Coming to you from Iconic Studio a here at proven winters colored Choice Shrubs. It's time for the Gardening Simplified YouTube radio and podcast show with Stacy Hervella, me, Rick Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, when it comes to berry good plants, I'd have to say juneberry or service berry has to be a favorite of mine. And blueberries you just can't beat that fall color. But I love the fruit on dogwoods and viburnums in the fall.
And you've got chokeberry and winterberry that are touted as excellent native berry producers. Stacey, I think this topic today is right in your wheelhouse because I know how much you love plants and you love birds. Fall is a berry good season.
It is, and you know all of this. It's very easy for us to look at a beautiful plant laden in berries and think that's great, but really this is all about, you know, giving animals the opportunity to stock up heavily on food and spread those seeds around so the plants, you know, they know what they're doing, as it were, and it's all timed. Of course. The june berry is wonderful, but it's right there. The name that
was months ago. So you know the ones now tend to be ones that are going to be deposited around winter and hopefully a fall goes well, some of those seeds will make it to next spring, you bet you.
And stay tuned because rumor has it the birdman's going to swoop in today for segment four, and we'll talk about how birds infall and winter truly rely on these berries and this fruit. Now, Stacy, some berry producing shrubs need a pollinator in order to bear fruit. So let's do a little horticultural terminology here a minute. There's dioecious, right, and there's monoecious. Now, dioecious shrubs are they bear male
and female flowers on separate plants. So a really good example of that would be a plant that I love in fall going into winter, and that is berry poppins.
But you need a pollen, winterberry holide. So this is a winter berry holly, and it is a deciduous holly. We've talked about a plenty on the show before. It's native to Hear in Michigan and through most of the US. And yeah, it's a plant that just becomes positively laiden with berries, but like other hollies, it is in fact diecious.
So if you want fruit, and certainly in the case of winterberry holly, you want fruit, there's not much else to recommend the plant unless you're getting fruit, Whereas if you know you have your more traditional evergreen holly, the fruit might be slightly less important because you're still getting that great, beautiful, glossy evergreen foliage. Then yes, you need a The plants are separate by male and female, so only the female plants will get fruit. The male plants
only serve to pollinate it. Both will flower, but the male flowers only have pollen, whereas the female plants have an ovary that will get pollinated and develop into a berry. But you will know if a plant is male or female based on its name, and a lot of people will ask us, you know, at proven winters and say, hey, I want to plant berry poppins winter berry holly, but how do I know if I'm getting male or female. Well, the answer is, if you are buying a Berry Poppins
winterberry holly, it is female. If you are buying a Mister Poppins winter berry holly, then it is a male. And very often I would say, I can't offhand think of a case. They're always going to have these kind of gendered names. That makes it pretty clear no one's trying to trick you into, you know, buying the wrong thing. That the female varieties are named something related to female or fruit or berries, and the male varieties usually have mister or boy or prince or something like that, so
that you know that they're a male pollinator. And even though the males of course don't get the berries and aren't as showy, the good news is that you can usually use one male to pollinate up to five females, so you don't need one male for every female in order to get good berries.
Hello, mister Poppins. And yeah, he's got to be like within fifty feet proximity.
Yeah, fifty feet is sort of the standard number. It's not like a hard and fast rule, but that number is based on, you know, how far you can expect a pollinating insect to fly during foraging trips, because of course it has to go to the male get pollen, and then go to the female, and the female tricks the little pollinating insect into thinking that it has pollen with these little fake anthers. But it goes over there and it doesn't do anything but leaves some pollen for the fruit to germinate.
So umm, yeah, and then of course the monoecius. So these are shrubs that are gonna bury regardless of whether or not mister Poppins is around, so to speak. And there are some great ones, of course, proud Berry, co Gralberry, beauty berry. And I want you to help me out with this one. Stacy Pyra, Camellis, pyracommals commalies. Okay. Now, the reason that I struggle with that one is and proven Winters colored choy shrubs has a variety called berry.
Yes, what a variety? Yeah, amazing news. So you might not be familiar with it, but you see this thing, you're going to want it.
And it's interesting for me because again you've got to go back to where I came from and in the garden center industry, and I remember in the seventies and eighties and nineties we were selling pyracantha or firethorn like you just would not believe. And this particular plant, as I understand it is a hybrid between Pyracantha and Ostemeles osteomies. Okay, ostiamiles very very interesting, which is a warm climate evergreen.
So what a great plant for berries. And you know, along that line again years ago in the garden center industry, I remember when we would sell all kinds of mountain ash tree. Oh yeah, you know, and they're just so I don't know, it's it's just prone to problems like citospera canker and fire blight and leaf spot and they just fall apart. But I remember back then. To the point here is that today some of these plants that we have to produce berries in our landscape are really fantastic.
Right, and the newer varieties are going to be more adapted to the realities of what it's like to garden exactly. Now, I do want to mention so manicious plants are plants that have male and female flowers on the same plant. So it could be that there are male and female flowers separate on the plant, or it could be that every flower contains both male and female parts, which is the most common. But there is one exception here, because
there's always some exception, right, and that is viburnum. So viburnum are monecious, which is to say that they have all the male and female parts they need contained in one plant. But viburnums will only flower if they have genetic diversity introduced in pollination, so they are not what is called self compatible. You actually need two distinct varieties, so you can't just use like two blue muffin because those are clones of one another, those will not pollinate
each other. You need a totally different arrowood viburnum from blue muffin in order to get fruit on blue muffin. So all the information that you need. Again, this is not something that you need to know going into the garden center, but it is something that if you're looking for a shrup that berries up, you're just going to want to read the tag and make sure you understand what is required or not, because there are plenty of plants that are self fruitful. To make sure you get
those beautiful berries. Because yeah, it's very disappointing to people when they when they thought they were doing the right thing and they find out that they weren't.
This subject just inspires me, it really does. Let me give you a lima rick that's inspired by this berries a gift beyond measure. They give me so much pleasure, So please do not whine. They have me on cloud nine. I've found my buried treasure. I enjoy at my chateau berries I love to grow. I press them into juice, then listen as a recluse to Bury Manilol. I love Barry Manilol. I admit it again. I'm a baby boomer. I think he's the best.
My mom went to Vegas to see Berry Manilow.
Very Manilo concerts. I love Barry Manilo.
Okay, well that's a spell different. It's spell different. It's not b e r r y. And you know, I think that it's confusing for a lot of people. And they a lot of people. They hear berry, they think edible. Yes, but certainly, especially as we're talking about these ornamental shrubs, you probably should not eat them. Most of them are not poisonous, although there's plenty of poisonous berries around and fall, most notably, of course, the one that everybody asks about.
It just wouldn't be fall unless we mention it at least once. Poke weed. You know, it's just it's not fall unless.
You pressly wait, poke salad.
Because everybody's always like, what is that? You know, bright pink stems, bright, purply blackberries. Do not eat those berries. As I often say, when in doubt, don't about gardening. When in doubt, don't, also applies to eating plants.
Walk away and nobody gets hurt. Of course, there's so many other great plants. I mean, when you think about holly or the Ilex genus, lots and lots of evergreens in that genus. Of course, evergreens like juniper's jim fizz comes to mind. The ornamental value of rose hips. I
love rosatives. They're so decorative, they're so beautiful. And then of course you have bitter sweet, which is a touchy subject because you have the native bitter sweet, and then you have the non native, which is incredibly invasive and you should not plant.
And if you have it in your yard, you probably have feet and face and not the native one exactly.
But we'll talk about how the birds spread the love around coming up in segment four with the Birdman. Prior to that, Stacy's going to introduce us to a plant that I'm sure will be berryful. That's coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified Show.
Prooven Winners Colored Choice Shrubs cares about your success in the garden That's why we trial and test all of our shrubs for eight to ten years, making sure they outperform everything else on the market. Look for them in the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Greetings, gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, where the order of the day is berries, because it's the season for fruit to form on plants. Some of
it's edible, some of it is not. Again, when in doubt, do you not eat it. Do not attempt to eat it. Do not let your dogs or children eat it, no matter how interesting is looks. I mean, I was raised with, you know, the fear of God about eating eberries because they were right outside our front door. And my mom told me from a very young age to never eat those. So I kind of was like afraid to even touch
the plants. You know, it's like a little bit I still like it's a prejudice I carry to this day actually against you.
Well, And when you say you or you bear, why you right? Why e W not me?
Why e W?
TAXI taxes not Texas taxes US?
And you know the crazy thing about taxis is in taxis is not the plant on trial today. I just spoiler alert. Death is it's so wild to me that it is easily one of the most toxic plants that you can grow, and deer devour it. Like, even if I wanted to grow taxes in my garden, I could not because despite the fact that even the smallest amount ingesting even the smallest amount will kill a human, the
deer just show it down to nubs. Life is strange, but anyway, only too sure things death and tax right well, Texas fortunately is not a sure thing. Some people love it. If you go to the UK, you know you're gonna love it, But over here, I'm a little like, eh, you know. Anyway, Yeah, so there's a lot of great plants for full fruit, but a lot of them suffer from a involuntary affliction, and that is that they don't look like much in spring when everybody's in the garden center.
Yep.
And as a result, our fall landscapes suffer because people tend to focus on plants in spring that look really great at that exact moment in the garden center. And you know, even though if you think about like all of the wonderful plants that we have with beautiful berries like proudberry, coral berry, brandywine, viburnum. You know, we have nice tags with colorful pictures of what those berries are going to look like. And you know, my personal belief
is people don't believe it. Yeah, I don't think that people actually believe that what we show them is going to happen in terms of berry development, is actually going to happen for them.
Very true with coral berry, yes, and that's a plant with a great botanical name. Is it simpole A carpas.
Yes, it is a great name. And so I think a lot of people they just kind of pass them by. Oh yeah, sure, right, it's really going to look like that, you know. And I get that because today's plan on trial is a calikarpa pearl glam caliicarpa, also known as
beauty berry. And this is a plant that when I first started getting into gardening, you know, I saw pictures of it and gardening magazines and books, and I thought, yeah, right, you know, you see these berries and the berries on beauty berry, whether it's pearl glam or another of the many varieties and species that are out there, are a true orchid purple like you have to see this color to believe it is truly amazing. And so I would see these pictures you know, in books, and think, yeah,
that's not really gonna happen. Even though it's hardy, I would just say, like, no, it's probably not gonna happen. So the first time that I actually saw a calikarpa in fruit, my jaw dropped because they it was right there as promise, with just hundreds, if not thousands, of
these small orchid color berries. And it was even more beautiful than I could have imagined, you know, not least of all because here is this just marvelous purple color in fall, and there's red and yellow and orange and all these colors changing in the landscape and then just these purple berries. And so it pays to take a little leap of faith. I can tell you that as far as proven winter's color choice shrubs goes, we are not lying to you on those tags. We want you
to be happy. We're not abusing your trust. So when you're in the garden center, you know, whether it's about fall fruit or anything else, do take a chances. Know that whatever it's claiming it's going to do, it will do in time. Sometimes it needs a little bit of time to get established. But you know, when we were talking last week about bulbs, I was talking about how
bulbs are great, but they have a liability. And you know, just like people, you can have a great person, but they might have like a little bit of a liability. And in this case, the liability of keliicarpa or beauty berry is that they don't really look that interesting for the rest of the year. They're kind of just like a plane and nondescript plant and they're just kind of hanging out being green. They don't even like flower until August.
And that because especially a lot of the older varieties can be quite large, up to ten feet tall and wide. You know, that's commanding a lot of space, precious real estate in your yard for maybe just a few weeks of interest. So when it came a time for us here at Peru Wuminer's Color Choice Shrubs to find a keliicarpa that was going to you know, do more for people,
you know, our first thought of course was foliage. You know, is how do we get a calicarpa that earns its keep in your landscape, that is beautiful and interesting enough to make it worth keeping around for those couple of glorious weeks in the fall. And the answer to that again is pearl glam beautyberry. This is a variety that came to us from doctor Tom Rainey at North Carolina State University. And there's two things that are well, there's
three things really that are very special about it. Number one and most important, it's foliage. Is a beautiful, dramatic purple black. Do you grow this plant?
I do not. I do not have this in my landscape.
So it's a beautiful dark purple black. And that is going to happen is students. It starts to emerge in spring all the way through until fall. And so not only is that ornamental and beautiful on its own, but it is absolutely fabulous when the flowers, which are the second unique thing about it, and they are white instead of the more traditional pink, when it come out amazing contrast because you get that beautiful, like black and white tuxedo y kind of look. And that's the same kind
of thing we have on wine and spirits. Why Gila, So August rolls around, You've got this black foliage plant, white flowers popping out, and then the fruit develops and then that beautiful orchid, purple flower, or a fruit is contrasting with that black foliage. Now, the third great thing about pearl gram, kelicarpa, or beauty berry compared to other
varieties is that it's a space saver. So I said, some of those older varieties ten feet tall and wide take up a ton of space, whereas pearl glam is about two to three feet wide and four to five feet tall, so it has kind of a columnar habit. And I love these narrow plants because they take up less ground space, so you get all of that impact, but they're only taking up a fraction of the ground
space as something else. And of course you know, if you're taking up less ground space, that means you have more space for other plants, and who doesn't want that, especially because it's black foliage contrasts so beautifully with so many other perennials. It almost has that punctuation mark kind of look in the landscape, great a foundation planting perennial bed wherever you want to grow it. You will find this to be a very very colorful and unique plant.
And again you're going to look at the pictures that we have on YouTube or on our show notes that gardening simplified on air and think it's not really going to do that, but it will, and it actually does not require a pollinator, so it is monoecious. As we were discussing at the beginning of the show, it does not require a second Calicarpa variety in order for that fruit to form. So one thing it does need is
some maturity. And this isn't uncommon for any kind of plant that bears fruit, whether it's an actual edible fruit or just an ornamental fruit. In the case of calikarpa, they need to have a good root system before they're going to be able to put the energy into developing and maintaining that fruit. So a little bit of patients, but it will absolutely pay off. Now a lot of our warm climate listeners are probably going, yeah, beauty berry. I know that because we have a North American native
species of beautyberry Calicarpa americana. And if you have ever driven anywhere in the South in September, you can't miss it. You've seen this, right.
Oh yeah, I mean absolutely. And it brings up the point also that with the plant, this is a plant that can handle heat. In other words, lots of suns. Yeah, sunshine.
It is a full sun plant at least six hours of sun every day. And yeah, if you're driving around the South uh in September, you can't miss it because you're just driving along the highway and then all of a sudden there's just like this blamo rub blamo covered in purple berries. And I think that our native species and program is not one of our native species. It's actually a hybrid of the Asian species, which is why it's able to get that dark black purple foliage. But
the are native one. They're almost like bubbles, so big and they're so densely packed on the stem that they almost obscure the stem. I mean, they are truly truly incredible a site to see. Now, our native variety is only hardy down to USDA Zone six. Pearlglam is hardy down to USDA Zone five. But in both of these cases, the plant may whether you're growing the native variety or pearlglam, if you have a severe winter, it may die back to the ground, but that is normal. You don't have
to worry. It will sprout from the roots. And because it flowers and fruits on new wood, which is to say not until it starts to grow later in the season in the sea exactly, you don't have to worry about missing out on the fruit even if it dies back to the ground. Now, one caveat I do want to offer with pearlglam I had it in my garden. I don't have any mar because I made some changes.
But if it does die back to the ground, when it starts to finally emerge, it can be quite late to emerge, and the foliage is so dark that unless you have it against some light colored mulch, it's very easy not to see it. And then you're out there, you're gardening, You're like, yeah, it's spring, this is great. And then crunch, there goes your caliicarpa. So if your plant died back to the ground.
Story of my life. Crunch, there goes my caliicarpa.
If you do have one, make sure that you've got it cordoned off in a way until it starts to put on a little bit of height, just to make sure that disaster does not strike so hardy d usd's on five keep tolerant through USDA Zone eight, no pollinator required, and extremely deer resistant. It is actually in the Proven Winner's Color Choice deer Proof program. So this is a plant that you don't have to worry about deer eating.
It is a great and unique choice sitsld. If your landscape could use a little spicing up right now, take a look at Girding Simplified on your dot com and explore Pearl Glam Beauty Beery. We're gonna take a little break. When we come back, we're opening up the mailbag, so please stay tuned at Proven Winner's Color Choice. We've got
a shrub for every taste and every space. Whether you're looking for an easycare rose, an unforgettable hydrangea, or something new and unique, you can be confident that the shrubs and the white containers have been trialed and tested for your success. Look for them at your local garden center. Greetings gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified show.
You know we love to hear from you. Whether you have a question for our mailbag segment, or you just have something that you want to share and celebrate with us, we would love to hear from you. You can just go to Gardeningsimplified on air dot com, It's our website and use the contact form to send us a message. You can even attach some photos there. You can also leave a comment on YouTube. And I do love hearing from people when they just want to share something amazing
that they've done. And so the first thing that I want to share with everybody is we heard from a listener, Kim, who is here in the Grand Rapids area, and she sent photos of her container combinations outside her business. And I wrote her back and I said, Kim, it's not often that I opened an email like this and audibly gasp, but I did. So this combination you have to see it, so please go to YouTube or our show notes at Gardening Simplified on your dot com.
Was that castor bean? I saw?
Yes, it was oh wow. So when you see this, you won't believe it. The castor bean plants in these containers are well over ten feet tall, and she has it combined with vermillion or Kufia, one of our absolute favorites, some gorgeous sweet potato vines. I mean, this is a combination that will stop you in your tracks. And she said that they all started out as very small plants earlier this year, and she's just been fertilizing and watering
like crazy. And the results speak for themselves. So please take a moment to look at Kim's gorgeous containers.
I saw a persian shield, Yes.
Persian shield. That was the other thing. I knew there was something else else. I was forgetting that Strobilanthe's diarrhanus, a purple foliage tropical.
Plant, an incredible plant.
Yeah, this is just not something that you would expect to be growing like this in Michigan, like maybe down in Miami or something, but nope, it's right here in Michigan. So amazing, Kim. We love to see it.
Hey, Stacy, we got a lovely comment from a listener, Jennifer. Love the show. Look forward to each Saturday episode. Stacy, we wanted to extend support to you regarding your no lawn project. We are senior sisters that have done the same thing to our backyard, Texas Zone eight B. We started over a month ago, pulled up grass, laid down mulch. We're so thrilled to have your endorsement because you did it the same way. We weren't sure at first, but we loved the way the cedar mulch has played out,
kept everything so clean. While we decide on paver replacements and small garden areas. We are mindful of zone planting five to nine Zone five to nine parts sun, part shade and shade as These work best for us because we have a lot of trees. We've been getting design inspiration from pinterest Mediterranean patio designs. It'll be a good project for us. Our front yard will remain a lawn hoa, but we are now enjoying our water bill being cut in half. I can imagine in Texas we're looking forward
to seeing your design decisions. That's fantastic.
Yeah, I mean, what are the chances that we were pretty much doing this exact same project at the same time and we had the same approach, which is just that this idea can bias time to work on it in phases. So I was absolutely tickled to see this message and know that other people are joining the movement.
And if you aren't familiar, there are videos on our YouTube channel of what I've done to my yard and there will be an update out and you can see where it was at in August and maybe we'll have another one in spring.
Yeah, it's great and Jennifer, I can't wait to see updates of your landscape and what you've done, that's fantastic and it's great. Yeah. I think what you're doing, Stacy is inspirational. You know I've done the same. I'm lawnless.
Yes, you are very lawless. You have like a lawn.
Path, not lawless, lawnless.
You might be lawless to I.
Fought the lawn and the lawn one. Yeah. Where are we? Oh? Here it is?
Yeah, this long question here, Hi.
Stacy and Rick. I absolutely loved the show, been watching from the beginning. Okay, so there's a backstory here. You want to share it with us?
So this listeners said a lot of photos that will have on YouTube or on gardening Simplified on air dot com. She had a beautiful old silver maple that they had to cut down because of age. They think it was very, very old. They were very sad to have to lose it. But they left the stump and use it as like a perch for a flower pot, which is a very nice idea, give it some height and make it a little more attractive. But now the stump has, of course continued to rot. This was four years ago, so now
they need it ground down. And what she wants to do instead is to plant a temple of bloom hepticodium where the silver maple used to be. But she said that people are giving her various opinions on whether or not it will actually grow in this spot. So they're planning to have the stump ground down, pass soil level, add top soil loam, and compost back into it even
and out, even though it's sloped. They're going to regrade it and get it back to basically as if the tree had not existed near as you can tell above ground. She says, we're willing to put in the care if but will it work and will it survive? What should I do? Or grass? And so she's just wondering what you can do. And I wanted to say I had a ash tree removed from my property shortly after we
moved in. Of course, here in Michigan, we were the epicenter for the emerald ash bor invasion, which is killed, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ashes nationwide, and I unfortunately had the bad luck of having a very beautiful mature ash in my yard succumbing to it eventually because it took a little while to get out here in the West. So when we did have that taken out. We did have it professionally ground and I have to say there was not a trace of stump when this was done.
Same experience for me. You do want to talk to the people who are doing the grinding of the stump to make sure they go deep enough take that stump out. But I had the same thing. I had a very large oak tree next to my house and it was too close to the house. It needed to go. I replanted as soon as we were done grinding that stump out. Yes, I used a hatchet. I did some digging, making sure
all the roots were gone. You don't want to have the wood chips left laying around because they're going to extract or not necessarily extract, but burn up valuable nutrients for the plant that you put in. But other than that, and you will see recommendations on the internet not to plant in an area where you've ground down a tree. But I've done it successfully a few times.
Yeah, I mean I didn't replace this one with a tree. It was just with a variety of different perennials and that kind of thing. But I found no issue whatsoever planting in the area, and especially if they are going to the landscapers are going to you know, take this away and put soil. I don't think you should have
any trouble at all planting a hepticodium. And one thing I would say is that if you are concerned, you you know, maybe start to dig before you head out to the garden center, and if worse comes to worse, start with a one gallon plant. Any time you have an area that's difficult to dig in, if you can find a smaller one gallon plant instead of a big three gallon plant, that means less digging for you, and chances are the plant is going to be able to
sort it out itself. I mean, this year, four years after your tree removal, there's not going to be a lot of living roots in there still trying to take you know, water and really competing with your new plants. So I don't personally think it'll be a problem, especially since, as you've said, you are willing to you know, put the work in and make sure that it is well cared for. You're going to be keeping a close eye
on it. I don't personally see any reason, you know, I don't think that silver maples typically have any kind of like a lollopathic or you know the effect of curtailing growth of other plants, like you know, a black walnut.
Might I think if anything, some surface roots remaining. You're going to see evidence of that with mushrooms sometimes. But again, you know, the soil could be exhausted, so fertilizing, adding some nutrients minerals back into the soil probably would be key. But beyond that, I truly believe that you can replant in this area.
Yeah, and you know it is sad as it was to lose your silver maple. Silver maples are problem trees. I have a huge one in my front yard. Unfortunately, I often say that I have the worse luck for mature trees on my property because it was the silver maple, a Siberian elm and an ash and it's just like, couldn't anyone have picked a decent tree at some point in the history of this home. So things have improved.
But anyway, as sad as that might have been, your sewers, no doubt thank you for the loss of the silver maple. So if you have a question, no forget you can reach out to us at Gardening Simplified on air dot com and we would always love to hear from you. We're going to take a little break and when we come back, the birdman is coming in for a landing, so stay tuned. The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to
you by Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning flowering shrubs and evergreens have been trialed and tested for your success so you enjoy more beauty and less work. Look for Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs in the distinctive white container at your local garden center.
Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. Today for Branching News, a show favorite, we have an opportunity to chat with the birdman. That's right, the birdman, Bill Stovell, swooping in here on the Gardening Simplified Show. Our topic of course today has been berries and fall berries and birds love berries and treat shrubs as an all you can eat buffet. And it's not an uncommon sight, of course, to see cardinals or cedar waxwings gulping them down on a wintery day.
When you think about it, a lot of birds, well they love worms and insects, bugs, but boy, they're not going to turn down a good berry bill. Thanks for joining us. On the show, And am I correct that birds love berries, birds.
Need berries, and we need the birds to need berries because they also plant them for us.
Yes, yeah, and you.
Thought about that and put the birds to work for you.
That's right.
I listened a dozen birds just thinking off the top of my head. I just love berries, and this is the time of the year to find them, and you should have a lot of them all around your own yard.
Well, share some of those with us. Bill, What birds would you say, really go after the berries?
Well, robins are a lot of fun. They like mountain ash you know that story about too many mountain ash berries and they wobble all over the place. Oh yeah, blue jays and cedar wax twings and bluebirds and revering blackbirds, and goldfinches, purple finches, wood thrush, beery song sparrows, chickadees. Kid might now I've had a few.
I've hit cardinals on a non invasive honeysuckle shrub in my garden. They seem to really like the fruits of that, which are in summer, not fall.
Well, that's what I'm thinking about berries. They come on in all different seasons. You know, we don't pick a lot of strawberries right now, but we're sure are picking, uh you know, some of the fall berries. Yeah, and don't don't miss the crab apples and the flying crabs and all all the little understory trees that create dogwoods that create berries for our people down.
So, how is it that a bird is able to eat a berry, which of course they're eating not for the seed inside, but for the flesh around the seed, because that's, of course where all the nutrients are. How is it that the berry is able to pass through their digestive system without being digested.
Well, the flesh around the berry is what is taken off on the inside of the bird, and then the acids in the stomach of the bird often helped to break the edge of the outside of the seeds down and make them those they can sprout, so they actually go through a planting process by eating them, and.
It comes out with a little fertilizer load conveniently attached to the seeds. Gives it a perfect little start there.
Well. Of course, berries offer a lot of energy to birds. They're packed with sugars, fats, and vitamins, but they're kind of low in protein. But and that protein that of course they're going to get from insects, you know. I watch the woodpeckers in my yard. Of course they love the insects, but boy, they'll go after the berries too.
But it does bring up the point that in the dead of winter, when those insects aren't around to help supplement those berries, it's not a bad idea to have a couple bird feeders set out right.
Well, particularly if you're talking about the protein. I have a sewet feeder or two around for everybody to come and nibble on, because that's good protein. But there are a lot of berries that wind are over. As a matter of fact, the high bush cranberry is better and late in the winter and early spring because it's pretty harsh. It's the first thing in the fall.
Yeah, yeah, No, we should just clarify for anyone listening that the high bush cranberry is actually a viburnum, not a cranberry. It's just as called the cranberry bush because it has red fruit. But they're actually quite tall ra as cranberries are low growing, and there are a lot of viburnums from Asia, but there are also a number of American Native American viburnums of which the American cranberry bush is one. And yeah, beautiful jewell like fruit on there that does resemble its namesake.
I have a gratefully, gratefully been viburnums that are just growing wild all around my plate too. So they just just what makes you take its course.
If you can. Yeah, it's a great approach.
You know.
Early in fall on these plants, whether it's viburnum, whatever type of plant it is, those berries can be really fluorescent and beautiful and ornamental. As the fall progresses, we start to have some hard frosts. Some of these trees are still loaded with berries and fruits, but they start to wrinkle. And I often think Bill about the fact that some of this fruit is fermenting. Does that cause problems for birds? Maybe window collisions, that type of thing.
Do we have some Do we experience some difficulty with them?
I'm not sure that that fermentation changes their minds very much, but it may change their ability to walk or fly, yes, particularly walk around underneath some of the those But I don't think there's anything wrong that you can pass a little bit of alcohol through your system and not be any of the work.
For wear usually right, and so it does seem that there is, you know, in my experience, a wide range
of when birds prefer to eat different berries. So some you know, they'll be taking right and fall when they're fresh, and then yeah, a lot of them, like crab apples and the vibernium that you just mentioned, they kind of want to soften, you know, to have gone through several freeze thought cycles, so that those fruits start to soft to soften and get juicy, and they seem to do they seem to prefer them that way, or it's just that they have exhausted other food sources so then they go for those.
I think they prefer them that way. It may help with the digestion. I don't know, it's part of the system, but it's consistent. They some wait till later. A lot of the apples, and just as you talk about, so there's there's fruit available through most of the season you know, spring, summer, fall, and winter. But it's it's something that they really depend on in the winter to have some some berries around and some of the dogwoods have berries a good last well into the spring.
And you know, one of the great things about this sort of you know, range of preferences from a horticultural standpoint is that as gardeners, that means we get to enjoy the berries and the birds eating them. So we'll have all that color, you know, all through late fall and early winter, and then we get to enjoy the birds eating them. So it's kind of a win win situation.
Certainly is and the color and just the different I mean, the red Osier dogwood is the stems are red, but the berries are white, and it's just constant activity.
Yeah, you bet beautiful now, Bill. When we talk about this for our home landscapes, of course, the berries are beautiful, the birds like to eat the berries, but in essence we are also providing a service to the birds in that these types of shrubs you mentioned, the dog wood or viburnum, they provide some protection also, you know, we were talking about gin fizz juniper, junipers or evergreens, whatever
plants like this that we add to our landscape. Birds need some protection in winter also, whether it be hiding from predators or from maybe the nasty windy cold weather.
Correct cover is real important for birds to break the wind and hide into and underneath the underneath that cover, there's often food places to scratch around when the weather's bad, sure, so landscaping is really important. And to take a look at what you're going to be planting and how big it's going to be, and if you can use some of the shorter understory trees, the dogwoods and some of the others to plant, it really helps your helps your garden and helps the looks through everything.
How important are thorny plants in this or plants that would be you know, more of a deterrent to predators. I'm thinking specifically cats, because of course there are a lot of people who have, you know, who are facilitating feral cats and that kind of thing. I had always heard that if you do have some nice thorny shrubs around it, those are extra helpful for birds and escaping from cats.
I don't know anything about that. I do know that we have some. I mean, I've got hawthorn here and it's a beautiful and thorny thing. I've got black locusts here and it's got thorns on it. But I didn't think about dissuading cats. I'd just assume they'd be indoors.
Well, ideally they would be, but unfortunately the reality for many people does not align. And I'm sure, of course, and your wonderful guard and the birds are very safe and have no shortage of places to take refuge.
Would you plant a barberry?
Heck?
No, no, yeah, I like, I like.
It was volunteer, but I've got it's probably about eight feet long and about four feet high in about four feet wide, and it is filled with berries.
Okay, barbary, barbary, yeah, barbary stuff.
You know, I can do other things for the birds, then plant of barbary.
Just saying well, red ferries are really good for that kind of thing too. That's thorny and it creates a good jam sometimes.
You bet, you bet, Bill. In addition to the berries, I know you're a big proponent of making sure that we provide some sort of water source for the birds, especially as we head into fall and winter, particularly here in the North and in the Midwest, something that you need to think about, right.
Bird bets are critical. Birds can find food, they can fly around and find that, but one thing's freeze over. They're in trouble if they need to take a drink, and they need to be clean during the winter as well. But to have a bird bat year round is a really good idea. Providing you stump it out on a regular basis so that you don't breed mosquito.
That's true, Birdman. When we interview people on the show about plants, we usually ask them the question, do you have a favorite plant that you want to share with our listeners? I want to ask you do you have a favorite bird? If you were forced to say this is my favorite bird, what bird would it be?
Oh? Rick, I know I can't. I can't choose a grandchild or a great grand value like I think loons or affiliated woodpeckers, or I like a flash of a cardinal Baltimore ools of northern oil. I'm sorry that old school.
Yeah, and.
I got a lot of little lbj's around, little brown jobs, little black jobs that are just the activity LBJ. It's LBJ. Yeah, little little brown job used to be president. If you have difficulty and identification, just look at the color code and then just state what that's really professional it is LBJ.
Well, you know it's it's across disciplines, because I know an entomology, they have lbm's little brown moths and and yep, and and Adriana says they have little brown mushrooms. So she is very interested in mushroom foraging. So she says, they have LBMs little brown mushrooms. And of course in horticulture we have the d y c s, the darn yellow composites, which is there's so many yellow daisy like flowers. It's just kind of yeah, it's one of those, you know,
it's a it's a good catch all. Might seem unprofessional, but it is widespread use across academia and lay people alike.
Well, it's gives you a taste of professionalism to be able to use some interesting terms.
Exactly, I suppose I'm going to just start throwing acronyms at things, and yes, I'll sound professional and like I know what I'm talking about.
That thank you just say usually thank.
You before we let you go. Bird Man got to ask you real quickly. For the people who love the hummingbirds out there, I've enjoyed them all summer. Long as we get into fall they start heading out. When should you take down? I mean a question people often ask, when do you take down that hummingbird feeder?
I would say, when you stop seeing them and let us go a couple of weeks. It's not negative to leave it out. Make sure it stays fresh, don't let it get stale. But it's not going to keep them here. The light is what makes them move, not the food. So they're not going to stay because they're having bird feeders full right, Yeah, it's time to time to do that. It's time to keep watching. And then when when you don't see your humming birds around anymore than you take it down for the season.
Well, Birdman, I w f it was funs.
Knowing the letters.
Always fun to talk to you folks. That's it's the Birdman, Bill Stovell. We always love talking to you, and I know our listeners viewers love it too. Thanks so much, Birdman, Thank you.
Bill, Well, thanks for thanks for seeing you guys. Talk with you later.
Well, there is never a dull moment when the Birdman visits, so we are always grateful to hear from him, and we hope you are too. So I want to thank Birdman. I want to thank you Rick, and of course thank you Adriana, and most of all, thank you all to you for listening watching the Gardening Simplified Show. We hope you have a wonderful week ahead.