Coming to you from historic, iconic studio, a spooky studio, A here at proven winners, color choice shrubs. It's time for the Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella me, Rick weisst and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, today we talk about spooky stories.
May hello, the lights went out in the studio.
Maintain your I told you it was historic and iconic. Maintain your composture today as we share horror stories from our listeners, this is going to be fun. And of course we all have our share of well sheer madness stories in the landscape. I know I have plenty. And as a bonus today also Stacy's gonna share a spooky Halloween poem with us.
Yes, an original word I love.
It and a limb a rick that will have you shaking. It's based on my neighborhood and my experience in my neighborhood. That's that's all coming up today. It's gonna be fun.
It's gonna be a great, big scary show. I know Halloween is officially over by a few days, but you know, the spirit continues into this weekend, so it continues on the Gardening simplified show as well.
Well, let me share scary with you. Halloween maybe a couple days over, but that means it's time for daylight saving time.
Yay, sleep, sweet sweet sleep, bright mornings.
I am ready, don't forget to fall back. Well, we had petitioned folks to give us horror stories from their landscape, and why don't we Why don't we dive into something all right? Right off the back? Sure, Stacy Brook writes to us. We bought a house last fall where the previous homeowners didn't know what they had on their property, did plant management. We inherited about a two thousand square foot wall of buckthorn along two sides of the property
and a poison ivy wall covering the chimney. And she attached a photo. That's quite a special it is.
It is a admirable specimen of poison ivy. If it weren't so difficult to manage and growing up the chimney and onto the roof like that, imagine that is a nightmare. This is a legitimate nightmare.
Misery loves company, So thanks for sharing with us, Brooke. We were able to kill the poison ivy with chemicals, but still had to remove sprouts multiple times this year. We had a landscaping company remove the buckthorn, and while we have a end quote lawn there now, it's actually a thick blanket of weeds invasives that we keep mowing down. We're currently trying to figure out how to best tackle
this two thousand square foot area. Add this to thistle and tree of Heaven growing in most beds and chipmunks getting into the crevices of the house, We've got a great gardening haunted house for Halloween. Hooray for home ownership, Brook, How long has this been going on? Oh?
My word, yeah, you know, I love the chi ends. Hooray for home ownership because I think anyone who has bought a new home, and especially if it was an older new home, has had their share of horror stories to deal with, you know, things that are difficult to manage. Like I know, when I moved into my house, one of my least favorite invasive plants, Agapodium also known as Bishop's me was well established. Yes, and you know it
gives you something to do. But I think that Brook's photo of that poison ivy is definitely makes a case for this being a true horrse ory. No one wants any poison ivy that big, especially growing literally on their house.
Yeah, and Brooke mentions here, we bought the house last fall. So if you're buying a house in fall or maybe in winter, and the lance cape is sight unseen in spring, unidentified flowering objects start popping.
Up, right, You're like, what's that charming vine covering the chimney? It must be a climbing hydrangea. Unfortunately, no, And you know, poison ivy is so hard to manage. And I would just caution anybody out there who is sitting there going poison ivy. I never got poison ivy. I am not allergic to poison ivy. To always approach it with caution because I am also not super allergic to poison ivy.
But anytime I have had to handle it directly, like if I've been hiking or walking and it kind of brushes your pants or your ankle, you know, for me, that's not usually an issue. But anytime I have handled it directly, I have gotten poison ivy. And I'll tell you that is an itch that is like nothing else. Oh, it's so painful, it's so irritating.
You can engaged with poison ivy. You need divine intervention. Let me tell you now. To control poison ivy, it's gorgeous in the fall. The color is un believably beautiful. And to control poison ivy, I truly believe that fall and late fall is the time to control. Cutting the plant at the base, you don't necessarily have to handle it.
Cutting it at the base, brushing on brush killer directly to the stump to undiluted while it's still fresh, because poison ivy is translocating into the root system, just like the trees are in fall. That's the key with poison ivy in my mind.
And remember, never ever burn any poison ivy trimming.
Yes, agree, I agree in.
Case unless you want a real horse story on your ends.
So Hey, Stacy Corey from Netta's Nursery in Posin' Michigan wrote to.
Us, Oh, yeah, I love this story. And I think a lot of our listeners, if they're not familiar with this product, they may not immediately like I saw where this was going right away, and I'm sure you did as well. But this will paint a vivid picture for you. So Corey says, at my family's nursery, we noticed that some of our potted trees were shown signs of chlorosis. Since our water naturally has a high pH or an alkaline water, we were advised to add a powdered form
of iron to the soil. A product was recommended supposedly perfect for potted trees, so we decided to give it a shut. The next morning, one of our high school aged waterers burst into the office wide eyed, exclaiming, it looks like someone was murdered in the apple trees.
Oh, I love it.
The powdered iron we had applied had turned a deep blood red color, which makes sense. Iron is abundant in blood so and most iron is probably sourced from animal blood that, when mixed with water, stained the soil. In some areas, It even ran from under the pots in streaks, creating a scene that could have been mistaken for a crime scene. To top it all off, my sister sent us a video of her washing out the iron stained
buckets from the job. It looked as if she was scrubbing away evidence from a scene in Dexter, with splashes of red everywhere. She underestimated the products. She clearly didn't gear up properly. It took us a while to stop laughing and a tidy of the row before our customers arrived.
What a fantastic story. That is fantastic. We call that involuntary plant slaughter.
I guess so, and yeah, I mean it totally makes sense. Iron does have that deep kind of blood red color, not the bright blood red like the dried blood colors. So you can imagine some for high school student feeling like, yes, something very bad had happened in the apple trees. Thank you for that, Corey, Thank you so much. Is a great story.
It is great. Let me share a limb a rick with you of my neighborhood. As long as we're talking about scary stories, these are neighbors in my neighborhood. So Frank lives down the street. His yard is a trick, not a treat. The ground's really hard in his lifeless yard. Plants die when they root in concrete. Victor in his tank, a spray is brewing. He does know what he's doing. He won't read we'd killer instruction and caused widespread destruction.
Now my neighborhood is stewing. Zelda's plants are yellow and browning, watering, just leaves her frowning. Poor Zelda is in such a dither all her plants curl up and wither, either dead from drought or drowning. And Jack's backyard heap we should sabotage. Is it compost or just trash to camouflage exactly what's under that tarp? Why are is tools so sharp? What goes on behind his garage? Blair's yard ornaments are appalling. This one's for you, Stacy. Blair's yard ornaments are appalling.
Her yard is tacky and sprawling. If not convicted for crimes, I can't silence her wind chimes, security cameras they're installing. And finally, Freddie, a perfectionist next door. Every blade of grass he can account for for one weed. He's frantic, completely pedantic, garage so clean you could eat off the floor. So here's the moral of the story with my neighbors. So as you peek through the curtains, let me remind to our neighbors we should be kind. They see all
the things you are batching. When you trip on a hose, they are watching as you fall on your behind. That's my neighborhood where we'll be trick or.
Treated I love it. I love it. It sounds like a very colorful place and very relatable.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, plenty of horror stories to go around. And I have fun with my neighbors. Okay, I mean, I've got two types of neighbors. When the type of neighbor when I walk out the door, they come running with their questions and there, you know, and the other ones that don't ask questions and are struggling out there and you can watch from a distance and it's a lot of fun. But I love my neighborhood. We're going to share more horror stories with you, and
thanks for sending them to us. But we'll share more of those here in the upcoming segments, as well as Stacy's I'm not going to call it terrifying poem. What would we call it, Stacy, what's the correct adjective?
Bone chilling?
Bone chilling? A bone chilling poem coming up that's coming up next here On The Gardening Simplified.
Show, Proven 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. Greeting's Gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show.
You know, usually we would be putting a plant on trial at this time in the show and telling you about one of the three hundred and fifty plus Proven Winner's Colored Choice Shrubs, but today we're devoting it all to our listener stories. So hang in there, plans and trial.
We'll be back next week as you would expect. But as we're in the Halloween spirit, I wanted to mention that our team here Proven Winner's Colored Choice Shrubs contains many big time Halloween fans, especially our creative director Shannon. She is one of the biggest Halloween fans that I know. She makes elaborate costumes every year and she just loves it.
And between Shannon and since Adriana joined the team as our videographer, we have a little maybe tradition we don't do it every year of making Halloween videos for Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs, and very often, you know, these go on our YouTube channel and kind of get buried. So if you are a Halloween fan or would just like to prolong the Halloween spirit in this post Halloween weekend, I would encourage you to look at our very silly,
tongue in cheek, very often fun Halloween videos. We have done everything from a spoof off the show ghost Hunters. Is that what it's called Ghost Hunters?
Ghost?
No, it's a show like a reality show. Yeah, ghost Adventures, Yeah, thank you Adriana. So we did a spoof on Ghost Adventures. We have done Shopping with the Monsters, where all the classic horror movie monsters were shopping in a garden center for plants. I won't spoil them all, so please do check that out. And of course we'll put a link on the show notes at Gardening Simplified on air dot com as well as in our YouTube description, so you don't have to miss those as we're in the season.
But let's not take any more time talking about that. Let's talk about our stories. We are continuing on the theme, the not surprising theme of maintenance nightmares, because that's something that happens a lot, and we heard from Julia. She wrote a very nice note. And Julia's story is one that I can definitely relate to you, and I will tell you why after I have read it, So here's what Julia sent us. Our entire backyard was a horror story when we moved in two years ago. It had
been neglected for years. Bamboo had invaded, and the previous owner tried to combat it with a cheap tarp and huge rocks. Good luck that is no match for bamboo, considering that even asphalt and concrete are not a.
Match for lower bloom.
Okay, and for some reason, we keep finding broken glass all over the yard, broken window panes, fine china, porcelain, halloween decor, in case, baseball cards, you name it. We've easily picked up fifty pounds of broken glass from every area of the yard. Not the safest place for our dog and our two little kids. This horror story does have a happy ending, though, and landscapers ripped out the bamboo, the tarp and the rocks. They put in a bamboo barrier so it looks like a yard and not an
overgrown jungle now. But we're still finding the odd piece of broken glass. Wow, now I totally relate to. So my house was built like in the nineteen tens, and you know back then there was not municipal garbage pickup. There was not, you know, really even like trash bins in that kind of thing, and people buried their trash. They just buried their trash in the backyard. And of course, you know, when you think about it, like food was not didn't have as much packaging, so you generally would
have less trash than you would have now. But the main trash you would have is when things broke, whether that was a window pane or a drinking glass or china, et cetera. And so yeah, I find all sorts of broken glass, broken glass bottles, like old china patterns. No matter where we dig in our yard, we always find these little bits and pieces, and I do save them because I find them quite interesting. I'm hoping to do
something with them someday. And sometimes we'll find like a mother load where like a lot of stuff had been buried. Usually it's just kind of the odd piece here and there. But yeah, broken glass, it's definitely not great if you want your kids to actually play in your yard.
You know, I've heard from some folks who have this problem, and I think you're right. People were just putting the trash in the yard. But there have been circumstances people have talked about the fact that crows will carry shiny things to the yard. Sometimes someone has back filled with really bad backfill. That has happened. And here's another theory on this spooky story. Maybe someone used the yard as a shooting range.
Ah. That's yeah, the broken glass would definitely make sense in that case. But yeah, so it does take time to pick up. Some of the glass that I find is actually pretty interesting. It's blue or purple or kind of pretty, you know, not just like the regular boring glass someone you know shot just to break something.
Well, thanks for sharing with us, Julia, and you are definitely a yard core gardener. All right. My garden horror story, Karma writes to us. My garden horror story occurred at my previous home, so I cannot give you pictures. My horror includes bermuda grass bindweed. Our lush, beautiful Kentucky bluegrass that we planted by seeds started getting bermuda grass creeping in. There was no way to control it. Soon the entire
neighborhood suffered, as did our lawn. I prefer a lush green run barefoot as the grass tickles my feet kind of lawn. How many hours did I waste trying to pull that vertical growing curse that hurts your feet. Bind Weed came years later, but a horrible hard to kill weed solution. We moved to a new development.
That is one way to deal with the nightmare. For sure.
This two shell grass, yes, exactly. Wow, what a nightmare. And of course bindweed stacey you know, looks like little morning glory flowers on it, but the root system on that weed is very extensive.
The root system is very extensive. I mean you can chase it down and dig out like huge kind of tubers and that kind of thing. And you know, I will confess, when I was a younger gardener doing landscaping, I often left bind weed because I did think it was a morning glory, even though the flowers it's kind of pretty, and I assumed that it was a morning glory. So I'm very sorry to the people in those developments where I was supposed to be weeding and I left
your bind weed. But it's also called bind weed for a reason, and that is that it curves and crawls around things, and it can cause a lot of damage to plants.
It can actually choke out a shrub, yes, see where they just and that's why they call it bind weed. So yeah, it's it's kind of a scary thing. And bermuda grass when you get that into a nice Kentucky bluegrass lawn, it's not like you can use weed killer on it. You're going to have to use a total kill herbicide to get rid of it. It's very, very difficult to control.
Great bermuda grass is often used on its own as a grass, in which case it's a fact dive and find and know. As Karma points out, you won't get that, you know, lush, beautiful green lawn that you want to actually walk on. But it's effective, yes, but in competition with other grasses, it's a nightmare, absolutely hot weather grass.
And here in the North, you're definitely going to want something other than.
Yes, you should definitely make that clear. That is that is very important. So Judy writes with a horror story that I have seen this one happen before, although not to the extent that Judy shares. And we do have photos from Judy, so you can see those at Gardenings Simplified on air dot Com or on our YouTube version. So Judy says, our garden horror story happened just this season.
I have some roses and other plants that I wanted to get planted, but we knew we wouldn't get to it right away, so my husband put a couple strips of plant fabric down in our large garden. Whatever you call this plant fabric, landscape fabric, so called weed barrier, any other name, whatever name you use, it is actually a nightmare. It's horrible. It was the cheap stuff because we didn't know about the good stuff at the time.
So sometimes, yes, the thicker stuff can be a bit more effective, even though it is a lot more expensive and requires more effort to put down as well as to take up. Now the plant fabric has become incorporated into the garden, with weeds and grass growing in and through it, and there is no way to pull it up, and we're not sure how we're going to row to
tillet for next spring. I'm thinking my husband is going to have to take a chisel plow through it, and then I'm going to have to walk around and try to pick up the pieces. Fortunately it was only a small section of the garden, but lesson learned. I included three photos of our garden in the past year, so you can see the size of it, and wow, this is a definition of knitted together. See these.
It's nasty. I tell you what, I'm not a fan of landscape fabric. I'm just not into it.
Well, as Judy's story of tests, it does not actually keep down weeds, so all it does really is create a more different, you know, situation if you want to move a plant or add to your garden or anything like that, and it can in some cases actually interfere with the moisture. It can cause too much moisture or too little moisture around the plants. I mean, I have seen so so many people kill outright their plants. But with with having landscape.
You're talking about woven polyester fibers, and it's somewhat porous, not completely porous. And in my landscape too, the previous owner used it and I've been pulling it up for years, and in areas underneath that landscape fabric it is dry as dust.
Yeah, it's hard for water to penetrate, and if water does penetrate, it's very hard for it to evaporate. So I have definitely seen a lot of people kill plants that are sensitive to lots of water in the soil, namely lilacs and panicle ranges, just because yeah, they watered it, and that moisture just never really evaporates because there's no sun hitting the soil, there's wind hitting the soil. And
you know, this is one of those things. It sounds like such a good idea, it sounds like such a fool proof idea, but the reality is far from that, and it usually does, indeed create a maintenance nightmare.
Yeah, because the original use was primarily for retaining walls, retaining areas for commercial applications, but for the home, I really believe you're better off using mulch.
I agree one hundred percent. All right, So we're going to take a little break on that note, and when we come back, we have more gardening horror stories, 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 easy care rows 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. Breading's Gardening Friends and Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified show, where we are spending this post Halloween episode talking about your garden horror stories, and horror stories happen to everyone in the garden. They can take any range from truly scary to mildly frightening to total nightmare. But I do you know, it was so fun to hear from everybody reading through these stories when I was checking our inbox.
And you can email us at help HLP at Gardeningsimplified on air dot com, or just visit Gardening Simplified on air dot com to send us a message through our contact form. And you know, while I was reading through these, I saw so many people sending us great follow ups of you know, things that we had helped them with earlier in the season and saying here's what I did.
I love that.
I love that too, So we are definitely going to be covering those on a future episode. But I did want to just encourage you. If you have a success story to share with us, we will accept and love your success stories as much as your horror stories, So please feel free to reach out. And of course you can always leave comment on YouTube and that way all of your fellow YouTube viewers will be able to to
join in and hear your story. So briefly, before we move to the Creepy Crawley stories, which I have to confess are my favorite, we have one last maintenance nightmare from listener Kathy, and she has an interesting spin on this because she said that a garden nightmare is seeing what a new owner did to your garden after you sold.
And I'm sure you've had this here right. So she says her new homeowner over her house paved over mature Japanese maples and five foot tall tree peonies so he could park his truck.
Yikes.
Yeah, different values there. And Kathy also confesses that she once used the deer spray sprayer for weed killer and that was not a good combination.
Yeah, mixing the wrong thing in a tank. I've seen that happen before. Not.
So what do we got for Creepy Crawley's.
Lacey says, Hello, Rick and Stacey. I generally always garden in a baseball hat, and now I'm glad that I do. One day this summer, I was working along in my garden filming a video for my YouTube channel, my Rustic Gardens. Upon the video airing a viewer pointed out something horrifying. For most of the video, I had a very large spider perched on my hat. This still gives me the hebgb's to think back on, knowing that I had no idea.
Fun all the YouTube audience, it's like, oh my gosh, I got a spider on red. So I did look at Lacey's channel. She gardens in Oregon, USDA Zone Fante puts out a lot of very interesting videos, so we will make sure that we linked to her and you can check out her channel and find out what it's like to garden over on the other side of the country.
Yeah, and that spider just wanted to be on the world Wide Web. He was on a webcam with Lacey Way, good job.
You know all this talk about Creepy Crawley's it does remind me that I wrote this poem. I honestly don't remember as a few years ago, and I don't even remember at this point what inspired me to write it. But I want to share it with you now as we're talking about the Creepy Crawleys. You know, if you've listened to the show before, you know that I love insects and I'm a big believer in integrated pest management.
So if you have problems in the garden, learning about them and finding a way to resolve them in a non toxic, very as peaceful as possible way. But I guess I let my imagination run wild one day when I was thinking about IPM, and I wrote the Gardener's Nightmare. So here it is. The candy bowl was empty, the candles all burned down. So I picked up a volume of Garden Verse and went to bed in my long
flannel gown. Though I read a few poems and horticultural tips, I soon began to doze and nod with the words plant the rest of those crocus still on my lips. I awoke quite suddenly to a din, a true cacophony, that was coming from out in the garden, somewhere around my beloved Daphne. I went to the window, pulled back the shade, then ran down to the yard to witness an eleven mile long garden pest parade. Slugs and snails
led the way, leaving trails of slime. Yet not a single raven flew in the sky to prey upon these vile things. One at a time. A million Japanese beetles followed, shells shining in the light. They skeletonized every leaf they came across, with neither be tea nor bucket of soapy water in sight. After them came mice and voles and terrifying array. They gnawed at the roots and the trees. Where was that red tailed hawk I saw yesterday? Shouldn't she be taking care of these? Next, the gophers and
woodchucks lumbered as is their way. They looked me square in the eye and cackled as they drank a bottle of hot pepper sprayed. Yet even they were nothing compared to two thousand rabbits, who mowed down every plant at its base, causing twice the damage than their normal habit. Deer, of course, were the main attraction. So regal they appear, and they browsed and rubbed every tree and shrub. I could only sit and watch, paralyzed with fear. At the
very end were acres of poison ivy and weeds. There was dandelion and dock and grass galore, and each planet itself in the space that had just been freed, then cloned itself and planted one more. Wake up, It's just a dream yelled a voice in my head. But I woke to muddy footprints on my sheets and a trail of fallen leaves ending at my bed.
Oh, how good, goose look at that? I got goose bumps. What a nightmare?
Yeah, Hi, thank you for fabulous Let my thank you, Alea. Let my imagination run wild with that. So some fun well done?
Excellent? All right?
Uh?
Talt am I getting that right?
Station help So? I wasn't exactly sure, but t lot seems like a reasonable nciation.
Okay as a Halloween story for us. I love gardening. I'm not afraid of bugs and critters around me. Early spring, I was cleaning, prepping one of my island beds for the season. I came across pieces of a kind of plastic bubble wrap material here and there, all together there were maybe four, and I figured winter winds blew them into the garden. I picked them up and threw them
into my pile of garden waists. Suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye move and slither out of one of those bubble wrap pieces, and I jumped. Little did I know that what I thought was bubble wrap was the skin snakes shed as they grow bigger, and one was still around. Yikes, did I mention that snakes are the only thing I'm afraid of? I agree with you. I'm the same boat for me. Goodness gracious, I mean that his sterea with snakes.
Yeah, I mean, we all know that snakes are so beneficial for the garden that they're gonna eat you know, snails and slugs and a lot of these things that we don't want. Of course, they also do eat some beneficial things like frogs and toads if you have those around, but you know, they're part of nature, and especially if you have a more rural garden, you may have snakes. I do not. I've never seen a snake in my garden right now.
Oh, I know you have oh fangs for the memories.
But when I was a landscaper, when I was going to college and then summers I would work landscaping, I had a lot of snake run ins, and you know the I remember one time I was coming up a hill with a load of mult You know how this happens. You always have to like bring the mulch up hill. I don't know, so I'm bringing the mulch up hill.
It's a hot summer day. There's a little juniper standard, so like one of those like small trees with a juniper on, you know, on top there, and there is like the biggest garter snake all curled up like this juniper standard is its nest. You know. It's in the top of this little like three foot tall stand, having the time of its life. And it scared me so
bad I dumped the mulch right there. Okay, so now the snake's there and I have to clean up all the mulch that I just dropped into the immaculate green lawn next to the snake in the juniper.
I'd do the same thing, Stacy, I would run for my life, you know.
But it's something that we have to get used to. And I guess the more often you see snakes in your garden, probably the less scared you will become of them. Yeah, you kind of get to know their habits and can avoid that area.
You know that song. I don't like spiders and snakes, I do, yeah, but I don't have a problem with spiders. It's the snakes that I have a problem with.
Yeah, I think it goes taps into like a deep lizard brain reaction that the humans have. So Laura shares that earlier this month, she and her son were helping her dad with some yardwork after he had a hip replacement. So they're moving a stack of bricks in his yard, and she says, inside the stack of bricks were many, in all roaches. As we took off each level of bricks, some of the roaches went further down into the pile
and some scurried off into the leaves. The farther down we got into the stack of bricks, the more roaches we saw. It reminded me of the old commercial for roach motels. Those roaches checked in and did not check out, and we're still living there. It was disgusting. My son didn't have on gloves. After moving a few levels of the brick and with the roaches crawling on him, he decided I could finish since I did have on gloves.
As I got lower in the pile, I finally decided I had to grab some roach spray because there were so many. All right, we got hev GBI's going around the studio right now. Both Rick and Adriana are visibly shivering. You know, I don't have a huge issue with roaches. The way they move is kind of creepy. But this is such a great example of how IPM can help
you resolve those problems. You know, if you have a scenario like this where something in your yard is is creating good environment for past to live and thrive, you gotta get rid of it. And once you get rid of it, you'll usually get rid of the best. I mean, sometimes you have to kind of, you know, brave your way through the thousands of roaches.
But it is that way through out gardening, whether it's a pest such as an insect or a disease. You're one hundred percent right, Stacey. You've got to focus on the environment. Yeah, there's a reason that they're there.
Yeah, and you know, it's never too late to fix it. And very often simply removing that brick pile that the roaches were like, Hey, this is great, it's warm. There's all these cozy little spaces for us to do our roachy.
Thing, a roachy thing.
Hopefully they didn't get chased into the house. Although you know, normally we do have outdoor roaches and indoor roaches, it's not like necessarily the roaches, the cockroaches that can live outside are necessarily going to come in. But it all depends on the situation.
So I'd go inside and have a bugweiser, That's what I would do. And you know, it does bring up the fact that this is the time of year, scary time of the year when on south facing walls, that's when you've got to be looking for those openings. As far as box elder bugs, spiders, Asian lady bugs, they're going to try and get inside for winters.
Yeah, they want to stay warm and cozy.
Yeah, and I and and I've had through the years in the garden center industry, so many people who rely on vix vapal rub what they rub it on the windows cell. You know, I'm recommending you look at the south facing of the house and look for cracks and crevices where they can get that's the practical thing to do. You'd be surprised how many people use vix vapo rub to combat these insects.
Does it work?
I don't think so.
Okay, well, I guess it's worth a try. If you have bugs and it's too late for you to steal off the crevices spooking, give the vix vapor rub a wirl and let us know if it does or doesn't work out for you. We have to take a little break and when we come back, or going to wrap up the show with even more Halloween horror stories, so please 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 Winner's Color Choice Shrubs in the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Greening's Gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. You are not hearing the normal segments of the Gardening Simplified Show.
We're devoting the whole episode to our listener horror stories. This is an idea that Rick had because he has experienced so very many yes gardening horror stories over the years between working in a garden center and of course being a gardener yourself. So like, what's your favorite one?
I do it yourself for I think you know. My worst horror story and all joking aside, was falling out of a tree with a chainsaw.
Oh Yeah, well that's pretty horrified.
I always advised people. You know, it was when I was young, stupid and invincible, dangerous combinations. You know, I've fallen off a greenhouse, I've walked away from all of these things. I do not recommend it as far as trees are concerned. Hire a professional who does it right and follows safety rules. But no, I could go. I could give you a two hour show of just my horror story.
Some people might actually want to hear that. But we did get a great one from Luri. Now this is also kind of funny, and I will tell you I did not see this coming as I started reading Lori's story. So she says, we're fortunate to have purchased land in Georgia for recreation in twenty twenty and as a result, we bounce back and forth between Florida and Georgia. So set in the warm South here. In the fall of twenty twenty three, we purchased a beautiful bald cypress to
put next to our new pond. So bald cypress, if you're not familiar, Taxodium distigum are beautiful native bald cypress. You see it everywhere if you go down to the swamps of New Orleans. It grows all through the South and usually in area.
Beauty's on the East coast this past week.
Yeah, beautiful plant, great plant, and we can actually grow it here in Michigan, and it especially loves wet soils, so she says. It was a beauty In a fifteen gallon pot, we planted it and anxiously awaited for the rains to fill our pond. Thankfully, after just a few weeks, the beautiful bald cypress had its toes in the water and we felt it was very happy. Fast forward to February twenty twenty four. That's just this past February. We pull into our property after a couple weeks away. I
asked my husband, where's the bald cypress. I can't see it. Granted, it kind of blends in with all the other trees, especially when it's dormant, but I couldn't even see its trunk from a distance. We parked the truck and wandered over to the edge of the pond, and horror of horrors, our beautiful bald cypress tree had been fallen by a beaver.
And Laurie has the pictures for proof. Here there is no mistaking that Yes, this bald cypress was definitely felled by a beaver, and well you can see the pictures on YouTube or at Gardeningsimplified on air dot com. We didn't know if it was dead or alive. We couldn't exactly extract it from the pond, so we left it wondering how in the world a beaver passed hundreds of trees to eat our one and only bald cypress. Guess it was just the right thickness and he didn't feel
like working so hard for those mature trees. We did ask the nursery nursery where we purchased it, what we should do. They felt the best thing to do was to cut the stump straight across, so that's what we did. Plus we put fencing around it. Now fast forward to August and we have a cousin it bald cypress, and we even had to enlarge the fence. We anxiously await to see how this tree shapes up Happy Halloween.
So it just goes to prove you that beaver's a log on to find the tastiest trees, you know, and in the landscape.
I think it's also really interesting, you know, you would see. Especially, you know, if a beaver took down a tree, you'd think, okay, well that tree is dead. And it's very interesting to see how this plant has recovered and the kind of adaptations that nature makes to withstand these because you know, both the beavers and the bald cypress are native to this area, so it is kind of a survival strategy
for both of them. And so now they're really going to have a bald cypress that's a shrub, not just a tree.
It's already growing back cypress with a story.
Yes, and definitely a bald cypress with a story.
Yeah.
So and it's a great story because not everyone can say that they have lost a tree or had a tree damaged due to beavers, beaver and speaking of fuzzy four legged critters damaging plants, Irene wrote that her story recently was planting some bargains from the garden Center Always love that to create a butterfly garden. She goes out to check on them daily and one day finds they are all pulled out. Put them back in. Happened again. She suspects raccoons.
I like your spirit, Irene. Three times you did not give up.
Neither did the raccoon unfortunately. But yeah, I mean I have definitely planted stuff in my yard. And even though I mostly plant deer resistant plants because I have such a severe deer issue, a lot of times, if it's fresh from the greenhouse it's really soft, they are more curious about it. They're more interested to try it. And yeah, when they're browsing it, they'll absolutely rip it right out of the ground and I'll find just a root pulseit in there.
And that's when repellents can come in Handy repellance can be practical. If you have to be spraying repellents all the time, it's not practical. But when they first come out of the greenhouse shoe.
Right, Yeah, and sometimes you have to, it's just you know, those plants have been given tons of water, tons of fertilizer. They're lush, they're soft. It's much different than when, yeah, when they come out in your yard and are stringy and fibrous and not so yummy.
So in the cute not scary category. CJ writes to us Hi, Stacey, and Rick. This year, my garden was invaded by the extra chunky bumblebee species species cocker Spaniellie photo is attached, so if you're watching on YouTube or you go to our website Gardening Simplified. On air dot Com, CJ talks about this bumblebee could be found lounging every day amongst my romance mulberry numsia. Oh great plant, great
annual numisia if you're keeping score at home. As a matter of fact, it's a great shoulder season plant, great for spring and fall. Kind of has a clove sent to it and proven winners has a great improved variety coming for twenty twenty five. It was her favorite spot in the garden. No persuasion could get this bea to leave these flowers alone, and sadly they diminished over the summer. Horror for something. But I think I'll plant a romance namesia here next year to lure in this same bumblebee.
Best blooms CIJ and Pearl the bumble Bee.
Yeah so CJ. If you haven't realized, Pearl the Bumblebee is a cocker spaniel, very cute, very epic hair, and obviously cute enough to be loved. Despite ruining the nmesia, it's great. And finally we heard from Kristin and the cute not scary category. She says, be careful when you open these pictures. I've made a ghastly mistake. Instead of something scary, I paired my gorgeous proven winners hydrangeas with
halloween decor. I'm afraid I don't have a spooky taiale to share, just beautiful flowers that I couldn't let get snowed on. Because Western New York is expecting snow this week. I guess that could be a scary story health I did add a touch of Halloween spirit by comparing by pairing them with wicked witch colius, which might just be my new favorite plant or should I say shrub. Hope you enjoy the photos even if they're more enchanting than eerie.
And Wow, the color on these hygdranges that Kristin cut is truly outstanding. I'm guessing she didn't say what variety there. I'm thinking they must be like Limelight Prime or little Lime Punch nice, just because the colors have that really rich, saturated tone that the newer varieties have, whereas a lot of the older varieties they can be kind of muddy.
But she's obviously growing them beautifully because they're so pretty, they're so colorful, and she paired them with some fun Halloween de cor.
That's fantastic way to go, Kristin. And you're right about the Colius. The color Blaze Colius from proven winners is fantastic. And you know, again, when I first started out in the garden center industry ages ago, that's a scary story of itself. You know, we just grew cold and shade.
Now you can grow them in sun and shade, and Kristen says, here, yet it's almost like a shrub, and you're right, And I think part of the reason for that is these coliats also have been bred not to flower like the older varieties of Colius did, or at least not until late in the season, so they're putting all that energy into foliage. I just love the color blaze Colius and growing them in sun, great plant.
I truly wish that I could grow them, But the deer love Colius as much as we do, so they are not an option for me. And actually my mom, I've talked about my mom's amazing red colis that she plants in front of a garage every year. The deer have even started nibbling hers, and she has some deer and they usually used to stick to her backyard. But one day she sent me a picture of her fabulous colius in September at its peak, and a little bit was missing, and I said that that is definitely dear.
So it's no fun.
Deer are kind of a nightmare, but a night where you can live.
With and Stacy. One last scary story if you live in my neighborhood, I in the past week have been out stealing maple leaves from people's yards and then using my churninator, my grinder. I sent some pictures and video to Adriana that will share with you. So if you hear that grinding sound coming from my backyard, that's me churning up your maple leaves.
Yeah, I think you could say that you're taking them, not stealing them, okay, because they were getting rid of them in the first place.
I'm borrowing them all for a good cost.
Yes, I think you're doing the right thing. And as you know, I have also been known to help myself to some leaves sitting on the curb if they're all bagged up and sitting there anyway, I mean, why not thank money it can, so we wanted to thank every single person who wrote to us with their story. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, and we hope that you enjoyed listening to the stories
as much as we enjoyed reading them to you. So we hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I want to thank you Rick, thank you Adriana, and we're wishing you the best. M