. What's going on with the hives[00:07:58]during that time a year. What kind of nectar are the bees going after? Because bees will be very selective about where, what they're going after, or what they like. And so early spring, you'll see bees all over the flowers at the garden center, and you'd come out, and there are bees, honey bees buzzing around all these flowers.[00:08:16] The minute the tulip poplars open. Whether they're because they like tulip Poplar more or because it's an abundant nectar source, the bees all moved to the trees.  You won't see a bee anywhere. They're all just hauling nectar and as fast as they can and producing honey.[00:08:33] So that in North Carolina in our, in the triangle tulip poplars are probably the number one nectar source. Redbuds are a good early one. Maple, and then later in the year, more towards the mountains black locus will produce almost a water clear honey.[00:08:52] It's beautiful honey and, and then Sourwood is probably the most sought-after honey.  It's elevation sensitive.  They don't produce well like we've got sour woods here in the triangle, but the bees will go there, and they'll get nectar, but they don't get enough nectar.[00:09:06] And there are too many other things going on that they'll get some Sourwood and then a little bit of everything else. And. [00:09:12] Joe: So what happens with the honey from the host to hive program? So [00:09:16] Keith: we harvest the honey, and it's a great program from that sense because we provide each one of the people that participate with 10 pounds of honey.[00:09:25] So you'll have 10, one-pound jars of honey which is more than. Most families would consume Winnie the Pooh. Yeah, exactly. It's honey, and you can share with friends its local honey. Having local honey is an absolute health benefit. You're getting a taste of every pollen. We screen the honey, but we don't filter it.[00:09:46]There's pollen moving through with the honey when we harvest it. So you're getting exposed to every pollen that you would find in North Carolina. So if you've got allergies, it really does benefit from having a microdose kind of that type of pollen with your coffee or your tea in the morning.[00:10:03]Joe: How many people can be part [00:10:04] Keith: of the program? It's limited to about 200 people. And we're getting close, close to the end, and this year, it. [00:10:11] Joe: sounds like it'd be great for families like [00:10:13] Keith: really educating. Yeah. It's perfect. And it's beekeeping, in general, is like beekeeping is more like keeping an aquarium if everything's going well.[00:10:21] It's effortless. You walk out and take a look at it. If it goes awry it's, you must fix that situation quickly. [00:10:30] Joe: It's like a gateway drug into beekeeping. Cause you can get involved as a family, but you don't have to have that thing in your [00:10:34] Keith: backyard.[00:10:35] Exactly. And you're not, it's a way to, it took me six months to. Feel comfortable walking up to a hive, popping the top, not worrying about being stung if I got stung. So it's a way to get, to get exposed to bees and to do something great for bees and do something great for pollinators in general, it's that's the other thing that you can do, besides a host of hive program is planting pollinator gardens and planning, nectar-producing trees in your landscape throughout the year, but particularly in the fall, things like goldenrod. Adding goldenrod to your garden is a really great thing.[00:11:11] Or adding Clover to your lawn because our nectar season is so short, and the triangle it gives extends the season. [00:11:18] Clover's a beautiful backdrop to just about anything. It's good for turkeys. It's good for the deer. And then the bees white Clover, any clever the bees get a lot of nectar and pollen from it. Where can people find out more so? On our website, which is GardenSupplyCO.com, They can sign up there.[00:11:37]They can call the store it's (919) 460-7747. Jason, we've got a full-time beekeeper. If you ever want to keep bees, or if you ever want to sign up for the Host-a-Hive. You can email him at jason@gardensupplyceo.com.[00:11:55] 

Keith:   Today, I'm talking about gardening for mental health. There are lots of articles out there more about gardening and how good it is for mental health. Something I figured out a long time ago for myself personally, not recognizing it, but no matter how bad a day I'd had, if I got out in the garden, touch the soil serotonin levels, go crazy in your body. It's an easy place to relax.[00:01:03]Joe: One of the few options we have in the pandemic [00:01:06] Keith:. Yep. So golfing, golfing has gone crazy. Gardening has gone crazy. The basics: you walk out of the house, and oxygen levels improve. When older people used to tell me they needed to get out in the sun and get some vitamin D to me, it was sounded like a lot of fluff.[00:01:24]The older you get, I think the more vitamin D deficient you end up and, I feel totally different when the sun comes out, it's the landscape looks brighter. Everything around you looks better. It's, it just feels you feel so much better to be outside. So you say you're breathing better oxygen, fresher air getting more sun.[00:01:42]The other thing about gardening is just practicing acceptance. Stress, a lot of times, comes from trying to schedule and control everything around you. There's, there's only a certain amount of stuff that you can control in the landscape. It's mother nature.[00:01:56] That works. Yeah. You can do your part, but then what happens. You're out there, and there's a lot of different components to it. You may be looking at your vegetable garden, and two vegetables are failing miserably. It's gotten too hot, and there's nothing you can do to cool them off.[00:02:11]Just accepting that's the way nature is. And [00:02:14] Joe: yeah. And if you have a high-stress job or something, I've heard people say that it helps you slow down, but I don't know if it's slow. It just helps you embrace the fact that. This is how long it takes. Like these things take how long they take.[00:02:25]And it's I like that word that you're using. I think it's more about acceptance than forcing you to slow down. Yeah, [00:02:30] Keith: absolutely. And maybe it's why I'm good at gardening. I'm not a control person at all. My management style is to point you in the right direction.[00:02:41] Just let that ship sail. And I'll come back around in about a week or two or a month to write that to that ship if it's, heading in the wrong direction. But I tend to let you know, let things go, and let the way they turn out.[00:02:56] So it makes gardening fun. It's like being in the studio today. We've got a, we've got a bluebird that's right at the window. And you've been trying to get in for the last 20 minutes knocking noise. It's not the door. It's the window. Hold the mic over there. Next time he tries it.[00:03:14] Yeah. He's he thinks that he's got another bluebird in the reflection, so he's mad. He's not pumping up his chest. He wants to fight. He's not happy at all. And you could try to change that, but probably not going to happen. So we're going to, we're going to live with our little friend.[00:03:31]As far as accepting what's going to happen, you do what you can do. You prepare the best you can come, prepare, prepare the soil, get the plants, the right best plants, and then accept the results. Do you know what I mean?[00:03:43] That's life, and it's harder for some people than others, but gardening is a good way to learn that and practice. The other thing is, letting go of the idea that things are going to be perfect. Vegetable gardening, in particular, There's lots of highs and lows.[00:03:56] It's, you get it in you till the garden everything's fresh and pretty. And then. You get, come back a month later, and certain plants are doing better than others. Things are starting to produce fruit or greens, or you can start to harvest things. But it's never going to be perfect.[00:04:09]And then at the end of the season, it's, you're pulling out dead plants that are still producing but don't look good and are near nearing the end. So just getting used to the fact that things aren't perfect. The fixed mindset or growth mindset. When you make mistakes, it's a growth opportunity.[00:04:24] It's not worrying about it, especially vegetable gardening or landscape gardening. I think it's always good to get good advice. Especially when you're talking about trees or talking about Woody plants larger projects so that you don't make as many mistakes. Still, when it comes to perennial garden or flower gardening, growing a vegetable garden, it's[00:04:42]Fun to go out there and experiment, try this, and try something else if it doesn't work. That's part of that whole growth thing. And while you're going through all these processes, it's It being outside, in general, is just a fun, fun place to unwind. Yeah.[00:04:57] There's [00:04:57] Joe: so many options that we have when it comes to spending our time. And so many of them in our culture feel like they have immediate results. Like I want to watch this movie so I can escape reality for two and a half hours, or I want to go shopping so that I have the thing that I want, but gardening is seasonal at the end of the trip.[00:05:10] Like you have to think about it in terms of it's going to be this year. I want to do this thing. Yeah. Which is a completely different mindset to put ourselves in than we normally are in. [00:05:20] Keith: Yeah, it is. And it's I've got a friend that just passed several months ago and every summer he would plant every spring he planted a huge garden and he, he called me, and he'd say, I need corn and I needed, silver queen corn. I'm growing silver queen this year. It's butter corn. And I would provide him with all the seeds because he lives in Virginia, and we'd go to the Lake in Virginia, and then I could help him pick the garden. In every fall, as the corn dwindled and the raccoons ate the corn one year, he had a bear rolling around in the corn.[00:05:49]He would say, I'm not growing a garden again. It's I'm done with this. He said, you can buy corn at the farmer's market cheaper than you can, then you can plant and garden, and when May rolls around, and he'd call me, and he'd say, I want to quit and plowed that garden. And he said, this year, I think I'm going to use buttercream corn, or, he would, it would be something else.[00:06:10] By the end of the season, things weren't looking that great in the fall. And they were all drying up, he was feeling the feeling and the downside of gardening and, but give him a couple of months to rest in the wintertime, and he'd be right back at it.[00:06:22]Yeah. And then, and then you get those re you reap there the rewards of their, fresh silver queen corn, you're pulling out of your garden. It's just after the crop has gone, and he would kind of get down about it all or anything that had gone wrong, or that thing about that darn bear.[00:06:37]Joe: I've never done it as a good or that a couple of months go by and Hey, do [00:06:39] Keith: it again. I'll do it one more time. Yeah. So I fell last time. It's good. My new I'm like, I'll do it. I'll try it one more time. Talking about my friend that the other one of the other points to the whole mental health is the connection to other humans.[00:06:55] That's some people have a hard time making connections. I seem to be able to talk to anybody well that I run into walking down the street. Now it feels I'm talking when people, even when they're not there. When there's nobody around, I'd be talking to the plant or the tree, but doing that human connection gardening is it's one of those things people come together to talk about online these days.[00:07:15] I There's all these gardening groups in the Triangles. All these people that are on there are all avid gardeners. People who love houseplants love vegetable gardening, and they're exchanging information, or they're exchanging plants, trading plants back and forth.[00:07:27]So it's a good way to make connections and make good friends make good long-term friends. I think when you go out, and you feel the soil and plants, it's a, yeah, it's that whole full circle realm.[00:07:42] You go out, and you plant plants, and you fertilize plants and And then, we all end up back in the soil at the end of our life. So it's a full-circle kind of scenario that, that we participate in. There's a Japanese saying, “showering yourself in green.”[00:07:56]It helps you recover and raises serotonin levels faster for recovery from surgery, less anxiety, less depression, and better stress management. And I think that's a lot of what we see right now. Houseplants sales are through the roof. Many of the younger population haven't figured out gardening or haven't bought a house yet don't own a piece of earth to plan in.[00:08:19] So they're doing more house plants and green in their house. And I think that's a big part of it is, when you have green in your house, it's just more relaxing. It's the green that makes you settle down and take a deep breath and manage stresses better. The Japanese call it forresting, being immersed in green.[00:08:37]Which I think, from the beginning of time, they would do it to relax, take it easy. Another thing is just being present. It's a good time to put down the phone, turn off the music turn off the podcast. If podcast, if you're driving and you want to.[00:08:51]You want to learn more if you want to be relaxed and be able to focus on the road now. But when you go, when you get out in the garden, that's a good time to turn everything off and just put the phone down and listen to the birds, listen to the bees thing, the w, and, and the wind chimes, maybe you sit in nature, and you get a sense of calm, it's a perfect time just to be relaxed.[00:09:12]Physical exercise is another thing. You go to the gym, and you do an exercise. You're working one muscle or several muscles, and you're doing it repetitively. It's a good strength, it's a good time to strengthen those muscles, but it's very specific.[00:09:26]The physical exercise of gardening is, you're working lots of different muscles, so you're strengthening your entire body. You're moving your arms in a lot of different ways. You're lifting various weights or just even lifting a shovel and pushing it back into the ground over and over.[00:09:39]But from lots of different angles. So it's a great way to reduce anxiety, boost your spirits.[00:09:45] Stress-reducing of the garden. When you touch the soil, and then you can go out and load the serotonin levels, they've done lots of studies on this. A lot of mental health facilities will have gardening for that reason. All older retirement homes and aging people will have raised gardens and situations because the serotonin levels go crazy.[00:10:05]When you touch the soil for some reason or another, you'll instantly start feeling better. And then you're like we said before, you're breathing fresher air. You're getting your vitamin D, and when it's a sunny day and then the reward from gardening, you go out there, day in, day out, know, or once a week the beautiful view from your house, the fresh veggies that you grow, where they came from, what kind of fertilizer you used on them?[00:10:28] You know how they were grown. They weren't sprayed. And if they were sprayed, you know what they were sprayed with, you use mineral oil or something. That's not that really is it, isn't gonna affect your health. Its fresh veggies are you can pick them 15 minutes before you eat them or the day before you eat them.[00:10:42] It's not something that's been shipped all over the place. So he's, you're getting the veggies or your flowers, your fresh cut flowers. You've planted them in the spring, and now you're seeing the rewards of them. And the more you cut them, a lot of times, the more flowers you get.[00:10:55]You go out, and it's not all work. It's going out, collect a few flowers, bring them into the house. Fragrant flowers are another one. Having the fragrant flowers spaced out just that fragrance when you walk by is just a, it's an inviting thing. I always tell people when they plant fragrant flowers to plant them, three or four different places in the yard.[00:11:12] So that from an exposure standpoint, they bloom a little earlier, a little later. It extends your season, but it also smells different fragrances as you walk through the yard. There are fragrances like Rosemary. That aromatherapy kind of feeling when you walk by Rosemary and brush your hand across it and then bring it to your, bring it to your nose that fresh smell of Rosemary.[00:11:35]And if you look at the Any of the bath products right now, or candles now, and a new scent that you'll see out there. And the fresh smell of Bazell in the garden is kind of hard to be, it's just a reviving kind of scent, but generally speaking, I think that there are a hundred reasons to garden.[00:11:53]I think that the people when they when people figure out how. Good. It makes you feel, and how much benefit comes from it? I think we could all stand to use a little more time in the garden. 

Keith Ramsey:  How are we doing today? We were going to talk about fertilizer for your yard, lawn, and garden today. There are always lots of questions that surround fertilizer and what to use and when to use it. It's pretty much two broad groups of fertilizer, organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer, and customers are always with the organic movement:[00:01:00] they're always worried about using chemical fertilizer, so I thought I'd talk about that and why it's important sometimes to use chemical fertilizer. It's chemical chemically produced, but it's just chemically produced to increase the amount of whatever element they're trying to try and to increase it.[00:01:16] So to get nitrogen high enough to grow tomatoes, you really need some chemical fertilizer, in my opinion. Its organic fertilizers are a good thing for building soil. It's more like taking a multivitamin chemical fertilizer, like a perfect punch. It's gonna; it's gonna really put that plan into a growth model.[00:01:33]Joe Woolworth:  To enrich it with nitrogen is something that occurs in nature. I think most people would probably be afraid that they'd put something weird in it. We're all thinking, what will we eat? I don't want to put monologues 473 in my body.[00:01:45] Keith Ramsey: It is. So it's, it's chemically produced. It's, they're extracting nitrogen out of a natural source and just boosting the [00:01:52] Joe Woolworth: they're not trying to make it taste good. Exactly. What all this weird stuff and food. Exactly. [00:01:56] Keith Ramsey: It's not you're [00:01:57] Joe Woolworth: feeding your fertilizer. [00:01:58] Keith Ramsey: Stop that immediately.[00:01:59] No, there's no 21, a red dye. Nitrogen is the key element in fertilizer for plant growth. There are pretty much nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, but those are the main elements. The nitrogen gives you plant growth and gives you that dark green color. If you, when your plant's yellowing generally all over the plant, usually that's a sign that it lacks in nitrogen.[00:02:20] Sometimes, that can be a sign that the nitrogen can be there and the pH is off. So getting the pH right. So that the plant can actually accept the fertilizer that's there is important. Potassium's there for plant quality. It helps and aids in flowering and stem growth.[00:02:36] It's all derived from rock phosphate. And if you apply rock phosphate to the soil as an organic phosphate, it really requires probably a year or two for the phosphate to break down. So adding a chemical phosphate is important.[00:02:50] If you want to affect the plant, this year or immediately, phosphate is linked to storing energy, the process of photosynthesis. So general plant and health and quality flowering and rooting. Potassium, on the other hand, is it's really there for plant vigor and strength.[00:03:05] Many times, root crops like potatoes or carrots or that kind of thing will need extra potassium to build that strong tube or root that you're going to eat. And that's an easy thing to get it, organically. It also helps the potassium also helps the plant resist disease.[00:03:21] And then, there are all kinds of minors and so sometimes doing a soil test if you've got a plant or if you're particularly if you're growing crops of plants say you've got multiple blueberries or a blueberry farm.[00:03:33] Soil testing is important because if the plant needs magnesium or manganese or iron, sulfur, copper, zinc, boron, those are the main minor elements a plant will use. If they need those and there's deficiency there, you can't just broadly add those to the soil.[00:03:51], They're in many general-purpose fertilizers and are available in a lot of chemical or organic fertilizers. Still, if you're really deficient in one or two of those, it'll make a difference. Iron's a classic example of a soil lacking an iron, And you're adding nitrogen to the soil because of the plant's yellow.[00:04:09] Sometimes, it just needs a handful of iron to make it make that difference. And in the olden days, people would add old nails or leftover steel to the soil around the tree. And then the iron would just, as it as the iron rusted it would become available to the plant, and they would leach down into the soil.[00:04:25], You hear old-time gardeners say, throw a handful of nails in the bottom of the hole when you're planting a tree, and that would keep the tree really dark green and actively growing. [00:04:35] Joe Woolworth: Wow. So that's a lot of variables. There are three main components. There are five or six other sub-main components.[00:04:40] And it depends on where your soil is, what plans you're growing. So when you go into a place like a garden supply company, how many choices for fertilizer? [00:04:49] Keith Ramsey: So there's a lot of different choices. I usually tell people not to get too bogged down in the details, even though we started in the details.[00:04:56]Adding fertilizers to the landscape or to the lawn at the right time of the year in some form or fashion, the plants utilize the fertilizer and then every few years doing a soil test. Have a baseline. Do you know, especially if you're buying a new house or starting a new garden, getting a soil test upfront and getting a baseline so that you can head in the right direction is a good idea?[00:05:16] And then just updating that every three to five years kind of thing. [00:05:21]Joe Woolworth: You mentioned the comparison of like multivitamins to types of fertilizer, are there a couple that always works really well for baseline?  [00:05:30] Keith Ramsey: You go with these lawn fertilizers, for instance.[00:05:31]I think it's essential. I follow up the guidelines from a lawn program in Virginia from the Virginia extension service, but. It's the sod program. And so you fertilized September, October, and December. The two main differences in fertilizers from in the, in that you're going to put down in the fall are a starter fertilizer, which tends to be high in phosphorus.[00:05:54] So you want it for root growth. And so you're trying to establish good, strong roots, and you don't want to push that plant really hard with nitrogen. So it's lower in nitrogen higher and phosphorus and potassium. So that's what you start with within September, and then as the grass plant matures and starts to root in.[00:06:09] Then you move to something higher in nitrogen because you want to push that plant to have top growth so that it also needs to grow more roots. And it's more established by the summertime,[00:06:19]the difference between organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer, so if you wanted an organic lawn, I recommend doing it. 90% of the time. Going back to chemical fertilizer, because if you do an organic fertilizer in the lawns, not getting enough green and it's not growing enough roots, it doesn't have everything it needs.[00:06:39] The lawn will be lacking. And then it's, you're talking about an environmental issue. So if you put a lot of chemical fertilizer out and it's not a slow-release fertilizer, it can leech, and you lose that fertilizer. And it's not necessarily great for the environment, but if you use a.[00:06:52] Chemical fertilizer that slow release. You're doing a good thing for the environment. You're establishing a thick green lawn that filters the water. The nitrogen is released as the lawn needs it. So it's not necessarily an issue. How do you determine [00:07:05] Joe Woolworth: if your fertilizer is a quick release or a slow-release?[00:07:08] Keith Ramsey: Typically, the fertilizer bag will tell you a cheaper bag of fertilizer, like 10, 10, 10. People will come in and say, don't you have 10, 10, 10? We don't really carry it anymore because it's not that specific for your need, and it's all quick release.[00:07:22] So if you drop 10, 10, 10 on your lawn, and we have, the kind of month we had, we've had recently where it's just lots and lots of rain. Most of that fertilizer's going to leach out before the lawn actually even gets to take advantage of it. So most higher grade, a little bit more expensive.[00:07:38] Fertilizers are gonna are going to give you results that are probably 10 times. What? 10-10-10. 10-10-10 in the perfect environment. Is awesome. If you'd get moderate rain and it doesn't, you don't put too much of it on, so it doesn't burn. That's the other thing about slow-release fertilizers versus fast-release fertilizers is you've got the opportunity to burn a plant or burn the roots.[00:08:00]difference, when you're using organic fertilizers, there's all kinds of sources for organic fertilizers feather meal, from a poultry plant. Which is a by-product, but it's a good nitrogen source manure bone meal, alfalfa green sand self-aid, and magnesium.[00:08:16] All of those are great sources of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. And a lot of the organic fertilizers that we sell now Biotone is one that we, every job, every landscape job we use, use Biotone in the hole when we plant the plants. And the reason is organic fertilizers more, again, more like a multivitamin you're dropping in the hole.[00:08:36] There's a little bit of it that's readily available, but with an analysis like four, three, three, a half a percent maybe is available when you put it in the hall. So you're not giving that much nitrogen to grow. You're giving it nitrogen that the microorganisms will have to break down, and it'll be available over the next six months or for till the end of time, then over the next six months in a reasonable quantity then, slightly available after that.[00:09:04]But that Biotone has all kinds of bacillus 9 million bacilli, per application. So their colony forming units of that'll actually break down. They aid the plant in like fighting off diseases, or it's similar to what we take for, your stomach for digestion it coats the roots it AIDS in disease prevention and insect prevention. The other component is mycorrhizal fungi, which Biotone has in it that bridges the gap between the roots and the soil. It's a symbiotic relationship as the mycorrhizas is a white fungus in the forest, leaves, and trees. As the fungi grow through the soil, the roots follow it. It allows them to take up nutrients better, take up water better than the fresh new fibrous roots of a plant will follow.[00:09:53] fungi. And it's just a perfect symbiotic relationship. So you'll end up all the university studies show you plant roots, where they've been washed off the soil. You'll have 10 times the amount of roots, and especially fibers roots, which is what's going to take up fertilizer and take up water in a plant that's been planted with mycorrhizal fungi or that was grown in the woods versus one that was grown in red clay, or, more of a sterile environment.[00:10:17] Joe Woolworth: We've been talking a lot about the chemical makeup of fertilizers. I was always under the impression that fertilizer was just like feces. It was just a waste. [00:10:25] Keith Ramsey: Yeah. Organic fertilizer is taking bonemeal, for instance, and extracting the phosphate out of bone meal or out of rock phosphate.[00:10:35] Joe Woolworth: When people ask for organic fertilizer, they're just asking for straight pooh?[00:10:37] Keith Ramsey:  they're asking for bonemeal like if they wanted to ask, it would be bonemeal, or it'd be manure. It would be. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Then, it's organic fertilizers where you get the smell too so that a chemical fertilizer will have a little bit of an odor to it; organic fertilizer always makes me laugh when a kid walks in adults, nose, noses start to fade as they age,  they don't pick up on It smells like most people. Still, a kid will walk into a garden center and our garden essential area.[00:11:06] And they're like, Oh, it stinks in here. And that's the organic fertilizer or even the chemical fertilizers that are still producing a little bit of the smell. Okay.[00:11:15]The other key is whether you're using organic fertilizer or chemical fertilizer is timing. We go through we recommend fertilize and early spring or late winter, early spring. In late spring, may June timeframe with organic fertilizer and then pick it up again in the fall in September.[00:11:32]That way, you've got the consistency that the fertilizer that's not going to produce a ton of nitrogen at any given time. You gotta be consistent about applying it so that it's readily available to the plant. If you were doing a chemical fertilizer, I would use that more as a corrective mode.[00:11:51]If a plant's been in for a year or two and it's not actively growing, and you want to speed it up, or if you've got a hedge of trees and there's the higher side, that's dry. You get four or five plants that are lagging on the rest of it. Then I would go in and use something stronger than nitrogen so that you're really pushing those five plants to catch up with the rest of them.[00:12:10] Or if you've got plants that are yellowing or discoloring, that makes sense. [00:12:14] Joe Woolworth: I've seen that before, and I wonder how you fix that. Say you plant like a row of shrubs or bushes or something, and some of them are doing good, and some are not so good. You can help. Yeah, [00:12:23] Keith Ramsey: exactly. As a well-balanced or chemical fertilizer would, at that point, it would be a good idea.[00:12:28] So that those plants are actually getting a little bit more of a boost than the rest of them. And. With organic fertilizer, you really can't burn. You can't over-fertilize. So you could fertilize the whole row with organic fertilizers. You're continuing to build and then add a chemical fertilizer to those four or five plants that are lagging.[00:12:44]As far as lawns go, we really recommend it. Most companies will fertilize heavily in the spring. It's effortless to throw fertilizer on and see a lawn improve.[00:12:55] We like to fertilize in the fall. So you're pushing the seed that just germinated this one blade to get to about 25 blades of grass. So I'm pushing it three times the fertilization and at least in the fall. And then when we have these periods of rain, adding more organic fertilizer than that even.[00:13:11]So that lawn is green and actively growing. It's a cool-season grass. It wants to grow actively from September until May, and then it wants to go dormant. So if you fertilize it heavy in the spring, you're pushing growth and Sallie longish, and then you'll end up with disease problems in the plants, and the grass plant fails.[00:13:29]Hotter, drier spots. You'll see that the grass fades out. If you're fertilized in September, October, December, and the grass is green going into spring; I recommend not fertilizing at all in the spring. If you still see a yellow lawn and it's not actively growing, then it's a good idea to wake it up and go ahead and do fertilization.[00:13:46]In the spring is when we handle most of the week control. So you're doing pre-emergence post-emergence. February 15th through March 15th is a good time for the first pre-emergence, and then six weeks after that for the second, a pre-merger will keep any of the weeds from germinating post-emergence.[00:14:02] If you're spraying the weeds that are existing. I like to wait until it warms up for that. A good rule of thumb is after dandelions have completely bloomed out. Bees, it's honeybees. We'll use dandelions as a good natural source of nectar early in Poland, early in the season.[00:14:18] So if you wait until they bloom out and spray them later on, you're not affecting pollinators and bees. So if you've got weeds that you want to get rid of, Postemergence, if you use them in a low application, won't kill Clover. So you can kill most of the other broadleaf weeds and maintain the Clover in your lawn because Clover is not a bad mix to a lawn.[00:14:36] And it's good for pollinators.[00:14:38]But if anybody ever has questions, I think it's hard. Often, when you walk into a hardware store or a box store to get the answers you're looking for, visiting a local garden center or talking to a horticulturalist is a great place to start, bring in plants, bring in clippings. [00:14:54] Joe Woolworth: getting somebody's attention.[00:14:55] When I walk into a box store. Exactly. [00:14:57] Keith Ramsey: Nobody around it used to be a different scenario, knowing stuff. Yeah. I, that it used to be a different scenario. You could actually find tradespeople in a box store, and it's just, it's a thing of the past now.  I think all local family-owned garden centers are very similar in the fact that they.[00:15:13]They pride themselves on their knowledge and being able to solve problems for people.  Bringing in leaves that are off-color or bringing in pictures of the plants stems if a plant dies and bringing in the entire plan if you can we always ask the people, bag them up, so they're not spreading in sector diseases, but we were always happy to diagnose the issue and then point them in the right direction so they can solve it.[00:15:33] see us. 

Keith Ramsey:  All right. Today, we're talking about gardening during the wintertime winter work. Winter is a great time to take a look out your window and look at areas that need improvement. Either from a view standpoint, areas that need a screen, or looking at the bones of the landscape. [00:00:55]when we talk about bones, evergreen plants, the hardscapes, the walls figuring out where you need more structure or figuring out where you need a ceiling or a canopy that you can do with a tree or an Arbor entry to do a different area of the yard, with the, with an Arbor It's a great time of year because the trees are deciduous.[00:01:13] In the middle of spring and summertime, you're in your backyard, and you've got total privacy as winter comes on, you've got six months of deciduous trees dropping their leaves. Suddenly you can see, straight into the neighbor's house, you can see TV when it comes on, you can see the lights.[00:01:28]Yeah, [00:01:29] Joe Woolworth: we just moved, and I didn't even realize that my back neighbors existed until all the trees [00:01:32] Keith Ramsey: fell down. It's definitely a, I built a house a few years ago, bought the lot, and built the house at the Lake. So it's a country setting. Leaves drop. There's an old camper sitting in the woods, on the lot next to us. I never saw it. It doesn't bother me at all.[00:01:50] Cause I'm there during the summertime. But when I go there during the wintertime, it's not the site that I want to see. It's not pretty. [00:01:56]Joe Woolworth: you can get a better sense of your land, but what specifically makes a lot more sense in the winter than in the summer when it comes to yard work.[00:02:03]Keith Ramsey: There are all kinds of things you can do in the wintertime. Looking at your lawn, and if it's not dark green doing more fertilization, that's a, it's a great time to do fertilization. It's a great time to do all of the ground covers. You can do dormant seating top-dressed it with black soil.[00:02:19] And then in the spring, you're going to get germination pretty quick. You can do lawn fertilization, like I said, mulching and pine strong. There's no better time to do it. Perennial plants are, have died all the way back to the ground, or you've got that is not looking at its prime, and it needs to be cut back. Ornamental grasses need to be cut back. In February, you start cutting your roses back. There are all kinds of dormant pruning that can be done. And when you're looking at a tree in the wintertime when it doesn't have foliage on it, you can see that we're branches are crossing or branches are rubbing or taken in and lifting a canopy a little bit so that you can walk under it.[00:02:55]So that you can see through it, a layer in a Japanese maple. It is just so much clear when there aren't leaves on the tree. So you can do that kind of stuff. But doing all your cleanup, all your pruning the stuff that requires a fair amount of effort, and you pretty much produce your own heat.[00:03:12] You know what I mean? When you're moving around, and you're really actively working, on a day when it's. 25 degrees to 40 degrees, whatever it's comfortable outside, a light jacket, and you probably end up taking it off. Mulching in particular, though, hardwood mulch is what I always recommend.[00:03:28]it's organic, it's natural, and color. It's consistent. It's readily available. It's a by-product. When you're standing next to a mulch pile, It might be a hundred degrees inside that mulch pile. You're shoveling mulch, and heat is actually coming off the mulch.[00:03:43]It's not a comfortable thing to do, and it's 80 degrees outside. Looking at your landscape, looking at the definition, digging some edges so that you've got that golf green look to the yard, given the lawn a better shape and then creating beds or around the lawn.[00:03:58] But getting that kind of stuff out of the way, the perennials aren't up yet, you've got everything trimmed back. you don't have to be tender and delicate around the plants at that time of the [00:04:07] Joe Woolworth: year. Is there any planting that makes more sense to do in the winter that will either benefit you in the winter?[00:04:13] You'll see some blooming, or it will be a benefit in the coming season. [00:04:16]Keith Ramsey: I'll never stop talking about this and that. And nobody will ever really believe me, but winter's the best time to plant stuff. dormant planting is ideal. You put stuff in the ground.[00:04:28]Our ground never freezes. Hard enough that you can't dig. we might, you know, the very top crust of the soil, my freeze plants grow roots every day during the wintertime. So the most stressful time of the year for plants in June, July, and August, September. the further you can get from that period of time, the more roots you're going to have.[00:04:46]And again, you go outside, something you can do with your kids, go pick a tree, Go pick a handful of shrubs, plant five or six blueberries, You're not going to break a sweat, doing it. It's the prime time to do it. Now. Plants will be rooted in usually when plants not well-rooted in you get sporadic growth.[00:05:07] You'll see one little twig, pushing growth on three sides of the plant. Once a plant gets rooted in, you'll see a good full flush. So when you plan the wintertime by spring, you'll see it. Good. Full flush planting in the wintertime is ideal. [00:05:21] Joe Woolworth: planting in the wintertime dormantly is anything you should be looking at to the plant you might need to address?[00:05:27] Do they need as much watering? Is it just [00:05:29] Keith Ramsey: put it in the ground? , you still need to look at a plant. On a weekly basis, basically. If you look at a plant and it looks good, are you looking at a plant, and it's dry, you water it. we tend to have enough moisture in the wintertime.[00:05:40] there are lots of winners. You'd never have to water. But it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on them. Winter winds, cold temperatures. All dry plan out, whether it's got foliage on it or not, foliage is a really good indicator of being dry. When we talked about plant wilting, you can look out the window and see this it's wilted.[00:05:57] It's either too wet or too dry. It's hard to tell from what if it's wilted, but if it doesn't have foliage on it if it's a deciduous plant, it's a little harder to tell. So you do need to go out and check them periodically. But it's typical that you don't have to do a lot of watering, if any, watering at all during the wintertime.[00:06:14]It also saves. Most of us pay for water now.  It saves on the water bill to plant during the wintertime here in North. [00:06:21] Joe Woolworth: Carolina, we very rarely see any snow. Are there any specific kinds of plans did you have to watch out for when there's a frost warning? [00:06:27] Keith Ramsey: Not really most of the plants that, people are always when they buy plants, they'll call back and say, is there anything I needed to do?[00:06:33] I need to wrap my plan up. If they bought a planet, a nursery, and it was outside, it's rare That we cover plants or that they would need to be covered in the landscape. We might cover chameleon in full bloom in the nursery because they will sell faster and full-blown.[00:06:48]So we're protecting a few flowers, but if we didn't protect those flowers a week or two later, new flowers would open. So in the landscape, at my house, I would never cover. I wonder if that's [00:06:57] Joe Woolworth: a big part of the reason why people often don't think to plant in the winter, I know, growing up in Michigan, it was always like bringing the tomato plants. It's about to frost. [00:07:04]Keith Ramsey: Exactly. Yeah. So many places in the country you would cover, a fruit plan or you'd cover tomato plant. You're protecting it for the next two or three weeks.[00:07:13]That kind of thing. In North Carolina, I mean like a chameleon, chameleons are one of the things that maybe people might think about covering to save the flowers, but. Chameleons are going to bloom for three months. So there you've got flowers and flower buds at all different stages. So if we had a real hard snap and then.[00:07:29]it warms back up. You're gonna have new flowers that are going to open like that warm. [00:07:33] Joe Woolworth: snaps. And it's really about giving the plant plenty of time to root well so that when the next season comes along, you get a better-looking plant. Yeah. [00:07:40] Keith Ramsey: In North Carolina, you can absolutely plant 12 months out of the year.[00:07:43] There's not a time. In North Carolina that you can't plant, you do have to be more vigilant about watering and keeping an eye on the plant in the summer months. I tend to do most of my planting at the what I would say is probably the worst time of the year, into June.[00:07:58]Beginning of July. We finally slowed down, and I've got the time; I've together a plant collection or pulled plants as they came in. What I really like are new plants that I hadn't seen, and I want to try. And I just won't get to it until then. there's a lot of times I'll water really heavy the first time and not have to water through the summer.[00:08:18]You only need an inch of rain. To maintain moisture levels. So it's more about understanding what that moisture level needs to be. Plants never want to be wet, really, truly wet, even wet plants that are wet tolerant. I don't want to be wet. They don't want to be really dry, with a few exceptions.[00:08:35] You know what I mean? When you're talking about cactus and things like that, or bog plants but 90% of the plants want to be evenly moist. They don't want to be wet or dry. So you can plant 12 months out of the year, but wintertime is an ideal time to do it. And if you go out, Pick those few locations where you're looking at your neighbor's trashcan, or you're going to block out the kitchen window, or there's somebody standing day in, day out, you know where the TV's playing and it's just right there in your view.[00:09:01]That way, it'll be very enjoyable going into next fall. And when I think what tends to happen is people see it in the wintertime, but they don't ever act on it. Then the leads come back out, and people are planting in the spring, and it's, out of mind, that view is gone.[00:09:15] They're never going to put a screen plan. And but if you look at it this time of year, you can really create some good structure with plants with, fencing with plants with rocks or with walls that give you the structure and the landscape that really make it pull together.[00:09:30]And then, fertilization, you can always dorm it, fertilized, dormant, spray your plants. if you're an organic gardener, most of the organic sprays work really well in the wintertime to prevent Plants from having insects or reoccurring problems dormant oils, sulfur sprays.[00:09:46] There's a lot of different things that, if you've had issues in the past, or if you got specific plants, come into a local garden center garden supply company, or any local garden center where you've got knowledgeable staff and ask them What types of sprays for what types of plants don't just go out and just spray any plant with, dormant oils.[00:10:05] You don't want to spray on conifers typically. It'll smother the foliage. So go out and ask before you spray. I'd never liked to just generally just spray everything figure out what's going to be helpful, to preventatively spray with an organic spray or a chemical spray, and you can get that kind of stuff done to fertilize before you mulch.[00:10:25] If you mulch, the fertilizer doesn't need to be dug into the ground ever. But you can get you to get it down above the mulch. It won't break the mulch down as fast. And it'll get to the root zone a whole lot better, but especially with everything that's going on these days, it's a great time to put a code on your kids, go outside and enjoy some outdoor time.[00:10:44] 

Keith Ramsey:   Today, we're talking about bonsai trees. Bonsai has been around for thousands of years but has become really popular in the last few years at garden centers here in America. They've been here for a lot longer than that, but it's definitely a trend that's coming on. And the word bonds I, all it really truly means is a potted plant.[00:00:59] In the Chinese culture, they would go out into nature, and they'd find plants and put them in a pot, and they'd start to train them like an older tree. The idea of growing a Bonsai you're trimming the roots, and you're trimming the top. So that, so by trimming the roots, you're shrinking the foliage on the plant. The more you trim it and the more fibers the roots get, the smaller the foliage gets. One unique part of that is when the plant flowers, the flower stay the same size.[00:01:27] So you'll have an Azalea plant. You Bonsai, after several years, the foliage will start to shrink, get smaller and smaller. The limb shrinks the inner nodal growth shrinks. And when the plant flowers, it'll still have these large flowers. Fruit trees, Apple trees, Berry trees will always have really large.[00:01:46] So it's a little distorted look. [00:01:48] Joe Woolworth: I didn't know that you could bonsai another type of plant. I never heard that. [00:01:51] Keith Ramsey: before. Yeah. So Bonzai is literally just potting a plant. Bonzai has grown into that shape of plant that you see, at a Juniper, but there's, you can really, truly bonsai any plant.[00:02:02]it's going out and finding a plant. That's going to mirror the look that you want. If you wanted to, if you wanted the look of an old Oak tree, with that tree's structure coming up and a big trunk and then just a canopy, there's a number of trees that you can use outside.[00:02:18] And there's a number of trees you can use inside. So there's, you definitely have to choose whether you're doing a Bonzai for inside or for outside and pick a plant that's going to do well in the environment that's your trying to place a plant. Yeah. You [00:02:30] Joe Woolworth: mentioned the process was trimming the routes as well as trimming the foliage back in.[00:02:35] So, how do you trim the roots when it's an outside plant? [00:02:38]Keith Ramsey: it's a containerized plant. Say once a year, once every two years, you pull the plant out of the pot, and you're literally trimming the tips of the roots and some of the larger. Roots so that you don't have one large taproot going down anymore.[00:02:52]You tip that taproot and just put prune in the top of a plant, the growth comes up, you prune it, and it splits, and you end up with multiple stems coming up instead of one stem. So basically, the same thing with the root, you're going to go in and trim the roots. It's going to split, and you end up with more fibrous roots.[00:03:11]And the more you shrink that root space or, the more it's out of proportion with the size of the tree, the more that foliage just kinda starts to shrink. There are lots of different styles of Bonsai. It's picking a picture of a Bonsai offline or out of a book. Something that you've seen, a real bonsai that you've seen somewhere, and it's mirroring that.[00:03:32]And in a lot of cases, they're mirroring. Older plants in a landscape, the Cedar tree that's grown on the side of a mountain, that's been windswept for years, that you see on a hiking trip, some at some point, you take a picture of that, or you have a picture of that in your mind, and you're trying to prune that tree and wire that tree so that it has that windswept look,  and[00:03:54]I think karate kid is part of why I think, in the last few months, the last year, I think that resurgence of. That Cobra[00:04:08] Joe Woolworth: Kai Netflix [00:04:09] Keith Ramsey: series. Yeah. Everybody's [00:04:11] Joe Woolworth: back into bonsai. Exactly. So Mr. Miyagi was always in there working on that tree.[00:04:16] What kind of commitment is it to properly Bonzai a plant? Cause it seems like if you pay attention to the movie, it's about six, seven hours a day. [00:04:23]Keith Ramsey: You could spend six or seven hours a day, but you'd have to have it like a thousand bonsais. It's a really minimal commitment. It's more about getting the plants in the right location and then keeping them watered.[00:04:35] If you're going to do multiple bonsais, Bonzai is something you'd probably want to if you're going to take a two-week vacation. It's like having a dog. You don't want to tie it up in the backyard. You want to get somebody to take care of it, at least give it some water.[00:04:47] Every couple of days, Bonsais tend to dry out faster than other plants. Because they've got a small root base. Couple of things that you can do, just a simple timer where you get an irrigation system that comes on, and if you don't have an irrigation system or putting them under a full-time irrigation system, but what [00:05:04] Joe Woolworth: would you look for in the plant if you.[00:05:07] As a sign that you were over-watering or [00:05:09] Keith Ramsey: underwatering?[00:05:10] So overwatering is usually the whole plant wilts, just like any plant we look at.  The whole plant tends to shut down cause it doesn't have oxygen, and it's not getting any water when a plant doesn't have oxygen, they can't take up water, say you're so the whole plant kind of wilts. A dry plant usually yellows from the inside or loses foliage from the inside of the plant.[00:05:31]So you'll see yellow leaves on the interior of the plant versus the exterior plant, maybe still wilting. It depends on the type of plant, but those are good signs. But placement is another thing it's, If you can take, a plant that, that needs full sun. You can put it in an area that's getting morning sun till maybe one or two in the afternoon, or that, get some morning sun and some afternoon sun, but it's in the shade in the mid-day, just having it in that right place is key.[00:05:59]But you can select a plant. You can go out and buy a bonsai. We, we sell bonsais, a lot of garden centers sell bonsais. And, but you can also go with the picture to decide whether you want an interior Bonzai or an exterior Bonzai. If you've got an exterior plant where many people go wrong, they'll go out, and they'll buy a Juniper.[00:06:18] And it's got a great bonsai shape, it's in a Bonsai, ceramic pot. They bring it in and set it on the coffee table. It's going to be sudden death, it's just not, there's not enough sun to dry, not the right environment. It's an outdoor plant and it needs to be outdoors. Outdoor bonsais can be utilized inside.[00:06:37] But it's a rotation thing. They're going to be there for a couple of days and then you move them back out. You bring them in for a party, you move them back out. You're going to have company, you bring him in, you set them on an end table, and then shift them back out. Interior plants, you can do things like ficus trees, all the interior trees Shefa layers.[00:06:55] And our Arbuckles make a great Bonsai. You want to highlight a plant for a highlight area or a low light plant for a low light area. But deciding which way you're going to go or doing some of both, but you select a plant,[00:07:11]Find a container. Bonsai pots are relatively inexpensive, but if you wanted to start five bonsais at the same time and just see how it goes, you can use a cheap nursery pot, just cut it down low and pot your plan in it, trim the roots, get it started. Once you have one that you like and you think that's really progressing, then you can move it to a glazed Bonzai pot,  for that real Bonsai look but to start out you're pruning the root structure.[00:07:37] You're thinning it out and you, and it's a slowly but surely thing you don't want to go in and chop the roots way back. You trim in the top-up, slowly but surely you don't ever want to just lop stuff off. When you did see karate kid when Mr.[00:07:49] Miyagi's on their trip, trimming a plant,  he's sniffing little pieces or, but when you're creating, when you're first starting out, you're going to take bigger pieces off. You're going to clean the inside of the plan out. Following the structure of something that you've seen that you like.[00:08:04]And then, like I said, putting them in the right conditions, and then it's simply just water, prune and fertilize.  They're relatively easy to maintain once you get the hang of it. [00:08:14] Joe Woolworth: Can a bonsai tree produce fruit. And is it smaller? [00:08:16] Keith Ramsey: or regular size? Yeah, no, it can fruit and it's going to be regular-sized fruit.[00:08:22] So you Bonzai and AppleTree. You're going to have this tiny little Apple tree. You'll have regular size flowers. You're going to have regular size fruit. So it's a unique scenario. You can have a, you could have two to three-foot Apple tree with tiny little leaves and, regular size, apples, or close to regular size apples.[00:08:41] Tons of fun. Wow. Thank you. Everybody needs to try one,  

Keith Ramsey:   Hey, this is Keith Ramsey at the garden supply company. Today. We're going to talk about Japanese Maples. I always feel like Japanese Maples are kinda misunderstood. Everybody thinks they're extremely slow-growing and. They're really expensive. We carry a wide variety of one gallon Maples, and I've planted lots of one gallon Maples over the years.[00:01:01] There's about 3000, 4,000, maybe an unlimited number of varieties of Maples.  It's not like you just have to have one Japanese maple in your yard.  There are tons of different colors; there are different sizes, there are different shapes. One maple compliment another maple.[00:01:16]You can plant mixed like a mixed border of Maples. There are Maples that leaf out chartreuse. There's Maples that leaf out. Burgundy. When you break it down into two, into really two large groups, there's Palmatums, which are a large Palmate leaf, and most of that 99% are upright.[00:01:34] There's a couple of holdouts that are weeping palmatum, so that's a big Palmate,  leaf. The other half of the plants are dissectums. So a dissectum is a dissected leaf. It's the Lacy leaf Japanese maple, and most of those are weeping varieties that are going to stay smaller and that that gets wider than they do tall.[00:01:55] They're typically a focal point in a landscape, and they need to be placed well. You don't want them in with a bunch of round shrubs. Because it's going to be around plants, and they'll just blend in. You want them sitting out on their own with ground cover underneath them or boulders or rocks around.[00:02:13]Both varieties do really well in North Carolina.   They handle our clay really well. Some of the varieties of pushing Angie year, so they are, they're slow-growing other varieties of growth, three, three feet plus. So you can buy a one-gallon maple and have a, have full-size tree in three, four years.[00:02:32]So it's not necessarily an expensive plant. Now, a lot of times, people look at $300 plant. That's shorter than a, say, as an October glory, red maple, and, but a red maple, might push four feet of growth in a year.  And it's a much, much larger tree, which is why Japanese Maples work well in the type of lots we're building on now and small courtyards.[00:02:56] it's a plant that'll grow in a pot and live in a pot for 15, 20 years if it's treated appropriately. [00:03:04] Joe Woolworth: I know that people like to go and purchase a Japanese maple, like from a big box store, but a lot of people run into a problem with their mislabeled, or they're not even the tree that, that they're [00:03:12] Keith Ramsey: purchasing.[00:03:12] And there's, and knowing what your planning is. Yes, half the, if you go and you pick something up, and it's just a seedling maple, you don't really know what you're getting. It's something that's been cross-pollinated. You pick up a hundred seeds, and every one of those plants might be genetically different.[00:03:28] The neat thing about Maples is,  they are crossed, and then they're grafted a lot of times. Typically they're grafted. And they're grafted for strong rootstock. And then for whatever the beneficial qualities of the top of the plant are whether it be color or the shape of the leaf or the growth habit. [00:03:46][00:03:46]Joe Woolworth: If you're going into the garden supply company with your eyes on a Japanese maple cause you got the perfect spot in your yard, is it just as easy as just planting wherever you want? Or is there a little bit more to it than that? [00:03:56]Keith Ramsey: I think it's, it's like anything you want a tree that's going to be.[00:03:59] Portion it to this space. if you're doing an upright tree coral bark, Japanese Maples, or one of them, the top trees we sell the bark in the wintertime is a coral color. So when it doesn't have a leaf on it, The trees showing off. It looks great, and they're all Japanese Maples are asymmetrical.[00:04:17] So there, each one of them is a piece of art. Everyone's very different. And the older they get, really the more character they get and the prettier they get.  The dissectum's, because they're weeping, really needed a space of their own. Most shrubs are the same shape as a dissect them.[00:04:33] So when you start blending them all in, it just looks like another blob in the landscape,  if it's not out on its own. So you know, a lot of times off of the corner of a sidewalk and a driveway, somebody will put one under planet with flowers or a boulder, or something like that so that you can see the character of the tree and it's out there by itself.[00:04:52]If you've got a tighter spot up around the house, you wouldn't want to do something like a Bloodgood that's gonna end up 20 feet wide. But a coral bark is a, or a seiryu. A Seiryu's an upright Japanese maple that's actually a dissecttum. It's one of the, one of the oddballs unbelievable spring green color.[00:05:12] And then the fall color is a brilliant orangy red. But a tree like that, the coral bark or seiryu, are both small to medium-sized trees. So it's something you can plan off the side of a foundation, close to your house, with the appropriate spacing. [00:05:28] Joe Woolworth: I know in our area here in the Cary area, the triangle area of North Carolina, we have a lot of neighborhoods that are established with really big trees.[00:05:35] And then we got a lot of new development, and sometimes you move into one of those new development things, and you're starting from scratch, right? It's a Japanese maple, a great tree to plant for having some significant growth in a couple. [00:05:46] Keith Ramsey: of years. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, it depends on the variety of there's varieties that put on an inch.[00:05:51] And there are varieties that put on three to four feet. Picking the right tree and that's the key, whether you come to the garden supply company or you go to the Homewood nursery or Logan's Go someplace go to a small garden center where their plant knowledge is there. Picking plants without having good advice is really a waste of money. Just going in and grabbing a plant and slapping it in the ground. It just does not make sense. So going and getting the advice, the knowledge, people who have grown plants for years and years that know what the characteristics are and what will fit and what space. Picking the right plant for the right place is key.[00:06:29] Joe Woolworth: Yeah, because I imagine everybody's got different goals. Somebody just might want an attractive tree. Somebody might want a lot of shades. Somebody might want something that doesn't grow very fast because they hate raking, [00:06:38] Keith Ramsey: and then there are lots of people that just collect Japanese Maples. I've probably got 15, 20 different varieties.[00:06:45]and add in a couple each year. Now you mentioned [00:06:48] Joe Woolworth: that earlier that a lot of them come with grafted in, what does it take to graft in a Japanese maple into another kind  [00:06:54] Keith Ramsey: it's a little bit of an art and a lot of science, but it's; basically, you're cutting a groove into the end of the rootstock.[00:07:01] So you grow on a plant and say like a one-gallon pot. And then you cut the top of the plant off, and you're cutting a V and the base of the plan. And then you cut the cut, the opposing piece, from a different plant, like a dissect them, a weeping tree.[00:07:16]You cut that into a V, and you put it down in there, and you use grafting wax to seal that in. And the plant basically grows back together. So you're taking rootstock from one plant and. Top stock from another plant, and you're getting in an aggressive root system, something that's going to hold up really well and in our soil.[00:07:34] Then you're adding the characteristics you want, a red weeping Lacy leaf maple. Wow. So it's tons of fun.  It's an art. I've done it a handful of times. Typically people, will go out and select a maple that's been grafted. [00:07:49]Joe Woolworth: If somebody comes in and they have a Japanese maple in their yard, and they want to get a matching one.[00:07:53] They want to get another one, and they don't know enough to identify. Can you guys help with that? Yeah, we do [00:07:58] Keith Ramsey: that all the time with all different types of plants. People bring in preferably a piece of the plant but pictures, and we've our staff can typically ID what that plan is. Or Japanese Maples are the same way.[00:08:11]Of course, you've got three four, five, 10,000 varieties of Japanese Maples. It's an unlimited scenario.  Nailing it every single time is not as easy, but there are 10 to 20 varieties that you see all the time. And that are really good standby plants that people use.[00:08:27] So a lot of times, we can idea Japanese maple and be 99% certain that it's going to be a Bloodgood, or it's going to be a Crimson Queen dissectum. But there's always the off chance that it's one of those obscure, weird variety, especially with NC state here. The NC state JC Raulston Arboretum, we've got all these plant people and plant collectors and unusual plants in our area, which is a nice thing.[00:08:52] Joe Woolworth: What do you think is the ideal size to buy a Japanese maple at, and what sizes do you guys [00:08:58] Keith Ramsey: offer? So I don't really think there isn't really an ideal size. I plan a lot of one gallon because I want to add variety to my landscape. I'll go into the back of a perennial border and planting to plant a small one Yellen tree and give it two or three years.[00:09:11] And all of a sudden, you've got something that's fairly substantial. But, if you're doing something that's a focal point. I think that's when you need a tree that's going to fit the space, and that's going to give you some instant gratification. So then you're spending two to three, $400 on a tree, which is really, I think, worth it when you're talking about a focal point.[00:09:30]And it's, Maples are one of those things in North Carolina they really thrive in the clay. You want to amend to the clay, and you want to plant them high because they're, they want to be, they'd rather be on the dry side than the wet side. They really thrive in our climate.[00:09:45] Joe Woolworth: Is there an ideal time of year to plant a tree. [00:09:47]Keith Ramsey: any plant in any kind of tree we plant 12 months out of the year, and we have really good results. But the ideal time probably is from the beginning of September until the end of May. While the temperatures are still cool, plants can root in.[00:10:02]And the plant's pretty, well-established going into summertime. I ended up doing a lot of my planning in June or July, which I would say is notably the worst time of the year to put in trees and shrubs. And I have great results. I water deeply. I keep my eyes on them. On a weekly basis and water when necessary.[00:10:21] But a lot of times in North Carolina, the clay does hold water. So if they're elevated and you water deeply, or we get an inch of rain, I don't have an irrigation system, and I don't do a lot of watering. So it's,  it's water twice a summer, the last few years. [00:10:38] 

Keith Ramsey:   How are we doing? We're here today to talk about what's going on in the fall. I'm Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. Fall's a great time of year to, be in the garden. It's the season that really never ends.  Once it's temperature starts cooling off, you can  start planting [00:01:23] and you can plant all the way into the wintertime.  It's a nice time of year to work on a landscape project because you're not pressured. You can do one section at a time and you can work all the way through the winter. Plants establish really well during the winter months.   They're going to grow roots every day through the wintertime.[00:01:39] So it's a time of the year that you can work outside and it's not too hot for plants. Aren't going to need a lot of water. This time of year, we're starting to get pansies and mums, that kind of seasonal color, and pansies are an amazing plant. They'll hold up to the cold weather.[00:01:54]They're out there underneath the snow, as the snow melts, they come back to life and then they're usually flowering heavier than they were before snowfall.  Pansies are something that is easy to put in and just give you huge rewards. [00:02:06]Joe Woolworth: When's the ideal time to put in your pansies?[00:02:09] .[00:02:09]Keith Ramsey: month of October really is probably the ideal time. We start bringing pansies at the end of September.  But all throughout the month of October, and then we bring in larger flowers in November so that people can continue to plant them. [00:02:22] Joe Woolworth: What does the process looks like if I want to put in some pansies, I head on down to garden supply, and then what?[00:02:26] Keith Ramsey: . We can walk you through that. I think the key to an annual bed is really just building a great bed. It's building up the soil, putting in soil conditioner, putting in potting soil. And when you see commercial beds around town, that's the way it's done. , it makes  planting an[00:02:40] an annual bed, just super easy. You can pull a flat of pansies and plant them in less than an hour. And that's, having the bed prepped and then the right soil is also what gives you the professional results too? That's, what's going to give you flowers all winter long getting the fertility, applying something, that's got a high phosphate fertilizer that, you can pick up at any local garden center, like garden supply company. [00:03:01]Joe Woolworth: So that's not like a complicated to get my soil tested kind of stuff. I'm just buying some products from the garden supply. [00:03:07] Keith Ramsey: That's it's really just a simple recipe.[00:03:09] I'll put down a bag of soil conditioner on the bottom and then I'll top dress it with a bag of potting soil and then use half a bag of soil conditioner mixed into the potting soil and I'll dig that into the clay. So you're opening up the clay and you're giving it a deeper root base place for the plant roots to root down into the existing soil.[00:03:29] But then you can plant directly in that mix. And then I use the other half of the bag of soil conditioner just to mulch the top of the bed.  You don't want to mulch with heavy bark soil because it just,  takes all the nitrogen out of the soil. And then we'll use an annual perennial fertilizer and it's a granular product.[00:03:46] You can just, you broadcasted across the bed and water a man, and it's really. Pretty simple process. [00:03:52] Joe Woolworth: If there were a formula for it and to make it easy, let's say you buy a hundred dollars worth of plants. How much are you planning on investing in the soil so that you really make sure you get the most out [00:04:03] Keith Ramsey: of it?[00:04:03] An average annual bed would be a flat of annuals. And so garden centers really have the best pricing on annual flats. None of the box stores anymore carry flats of annuals. They carry different types of packs or bigger pots. But we carry a 36 pack flat.[00:04:20] That's $25.  It's less than a dollar, a plant. And then, you basically need two bags of soil conditioner and a bag of potting soil. So, with the fertilizer and the plants, it's probably, it probably doubles the cost. So for $50, you've got a six-foot by two-foot bed of color that lasts from October until April.[00:04:40] Oh, it's really a deal and it's super easy to put in if you prep the bed that way, it's all about knowing how to plant like a professional landscape team would on a commercial. [00:04:49] Joe Woolworth: So you mentioned that this is also a great time of year for landscaping. The weather's not so crazy.[00:04:53] What are some of the common things that people are putting in the fall when it comes to landscaping in their yard? [00:04:57] Keith Ramsey: So really, you can plant just about anything. There are a few perennial plants that really like to be planted in the early spring as it warms up. But 95% of the perennials can go in this time of year pansies all kinds of heuchera.[00:05:11] There's a whole range of cool-season things that you can plant with pansies violas will handle a little bit more shade than pansies. It's a pansy-like plant. But then trees and shrubs when it cools off the top of the plant's not going through any stress and the soil temperatures are still warm enough through the entire winter that plants will grow roots.[00:05:29] The idea is that it's just a fading season. It gets a little worse every day but it's never a bad time to plant in the wintertime. Once you get the plant in. You're going to start growing roots. And you're basically trying to establish as many roots as you can.[00:05:42] Before we get into that July timeframe where it's really hot and the plants stressed. It's losing moisture. [00:05:48]Joe Woolworth: When I think of fall, right when I first got to the width of it, I know a lot of people think pumpkin spice, lattes, and stuff like that, but I think bonfires. Absolutely. I think it's time to start a fire in the backyard.[00:05:59]Keith Ramsey:  The other day we had a seafood boil for some employees and friends. A bunch of people got together. It was that. Perfect fall temperature. We had the pizza oven at the store cranked up and we, we had gotten all the fixings from salvias pizza to make pizzas.[00:06:14] We had we're putting fresh Bazell on it and just. Absolute perfect evening, but we had four fire pits that have been sitting there for, I don't know, probably six months towards the back of the store. It's been summertime it's hot and it hadn't really been the time. We sold all four. Fire pits to friends and family that were there.[00:06:35] Yeah. We fired one of them up. Everybody's standing around it. , you're seeing the fire in the fire pit. It really is just a perfect time of year. And it's also, you can't have an open fire and Cary and most of the cities around here, but you can have a fire pit going.[00:06:51] It's also a nice way when you're working in the yard. To pick up a few sticks, get a little fire going in your fire pit. And then, just ease into a Saturday evening, with marshmallows or drinks around a fire. [00:07:04] Joe Woolworth: Yep. That's a great way [00:07:06] Keith Ramsey: to spend the evening. Yeah, it really is.[00:07:08] The other thing fall is, like the plants, as plants start to die back and perennials start to fade trimming that kind of stuff back and letting the leaves fall. If you can utilize the leaves, make a great. Composts and it ma they make great leaf mulch in natural areas. I recommend holding on to leaves if you have big enough spaces to do it, and then as colder months, come on.[00:07:31]That's a good time to start doing your mulching you, can you cut everything back? You've done your pruning. Go ahead and get the mulching out of the way while the temperatures are cold.  It holds moisture to the roots. It holds some warmth to the roots. So it's good for overwintering plants, but it's also a good time if you're doing it yourself.[00:07:49] To get out there. It's hard to break a sweat when it's cold outside, so you're moving mulch and it's another reason to spend time outside with everything that's been going on this year. I think being outside, it's a safe, happy place to be. [00:08:03] Every time you touch the soil or you get outside and you start doing that kind of physical thing, it just it's. It's good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health? I always feel better after I've been out and spent some time in the yard. [00:08:16] 

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:15] Today, we're going to talk about prepping annual beds or prepping pots for planting annuals.Joe Woolworth: [00:00:20] what is an annual bed?Keith Ramsey: [00:00:22] Every year, people plant annual flowers. An annual is something you're going to replace in the spring, and you're going to replace it in the fall. So, you end up with really good color spots in your yard. I always like to tell people to pick three good spots and an area in their yard so that they're focal points. Put one or two types of color in there so that they really draw your eye to that space, and they kind of hold space as perennials come in and out of bloom.Joe Woolworth: [00:00:48] What's the difference between an annual and a perennial?Keith Ramsey: [00:00:49] So an annual you're going to replace every year. It's, it's an annual event. It is something you've got to change. It makes it easy to remember. Perennials are going to come back year after year. But both of them provide you with a lot of colors, the downside to a perennial.[00:01:04] people get all excited about them because they come back year after year, but the downside to them is they go into a big wave of blooms, and then they come out of bloom, or they bloom at one time a year, and then they. They don't bloom until the following year. Where annuals, you put them in and they're going to, they're going to hold that space.[00:01:20] 90% of the time, if you prep the soil right, you're going to have really, good quality annual beds, and they're going to, they're going to perform well. There's always a downside or a weather-related event where annuals don't really do it that well, but typically you put an annual, and it's kind of, it's going to bloom from the time you put it in.[00:01:37] planting time would be, kind of an April 15th to June 15th, and that's going to bloom around until frost. So, you're going to have blooms until, pretty much the end of October, November 1st. I usually recommend that people pull their annuals out a little bit ahead of that and replace them with pansies or vials, cool-season annuals that will bloom from the October timeframe all the way around until spring.Joe Woolworth: [00:02:02] when you're getting ready, and you're deciding, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to make this pot here is going to be an annual Potter. This bed is going to be an annual pot. What? What sizes do you need? when it comes to choosing a pot or choosing a bed, is it dependent on the plant, or do youKeith Ramsey: [00:02:16] know it's in relationship to the space that's around it, and what I usually tell people when they're making an annual bed is to do something that they can plant in.[00:02:24] 1520 minutes, some, you know, half an hour at best. Something they can plan with a cup of coffee or a cocktail. You don't want it to be a really large, you know, a lot of work. But the prep and the bed and getting there, getting the soil right, and getting the fertilizer right is the key.[00:02:39] To really have him professional results.Joe Woolworth: [00:02:42] It's a recipe. What's the, what's the elements of theKeith Ramsey: [00:02:44] recipe? So, the recipe, we usually start with soil conditioner, which is the cheapest soil amendment you can buy, but it's probably one of the better soil amendments. It's a pine bark-based product. We'll add that to the base.[00:02:55], you know, an annual bed that's maybe—two foot by four foot. You had a bag of soil conditioner to the, to the base, to the bottom, and then we come back through with potting soil on top of that. And then we use soil conditioner to mulch the bed instead of mulch, because mulch takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil.[00:03:13], but once we get all that out, we put the, we, we add fertilizer to the top of the bed, at the recommended rate. And then dig that into the clay because clay is a really good soil amendment. Or it's a good, good soil base. It holds nutrients really well and, and holds,Joe Woolworth: [00:03:26] Oh, really? My art is mostly clay, and I thought that I couldn't grow anything.Keith Ramsey: [00:03:30] cause that's our home run.[00:03:31] Yeah. So, clay holds nutrients well, it is full of mineral-rich, and it holds water really well. The downside to clay is that it's dense, it's hard to work with. And then it holds too much water. So, when you, when you add soil conditioner doing it, you're lightening. You're lightening up the clay.[00:03:47]but you never want to remove the clay and add a bunch of, you know, if you take, if you dug a hole and remove all the clay and you add your really good soil to it, it's basically like a bowl of cereal, you know, it's just, it turns to mush. And plants are sitting in too much water. They don't have enough oxygen, and they've died from drought, basically.[00:04:05], but once you get all that done, you dig it in. You can plan an annual bed, and you know, five, 10 minutes, you can because it's just fluffy.Joe Woolworth: [00:04:13] Do you recommend people, like do the pre-ground kind of seedlings or you start with seeds?Keith Ramsey: [00:04:18] typically, you're starting with a pre-ground, seedling. If you start with seeds, I always recommend doing it.[00:04:23]in the, in the house, under lights, and getting the seedlings hardened off and ready to go, which is, which is a good possibility too.Joe Woolworth: [00:04:32], remind me again, you said the best time of year to plant.Keith Ramsey: [00:04:35] it's April 15th through about June 15th, probably ideally April 15th through May 15th. For getting annuals in, and it gives them the ability to get started before the hot part of the summer, even though they're hot weather plants, they get a chance to get rooted in and get established before it gets hot.[00:04:52] On the flip side and in the fall, you want to plan them between October, which basically is ideal. Yeah. When you're putting it, you know, you're putting an annual bed together. If you do all the prep work, you're going to have professional looking annual beds. When you drive around town, you see these beds that landscapers have put in.[00:05:08] that's what they're doing. They're prepping the bed. Growing up, I heard people say, you know, dig a $10 hole for a $5 plant. Which I always thought was absurd. It's, you know, it's a lot of soil, and it's a big expense. And that's not really even the case. It's more like dig a $5 hole for a $5 plant when you do that prep; you're really going to get the results out of it.[00:05:27]. And then when it comes to—putting, annuals and pots. We do, we do something very similar. If it's a very large pot, we'll take a small nursery pot, turn it upside down in that pot, so we're not using so much soil. And so that it drains well and it's light, and you can move it around.[00:05:42] So you're basically just creating a cavity of air in the bottom, in the bottom of theJoe Woolworth: [00:05:45] pond. Those giant pots. I even move in it.Keith Ramsey: [00:05:48] Yeah. Yeah. So, it's just a space taker. And then, you add soil conditioner about halfway up the pot, which is again, it drains, well, it's a good soil to grow in, but it's cheap.[00:05:59] So you fill it up with the cheap soil, and then you take. Potting soil, and you top it off the top half of the pot with potting soil. You are putting the plants in a really rich, fertilizer rich soil. And then, as the roots grow down, they'll grow right into that soil conditioner.[00:06:11] But your pot is always going to drain, and it's going to be a little bit lighter, and it's a little bit cheaper. And if you've got to empty it, we recommend changing pots out on a yearly basis, at least the top part of the soil. But if you have to change out the entire, in the entire pot, it's a little less soil.[00:06:25] They have to compost and get rid of.Joe Woolworth: [00:06:27] So if I planted an annual bed right now, cause we're in the window right now, right? Would I need to redo the soil in October?Keith Ramsey: [00:06:33] Yep. when you're planning an annual bed, you're never going to remove the soil and an annual bed or typically not unless it just builds that much.[00:06:40] But you always want to add some fresh soil. an annual, taking all the nutrients out of the soil andJoe Woolworth: [00:06:45] not the conditioner. You don't need that. You wouldKeith Ramsey: [00:06:47] still use the conditioner, you'd add fresh potting soil, and then you would use a conditioner. Well, they use that to finish it off and mulch it in.[00:06:55] So we'll use the soil conditioner as a mulch.Joe Woolworth: [00:06:57] Gotcha.Keith Ramsey: [00:06:58] if you can run through that program, you'll, you'll definitely be successful with annuals.Joe Woolworth: [00:07:02] So you recommend, find a couple of spots in your yard that look like they need some color,Keith Ramsey: [00:07:06] right? Just focal points, you know, in three, three spots in the front yard.[00:07:10] a lot of times people won't, they won't plant annuals the whole time they live there, and they'll come, and they want to do something to sell a house. And I'm like, three annual beds. They'll typically come back by, and they're in a new house, and they're excited because the annual bed sold the house supposedly.Joe Woolworth: [00:07:27] That's awesome. If you had to put a skill level on it to plan a really good annual bed, like I'm not a gardener, right? My thumbs, like what's the opposite ofKeith Ramsey: [00:07:35] green, red,Joe Woolworth: [00:07:37] candid. I kill everything that I bring in my house because I neglect everything. But if I wanted to do this weekend project, I think it sounds fantastic, doing it with a.[00:07:45] With a drink or a cocktail.Keith Ramsey: [00:07:46] Yeah, exactly.Joe Woolworth: [00:07:47] Put into this and put in one of these beds. What kind of skill level do you need to do it? Right?Keith Ramsey: [00:07:51] You don't need it. You don't need any skill at all. It's a one, two, and three followed follow directions. The one thing that I would say is, you know, stop by garden supply or stop by a small local nursery that can give you advice on what plants do you use, you want to pick in the plants. It is a key is key with anything that you do in landscaping.Joe Woolworth: [00:08:11] and you can head on down to the garden supplying company.Keith Ramsey: [00:08:13] Exactly.Joe Woolworth: [00:08:14] That sounds like a fun weekend project right there.Keith Ramsey: [00:08:16] Absolutely.

This podcast contains advice on how to prepare your soil for planting vegetable gardens. Keith talks about ways to get children involved and suggests which veggies to grow according to the season."

This podcast contains advice on how to prepare your soil for planting vegetable gardens. Keith talks about ways to get children involved and suggests which veggies to grow according to the season."

A discussion about the hardy Japanese Maples. This podcast goes into caring for them, why most come from the west coast, and the many different types and varieties available.

A discussion about the hardy Japanese Maples. This podcast goes into caring for them, why most come from the west coast, and the many different types and varieties available.

Keith Ramsey discusses a program called "Host A Hive" where you can learn about beekeeping by overseeing a hive maintained at Garden Supply Company. He also discusses bee swarms, maintaining a hive, and the importance of bees to the landscape.

Keith Ramsey discusses a program called "Host A Hive" where you can learn about beekeeping by overseeing a hive maintained at Garden Supply Company. He also discusses bee swarms, maintaining a hive, and the importance of bees to the landscape.

In this week's podcast Keith Ramsey talks about something that started in WWI with homeowners turning their front laws into vegetable gardens. He gives you tips on starting one of your own and how to maintain it.

In this week's podcast Keith Ramsey talks about something that started in WWI with homeowners turning their front laws into vegetable gardens. He gives you tips on starting one of your own and how to maintain it.

This podcast covers container gardening. Point covered include, appropriate plants and trees for containers and how to maintain them.

This podcast covers container gardening. Point covered include, appropriate plants and trees for containers and how to maintain them.

A discussion on how to improve your landscape and picking the right professional landscaper.

A discussion on how to improve your landscape and picking the right professional landscaper.

What preparations in your garden now to set you up for spring and beyond.

What preparations in your garden now to set you up for spring and beyond.

Learn about the benefits of our red clay soils in North Carolina and how to properly prepare for planting.

Learn about the benefits of our red clay soils in North Carolina and how to properly prepare for planting.

Tips on watering plants and lawns.

Tips on watering plants and lawns.

Choosing the right houseplant for your space and how to maintain it and keep it healthy.

Choosing the right houseplant for your space and how to maintain it and keep it healthy.

A discussion about the importance of bees and ways to attract and feed them along with hummingbirds, butterflies and more by planting pollinator plants.

A discussion about the importance of bees and ways to attract and feed them along with hummingbirds, butterflies and more by planting pollinator plants.