Coming to you from Iconic Studio, a at proven winners, Color Choice Shrubs. It's time for the Gardening Simplified radio podcast and YouTube show with Stacey Hervella, me, Rick Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, the trees are going to take some much deserved time off and
we will benefit fall color. My favorites have always been maples and dogwoods, it Ta and fother Gia which Hazel's a favorite of mind and of course gink O. I love Ginko trees, Viburnham, service berry, oak leaf, Hydrangea and many more as favorites for fall color. And there's many great choices. As a matter of fact, Stacey, I think I have a new fall color favorite. Kodiak Orangevella.
Oh, great choice. That's a great class.
Just beautiful and also Spice Girl Korean Spice Viburnham. That would be Viburnham CARLICII. Right, yep, nailed it. I'm hot already. It's a standout choice for adding spectacular fall color to your landscape. And we love our fall color. It's a magical time of the year. One of my favorite fall color spots is Lake of the Clouds, it's in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Michigan. Way up there in the up you can see the fall color from
dramatic cliffs. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see some of the pictures that I took, or will put them in our shown notes. But Stacy, everybody has their favorite fall color spot.
I would think, I mean, I don't, No, I don't like I wouldn't say that I have one particular spot because it's kind of just like wherever, you know, wherever I'm going. Yeah, but I do have a favorite fall color tree.
You do.
Oh yeah, sugar maple.
Yeah, it's got to be sugar got to be sugar mapole. The star of northeast US. The color is sugar maples than the backbone of New England's stunning fall foliage. And they're talking about its distribution possibly moving further north due to climate change over the next century. So that would be let's see if I get this right, Stacey, Acer sacarum. That's correct, close enough.
Yes, and not to be confused, even though this is very confusing with Acer saccharinum, which is the silver maple. I don't know why taxonomists did this to us. They must hate us. So acer saicarum, sugar maple good, acersaccharinum silver maple bad.
Got it? Got it?
Well?
I love sugar maples. I mean, think about maple syrup, and of course the fall color. But it's claim to fame actually because of its tight grain and light color. It's the kind of wood that makes up twenty nine of the thirty NBA hardwood basketball courts. That's what they make basket.
I did not know that that is interesting.
Yeah, so there you go. Now it's somewhat autumnated. Did you see what I did there?
Well, I read it first, so I had at.
I know I had it here in my notes. The timing of color production is quite consistent from year to year, although unusual weather patterns can affect it, diminish or advance timing. Of course, this past year we dealt with some drought. We want sunny days and chili nights to get the anto cyanins. That's the red color. I mean, I think it's it's pretty predictable. We're going to get great yellows and oranges, but that antho cyanin pigment creates the reds.
And if we get rainy and windy weather, it could affect the color, okay, So we're looking for sunny days and chilly nights and that will bring out that pigment. Of course, we love anthocyanins. Anto cyanins are found in lots of foods like blueberries and grapes, supposed to be really good for you. You can get your antho cyanins from a good glass of red wine. So it's a great fall color.
Thank goodness for the anthocyanins.
I love it now. Chrysanthemums are to fall what turkeys are to Thanksgiving. Fall combinations now have become very very popular, and I've been hearing more and more people, for example, using supertunias in fall combinations because petunias are somewhat light frost tolerant. So it's a great, a great thing to do. And I like fall color in my perennials too. Hu karas like the adulce toffee tart and fall in love sweetly. Japanese anemonies.
I love Japanese and eemonies are so pretty. They can be a bit rambunctious, but you know, if you put them in the right spot, and they don't really make a pest of themselves. You're so grateful for them because those flowers are so unbelievably pretty, so abundant. I mean, it's like a no rainer kind of plant. If you've got the right spot for it, you're right rambunctious.
They have a rhizotomous type of root. They look delicate, but they're very, very tough. And who needs friends when you've got anemonees.
Well, you'll need friends because you're going to want to split them up and share them inspired the wealth around, so you will need friends.
In fact, there you go, And I love autumn crocus. It's not a true crocus. It's culture cum, a group of fall flowering bulbs in the lily family. Other names for these plants include meadow, saffron, Naked Lady, and of course culture com.
Well. Culture cooms are really such an amazing plant because they're not a plant that you a color that you expect to see in fall. They have this like really crazy pastel kind of color. But the trick with culture coms, especially coming off the heels of our bulbs show, is that they are fall planted fall bloomers. Yes, so most things that are going to plant are going to bloom later in the season. You're planting in spring like Lily's and that kind of thing. Whereas culture cum, you're only
going to find it in the fall. You're going to plant it, it's going to flower, and then it puts out this really ugly foliage in the spring. They get super ratty looking, but you got to put up with it. But it's worth it because when that comes back in fall. And you know, that's why they call them naked ladies, is because there is nothing and then all of a sudden, you go out one morning and there's this purple flower and you're like, what, I totally forgot a planet this there.
They're an amazing thing, but they are a plant, I think for savier gardeners who know to look for them and to plant them in fall. So kind of a little tricky little trick there to enjoying good culture comes.
And in fall, like you said, blooming with the I'm going to call it easter colors. Yes in fall, and yes, if you can find them. Sometimes in garden centers you'll find them blooming on display right if they haven't been cared for, cooled properly. But certainly a great plant to add to your landscape.
So say something else interesting about culture. Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize this, but a chemical derived from culture culture keene is the original plant mutator chemical that they used to induce mutations in plant breeding. So there's been a lot of changes since then, but it was really the extract from colchicum that was one of the first things they could treat seed and so forthwith to try to induce the mutations that would bring about new colors, new forms, all.
That kind of stuff that's fascinating, that is really cool. Well, we get inspired by fall color, and I get inspired to write a limb of rick. So here it comes, whether you're ready or not. Colors that compel a visual ground swell. Fall color is the buzz. We love it just because falls. Well that ends well, so growing season, goodbye. The winter Season's nine, So start the coffee debate. Pumpkin flavor to celebrate. Nope, no more, mister spice guy, I'm
not into pumpkin spice. Are you do you like pumpkin spice?
You know, I like this spice. This is that accompany that kind of thing, But no, I do not wish to have pumpkin in my coffee.
Yeah, same here, same here, all right, Well, for more color in fall. Of course, we appreciate and enjoy asters. I mentioned before mums and asters are just like mums. I believe it's important to set on your schedule to pinch those guys in spring into early summer so they're shorter, squattier and full of flour. In fall, pansies and viola's of course, crab apples and their fruit. Wow, what great
fall color, and of course dogwood fruit also. Now with pansies, remember the roots cannot absorb water from frozen soil, so they will overwinter. But I have found that pansies perform really well in the north where we get snow covered.
Yeah.
When you don't get snow cover, sometimes you can lose the pansy beds because that snow is.
Yeah and dry out.
Yeah, yeah, it's insulating for the pansies. So there's many wonderful ways to add great color. And of course we have ornamental kale and cabbage, swiss charred, a variety of plants. And again, Stacy, I see more and more in garden centers, in greenhouses, combination planters. I'm seeing more of that instead of just chrysanthemal.
Yeah. And you know what else has become really popular over the last several years is the ornamental hot peppers. Yes, those are very cool to see because those bring a lot of color and people always say, can I eat them? And I mean the answer to that is, I guess if you want. They're not usually developed for flavor, so a lot of times, you know, what's the breeding goal? These were developed for color and containers. They might not be the tastiest pepper. They might be extremely hot, they
might be extremely mild. But yes, in theory, if you are sure that it is a pepper and not. You know, I don't think they even sell those Jerusalem cherries anymore. I remember those back in the day. Yeah, oh yeah, it's a long time out. Oh but that's another new cool thing that you see around.
We'll see what colorful plant Stacy has to share with us in Plants on Trial. 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 and 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 fall color. You're seeing it, We're seeing it. You can't go anywhere without
seeing it. And you know, of course you've got flowers. We haven't talked a lot about flowers that are colorful in fall. But you know, one thing when you're talking about moms and astors and all of that in the previous segment, are you familiar with the perennial Sheffield mums?
Sheffield mums, I've heard of it, not.
Yeah, so they are a fall perennial. This is not today's plant on trial. But I did want to get this out because you were talking about like how people over winter try to grow their regular decorative mums as perennials, and in many cases that is possible. I think that increasingly a lot of the varieties that they are selling at the market are just not suited to growing year round, so people try to overwinter these things grow them permanently
in their garden, and it is possible. But Sheffield mums are true perennials, and they have like a daisy kind of shape, a pale pink kind of nice, almost fern like foliage, and the most beautiful fragrance. And these are true perennials that will actually spread quite nicely in your garden. And this is another one, like when we were talking
about bulbs, when we were talking about fall berries. You know, these are plants that typically suffer from the fact that they don't look like much when the majority of people are in the garden. So it's a good idea to take note of these things. Now, in fact, you might still be able to get them in the garden center because now they're like, well, people might actually buy these
since they're covered in flowers. But I would say Sheffield moms are a perennial that you should definitely keep an eye out for and consider adding to your garden if you're looking for more flower color in fall in your garden. See they're nice.
Yeah, yeah, they're nice, And I just looked them up. They're very nice and you can buy them in a lot of places.
Yeah, they just deserved. It's just one of those things, like the culture, you just need to know that they're out there and know what you're looking for. So We've talked about flowers, we've talked about colorful fruit, and fall, we've talked about colorful foliage because of course that's what gets all the credit. Fall.
I think it was munbelievable.
Yes, but you know one thing that we don't really talk about is evergreens, broad leaf evergreens getting color because we talk about fall foliage. And what's happening, of course, is that the plant is converting taking all of that chlorophyl. It's been using the chlorophyll to make energy and sugars all season long, and you know, the shorter days are
triggering that to stop. So it translocates all of that chlorophyll, stores all that energy to help it get through winter, and that unmasks all the pigments that were there all along. So the fall color is there under the green all season long, and then the green goes away and you see these amazing colors. But that's not the only way that foliage can change color, because the cooler temperatures these shorter days also trigger color change in some broad leaf evergreens.
I'm glad you brought that up. Let me quickly ask PGM rhododendric, would you agree that's great? Fall color.
Yeah, PJM. Rhododendron is an evergreen and it turns purple, like a deep purple. That can be quite interesting. Now, I think that it tends to be best if you set it off with something brighter. A lot of those really dark colors sometimes they just become kind of a black hole in the garden. But like, imagine pairing that with something like Msnia hubric dii, which is like that yellow, and it turns yellow really fine thread like foliage in
fall just beautiful. So there are these other ways that fall color can develop, and you will certainly see that in today's plant on trial, which is trace amigos abelia.
Wow, that plant is a chameleion.
It is kind of a chamelion and not like that bed chameleon plant that we've been talking about a bunch of the summer right, totally different. You don't have to worry about this and taking over your garden. So okay, Trace Amigos, as you might be able to guess by the name three Friends, is really a bunch of different colors at once. It is a variegated abelia. So under normal circumstances throughout the summer, the foliage is just going to be a nice, tidy, kind of mint green and
white variegated. And I know variegation, of course, can be very polarizing. Some people like it, some people don't. I do think this is one of those variegations that is quite neat and tidy, so people do tend to like it. And in spring, again when the days are shorter and the temperatures are cooler, as well as in fall, this plant turns all sort of colors. You really have to see it to believe it. So most notably, what you're going to notice is that the top of the new
growth turns a bright pink, so that variegation maintains. It's just that the white turns a really pretty pink and just completely lights up the plant. And then as that starts to age, what happens is that's turning yellow and orange, and so that white margin is all lit up in all of these different colors. Now that goes away during the heat of summer when the days are the longest
and the weather is the warmest. But again in spring and fall, you get this amazing development of color like you really haven't seen, and that pink color it's very similar to what's happening with panicle hydranges later in the season too. It's just bringing about these changes in the plant cells that let these colors flourish. And I think people don't really consider that you can have an evergreen that's still actually kind of colorful and fall.
Yeah, that's very cool. Yes, I guess that's why I call it a chameleon.
Because it's yeah, right. So you'll certainly see pictures of this, of course if you're joining us on YouTube, or you can go to our show notes at Gardening Simplified on air dot com and see pictures of this, because it is something that you really are going to want to see for yourself. Now. I talked about Abelia a couple months ago when we did our dog show, our show All about Dogs, because Abelia is a very tough plant,
and I think it's an especially underappreciated plant. Now, partly it's because it most abelias and Tracey and Migos is no exception here are more warm or mild climate plants. Tracey and Migos is hardy down to usda' Zone six heat tolerant through USDA Zone nine. We have no problem growing at whatsoever here in Michigan. In the cooler end of its range is going to be semi evergreen, which means that it's going to keep pretty much just the leaves at the tips of the branches, and the inner
leaves will fall off and be replaced next year. In milder areas than that, it will be completely evergreen and you will enjoy this color change really probably all through winter clear until next spring due to those cooler, cooler temperatures and shorter days. But what I really Abelias are great foliage plants, but I think that the flowers are especially something that deserves more attention. Now I have a hearty abelia in my garden. It's a variety that we
used to offer through proven winners called Ruby Anniversary. The thing has been flowering now for a solid two and a half months. The flowers are extremely fragrant, and they attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and mumblebees like they are just flocking to this thing. Now. With a plant like Trace a Migos, because you have this variegated foliage, a lot of times those flowers just get lost. Because the flowers on Trace and Migos are white. They're really nice, pure white, and
because it's a variegated plant. You can't really, they're not popping out of the foliage.
Yeah, And let me ask you real quickly with the white flowers, to you, does it smell like jasmine?
I'm yeah, you could probably say that. I would say, strike one of the closest corollaries to it. It's definitely like a light floral scent. I would say if I had to compare it to any other flowering plant, that would probably be like the closest.
Okay, that's why pollinators love it.
Yeah, yeah, they do. And that's what's really cool about this is you don't necessarily see the flowers, but you'll smell the flowers, and you will see all of this activity being attracted to the flowers, and so it's just kind of like a fun little feature. And I like personally that Abelia is not one of those plants that just like has its moment where it's just covered in flowers and then nothing, like there's something to be said
for that. You should definitely have those plants in your garden, but you should also have plants like Abelia that just kind of like always have flowers on them from everywhere from like June until frost. Because it's really never without some flowers. It's never like that stop you in your tracks and you know, can't believe what you're seeing. But it's just consistently flower I like that, like reliability, it's something you can turn to and it's going to look really,
really great. Tracing me Abelia comes to us from mine nurseries in France, where abelia tend to be a lot more popular and even treated almost as like a gift plant. So especially like these foliage abelias, they will sell them at garden centers in colorful little pots that you know, kind of complement the foliage and just use them as a tabletop decoration. You know, here we need to, oh God, dig a big hole in the yard and plants your abelia.
We haven't quite adapted that mentality. Usually if we're like, hey, this is a shrub, I'm going to want to plant this in my garden. I want it to be with me for the rest of my life and I need to be successful with it. So it kind of has that novelty feature that had, you know, something that you just want to buy as an impulse item, as well as really fantastic presence in the landscape.
But if I'm going to plant it and have it with me the rest of my life. Are the deer going to eat it?
The deer are not going to eat it. So Abelia is very deer resistant. The deer have never touched my ruby anniversary, and I think that tends to be true of the rest of the Abelias. Their foliage is. They don't have like a bad smell or you know, hairs or thorns or any of those things that normally deter deer. But the foliage is kind of glossy and leathery, and so maybe they just don't like that it's not toxic.
I don't really know exactly what it is that they don't like it for, but I will take it because I'm not going to question. They can go eat all the toxic taxes that they want and leave the non toxic abilia alone. That's when when for us as gardeners. So, like I said, this is going to be hardy down to Usdzone six, heat tallerant through USDA Zone nine, definitely going to benefit from some mulch because it has shallow roots.
If you are in zone six, I would recommend adding this to your spring planting list rather than trying to plant it now. But other if you're in zone seven through nine, definitely plant it now. It's going to reach two to three feet tall by about three to five feet wide, so a nice front of the border, front of the landscape. Plant for just some great color that you don't really have to do anything at all to enjoy. So check out our pictures at guard Simplified, on air,
dot com or on YouTube. And if you are interested in adding Trace Amigos Abelia to your gardener landscape, make sure you let your local garden center know. We're gonna take a little break when we come back. We're opening up the garden mail bank, 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 and 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, where one of the ways we try to simplify gardening for you is by answering your gardening questions and you can send those
to us at Gardeningsimplified on air dot Com. You just go there. There's a contact us form and you can even send us pictures if you're dealing with something that we're going to need to see photos of, which is always helpful. I don't know how they used to help people go before digital cameras. I have no idea how that works.
They sketch stuff out on a nap.
They just kind of use their psychic powers or something. I don't know, but we can definitely get you better information if you can send us a photo. We're also still have time to send us a Halloween horror story if you have one. Halloween garden horror story could be anything.
So far, we've got some interesting ones, nothing involving you know, ghosts or body parts, so but you know yet, there's still a chance that you could send it to us, so you can also just do that through the contact format Gardenings Simplified on air dot Com.
You never know what you're going to dig up.
You never do, I mean, you really don't, you know. Usually for me it's just like pieces of glass and broken dishes living in an old house. But you never know.
Of course, in Europe, you hear all the time people digging.
Up bombs, Yeah, bombs and World War two, Yeah, old ruins and entire cities. And usually we don't have anything quite like that here, but hey, let us know if you did, so, do reach out to us if you have a garden horror story to share, or we just want to ask a question. So what's our first question? You know that was.
Really interesting on a bilia. I have a question for you to start, and that is why do lizards tell great jokes? Because there's stand up chameleons. Okay, here we go.
I weren't like scales tail and no iguana.
Stand up kamelia. Okay. Question from Vicky. Any ideas on why the squirrels are going crazy? This year? We've noticed frantic digging by at least one squirrel in our yard. The front yard is half torn up, the backyard one area mainly, but holes everywhere. Plus we've observed this every day all day. One morning, just before it was fully light, I saw a squirrel digging up the area in my backyard. That's the worst. And this behavior has been observed throughout
the day and into the early evening. Is this a sign of extreme weather. Is it one crazy maniacal OCD squirrel? Wow?
Yeah, so I've observed this, you know, and I have too, although I would say for myself, I don't think that the squirrel seemed to be acting any more maniacal than they do every fall. My neighborhood squirrels, you know, they're like yesterday I saw a squirrel sitting in the middle of the street eating a nut, and I'm like, dude, you're in the middle of the street, will you please move? They're crazy, like I got eat this saint right now.
But yeah, I mean, I think it all just is a matter of what you're seeing and when you're seeing them, and of course of the food supply, because the more food that they have, the more they're going to try to bury because they're trying to stockpile it all. And of course squirrels are quite territorial, so I guess it also depends on how much they're out competing their fellow squirrel.
Now in my neighborhood, I have several walnut trees, and they love burying those walnuts they do, and that tastes a pretty big hole.
Walnuts and of course oaks. Now I talked I interviewed once a science writer from USA Today, and he explained to me had written a book and he explained to me that a squirrel's mental capacity actually expands in fall. I think it was the hippocampus or whatever, you know, a fifteen or twenty percent increase because they've got to store away these nuts. And I still believe because when I watched them, they rub it on the side of their head and then they put it in the ground.
I think that they put their scent on these nuts that they put in the ground. But last year was a mass year, and I think these squirrels just innately understand that, Boy, it was feast last year. Odds are it's going to be fam in next spring. Let's do a lot of storage. And I think that's why they're digging like crazy.
Well, you know, Plus, the term mass year is most typically associated with oaks, but there are other trees that have banner years of fruits. And so certainly if you have walnuts or other things that they dig and berry that are having a banner year, then yeah, they're just going to have more to bury. And that's just preparation.
And you know, the same thing happens with chickadees. That that's part of Douglas Talumy's work, is that chickadee's their brain enlargest so that they can remember where they stored all of those little seeds and stashed them in trees and so forth. But I wonder what the squirrels think when they dig it up and they're like, oh, crud, this was you know, this was Brad's nut that he buried. Bread's a shirt. I don't want to get in his way, you know, And they're like, better not touch this one.
I'll but I'll go find one that I buried. I wonder what goes on in that big squirrel brain question.
So, I mean, think about how black walnuts staining your deck or staining their drive, you know, and what does it do to squirrel's teeth. I mean, man's that's a good I mean, there's so many things that come to mind. We better just move along.
You wish we could have this conversation all day.
We heard from two listeners that have the same symptoms on two different trees. Drew writes about his Venus dogwood in Toronto. Donna writes about her Temple of Bloom hepticodium in Oklahoma. Both plants show the same damage. Very brown, very crispy leaf edges with a touch of still healthy green in the center. What's going on?
Yeah, you know, I thought this was interesting that they both came in around the same time, two different trees with as you'll see on YouTube or in our shown it's at Gardening Simplified on air dot Com, the damage on the both plants looks see exact same. And there's
a simple answer in its droughtstress. And basically what's going to happen when a plant starts to experience severe droughtstress is of course the leaf edge has a lot of potential for water loss in it, and it's also the furthest point from the roots, so it's where the water is going to basically stop flowing, you know. First, that's
where they're going to start to dry out. They don't start to dry out from the center out, they start to dry out from the outer edge in And I think another important thing to remember about trees, especially in drought stress, is that the damage actually may have occurred months prior. Just because it's finally manifesting itself does not mean that the damage is happening. You know, recently, people ten that's often the case with plants that wilt, and
trees do wilt. I mean, if you are familiar with a tree, you can kind of tell when it's you know, stressed and wilting. But I'd say for the average person, they don't say, WHOA, that tree's you know, really really wilting. That's an immediate response. But a lot of this browning it can be cumulative. It can be due to many many weeks of you know, dry weather. And remember too, even if you're watering it, sometimes there's competition from neighboring trees.
There's a lot of reasons why this could happen. But my advice of fixing it would be to, yeah, provide supplemental water. Both of these trees are fairly young as well, so they're going to need a lot more water than an established tree because their root systems aren't fully developed yet. And mulch, mulch those babies that will help conserve so so much water.
Yeah, it's a great point that it doesn't happen overnight. And when I look at the pictures, I see other plants surrounding the trees that have different water needs, and people have to be reminded that with these trees, just a trickle watering for a few hours, a deep watering. It brings up that old argument frequent light or deep infrequent, And in the case of a tree, I say deep infrequent. The other thing, as far as mulch is concerned, there's
existing mulch there, Stir it. By the time we get into August September long season, that mulch becomes compacted, almost hydrophobic. Stir it. Make sure that the water is getting down to the roots, you know.
And another great thing you see these around us, especially like in municipal tree plantings, but the tree gators, those green bags that you see zips around new tree plantings. If you're not familiar with them, they are basically a waterproof bag with kind of a pressure sensitive tape on the bottom that when you fill it up, it just seeps out over a long period. And those are a very very effective way to get especially young trees established.
They don't look the best of course in your backyard when you have this beautiful tree, but you only need to use them for two or three years, and that can help a lot, just as long as, of course, you remember to fill the bag.
Calli writes to us. I have a piece rose. I want a plant in the ground. I was away from home this week, came home to this white stuff on one branch. Do I cut off that branch or treat it? CALLI lives in Northeast Texas, Zone eight.
Yeah, so I don't know for sure whether this is mealybug or scale. Most likely it looks like mealybug to me. Those are some big mealy bugs. Even the meali bugs are bigger down into bigger in Texas apparently. And you know, it's not uncommon for something to just proliferate like this, especially in a warm climate, you know, where things could be moving along fine and like you seem to overnight
have this suddenly appear. So Kelly, I would say, absolutely cut that thing off, throw it away, wash your hands, because they're going to have like little eggs and so forth that you could easily spread. I mean, mellibug is not the worst that an outdoor plant can have. But if you can minimize you know what you're putting out in the garden and how much it spreads, your rose will certainly thank you. And roses I don't find usually get mealibugs. So it is strange that this one seemed
to explode, so yeah, that's true. I've never seen one.
But it's just on one step, so I agree with you. Let's cut it out and move on.
Yeah, then the ros will be fine, none the worse for the wear. So yeah, get that thing off, put it in the ground, and as in many cases, once something is in the ground, can spread its roots. Is getting more regular water, doesn't have the stress of growing in the container, it will often be able to resist any of those pest infestations a lot more easily. We're going to take a little break. When we come back,
we've got branching news, so please stay tuned. The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to you by proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning flowering shrubs in evergreens have been trialed and tested for your success so you enjoy more beauty and less work. Look for proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs and the distinctive white container at your local garden center.
Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. It's time for branching news and Stacy, I thought this story is really interesting. The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development was the first to introduce C Coast Viewers now c as an se SA C Coast Viewers powered by Enchroma to enable color blind visitors to see the changing colors in fall at twelve parks and scenic overlooks.
Isn't that so interesting? Yeah? I wonder how that works.
Yeah, and it's fun to research it because they actually give you the opportunity to see fall colors the way they appear to someone who's color blind and then compare it to what you see through these viewers. So really neat Virginia State Parks are making autumn war vibrant also for everyone. By installing these special viewfinders for colorblind visitors, they allow them to see the stunning shades of scarlet
and gold that everyone else gasps at in October. These nifty viewfinders work magic for those with red green CVD, making the autumn experience magical whether you're color blind or not. That is very, very interesting. While people with normal color vision see more than one million hues and that doesn't seem right to me. That's a million hues and colors. I'm gonna have to research that. But the three hundred and fifty million people in the world with color blindness
only see an estimated ten percent of them. As a result, their worldview is less vibrant and dull, and some colors appear muddled or indistinguishable. You know, I was. We talked in segment one about fall colors, and I mentioned Porcupine Mountains here in the far north of Michigan and the up and standing on those cliffs and looking at those colors usually early October, first or second week of October. It really truly takes your breath.
Word it is. It's something you really have to see to believe. And we've got some of the best fall color in the world here in the US and Canada, of course.
Incredible, Stacy, you shared a story with me that I thought was really interesting, the invention of the modern chainsaw. Some time shortly after the end of second the Second World War, a logger named Joseph Buford Cox was out in the woods using his axe. He split open a stump and found it was full of timber worms the four inch long larva of the timber beetle. Joe took a minute to look the worms over as they continued to bore into the stump trying to get away from him.
Sawdust dropped away from their jaws and prodigious streams, and Joe watched them sink slowly into the stump. Some were going against the grain, cross cutting, some were going with it ripping. All of them were going at it at about the same speed. Joe was watching a bunch of timber grubs practically falling through a stump, grinding their way through the way we picture a chainsaw today doing it. And Joe thought, well, maybe I can learn something about
this that would lead to a better power saw. So back at his home in Portland, he set up a little experience station in the basement magnifying glass some timber worms and he inspected their teeth and noted they had a C shape, and that started the whole thing. He worked on a basic design of a timberworm's jaws and basically sketched out a cutting chain that looked similar to a motorcycle drive chain with a cutting tooth sticking out
every few links. The cutting teeth were hook shaped chisels that would bite into the wood and essentially carved the chips. And then he added a bump in the metal just in front of the chisel on each link, filing down the bump, so he could control how big a bite each chisel took and the rest is a history. This is right around the mid to late nineteen forties, launched his company, the Oregon Saw Chain Corporation, with a payroll
of four employees. But boy, it took off from there and now basic every you know, obviously the patents have expired and so all kinds of chainsaws are made, but his bug chain is basically used in every chainsaw in operation today.
It's amazing, right getting that inspiration from hr I sent you then after we were talking about the burrs and Milkrol has another thing that was inspired by by nature.
Yeah, it's fast original. A website for you to check out, because I really enjoy this website, Harvard Forest dot edu.
We're gonna put the link at the website, but it's just a great a great website for learning about research, fall colors, trees, whatever it may be, but a great website, Harvard Forest dot ed U. And I think a great time also to remind folks because I have used this often, Stacy, if you can explain again if if there's a certain thing, maybe it's chainsaws or maybe it's chameleons, that you're really really interested in using your dot edu.
Oh yeah, so this is so helpful, you know nowadays of course, if you try to search something, who knows what you're gonna get and you want it to be reliable, you know, you need to have something that you can trust and isn't just you know, some up bloggers thoughts random thoughts on a topic. So to get reliable results, you can just use this command. Type in your words that you're gonna use, and then site s I T E. Colon two dots dot edu and what that's gonna do
is limit all of your results to university websites. So I typically do this for plants, So I'm going to use a scientific name and that command, and then everything I'm getting is from a university website. But depending on what you're trying to find out, you might want to use like a dot org website. So this will work with any type of website extension if you do. If you live in a foreign country and you only want to see what results that have your country's suffix in
the URL, it works for that too. And it's just you know, the more information that comes online, the more important it is for all of us to be able to find information that is trustworthy, quickly exactly.
It's great advice for researching information. Okay. Iceland's Farmers Association told the BBC that there were shortages of cucumbers and farmers have been unable to keep up with spiraling demand for cucumbers. A Canadian TikTok creator whose viral cucumber salad recipes have received millions of views and shares, is being
blamed for a shortage of the vegetable in Iceland. According to the BBC, TikTok creator Logan Muffett, who shares videos with his six million followers, started making cucumber salid content in July. He suspects his videos are popular because they're super simple, easy to follow and fast recipes. So I think next spring in Iceland there will be a lot of residents who plant maybe a few extra cucumber plants.
Well, you know, it's very simple. They're one of the easiest vegetables to grow, so it's a good thing. But I can't believe that a Canadian blogger blogger single handedly bankrupted Iceland of cucumbers. I'm not saying something, but yeah, everyone should grow cucumbers. They're so easy and it's really nice to have cucumbers just outside your back door.
When there's a shortage, it's cucumber something, that's what it is. So plant more cucumbers. Stacy at this time of the year. Also, as I enjoy taking leaves and doing some passive composting, active composting using those leaves in my vegetable garden, I
can't help it. Okay, again, I'm I got a few years behind me, and as a kid, it takes me back and I just remember so vividly people raking the leaves to the curb, squirting some gas on them and lighting them up and having the smoke in the neighborhood in late October and November was so thick. I can't believe that we actually used to do that.
Yeah, I mean, I think for people who are a little bit older, the smell of burning leaves is the smell that you associate with fault. Yeah, that is for me.
And it's just strange and as stange as a kid, you know, and dangerous, dangerous for many people. But as a kid too, those glowing embers of leaves, the sunsets, it's just a spooky haze. And as kids we would take our bikes and we would ride our bikes through those burning piles of leaves. Yeah, I know, dumb, but we would. I've got a couple burn marks as mementos from that period.
But yeah, wait, why would you do that? Did it like spark or do something cool or you're just being Daredevil's like, what's the appeal here?
Because the leaves are there, and you've got a bike, okay, and you got a banana peel bike and you ride as fast as you can and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But just those memories are just unreal to me. I'm glad we do what we do today, and that is compost leaves in our garden.
Yeah. Well that or I guess the invention of the the law and leaf bag.
There you go.
It's completely changing. You do see people burn their leaves, especially you know, out in the country. But you know, especially if you have a very dry year like we've had in Michigan or you talked about how dry it wasn't in Ohio, you know, that can be quite dangerous because of course they're dry, and they go up very quickly and they can coast on the wind, and yeah, it can definitely cause some serious issues amazing.
Thank you, Stacy, thank you, thank you Adrianna, and most of all, thanks to you watching on YouTube, listening on the radio, or listening to our podcast. We appreciate you and thank you for your support. Have yourself a great week.