Hello, thanks for tuning in to PBS North.

I'm Natalie Hest, director of development, here with Tara Bilman, our annual giving manager.

And we have a quick update.

With the winter storm moving in, we made the call to keep our crew and volunteers home safe and swap our live show for something we hope you'll enjoy just as much.

We are bringing you the best of season 23 of Great Gardening, some of our favorite moments from last year.

Perfect timing, honestly, to dream about the warmer days ahead.

Spring is coming.

whether this storm likes it or not.

So, we'll be back live on April 2nd and we're looking forward to seeing you then.

Until that day, stay warm, stay safe, and enjoy the show.

Great gardening starts right now.

This be bomb is literally crawling with bees.

Wow.

I just thought a pink onion, why not try it?

Our hostas do well in Minnesota.

They like our temperatures.

We have things blooming from early spring to late fall.

It's fun to imagine what this place will be like in a few years.

We've just gotten started.

I've got about 70 trees.

What they've got in common is they're called bonesai.

Bonesai means tree in a pot, tree in a tray.

That's part of what is my backyard that's come about over the last 25 plus years of collecting wild or going to auctions or just having friends that also do this passion.

I was at the Minnesota State Fair.

A bonesai master comes into Minnesota and they come and they look at all the trees that anybody who wants to exhibit a bonesai tree for the public as well as to be judged by this master.

I happened on that weekend having had a bit of an interest in in uh shaping trees but had never encountered a display.

I was literally overwhelmed with their uniqueness and I took a course, took that home.

I was living in an apartment at the time and that uh that tree did not survive.

And that's one of the things I learned about bonesai.

And that's why with my 70 trees, it's helpful to have so many trees because they don't all make it.

As you see, their their setting right now is out where they belong all summer long.

What do they need to stay alive?

They need sunshine.

They need the constant watering.

If you, as we look around together today, you'll see a lot of wetness.

And what's surprising to many people is that, well, what do you do with them in the winter?

Well, some of them that are quote zone hardy, they'll stay outside under a blanket of snow hopefully, which we didn't get this last winter, but that was tough on them.

They've got to go into that sleep cycle, but they don't get to that 20 below kind of stuff.

So, I've got this variety of some being tougher, more resilient, and some needing some special protection.

Trees that are the most compelling to people are the ones that have a story that elicits a level of what happened?

Why does it look that way?

This particular tree is what's called a phoenix graft.

It is where I have married a living juniper onto a very very old piece of deadwood.

And and I counted the rings on this and this is over 500 years old, this piece of deadwood.

And so this is probably 8 n years later that all these pads, these clouds of growth have now grown out and the configuration of this juniper to this piece of deadwood is now beginning to look realistic.

This is a cyprress.

Um, and I would suspect I've had this tree for somewhere between 15 and 20 years.

As you can see, stones are a really a significant important part of display of trees.

This particular tree is sitting on top of a rock and one of its roots actually penetrates right through the rock.

There's a crack in the rock that I threaded that root through.

It kept growing to the point that now it just looks like it's just sitting on sitting high on this rock.

Bonesai is part horiculture and part art.

This tree has been with me I would say 23 24 years.

It's a boxwood.

Boxwoods are eminently suited to bonesai because they've got small leaves because the their bark texture is is very rough almost like an oak or certainly an old tree.

They've got wonderful root systems that spray out.

I mentioned earlier that sometimes I collect up near floodwoods in ditches.

This is an example and it's over it's been with me over 20 years.

One of and it would naturally grow to 30 feet or so.

So my opportunity or task as a bonesai practitioner is that I want to keep it small.

This is a juniper.

The the cultivar is actually from Japan.

Again, one of the things I'm always trying to replicate is what happens with age.

Things sag, things begin to fall down.

Um, and so I'm pulling branches down, creating these clouds.

What I want to do is create the air in between so that you'd have this this ability to see all of the the the the pads intact and have a depth.

A bone sight tree always has a front.

This is the front.

So on this tree, what's important is that your eye would naturally follow the line of the trunk uh creating stability from a wide trunk base and then moving up.

But that's an example about just being with these trees that things are just so often just discovered.

What how did that come about?

This one has got a lot of story.

It's got deadwood in it.

It's got branches that have died off.

That's called a gin.

You'll see parts here that are are crevices where a branch is literally broken free.

I stabilized it and now have a wire back here holding bringing its top towards us.

Let's get back to some more viewer questions.

I know um a few folks have been wondering um how soon can we like start growing things like you want to talk a little bit about that?

Well, you know, right now if I was to start something I would start celery and peppers.

Peppers are they take a really long time, but it's a good time to start them because of day length.

It it makes a big difference for them on day length, but um I would be starting those um now or at least quickly.

Right.

For me, it's onions because you Right.

You mentioned day length.

Can never get enough onions.

Yes.

I love it.

Actually, they're becoming a health food right now.

The allisonin that's in onions, the same thing that's in garlic.

And uh we like to start them early.

They grow very slowly as you mentioned with peppers.

And we want those really out uh early May so they can take advantage of the lengthening days because with a long day onion that's what's forms the bulbs.

So we really got to get those started and they're fun to grow.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Sure.

But you still would have a chance with bulbs if you you know didn't quite get them.

Oh yeah.

You have lots of options.

You can put transplants in.

You can put the small bulbs the sets in.

So you have lots of options with onions.

Yeah.

It's great.

Well, thank you.

Keep sending in those questions.

And right now we're going to talk a little bit about winter hardiness zones.

What are they?

What do they mean for us?

Let's talk about that.

Yeah.

Getting through the winter, of course, is critical.

And anytime you're selecting any kind of a tree, shrub, perennial material, number one, will it grow and will it survive our winter.

So that's why we've got this marvelous uh zone maps that have been developed by the US Department of Agriculture.

They revise these every 10 years.

These are average temperatures.

And for us in Minnesota and Wisconsin, we're really looking at these five zones, 3A, 3B, and they're the temperatures.

-35 to -40 is going to be the coldest in the most northerly part of our viewing region.

All the way down to zone five, which as you can see there, that's -15 to minus 20.

We are not really zone five in Duth.

We're zone five in the Bayfield area because that wonderful peninsula that extends out into Lake Superior and then down in the Twin Cities.

So, we've got maps and zones.

Uh, the US Department of Agriculture does a real nice job on their website.

You can put in your zip code and it will flash back your winter hardiness zone.

So, both Minnesota, Wisconsin in this case, and then Minnesota, which we have a very similar map.

We used to have a lot of zone 2.

Now, the zones are just about absolute temperature.

They go from the Arctic zone one all the way down to 14, which is in the Caribbean, and all of the temperatures in between.

But that's all they refer to.

It's an average, a 10-year average of the minimum temperatures over that period of time.

They were just revised uh two years ago.

So the it's relatively current.

We lost all zone two in northern Minnesota.

So we're now just zone zone three and four basically in this area.

And you said they update those every 10 years.

Uh they will update them in a 10-year average.

That's correct.

So we've got another eight years to go and see what the next 10 years bring.

But there are other several other factors in addition to just absolute temperature.

So you want to think about these things.

First and foremost, you got to have something that survives.

If in fact you're not sure about the hardiness of your material, it's not just temperature, but temperature fluctuations.

We can have warm periods, cold periods.

The old January thaw seems to be occurring in December, January, and February.

uh where we get the fluctuating prevailing prevailing winds are really critical for winter hardiness and the relative humidity of those winter winds.

So if we have a lot of dry winds, they tend to dry out material.

The sun exposure on your plants, you want to minimize that in the south.

Uh something that people should really think about is soil moisture.

Particularly, we've had warm falls.

You want that soil to be moist.

If you need to water in the fall, even if you think the tree is dropping its leaves, let's get good moisture down in the soil.

That's going to help it get through the winter.

And then another thing you want to think about, if in fact you're questioning whether or not your plant material is really hardy, make sure that you encourage quality growth through the entire previous year's season.

You want to minimize insects, disease.

You want to make sure it isn't drought stress.

You want a good, healthy tree coming into the fall.

So, there's a lot of those things to consider for winter hardiness in addition to, uh, the absolute cold temperatures, which you can't do too much about it anyway.

So, uh, with plant selection, here's some thoughts.

Again, uh, you want to make sure that you select plant varieties that are appropriate for your zone.

So, if you're buying something that's labeled zone 4, don't really try to plant it in zone three unless you're going to protect it.

And you can do all these things.

Protect from the wind with windscreens, uh, wraps, shelter belts of other trees, be very conscious of the quality growth, or perhaps plant it someplace where you're protected by a structure, a garage, a house, or something like that, protecting again from the north and west winds.

So, if you're going to cheat a little bit on the zones, you're not sure if it's really going to be dependably hardy, then you have to look at all these other other issues.

And then people don't quite understand this, but if you're going to plant an apple tree, we're concerned about this time of year we get sun scald.

So we want it on a north facing slope.

That slope uh runs from the south at the high end down to the north so it gets protected from that winter sun.

It's in the south.

So those are just a couple considerations for people in addition to the uh the zone maps we talked about.

That's important, Bob.

I mean, and and really it's it's hard to want a plant that is not for your zone, but you know, realistic expectations.

It's important we pick things that are appropriate for us.

Yeah.

This is the Elely Giving Garden.

And what we do is we raise produce and we um oftentimes give it to the patients at the VA outpatient clinic and we welcome community members to come and um harvest herbs, harvest veggies or just sit and relax and enjoy the surroundings.

Um, we originally conceived this idea in 2022 and worked with the city to find a garden location that was on city-owned property and arrived at the VA outpatient clinic.

Our first year of planting was in 2023.

This year in 2024, we've been a little more purposeful and thoughtful about what we planted based on what's been used in the past.

We added our canoe garden and are looking forward to the Rotary Club donating a picnic table and the local high school shop class building us a pergola in the fall.

So, is there anything like this in Ele or nearby?

Not that we know of, which is one of the other reasons we decided to focus on a giving garden.

We're hoping that if we have extra produce, we can connect with the food shelf.

We do some educational things and have donated some food packets or some seed packets to the food shelf.

So working with them and other local organizations is kind of a mission as well.

We are basically the ele giving garden group, the ele area master gardener volunteers.

So master gardener volunteers go through uh an educational program, an online educational program through the University of Minnesota.

It generally runs from January until end of April, beginning of May.

Your first year as a master gardener volunteer, you are expected to put in 50 hours of volunteer work on some sort of project, which is how um a number of us connected.

And then after that initial intern year, you put in 20 to 25 hours of volunteer time a year.

So this is our collaborative volunteer project.

One of the aims of the master gardener program is that you also do community education.

So you'll see um as you look at the garden, we have tags that identify all of the produce and all of the plants as well as QR codes that you can scan with your cell phone that will take you to a U of M extension site that tells you about the vegetable that you've chosen to look at.

We haven't opened it up for people to grow things yet, but it certainly is a space where people can come and grab things.

Last year at the end of the season when it was pickling and canning season, we had a run on dill.

Um people were running out of dill in their gardens, so they came and harvested dill from us.

This year we've doubled our dill production just to address that.

But we try to do regular social media posts on the what's up elely on the ele area garden sites to say, you know, this is what's growing in the garden this week.

This is what's ready to be harvested.

Uh please bring your own containers.

Try not to take it all.

Save some for your neighbor.

So, it started in 2022, the spring of 2022, when Amanda Nelson, one of our members, um, had done some work with her neighbor who was a veteran and he was also an artist.

So, she traded her garden expertise and taught him how to garden.

He gave her a piece of art.

So, she was hoping to expand that program and to actually work with individual veterans.

um she was having difficulty connecting and finding individual veterans.

So we had heard about it through a social media post.

Um the Eleers volunteered to meet with her.

We started to do some brainstorming and decided maybe we needed to do a garden for veterans so that they didn't have to grow their own produce.

So, we brainstormed a number of sites, talked with Harold Langowski, who's the city planner administrator for the city of Elely.

Um, we suggested this site.

He thought it was a great idea.

Visited with the VA outpatient clinic staff who also thought it was a great idea.

And um the city was really instrumental in leveling the site, helping us get mulch, helping us relocate the stone planters from where they were in storage.

Um just basically anything that we needed to get going, they were willing to help with.

We have a pollinator garden in the front.

Um and Joyce, one of our volunteers, is usually the person who plants the pollinator garden in the front.

She does the annuals.

We have some native plants that are perennials that we um take care of as well.

So, we have the sign pollinated garden and then we have more of the giving produce herb section back here.

We have kind of a deer problem in the city of Elely.

Um and so the fences are handmade by one of our volunteers.

Um she puts interesting handles on top.

We can hang the QR codes and the identifiers on the fences, but what they do is they protect from deer and rabbits and other little creatures.

So, they're easy to lift off to water, to weed, to harvest, and then we just slip them back on when we're not here so that the deer aren't having a feast.

The canoe is new this year.

So, Joyce, uh, we're blessed to have Joyce with us.

Uh Joyce is connected to one of our volunteers, Stan, who does some landscaping and has heavy equipment.

So Stan came and built not only our herb garden, but this year did a base for our canoe planter.

And we decided since we're Eleer, Boundary Waters, that a canoe would be a good thing to use for a planter.

We're a volunteer organization and we don't have a lot of financial support.

Uh, so financial contributions are always accepted.

We'll be looking for more canoes in the future.

Please don't donate until we ask.

We really don't want to show up and have 50 canoes sitting here.

Um, and just come and enjoy and pick the produce.

It's just a really good way to connect with the community.

It's really rewarding when you're doing your weeding and doing your watering and somebody comes out of the VA clinic and thanks you and talks about how wonderful it is.

Thanks for joining us for our great gardening best of season 23.

I'm Natalie Hest, director of development, and I'm joined in the studio with Tara Bilman, our annual giving manager.

Believe it or not, winter's almost behind us, and that means one thing.

Gardeners all across the Northland are gearing up for the new growing season.

Those seed cataloges have been arriving, and I know I'm already dreaming of what's to come.

I know the feeling, Tara, and we know you've been waiting for great gardening to return.

And I am so glad you're with us today because we have something important to share with you.

You know, every great garden starts with a goal.

What you want to grow, what you want to build, and our goal during this March fundraiser is to raise $65,000.

When we hit that goal, we'll unlock a matching challenge grant, which means every dollar you give will be doubled for PBS North.

The match is waiting, but we don't receive it unless we raise $65,000 first.

Uh, and we have through this weekend to do it.

So, call 218-788-2844 or go online to pbsnorth.org.

And there are some wonderful thank you gifts waiting for you, including soil test kits, a Northern Gardener magazine subscription, and the book 100 Plants to Feed the Birds from Laura Ericson.

Let's take a look.

When you invest in PBS North, you help keep great gardening growing strong, bringing expert advice and inspiration to your community.

When you make a sustaining gift of just $7 a month or an annual gift of $84, we'll thank you with the book 100 Plants to Feed the Birds by Laura Ericson.

This beautiful, easy to use guide shows you how to create a garden that welcomes birds, adds color and life to your yard, and supports local wildlife all year long.

With a sustaining gift of $10 a month or a onetime gift of $120, you can choose between a paper pot maker, perfect for starting seeds and transplanting with ease, or a soil test kit that helps you understand your soil and give your plants exactly what they need to thrive.

And when you contribute $15 a month or a contribution of $180, we'll thank you with a one-year subscription to Northern Gardener Magazine, an award-winning publication filled with expert tips, stunning photography, and regionally tailored advice to help you grow with confidence in every season.

Your generosity keeps PBS North blooming, ensuring we can continue to deliver local stories, expert gardening guidance, and inspiration all year long.

Make your gift today by calling 218788-2844 or visiting pbsnorth.org.

Thank you.

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They know what it means to garden in the Northland.

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They answer your specific garden challenges with advice tailored to right where we live.

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We are so grateful for the support of viewers like you.

Great gardening exists because you choose year after year to keep it growing.

And there is no better time to make your contribution than right now with the $65,000 match waiting to be unlocked.

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Go online to pbsnorth.org or call 218788-2844 to help us reach our goal to unlock the matching challenge.

We are getting so close, so thank you for your support.

Now, let's get back to great gardening.

We're in this together.

We're in this together.

We're in this together.

in this together.

So, now we're going to take you to Hibbing to check out former master gardener Judith Johnson's beautiful garden with a focus on native plants.

Let's take a look.

I live over on the west side of Hibbing and I found my inspiration probably from my mother liked to garden.

This is actually the property I grew up on.

So, I've always been interested in in plants and flowers.

And truthfully and honestly, I love bugs.

I love snakes.

I grew up keeping garter snakes in my dresser drawers.

I used to collect a lot of bugs until my mother told me how important they were to pollinating and I should let them go.

So I I never kept them again.

She was a science major.

So she knew a lot about bugs.

So I like bugs and bugs and flowers kind of go together.

You know, I just love everything about it.

I love spending time outside.

I love weeding.

You know, you can just go someplace in your mind when you're weeding.

I love watching my plants grow.

They become your babies.

So I get so excited when I see one come back and then I get sad.

I lost last winter for some reason lost all my culver's root.

So and I really love that plant.

It did not come up this year and who knows why.

That's the other part about it.

It's like and then I've I've done this letting things go to seed more which I never used to do.

So I have coline coming up everywhere and uh giant uh blue anis high sap coming up everywhere and I just enjoy that too.

So it's it's just like a thrill every time you go into the garden because I'm strange like that.

Um, I think where I planted the birch tree and the pine tree and and I've really mo I would say 90% of the plants in there are native plants and I just think it's beautiful.

I love when plants bloom, but I love the textural aspect of plants.

It doesn't always have to have flowers.

If you look out there, all the different textures, the colors of green, the uh the design is I think is just beautiful.

And throw a log in there.

I left a stump back there.

Um, so adding that little bit of nature and there again I have a little wood pile back there where I put all the sticks that fall around the yard and and I did see a wonderful big fat toad.

Scared me half to death the other day yesterday.

But you know that's why you do it because you're seeing that type of thing.

Now let's get to some more of your questions.

Um, Kevin and Kok wants really big onions.

What are the tricks to grow big onions?

Okay, I've grown a lot of onions and mine aren't that big this year.

So, depends on the location.

Uh, you really want to start with long day onions.

Number one, you have to have something that's going to bulb up when you get 12 to 14 hours of sunlight.

So, you have to be very selective about your varieties.

if he wants really large onions.

Unlike some other crops, the heavy feeders, you do not want to apply a lot of nitrogen.

You want it to have a good fertility in the soil.

They're shallow rooted.

You want plenty of moisture.

I think some of the largest bulbing onions are probably our walawala, which is in Washington.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The the name and the variety comes from Washington.

Uh it it's um a real nice sweet onion.

We've got two categories.

The hotter it is, the sweeter it is.

Right.

Right.

And the early season onions, they got lower sulfur contents.

They're great on they're very mild, but they don't keep very well.

So you you want to make your selection based on what its intended purpose is.

But I would say u getting in very early those transplants starting from transplants seed if you can locate them.

Put the transplants in uh the third week in April or the fourth week in April.

And then um water if it's real dry.

They are a green plant, but be careful.

Not too much nitrogen, not too much uh additional moisture, and they should bulb up real nicely for you.

You want that bulbing process to start right as those days are getting real long coming into June.

Sure.

So, we have a viewer that wants to know what's wrong with their aelia.

They're mature aelas that bloomed beautifully, but now the leaves had modded brown spots and they're slightly curled.

And the aelia gets full sun.

This may be the second year this has happened.

Well, I you know, my go-to always is pH on those things that are a little bit more temperamental and you have to be careful of, but it could be a it could be a hundred different things.

That's the problem.

And this one actually, if I can share this, came from one of our volunteers.

So, I went and talked with them.

You investigated, Bob.

I investigated because that isn't really quite enough information.

Um this was an aelia that u is in full sun which you know they'll do okay in full sun uh but been around for a long time so it's woody uh they're seeing a decline in it.

This is fungal disease that they've got there.

It's not insect but only when you uh search a little bit deeper and dig for that.

Also the pH has gradually risen a little bit.

So, the solution there is going to really be to try to uh drop that pH a little bit and get some fertility early because they've lost some of next year's flowering bud because the leaves are are curled up here.

So, we're going to get some ammonium sulfate is what you want to use to acidify and to supply the nitrogen just as the buds are breaking and you don't want repeated fungal disease.

That can be very damaging.

One year isn't so bad, but two, three years in a row that can be difficult.

And uh so we want to do a little bit with a a general purpose fungicide just to protect that.

And they have to be careful though not to prune it now because if there are any buds that are going to be set, they're going to be set now.

Do it right after you want to clean it up.

But you're right.

It may take a year off because the tissue has been damaged by the disease this year.

Sure.

Robin and Superior has a vine that is growing up the trees.

It's growing all over the plants.

It's quite invasive.

They keep pulling it up and it takes over the garden.

They pull it up again.

It's on the north side of the house.

Are they doing more damage by pulling it up?

I want to know if it's cucumber vine, that wild cucumber, and I hate it.

We have it.

It's all around our fencing.

And this is the time of year that it really takes off.

And so I we still pull it.

We pull it as much as we can, but pull it as soon as you see it because then it might not have the seeds.

The seeds are getting there right now.

And but you've got to try to get rid of it as quickly as you can without dropping as much seed as you can possibly prevent.

And that's you know, one thing we talk about the growing season.

And if you had moisture, the weeds took off like crazy.

And you can get a seed bankank there year after year.

So, you want to get them pulled before you before you have the pressure from the seeds.

Sure.

Thank you.

All right, let's get back to Hibbing to see more of Judith Johnson's beautiful garden.

So, it is in a runus is the name for it.

And I'm not sure what family it's in.

Some people actually call it a false stillby, I believe, too, but I don't think it's in the stillbe family.

I'm not sure.

But yeah, it always puts on a great show.

It's just about spent.

This does not move around, but it gets uh quite large.

That's a little devil nine bark, which is a miniature.

It never gets any bigger than that.

Usually puts on a nice show of flowers.

This is White David.

Tall garden flocks.

This is Rebecca.

And it will poke out of here.

And this is White David also.

So when this blooms, I've got that red and white.

Even though it's not a native, the uh clearwing, I never can say that word.

Sphinx moths or hummingbird moths.

Oh, hummingbirds.

Yeah.

Love that white David.

They And they come just that dark and they just will cover it.

There's been 15 or 20 of them on there.

And then the bright orange of the Rebecca.

You gota have a little artsy stuff once in a while.

I don't like too much, but I like a little bit.

Now, where did you find the ladder?

Oh my god, it was in my basement.

It's probably 60 years old.

And I know some of that's the paint from the kitchen.

And and the hummingbirds sometimes like the patunias.

I do have a few hummingbirds that come in.

They like to come when I'm watering.

They will actually even fly in the water.

They're so cute.

It's my pretty little oak tree that's so important to our pollinators.

I think a mature oak tree hosts like o over a hundred pollinators.

Everything from certain bugs to moths to Yeah.

Just a really important keystone plant to have in your yard.

I don't think you should ever be afraid about moving a plant that it doesn't work in a certain area.

Sometimes plants move themselves.

Oh, look.

Weeds.

You mentioned a little bit ago that you love weeding.

I do.

What do you love about weeding?

I think it's mindless.

So, you can just go someplace in your mind.

I find it really relaxing and soothing and you have no problems, no worries, no job, no nothing.

You're just down there.

And there's something about having your hands in the dirt.

Now, Deb, you've got another demonstration for us using porch pots.

Right.

So, um I just wanted to demonstrate um some refresh.

So, people might have porch pots that look very, very sad.

Uh this is a aanthramum and it looks sad.

But if we clip this w back, take off all the old seeds, old flowers, and just um clean it up, then we will get a flush of flowers.

And then it'll give you that mum look um without having to rip it apart and do another mum um in its place.

And it'll just refresh.

And it won't take long to recover.

And you can see it's already budding up um down low.

So just clean it up.

Get do the best job you can.

get all those old seed heads out of there and then it'll um start to bud.

And then if you have a spider plant like this one has a spider plant and sometimes spider plants can take over mixed containers.

All you got to do is cut that spider plant back way back and it'll slow it way down and it won't take over.

So that's an easy fix for anybody that's struggling with um a spider taking over.

And then also in this pot is a deranium that just needs a really good cleanup.

But you will be amazed at how this will flush and how much better it will be.

And then we like to use like a timereleased Osmo type um fertilizer to give it a boost.

What a fun review of last year's season 23 of Great Gardening.

I'm Natalie Hest and I'm joined by Tara Bilman.

We hope you've enjoyed it, too.

And we're also hoping you'll help us reach our goal for this March fundraiser.

We are getting so close and every contribution made now gets us even closer to unlocking that $65,000 matching challenge grant.

And maybe Great Gardening has inspired you to try something new in your garden.

Or perhaps Bob and Deb have helped solve a tricky challenge.

Maybe you just love the gorgeous photos sent in by fellow gardeners across the Northland.

And when you donate $15 a month or make a onetime gift of $180, we'll thank you with a year-long subscription to Northern Gardener, an award-winning magazine full of inspiration, practical tips, and expert advice designed for northern climates like ours.

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This beautiful, easy to use guide shows you how to create a garden that welcomes birds, adds color and life to your yard, and supports local wildlife all year long.

With a sustaining gift of $10 a month, or a onetime gift of $120, you can choose between a paper pot maker, perfect for starting seeds and transplanting with ease, or a soil test kit that helps you understand your soil and give your plants exactly what they need to thrive.

And when you contribute $15 a month or a contribution of $180, we'll thank you with a one-year subscription to Northern Gardener Magazine, an award-winning publication filled with expert tips, stunning photography, and regionally tailored advice to help you grow with confidence in every season.

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It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood.

We are the curious.

Wow.

The adventurous.

Oh girl, those venturing out for the first time and those who've never lost our sense of wonder.

Are you seeing this?

We are the hungry.

The strong.

I must be the brave, the joyful, a happy little cloud.

We believe there is always more we can uncover.

more we can explore.

We believe in the capacity for goodness and the potential for greatness.

The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.

PBS PBS PBS.

We have a viewer that wants to plant a row of white mounding patunias, but in the past have not had luck finding a hearty, sturdy mounding patunia in white.

Do you have any suggestions?

Um, my opinion on white in and white almost in any flour category is there can be some of the weaker um strains of color, but there is some nice multifllorals.

If you get like um a smaller compact multifllora with has smaller blossoms, there is the carpet line or series and then there is the picello series and they're just nice tidy and tight.

You don't have to dead head them and they will they will perform nicely instead of those sprawling grand flora um larger flowers that just have a a bigger uh space in their nodes.

You have to be on them pinching them and um taking the flowers off.

But the multifllorals um are much easier to manage.

Sounds good.

Lisa from Lakewood Township wants to know how to control horse tail in the garden and in the yard.

There's a good question.

If she can figure it out, she can let us know because ecquism is very a ancient plant.

It requires very little water, very little nutrients.

So, this might be a good year for it.

Um little different.

you can't even control it with some of our uh herbicides if you would elect to use them.

So, one thing we've observed is that if you actually enhance the growing conditions, in other words, get that organic in there, get some more fertility in there, encourage the growth of of your actual vegetables or flowers that you want to grow and focus on them.

Actually, the equacetum doesn't do as well, doesn't compete as well in a high nutrient, high moisture environment.

So, I would try that.

You can try digging and pulling.

There's an very extensive underground ryome system.

They're going to come back for you.

You're going to feel good short term, but they're very, very aggressive and as I say, very, very ancient.

But try the opposite of what you might expect.

Feed it, treat it with kindness, and often times your uh the flowers and the vegetables you're trying to grow will prosper and the aquisitum will fade away.

So we're a part of the Duth Garden Flower Society and as a member of that group, our Morgan Park Garden Club tends for gardens for flower gardens in Morgan Park.

Duth Garden Flower Society has been around since 1917.

It was started by Rebecca Boington from out in Gary New Deluth and has been um beautifying the city of Duth for all these many years, over a hundred years.

And in each community there are garden clubs, one of which there's a might have to get a picture of that sign, but of the um garden clubs and um their different um names and the communities that they beautify.

So we have four flower gardens.

One here, one at our community club, one at the south entrance, and one at our main entrance.

So we start off early in the spring because we uh in order to have plants for and uh shrubs for our gardens.

We have a we the duth garden flower society has a plant sale every memorial weekend and we start early dividing perennials and getting them ready and grow them for the plant sale.

So we have members doing that.

We have members helping at the plant sale.

And then um early in the the s spring and summer season, we clean out the gardens and prepare the gardens for planting.

And so then we'll plant the annuals and tend or uh prune back the shrubs and perennials that will need care.

And then throughout the summer, unless we have water, the plants don't grow.

So we have um several members that volunteer uh their time to water the four gardens.

And we have a 350galon water tank that they use their trucks and haul it around and then uh power it by a little uh RV pump and water the four gardens.

We have members that so we have planned work days where we weed and clear out the dead head the flowers so that they continue to bloom all summer long.

We have kind of a sign up that a couple people at a time take a week to dead head and uh weed throughout the summer just to keep things going because if you don't dead head then the flowers won't come back.

So, but anyway, we do that all summer long and then in the fall we have time that we when the um flowers are all spent and it's time to put things to bed, we have a kind of another major uh workday project.

So, and then mowing the lawn.

We have volunteers that mow the lawn because if the lawn is not kept um nice, it doesn't look very good.

So all the gardens have somebody taking care of the mowing.

So you can see it's a labor intensive activity.

So well to to please the eye so that we we actually plan so that we have color and bloom all season long from early spring to fall.

So in the beginning of the season we have tulips, daffodils and alium that are blooming and then continually throughing throughout the summer we have um flowers that are blooming like some you can see might be a little bit spent and then some are starting to bloom and so that we have hopefully have continuous bloom so that whoever is walking by or driving by or might be having a great day or might be having a bad day might get a little inspiration by looking at the the beauty of the garden.

Well, I like uh I'm a grew up on a farm in southeastern Minnesota.

I like to play in the dirt.

I get to meet um lots of nice neighbors or neighbors that are very nice.

We work together and um we all love um gardening and we do it for our neighbors and our community because we like to share that beauty with others.

Um it's fun to work together.

I'm not a good sitter so I'd rather be weeding and planting than sitting.

Um so yeah, there's a lot of u benefits.

So, a little bit last of the delphiniums here, the blue.

You can see the uh fox glove here that are blooming.

And we're over here are some fox glove that have already bloomed, but we're going to let those mature so we can save those seeds for next year.

These are a type of an aliium.

In the front, some short zenyas.

Two bunches of sedum here and here.

Several different liies blooming right here that are so colorful here.

And I guess we deadheaded those.

The pink and the red are manarda.

These are beonas in the front.

Snapdragons.

A helopsis, which is a type of a perennial sunflower.

And more um flocks here and here.

And then there's peppered hydrangeangerous shrubs that will be blooming.

And then this is a burning bush.

It's also called the winged eanomous, a burning bush.

It'll be flame red in the fall.

And then on the back side, so this is more the sunny side.

The back side we have uh shady plants, hosta, and um more shade loving plants just to uh um tolerate the shade versus tolerating the hot sun.

So uh the gardens at our community club is a more of a shady area and um we only have so many hands and so many hours to do it.

So that garden is a little bit more self-sufficient.

So, it has more shrubs and more shade loving plants.

The garden on the entrance, though larger than this one, is similar in nature.

So, we have shrubs and perennials that come back every year and annuals that we kind of pepper in to make sure there's lots of bright color.

And then the our new garden that we're it's an old garden that's on the other entrance, we're going to be doing a complete makeover into a native pollinator garden.

And hopefully that'll allow it to be a little bit more self-sufficient for time and tending it.

So, um, what else?

Um, well, if you have extra time on your hands and you want to garden, you can look up the Duth Garden Flower Society or DGFS on the, uh, worldwide web and volunteer in a a neighborhood garden.

You meet a lot of friends and um, uh, yeah, learn how to garden.