Garden Q and A – Dog Safe Plants, Living Mulch, Container Fig Plant, Wood Chips, Summer Flower Bulbs

Garden Q and A – Dog Safe Plants, Living Mulch, Container Fig Plant, Wood Chips, Summer Flower Bulbs – In this video I answer gardening questions that were asked in last week’s garden question and answer video.

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Welcome to Hort tube my name is John putam this is the garden question and answer video that I do pretty much every Sunday you can ask gardening questions down in the comments section below and that’s where I pick from each week and I think there’s uh 20 something uh that we

Picked from this uh past week we uh down in the Florida Keys and um this is uh Florida Keys black bead which is one of my absolute favorite Florida native plants we happen to be down here dur during this time normally sometime in January and we’ll we’ll see this thing In Bloom and

It’s the most fragrant most amazing uh plant obviously it’s Evergreen you can see you can see it’s Evergreen and then it’s actually host to several endangered uh the host plant for several endangered butterflies in this part of Florida from pretty much Miami you know down south into the keys here but the

Fragrance is unbelievable and you know if you watched my channel for any length of the time I’m not a big fragrant plant person because a lot of them are just overly perfumed uh this thing is just perfect and you smell it a long way before you before you ride up on them

Here they are in full bloom right at the beginning of February as I’m shooting this so there you go that’s the backdrop for this video the next backdrop you see for the Q&A we’ll definitely be at home we’re going to be at home for a long long stretch uh doing some lots of

Project work there so that is that is upcoming all right so uh there um down below uh the videos over on my channel page there’s a little member uh sign up area for being a member of the channel and there’s a lot of people have done it

Over time and I’ve held a few members meetings over the last few years but inconsistent uh and I’d like to bring some consistency to that at some point and if you are a member expect to get a message here on YouTube in the next week or so about a member’s meeting so anyway

And thank you to those of you who are uh members of the channel okay uh i’ put up a video this week from he from up in St Augustine that was shot a couple weeks ago just riding around the city identifying some of the common uh landscape plants that are used we

Probably hit you know 25% of the common plants that are used but some of them that happened to be looking good as we were riding our bikes around on our bikes now on a trail uh here in Sugar Love key actually uh and uh there was a second

Video shot from that and it’s going to go up on the learn to garden video series for so those of you who are on have the learn garden video series there are going to be some tour videos this one will be tropical plant-based but it’s a small garden on Flagler College

That uh kind of looks great together some you know just looking at it from how pieces are put together in a small space uh some of the plants that were in the video the other day being used and we’re going to do that in several different areas as we

Travel show off some plants in combination on the Lear Garden video series so that’s over on the website if you’re interested in that and uh the monthly checklist video went up this week as well earlier in the week and I actually because we were on the road

Used some of last year’s footage and then I put some additional footage over the top of it to hopefully make it a little more interesting uh than it was in the past U so anyway there you go thank you guys very much for uh following along with all of all the

Content that’s gone up while we’ve been on the road and again we’re as you’re watching this a couple days from being back back in the garden at the house and putting up content from there questions so number one somebody said Insight on living mulch versus traditional mulch or compost they’re

Just talking about ground covers in general and I talked about in the in the monthly video about using more ground covers in the garden just to have to spend less money on mulch think about mulching less uh I think that there’s you know there’s a lot of thought on you

Know using ground living mulch ground cover plants whatever that is and that can be in farming you know if you’re a row crop farmer you could have things growing under between rows of corn or whatever or in our Gardens and our ornamental Landscapes when we’re talking

About using some sort of you know ground cover up under our shrubs or around our Lawns and that kind of thing you know to reduce the amount of mulch that we’re using a lot of I think a lot of people you know and there’s been there’s lots written about you know maybe they’re

Going to it’s going to compete for water and nutrients and that kind of thing and I would think that would probably be the case if I was trying to grow corn uh and trying to get 200 and some bushels an acre or whatever that I probably wouldn’t want a lot competing with my

Plants but in our ornamental Landscapes I find that a lot of the the the gardens that we visit where the plants are pretty close together where there’s Ground Covers uh there’s layered plantings from ground covers to midsize shrubs to large shrubs to trees that it doesn’t seem to use any more

Water and in fact I think a lot of that the rainfall that you do get is held in place better there’s a lot less runoff out of that kind of situation a lot more soaking into the ground and so I you know I like to use um not ground covers

That get out of control I mean if it’s going to create maintenance in the garden I’d rather go and buy mulch and mulch the garden than create maintenance but it’s kind of low maintenance slower growing ground cover things I think are perfectly fine in your garden they’re

Not going to out compete the other things that you have there uh you know when you’re initially planting them there can be some competition issues if something is more established than something else you know a lot of times we have those issues but if you’re planting them all at kind of the same

Time they’ll be fine together and they’ll figure it out Ground Covers will figure it out they’ll go over here and then it’s not enough sun and they’ll go back over there you know they’ll go over here and it’s too much sun and then they’ll go back into the shade if it’s

Not moist enough over there they won’t go over there if it’s one that needs more water they’ll figure it out somebody asked me my thoughts about SMX Vines um are there any value and it says then they said seems like an invasive SMX can be SMX is one of those plants

And we uh Steph and I worked at a garden center back in the 80s early 90s up in North Raleigh called raiken ho Garden Center and the original owner of raiken ho he had retired but he had this little little spot in the corner of the property where

He grew smac very large uh underground tubers of smacs and sold them they were very expensive because a large tuber you need a large tuber in order to get the plant to actually grow pretty quick and there was this Fad in the 80s early 90s of people wanting to put SMX Vines over

Their doors and there were lots of SMX Vines overdoors I see less and less of it it’s a beautiful Evergreen Vine if you can get them going if you bought brought a little teeny tiny smile ax it would take years and years and years for

That thing to grow up over it so people were willing to spend $150 $200 which was a lot on a plant back then a whole lot um seems like that’s kind of normal pricing now but back then you know that was uh you in order to get a big tuber

That would actually climb up the side of your door and fill in pretty quickly you had to spend some money on it because it had to be an old tuber I like it in that application the problem is we have a smilax Vine next to the fence uh in our

Garden at the house and we’ve spent three years battling that thing so if there’s one that’s not in a place that you want it uh they are truly uh they’re truly hard to get rid of uh but if it’s in an area that you’re trying to grow one and you’re trying to

Train it up over a trellis or up over a door or something like that they are absolutely beautiful Vines and foliage on them is there’s nothing more intensely green and shiny than a smile ax that’s really healthy and really you know really vigorous but you need to

Invest in a tuber that’s got some size on it otherwise it’ll be years and years before it will cover whatever you’re trying to cover okay enough on SMX uh somebody has a brown turkey fig in a 20-in pot and they’ve had it in there for six or seven years it needs

Transplanting but the the person is unable to handle a container that’s any larger than that and wanted to know if they could just simply root prune it yeah you can root prune it you can take plants out of containers root prune them a little bit um knock off some of the

Older roots on them tuck in some new potting soil around them and that will probably buy you another season or two uh and that’s done frequently and heck B Bonsai folks you know they root prune they root prune like crazy have these big giant plants up on top of root

Systems that are you know super super narrow so it can absolutely be done and that’s that’s the way I would do it I think you’re going to run out of you’re going to run out of time on a container container figs figs were one of the

Hardest things for me to grow in the nursery because we would plant them in the spring from little small containers into three gallon pots directly into three gallon pots and it would take maybe two three months for them to start growing and then by August when I had no

Business whatsoever to sell them to anyone I was trying to get them to September October so I could you know fall season when they would sell and they would be the biggest water hogs in the nursery like the only thing in the nursery that had two irrigation heads on

It were the figs they were they’re they’re pretty difficult plants to keep in containers in general uh you know and there’s some smaller growing varieties out there but a brown turkey fig and a 20-in container that’s been in there for six or seven years I imagine it’s pretty

It’s pretty dag on root Bound in that thing uh at this point and probably needs to be watered quite a bit but yeah you can take it out root prune it a bit tuck some potting soil in there you can do that with a lot of plants buy

Yourself another year or to um in that container uh so somebody asked if I had any comments on chip drop if you you those of you who been foll the channel for a long time know that we started the project in Raleigh by getting a couple

Chip drop deliveries uh chip drop is uh just a connection between uh you and tree services in your area that give them an option to come and drop the wood chips someplace where they don’t have to drive them all the way to a dump site facility somewhere or wherever they

Normally dump them they can look on chip drop see that there’s somebody requesting wood chips near where they’re working that day come drop them in your driveway and then they can go back to work uh so it saves them a little bit of time sometimes it’s good to tip the

Driver you know 20 bucks or something because if you need a second load maybe that’s a you know he’ll think about it in the future and pick you uh so that’s probably a good idea uh with chip drop but no we two times we’ve gotten chip drop now

The first time I think it said it was a 20 to 20 25 y load something like that and the first load was probably around 20 22 yards and then the second load we got was probably over 30 and for our small lot uh the driveway was kind of

Overwhelmed with with wood chips and it took a long time in fact just I mean year and a half probably to go through that entire pile of wood chips and I wish I actually had some more right now but I don’t want another 30 yard 30

Yards so uh keep that in mind make sure that when you sign up for ship drop that you’re ready for them that you have a place for them to be dropped and that you can use them in some reasonable amount of time um uh but they’re they’re

Easy to move it’s very light material and it’s very easy to move but it’s an overwhelming it could probably be an overwhelming load of material for some folks so somebody said if Conifer start balding at the base is there anything you can do to stimulate growth you

Really have to do some pruning on them at that point probably if you’re gotten I’ve talked about this you using conifers for screening plants that they’re there’s normally a point where they get tall enough that they shade their own the bottom and they start to

Thin and you can see through them or dog you know a lot of them are very sensitive to dog urine dogs can pee on them and that kind of thing so if you had a a little Arbor Vita and it was brown at the bottom you know from some

Dog pee damage or whatever you know you can just she lightly Shear it uh this time of year or you know anytime in the late winter here I don’t know how big these conifers are that you have but that’s going to be really the only way to stimulate those dormant buds that are

Down in the bottom of that plant to start putting on New Growth is going to be some sort of little bit of shearing or tip pruning of each of the branches on it uh so somebody okay on the C I put also put up a video on

Cryptomeria uh we went over to the rolon and NC State’s campus and at in the house cuz and I didn’t show how to plant them in the video and somebody just made a comment about about to be nice to see how to plant them you know the way these

Videos work you know if I did the video and I did the planting and the maintenance and everything about the crypto Maria that video probably be 45 minutes long or something like that so it’s just more about the group of Japanese Cedars as a whole but if you go back on the channel

Because there’s like, 1500 videos on the channel and if you go back and look at one of the individual videos about those crypto areia uh you’ll find how to plant them you know I’ve any of the individual plant videos usually contains any information you’d need on planting them that’s different

Than planting something else a lot of times 90% of the let’s say 80% of all the plants I’ve ever covered on the channel we dig a hole plant them the same way leave them slightly elevated and move on with life and that’s true with those crypto areia but there is the

Occasional plant that I’ll cover on the channel that I’ll say hey you might want to raise this up more than something else you might want to whatever uh there may maybe some subtle differences but for the most part that Japanese Cedar you dig a hole you put it in the ground

You make sure it’s elevated slightly above grade so if it sinks back into some loose soil it doesn’t end up too deep and uh they’re pretty easy ornamental plants really so somebody has noticed bark scale on their crpe Myles all the way up in Virginia now uh what

Is going on and is it pervasive yes bark scale showed up on the Gulf Coast years ago and it’s worked its way up through the country we have it in Raleigh even the uh the really really beautiful uh Japanese CRP Myrtle at the rolon has it

We we saw it a couple week you know few weeks back we were over there filming and it can see the bark scale even on that uh and it’s you know of all the CRP myrtles you know you know I’m not the J biggest fan of the over planting of CRP

Myrtles all over the City of Raleigh but that CRP Myrtle at the Ralston is definitely very high up on my list of all-time favorite plants and there’s another one down at Juniper level botanic garden it was planted a similar time giant giant Japanese crep Myrtle but yeah but where I’m seeing it

A lot of the crep myrtles I’m seeing the bark scale on are in some sort of stress uh so the crepe myrtles that I’ve seen the worst of the bark scale where the bark scale actually seems to be having a very negative impact on the

Tree is where the city has plant Ed them in small little container spots near downtown or along Hillsboro Street in front of NC State’s campus there’s some of them that are in pretty bad shape from it so it seems like the plant is able to to fight it off a bit you know

Live in some sort of harmony with it unless the plant is in tough shape so if the plant has been you know being underwatered doesn’t have a big root you know can’t root out into an area it’s in too much shade whatever it seems seems like seems like the when the bark scale

Runs Out of Control uh is is based is based on uh the plant being in stress of some kind too so make sure your plants make sure you’re watering them make sure you’re going to fertilize them at the end of the month make sure they’re mulched make sure they’re trying to get

The tree in as good a shape as you can uh I don’t think you know I know this is this is the route we go on every time something something new happens and then everybody breaks out some chemical and we start spray it and then people eventually give

Up on it uh and and remove some crepe myrtles and I think that’s probably the route um that we’re heading on with the bark scale the bark scale also creates some p uh some Sy mold the same as the aphids so the trees I’ve seen it on

Where it’s really out of control they’re dripping you know the dripping off the tree onto the things down below it and discoloring the plants that are around it as well okay uh so somebody unfortunately lost their family dog recently I’m really sorry about that it

Was a husky mix it kind of hit me you know with my 15-year-old husky mix that you know uh who’s en loving this trip by the way cuz she spent some time she spent some good amount of time on the beach uh she she absolutely loves that

That one kind of hit me yet it was a husky mix but uh they buried um they buried their dog and buried about 3 feet down they wanted to know if they could plant a Chamilia directly above it or they need to wait a while I don’t think

You’d have any problem that down in the ground uh go ahead and planting uh your Chamilia that they have that they’re going to plant in that space and uh good luck with your um memorial let’s see uh so somebody um they went to a garden center in zone 7B

And Tennessee I tell you what 7B in Tennessee after the last couple of winters we’ve had with the cold that’s on that side of the mountains I don’t know that I’d trust anything uh that was only 7B or 8A hard on that side of uh Appalachia right now but anyway they

Went to a garden center they bought some lemon thyme Garden Center said it’s been outside so they want to know um um if they can go ahead and plant it yeah if it’s been outside and it’s acclimated to your area and it’s survived the low temperatures that we had over the last

Month you shouldn’t have any problem putting it in the ground they want to know if they said they should if they protect it being that your lemon time is probably in a teeny teeny tiny little pot you know the only things I would say about it to discourage you may from

Planting it would be number one if you plant it right now it could be wetter than it would be other times of the year so as cold as it is still is outside the plant’s not going to be able to use water very well and so if you planted it

You’re disturbing soil right and now any rainfall you get any snow you get or whatever is going to maybe keep it a little too wet so that may be one reason not to plant it uh if you do plant it um I don’t think you probably need to cover

It but you know be prepared with anything you’re planting in the winter you know you can throw a pillow case or something over that pretty easily cuz it’s literally flat to the ground but my only thing that I would maybe say is that plants that are more water

Sensitive uh if you plant them in the winter they could succumb to being overwatered before they’re established themselves cuz they not going to do any rooting either um as cold as the soil is so somebody um they’ve got some self-grown Japanese Maple in one to two gallons

Um they want to know okay they’ so they’ve they’ve grown some Japanese maples on their own they want to pot them up uh what should they use to pot them in so most of the nursery industry most of the nursery business use some sort of aged bark product so if you pull

You know go and pull that thyme out of the container or pretty much any shrub that you’re buying when you flip it when you flip it over and look at it you’re going to see bits of bark from some sort of Tre and Southeast is mostly all going to be Pine

But so it’s an but it’s an aged pine bark I need this is the most important thing I’m saying here so this person was asking if they could use pine bark soil conditioner what you’re going to see from Pine bark soil conditioner is it’s just finely ground pine bark but it’s

Pretty fresh uh it hasn’t broken down any at all so it doesn’t have any small bits in it it’s still it’s small bits compared to like many nuggets or nuggets but it’s still kind of chunky material it’s going to be very hard to water that uh so

When I say aged pine bark it’s been piled on itself for some period of time it’s been heated up there’s a little bit of composting that’s gone on so there’s a tiny bit of smaller material that will hold some water in place in that container that’s what you’re not going

To get by buying just straight pine bark soil conditioner uh at the Garden Center so I would mix a little bit of compost into that pine bark soil conditioner and that’ll just kind of catch up with the Aged pine bark um but maybe maybe 1/3 compost and uh and two Parts Pine barks

Oil conditioner something like that should work fine for you uh so okay somebody has their paths they put wood chips and it’s 2 to three years old now uh can they use the broken down wood to fill grow bags for vegetables uh interesting uh kind of an interesting uh question yeah that broken

Down so we and we did the same thing so we’ve got wood chips from Chip drop as our paths in the back garden and that material is breaking down uh over at Juniper level botanic garden Tony’s told us that they take that material when it’s broken down and they use it as

Compost and then they put fresh uh it’s basically a spot where all the people that are coming visiting the garden are walking on what becomes their future compost uh and it’s how they use the wood chips uh at the Garden so they do reuse it uh like that anytime though

You’re taking something that’s been in contact with the soil and you’re putting it into a container um like this and this is whether it’s a grow bag or a plastic pot or whatever the heck it is anytime you’re adding something to a container like that the what tends to happen is the

Water we we get these we get a wet area down toward the bottom of the bag okay and it’s just that wet area sometimes can turn into uh Anor robic condition so right now now this material’s been breaking down on the ground you’ve got beneficial bacteria beneficial microbes

Everything’s working for you but if you take this material and you put it into that bag and you stack it up this deep the bottom toward the bottom of that bag if it’s sitting on the ground you’re probably going to develop some Anor robic conditions down in that material

Uh on those broken down wood chips so keep that in mind I’d make sure you get that bag up off the ground set four bricks down and set the bag where you make sure that that bottom is drying out some and you should be absolutely fine but keep in mind that bag could

Definitely develop anerobic um conditions from that material uh okay um is it okay so somebody said is it too late to prepare a plant to be transplanted like root pruning no not at all you can definitely if you’re going to be moving something in March or April

I would absolutely go out right now and root prune it meaning just cut the roots in a circle around the drip line and just kind of basically you’re putting that plant back in a pot right you’re just putting the roots back into a smaller area but

No you absolutely could go and prep one to move right now uh let’s see um so I I picked this question somebody just wanted plants for a wet mostly shady area they had ITA as a question mark ITA is a great plant in wet Spa wet spaces and some shade not a

Tremendous amount of shade but some shade uh and there’s other native plants that are like that like plethora and uh spilanthes buttton Bush there there’s a lot of native plants that are good for this but then they added this must be dog safe and so

Those of you who think your dogs chew on Plants I I’m very lucky I I’ve lots of poisonous plants in the back Garden but I got Holly just doesn’t eat them right Griffin seems to pretty much ignore them he wants to pee on them but he pretty

Much you know he’s not out there eating the plants and so I don’t have to worry about this but if you have a dog that constantly chews on Plants I understand where you might be worried about having plants that are dog safe use the north K

State website for this this is um they I think to a fault put the poison whether something’s poisonous up at the top of every of every page on every plant um you know I almost think it creates some paranoia that probably doesn’t need to be there because most of these dogs know

What to eat and what not to eat um it’s not like they’re you know they I think they have a more they’re more in tune with with everything than we are I think we would be more far more likely to eat something poisonous than than the dog

Would but with that said they do have a list um you know every plant every page you go to so if you search a plant and then search it NC State University with the name of the plant I’m sure that their page will pull up and then it’ll

Say up in the very top uh whether it’s poisonous or something like Oleander it’s going to say Extreme Caution it’s super poisonous uh if it says mildly tox or something like that their lowest rating I think almost every plant’s going to fit that description I mean you know

There’s if you eat enough of any it that’s one of those plants if you eat enough of it you’ll be mildly sick that kind of thing so if it’s the if it’s their most mild rating i’ probably wouldn’t think about it too much uh wouldn’t worry about it you know all

That much because I think your dog would have to eat a whole lot of it but when it gets to the more severe ratings and you have a dog that might chew on them totally understand that uh let’s see somebody went um I got a bunch of wind to cut back uh

Questions so some winter honeysuckle was one of them you know they’re blooming right now they were in a neighborhood walk around video that I did recently so You’ prune those toward the end of winter I discourage on winter honeysuckle the turning them into meatballs I think they’re best when

They’re you know allowed to Arch and come out so if it if it really needs to be cut hard you can cut those things to the ground and then they’ll come back out in that arching habit roses most people are pruning roses right now you

Know through you know the end of the end of winter time uh mully grass so any any of your grasses I’m still going to wait just a little bit longer and wait for some of the new growth to kind of start on them but not so much that I end up

Cutting off this year’s growth so as late as you can wait although I say this and I see lots of people cut it back have already cut it back and usually it comes back out from it so wellestablished grasses I think you can get away with with not necessarily pruning them at the

Perfect time less established grasses I think you’d want to go right as late winter as you possibly can that’s that’s the way I’ll leave that uh hot lip Salvia so though you know hot lip Salvia tends to bloom in the cool part of the spring and the cool part of the fall and

Throws out a few flowers during the summer but most of its flower is in the spring and in the fall wanted to know when to prune it you could prune you could you could prune it now and You’ still get some flowers this spring you could wait until after your big heavy

Spring flowering and prune it basically to the ground if you wanted to those are those are pretty pretty tough plants so that was some of the wind to cut back questions and again I got tons of pruning videos on the channel and we’ll be doing some more in the next few weeks

Uh on when to prune things um so I said I guess I created some confusion for this this this person says if you can plant in the winter why can’t you transplant in the winter I.E hydrant ranges roses they’re in zone 7A in Virginia uh you can absolutely uh

Transplant in the winter I think what you want to think about though with planting or transplanting in the winter is is the plant very Hardy in my area talked about this frequently I mean you don’t want to be putting in uh you know very marginal plants right in the peak

Of winter or plants that you’re purchased that have lots of new growth on them you know outside of when they should be growing all those kinds of things I’ve talked about about winter planting and you can absolutely transplant in the winter and but the same rules would apply you know you’re

Talking about planting hydranges and Roses well they’re going to be well dormant right now from the cold that we’ve had roses are Hardy in zone there are roses that are probably zone three Hardy to Zone 10 I mean they the widest range of plants this the reason that

Hydrangeas are the number one uh selling group of plants worldwide ornamental plants is because they literally will grow for almost everybody on the planet from where I’m at in zone 10 you know up to Canada and then and hydrangeas are the number two selling uh group and that

They also have a very wide range not all but a lot of them have a very wide range of areas that they’ll grow in uh and of course the shiness of them and all that kind of thing um but yeah very dormant hydranges you can move uh in the in the

Peak of winter as long as the ground’s workable I mean if you’re in Michigan and the ground’s frozen then no uh but if you’re in zone 7A in Virginia and the ground’s workable you can these very very hearty things if you’re up for it

In January go for it uh do keep in mind though you know the ground tends to be wetter it’s a you know talked about that already and you can sometimes create situations where something is staying really wet uh and you didn’t intend for that to happen uh you know in with

Winter planting somebody ask is it possible to harden off seedlings with a shade cloth to protect from stun instead of taking them inside so you start your seedlings inside and uh and then you because we have such low light inside even if you have them under some sort of

LED light or some sort of light system inside the Sun is definitely brighter than that so when you transition them out from the inside the house to outside the house you have to be super careful not to burn them this has cost me serious money in the past I’ve taken

Things out of boxes that got shipped to me from other places in the nursery business and we took them out of the box put them in the Sun and they got burned that same day so we had to transition things from a box to under a shade cloth

To out into the Sun so yes the answer to your question is I would bring my seedlings outside under some sort of shade cloth if you had a 50% shade cloth that’s kind of Ideal let them sit under that 50% shade cloth for a couple days and then uh start to transition

Them to more sun and you can just give them like a couple hours of Sun the first day and then a couple more the second day and so on and so forth until you’ve got them acclimated to the full sun without burning them in the process

Uh cuz it’s just like your skin if you’re sitting in inside all winter and you you know the first time you go to the beach if the first time you go to the beach is June 15th and you don’t put on sunscreen you’re just going to get

Blasted uh same thing happens with your seedlings they just not used to that direct sunlight uh let’s see um so somebody want to know about summer bulbs planting time specifically leat so as soon as you’re right around your frost free date but you can buy them now and you can

Definitely start them early and I have videos over the last few years on start jump starting summer bulbs and so that’s you know leatrice and elephan ears and cailes caladiums canas all kinds of things these summer bulbs but you don’t want to put them out and then

Get you don’t want to start them and then get frost on them so what we’ll do is we’ll plant them in containers get a jump start on them the containers are in they’re one gallon container so we can bring them inside if we need to on

Nights to get Frosty uh and then by by the time we put them in the ground they’re already plants uh rather than just bulbs or corns or tubers or whatever they are um let’s see somebody has a massive Foria uh that doesn’t Bloom it’s in a

Giant colony to make it even worse it’s got some wisteria uh growing in it um you know how should they tackle this once you get to this Foria into some kind of colony like that it’s very very diff ult if you go and cut it to the

Ground cuz I think the the one thought would be cut it to the ground you’re just going to get more suckering from it at this point for me um and I don’t know what kind of physical you know condition you are you’re in or whatever but for me

I’m probably going to go take about three chunks of that uh for cyia dig them up and then I’m going to Nuke the rest of that plant the Wisteria the the Foria everything and uh and then replant those three pieces back into that space and I think you’d be back to in business

On your um on your Foria but that does happen over time that a lot of these plants will colonize and then they have less flowering um you know over over the years and of course the Wisteria definitely is not helping uh any of that somebody asked if I’d be doing

Consultation Services in 2024 yes you can sign up for consultations over on my website same as the Lear garden video series and I do 50-minute consult I get a lot of emails and a lot of contact about doing in-person consultations and I just don’t have time

Uh for it at this point have so many other things going on and I appreciate it uh everybody reaching out and asking that question but again uh I can do a 50-minute consultation generally and you send the photos of your you know in advance to me and so I have some idea of

What we’re talking about and usually if we use the time wisely you know I can answer a lot of questions a lot of times it’s as basic as is how to maintain the things that you inherited in buying a house or you know planning for something

New whatever it’s all you know all kinds of different consultations I’ve done I’ve done consultations for people who’s starting nurseries and all kinds of things you know I have a lot of different types of experience in this business so generally speaking I can help out uh hopefully help out let’s see

Somebody said they can’t find triple shredded hardwood they can only find hardwood mulch uh and um and it’s double ground it used to be called uh double shredded hardwood Mulch and somehow it just one day became triple shredded hardwood Mulch and went up in price I don’t know

If the I don’t know if the shredders got worse but it used to be double shredded hardwood mulch that’s what I bought for all my landscape jobs and then one day i’ you know all of a sudden I have to ask for triple shredded hardwood MCH for

The same thing uh so yes I’m I’m guessing your double shredded hardwood is triple shredded hardwood and you can absolutely use that and I do think it is over are all the best mulch uh to use on established Landscapes and I have another question about that in just a

Second uh three more here somebody needs to uh to prune an August Beauty gardinia uh 50% uh will it lose most of its blooms this year uh yeah if you prun you can prune it in the next few weeks um gardinia is Bloom on New Growth and so

It’s going to put some growth back out and Bloom some but obviously a 50% PR is going to have a negative impact on the number of flowers you’re going to have so you could do this in March cut it in half it will flush out you will get some

Blooms they’ll probably be more like in June than May where they normally would be um despite the fact things called August Beauty gardinia rarely had blooms on it in August uh then uh uh you so you’ll get a few less you could also have it bloom in May or June and then um

Uh have it bloom in May or June and then prune it let’s see somebody has some fat hedra damage when to prune it off I imagine that our fat hedra probably got a little damage on it as well since we’ve been gone because there’ve been several nights in the teens and so I

Expect to see a little bit of damage on it and it was also trying to grow you know in December and early January so almost certainly it’s got some damage I’ll wait to prune it off until sometime in March I always think that some of that material that damaged material

That’s on the top of the plant is probably offering some tiny amount of protection to the rest of the plant uh okay last question for this week um why do I not use pine straw anymore I used the only time I’ve ever really mulched with pine

Straw so if if it was a if I was doing a landscape job and the person had lots of pine trees just kind of made sense to use use pine straw if you have that’s the thing you have obviously you know put it to good use I also use pine straw

In a rotation at the old house where I would hardwood mulch maybe three times and then I would pine straw and let that hardwood mulch just break down almost completely in between each time that was very beneficial uh and then at the new house I’ve used pine straw in the path

And I may actually do that in the next few weeks because I don’t have I just said I don’t have any wood chips right now so what I may do is go back to the house hardwood mulch the beds and then pine straw the p uh that may be the plan

But I have nothing against pine straw I just I don’t think it’s as good as the wood or bark-based products at improving your soil so I think that was actually 25 questions again thank you guys so much for participating in these videos and you can ask gardening questions down

In the comment section below the video uh and make sure you include your Zone if it seems relevant your hardiness Zone if it seems relevant in any way and I’ll pick from those and again next week we’ll be back at the house uh those of you who are members of the learn to

Garden video series we’ll get an email when that tour video goes up on that in the next few days and um the learn to garden video series is over on my website if you’re interested in signing up for it there’s a discount code down below this video thanks for watching