Originally aired 2012.
Hosted by Ciscoe Morris & Meeghan Black from the Tropical Butterfly House at Pacific Science Center in Seattle.
Segments: Tips to Warm Up Garden Soil, Organic Lush Grass, Cutting Back Tree Peony, Banh Mi Sandwich (PCC), Plant Pick: Ginkgo Biloba Mariken
Guests: Hendrikus Schraven (Hendrikus Organics), Len Horst (Earth CPR Supply), Chef Lynne Vea (PCC)
Hey, it’s me, Cisco Morris. And here’s what’s going on. I got new with Cisco. Want to grow a plant? Here’s a trick that’ll help it thrive. You can have a lawn that looks like a golf course and still go organic. Megan’s making Picnic fair with a Vietnamese flair.
And we found a mini version of a very cool tree for our plant pick, plus a place that has butterflies year round. All this coming up right now on Gardening with Cisco. Hi, I’m Cisco Morris. And I’m Egan Black. Welcome to Gardening with Cisco. Isn’t this a little slice of heaven?
We are today at the Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House. Now I got to tell you, we. Coming here anytime of the year, but when it’s cold, wet and it should be nice outside, this is a tropical paradise. Yeah, Washington and spring freezing cold out.
It makes it so hard to grow those heat, love and veggies. But I’ve got a trick you can use the warm up the soil and you’ll be able to grow them great. So today, for the first time ever, on gardening with Cisco Eggplant. How about that? I never thought
To grow eggplant. This is the chameleon vegetable because it takes a flavor of whatever you cook. Oh, you’re right. But what about what you grow on? Is it gonna taste like plastic? I’m so curious about what this plastic is doing here. If you use a black mulch.
Then it reflects the perfect heat. So what’s the difference between black plastic and black mulch? I don’t really know. Black mulch. Just make it sound more gardening. Yeah, because this is definitely black plastic. OK, one thing, I Megan, I put this down before for it’s been down here for a few
Days because it absorbs the heat. I imagine it gets kind of hot under there. Yeah. Even in our limited sunshine things that these plants where they need. Now we’re going to put this back. Because you want to grow this on this black plastic, but we’re going to figure out about
Where we’re going to plant them. We got to remember we put the plastic back. Right? So I think, like, right there and right here. OK. And So what are we going to do? Put a little. Yeah. Dig a big hole. OK And then we’ll stick the fert in there.
And one of the things that’s pretty easy to dig, it had some good. So, you know, I just harvested a bunch of spinach out of here that you and I planted. Oh, very good. OK, So good organic vegetable food here. OK, good. OK. So it’s, you know,
You want 1/2 cup under each point, but I’m just going to do the area. Yeah, that’s exactly the way to do it. A little more furniture that way we don’t have to be too particular when we put the. Yeah. And people really got to remember you really don’t want to add fertilizer,
You know, on a plant, especially I had spinach growing in there, used a lot of nutrition up, you know? OK, this is curious. So it likes to grow on this? Yeah, it likes to. It likes to grow on black plastic because it’ll keep the soil a lot warmer.
And notice wherever you plant your eggplant, you want it to be the hottest spot you got in your garden. OK, so I got this reflected wall that’s really neat. So just going to cut a little hole. Cut a hole. This is interesting. Yeah. Is there any other vegetable that would benefit from this?
I think, yeah. You know, a lot of times like squash. Really. Yeah. And if you wanted to grow melons, then. Oh, really? So you’re doing here, I’ll give you this, if you like that. So you artificially raise the soil temperature. Yeah, Yeah. We get that absorbed heat. This ripens up in 70 days.
This is not going to be a hue Mongo St. plant. It’s gonna be these are usually what they call Asian egg plant. Yeah, and these racks are really important. Now. I could probably plant you know, something else down here when they. So let me ask you a question about this. What about watering?
Cuz you have to make sure the water gets in there. Glad you asked me. I almost forgot. Could you could you? Could you? And that way, the water will seep through. Yep. Nice. OK, so a little eggplant and the black mulch or a good oldfashioned black garbage bag. It does this, right? Cheaper.
So that was green apple eggplant. And you say that Peppers could also benefit from that kind of a treatment. You’re not kidding. Welcome back to Gardening with Cisco from the Pacific Science Center, Butterfly House. Look at this, Megan. I think it’s it’s a blue Morpho. Once it opens its wings,
It’s just startlingly blue. I think he wants to be a part of our show. Hey, I think so. He’s pretty cute. The only thing is, I don’t. I don’t know why we’re whispering, though. I don’t want to scare him away. I think he’s pretty content. Anyway, we’ll have you mowed
Your lawn yet this season? Of course you have. Yes, they’re growing like crazy. Or perhaps it’s just the weeds in your lawn, depending upon your method. Well, we have a great way of keeping your lawn growing green. Without the weeds, all you have to do is go organic. A lush, deep green lawn
Can be an organic lawn. This one belongs to Lennon, Wanda Horst. They’re the owners of Earth, CPR and organic gardening supply business and squim on the Olympic Peninsula. They sell Henriques organic products and that’s exactly what they use on their lawn. This used to be cop pasture with ditches in it.
And we came through and full dozed it and wrote it, tilled it, and then we laid seed and used seasons. Yeah, yeah, nice. Nice and see how tall it is guys look. I’m sending my fingers. There are other tricks Lynn has to keep this grass looking great. Hebrews his own compost tea
To use on the grass inside. Here we use Hue Magic humic acid and Henriques parties. Product product Moose the Goat helps thin the lawn. The other thing is Moines critical to have it as high as you can get it. So the grasses can up, come up and sort of crowd out those weeds.
Well plus it keeps the moisture in the soil. It keeps the biology going. Your grass clippings turn into nitrogen. Organic lawns generally require less maintenance. This is a non organic lawn right next door where the weeds definitely have one. There is no biology there to break it down.
So if you go in on organic process you have that thatch being broken down by the biology of the soil. Organic lawns don’t just look good on the surface. They’re healthy right down to the core. You can see it, you know as I’ve taken apart, you see that how it’s still hanging.
That’s the root system that means those roots just sort of beautiful and as the roots are penetrating way down and it’s holding its moisture and getting its food sources or really healthy grass or cattle feeding or anything else, so and. That smells good. That smells good. Don’t forget the nose, guys.
Yep, that’s why God gave you one. You can smell when it’s good. So if you are one of those people who feels the grass is always greener on the other side, maybe going organic is the answer to making your grass the greenest. Boy, little Marie Morpho’s trying to steal our job. What
A ham. I don’t think we’re going to be able to afford him. We probably cost too much. By the way, the Henriques lawn fertilizer is called seasons. Hey, talking about grass growing so fast, have you seen those 3 Biennis holy cats? Flowers this big? People don’t know You could prune them.
Well, there’s a trick to it. You can keep them shorter, make them bloom even more. So your Peony was like mine. The tree Peony. You got 3 flowers. I only got 2. They’re so beautiful. 1-2 And look at this beautiful guy here. Big. Oh my look at that. Is that beautiful.
That was man. Oh, yeah. I want more than two or three, though. Yeah. I’m greedy. I don’t blame it. So you say I can have more than. Yeah, if we get it to branch out more. OK. The other thing is, you know, it gets so tall. How do you stake them up? Right.
You know, I tried to stake this, but you could see I wasn’t totally a little bit. So we wanted to branch out more, which means we want to cut them back so that they’ll they’ll branch out. OK, so we could take this back to old wood if we could find a
Big bud like that guy, right? But maybe we don’t want to go that far, so we can cut it anywhere where there’s a branch. And so this one about the same place. Yeah, let’s do about the same thing. Yeah, Perfect. Perfect. Feels like when I do that. Oh, yeah.
OK, so let’s gonna leave this guy there for now. Leave that guy. So that’s broken. Oh yeah. And but we’re lucky, Megan, cuz look, here’s a ****. OK, So we can cut them right there. So, all right. And you always cut on a downward angle away from the ****.
OK, now, Megan, this. This what? Doesn’t look too alive. But that could be alive. But I can’t tell. OK. Better safe than sorry. I think that’s alive. Really. OK, I think so. So now we should get really good branching out. I don’t know, Megan, What do you think?
Hey, look. See, it’s sort of ohh yeah, you didn’t even go lower. If you want that. OK, so get this little guy here. Yeah ’cause there’s a big old fat bud right here. Fat juicy. So good bud in a way. Yeah, and there’s some dead stuff. Maybe we can take that off.
OK, so we’re cleaning him up as well. Yeah. And then when this guy’s done, we may decide to cut that back to keep it on balance. But it. But now the staking isn’t as big of an issue. And then these will branch out, hopefully getting more buds, hopefully.
Usually you get at least two for the price of what are so magnificent. They are a good rainstorm and they go away anyway, That’s you need more. Yeah, they’re more ephemeral, that’s for sure. But boy, they sure are pretty. So your tree, Peony, get out there
And clean it up right now. Who knows, It may serve you well next year. Easy job, can take hardly any work. And beautiful. Welcome back to Carney with Cisco from the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. We’re in that tropical butterfly house. Surrounded by gazillions of kids and butterflies together, well, they do.
You know, they import about 500 butterflies. From Asia and South America, every week if we’re really lucky, we might see one hatch out of a cocoon. It is such a great learning experience, and it’s toasty about 85 degrees in here. We’re like a man. Yeah. Speaking of hot and cooking,
We’re moving on to our cooking segment. That was my transition. You like that? We’re whipping up a little. Bon me what? Watch and learn, baby. When Lynn told us what we were cooking today, all I wanted to say was bun me, baby. It sounds like an action as
Opposed to a great stand of verb. That’s hilarious. Yeah, bun me. Yeah. So we are in. We’re it. Yeah. This is super hit. Tell us what we’re going to do. Yeah. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to create a sandwich. It’s a Vietnamese sandwich that
Sort of evolved from the from the French influence in that country, you know, half a century ago. And it’s now the sandwich that I love. It’s what I do with my sandwiches. Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do. First. We’re going to make some, what we call quick Pickles.
And we got some pickled radish, carrots and dikon. So I’m going to show you. I just wanted to demonstrate. To you real quick, the cut on the Dicon okay, and you know, Dicon is a type of radish as well, a nice mild radish. So you’re just feeling it right now.
I’m just feeling it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Nice. So then we want to create what we call just little strips or alumette. Alumette means matchstick in French. So in order to do that, you’re going to take this and you’re just going to cut it at a kind of a long angle like this
Into relatively thin slices, Okay. So you get as many slices as you need. And then we’ll get rid of that, stack those on top of each other and just twist them this way. So the key here is the diagonal thing. I’ve tried to do it before and I’ve never gotten them right. Yeah,
You can’t get them quite long enough and you can’t, like, think you’re spazzy. This works. Okay. She said Spazzy. Yeah, well, I I resemble that. There you go. And so there you are. That is a little mat sticks. I love it. So these just go into a quick little marinade, little vinegar,
Sugar and salt for about an hour. Wow. That’s it. So I’m just going to tuck those in here. I’ve already got these pickling. Yeah. And so they get that. They stay crunchy, but with a little bit of valuability, you know, and a nice little sweet tart, you know, heartbummy stuff.
So let’s build our sandwich. So this starts with baguette bread, and what you do is you the traditional. You cut it open, butterfly, but leave it connected. Yeah, love it. And you want to choose a not too crusty baguette and you want it to have a little bit softer and then
You’re going to just kind of dig a few a little couple of finger fulls of bread out of there, take the guts. Yep, exactly. That way you’re making a room for the good stuff. And stick it your mouth around it. Exactly. OK, perfect. And then traditionally this gets spread with the homemade mayonnaise
Which I made for you today, but you can use just a good quality mayonnaise. I added some macadamia nut oil and some extra virgin olive oil because you just happen to have macadamia oil on hand. Of course she does. Yes, I do too. It’s PCC. Hello.
OK, OK. So you can make that as, you know, thick or thin as you like. And then in our case today, we’re going to use some fresh wild salmon because it is salmon. No, I love it. I cut the salmon thinly and we’re just going to put a couple of fillets in there.
Great. And then I am going to brush those with a little bit of sweet chilies. Yeah, I’m a little and you know and here’s where the Bonnie becomes your own personal creation. You can, you can pile it up with any of the flavors that you love. But sort of traditionally what
We’re going to do next is, is where we need to go. So thinly sliced strips of cucumber, three or four on there and then let’s put scatter on a couple of jalapeno chilies. Now are these going to be super hot? They are going to be a little,
A little kick. Yes, I like it. And then our pickled vegetables. And I wanted to point out that the daikon and the carrot are traditional. The little sliced radishes aren’t necessarily so traditional, but I love the color that they give the sort of gem tone and they’ve still
Got that nice spicy bite to them. And then probably my favorite part, just some nice pile of fresh cilantro leaves. Isn’t that just, Oh my gosh, that is gorgeous? Yeah, exactly. And then you just sort of squeeze this together like that. And and chow down. And you and you.
Super chow down, baby. That’s it. Or this is like the most fabulous picnic sandwich on the planet. Yeah. And so I wanted to show you how I wrap these up. OK. Thank you, my dear. Absolutely. So I think this one might have to be mine. What do you think?
That sounds like a plan. I think we need a basket for our picnic. You get the basket, I’ll get the wine. OK, Ready? We’re out of here. Nice job. You’ll find thatrecipe@king5.com. Click on Gardening with Cisco. You know, bon me sounds so much more sophisticated than Salmon Sandwich,
But I got to tell you, it tastes good either way. Oh, no, no. I wish I could have tried it. I can’t wait. Too bad. So sad. You know, this place is so cool. Megan. I want to move. Yeah. Really. You think they’d let me put a tent in here somewhere?
It’s like a jungle. Maybe over there. Sure. Welcome back to Gardening with Cisco from the Tropical Butterfly House here at the Pacific Science Center. This has been around since 1998. Isn’t that awesome? It is such a great refuge from nasty weather outside. Or just a fun place to bring
The kids you get to learn so much about the butterfly. Yeah, but Megan, our plant pick, has been around a lot longer than they’re always trying to win out. Me, aren’t they? According to fossil records, it’s been around for 200. 50 million years unchanged until now. Bush. I was so excited when
I found this. Such a nurse. I thought this had some kind of medicinal properties or something that ginkgo, doesn’t it? Well, I think it’s for memory, but I forget that. I think it’s appropriate that you got this guy. Absolutely. Now, if I remember correctly, these babies are like 6070 feet tall.
They are, but not this guy, one would hope, because there’s not that much room here. This was found as a little witch’s broom on a great big one, and they found it in 1990s, and they know that they grow. Less than 4 feet tall in years and years. Interesting. Well, he’s a cutie.
Turn bright yellow in the fall. I do. Yeah. So they’re deciduous. Yep. Because behind it. Right. We’re gonna put a torch Lily with yellow flowers. What? That looks that look really pretty. See, I just opened up this whole area. I’m really excited. Um. So with the ginkgo, I’m assuming where we’re planting him,
We do have a little bit of sun right now that he likes full sun. Yeah, he likes sun. Oh, good. And, you know, they’re very drought power. It wants to. Established. We need any. What’s this part about it being a fossil? Yeah, they’re they have found fossils 240,000,000 years old. Before
The dinosaurs were here of Ginkgo plants, Kinkos were here. And guess what? They were exactly the same as they are now. No way. Isn’t that cool? That is really cool. Where do you want to? Is that going to be a beautiful? I think I like him this way. Yeah.
Oh, boy. Oh, I can’t wait. This is going to be the most beautiful bed in my whole garden. Boy, oh, boy. Oh, he’s a cutie. And then Megan will be. Put that back in this corner cuz it OK. Oh, so you really did open this up. Look at all these new plants.
This is not like you. Yeah, this is really exciting. Oh my gosh. And you have a little garden going already. This is so beautiful. I can hardly stand it already. How fun. So the little ginkgo guy you probably want to call a nursery and ask if they have the little dwarfs.
You don’t want a regular. You want the dwarf American. That don’t ask for Charlie because they’re not going to know what you’re talking about half the time. I don’t either, so that’s OK. Once again, that miniature ginkgo is called American, and if you want to check out the Butterfly
House here at the Pacific Science Center, it is open seven days a week. The admission is free with your admission to the Science Center. How about that? And you know, as cool as all these butterflies are. Yeah, you know, you were going there. Look at that amorphous phallus over there.
You don’t see those hardly anywhere. Thanks for watching. Everybody have such a great weekend. Yeah, thanks for watching. Everybody come have a tropical experience at the Tropical Butterfly Center. Oh, La La. We need a tropical drink. Let’s go get one. Good idea.