Success in the garden. Coming to you from Studio A here at Coved Winner's Colored Roy Shrubs. It's time for the Gardening Simplified radio podcast and YouTube show with Stacy Hervella, me Rick weisst and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson.
Today we talk about supporting roles, plants that play supporting roles. They were an essential element in theater long before movies came along, and then when movies came along, they invented an award for supporting roles, and we could argue that they are very important in movies and of course very important also in our landscapes. A supporting role performs a role in a play or a film below that of a leading anchor and above that of a bit part. So think
of Batman and Robin. Robin would be the supporting role. Think about out one of my favorite movies, Apollo thirteen, Ed Harris. He has been a great supporting role actor through the years. He played the role of Gene Krantz. Tom Hanks of course had the lead role in that movie, or Jonah Hill in Moneyball with Brad Pitt taking the lead role. And then you have actors and actresses like Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson who can do both play
a great leading role or play a great supporting actor. And I'd have to say, right off the bat Stacy that I personally believe well, the front runner for supporting role in a landscape has got to be evergreens. Evergreens the foundation, the structure, the bones of a landscape. I think they're the perfect example. Do you agree. I don't disagree, but that would not have been my first choice. There you go. I don't think you're wrong
at all. I'm not like, how dare you? But no, I actually feel in my opinion that evergreens kind of have more of a starring role because they have your own interest and they typically have such a distinctive shape, you know. So to me, a supporting role plant is one that just kind of does its thing that it lets the stars be the stars. It doesn't interfere with their shape, it doesn't clash with their colors, it doesn't pull focus, as it were, but it so it lets be themselves and
it doesn't fade into the background. But it doesn't compete either. And I would say, typically maybe it's just me my I very often goes straight to the evergreens unless there's something else in flower. Like you know, if you've got to a landscape with hydrangeas and evergreens and the panicle hydrange's are in full bloom, well then that would definitely be the star at that particular moment. But I think when I was thinking about this, I think about supporting plants.
And have you ever been to the Luriy Garden in Chicago? Have not? Okay? Oh wow, It's such an amazing public garden, just beautiful, designed by consonant plantsman Pete Udolph. And when you go there, I think you really get a great sense of what is a supporting role plant.
And he uses a native Euphorbia Euphorbia coroa lotta as a supporting planet's in bloom in late summer and fall, and it just has these kind of blue green leaves and these fluffy clouds of white flowers, and it kind of repeats all through the garden, And that, to me is the supporting role plant. It doesn't take away from anything else it has presents, it lets everything do its own thing, but it just kind of knits everything together. See I'm
liking this. This is a good debate because I think evergreens, you know, you think of junipers or box would they play a filler supporting role, And yet some evergreens, like let's talk about Jim fizz juniper or stinging ourbor viti, they could play a lead role. The eye is drawn towards those plants. Foliage or filler plants I think often play a supporting role, a backdrop. And yet even at that in the shade you could take sun king
Aurelia, you can take hard to heart kalladiums, rex Begonias colius. You could argue that they play a starring role also, So this is a good debate. Well, it really depends on how you're using it. It really depends on your landscape. And while you were, you know, mentioning those and we're kind of you know, people are familiar with the concept of the
thriller filler spiller as a container design thing. So the plants that we're talking about as a supporting role are the filler, which doesn't mean they just sit around and take up space, not at all. They still have an important role too to fulfill here. But you know, I was thinking about lantana, and lantana is a plant that can be a thriller, filler or spiller, all depending on how you get it. Sure, you know, you
can get a tree form lantana that is absolutely a thriller. You can get, you know, a hanging basket when it would be a spiller, but very often it's used as a filler. So sometimes these are There's a lot of leeway here to say what's what. So the theory here is I'll go back to it. Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson, both fabulous and either a leading role or a supporting role. You know. Again, when I think about supporting role plants, I think ornamental grasses make a great supporting role plant.
Their dynamic groundcovers play a supporting role. They fill in. I think of the summer fill ins when you hit June and July and August and it's hot and you can get those bargain annuals that grow really fast at the garden center and they fill in. They play a supporting role as a matter of fact, in summer fun plant to grow cassia or popcorn plant. Have you grown that in your life? I have not grown it in my own landscape because it gets a little big for my space. But I do love it.
I've seen it, and whenever I do see it, I always make people smell it because it does smell just like butter popcorn, hot buttered popcorn at the theater. They grow it in the children's garden here at the Frederick Meyer Gardens, and so that could be a supporting role plant native plants. Of course, they don't have to earn top billing, but every garden needs a supporting cast. I think of our fire red twig dogwood as a great
example in my mind. But even you know, look at flowering annual Superbina verbina. I love that plant like pink cashmerror, and it could stand on its own as a fabulous flowering annual. And yet you put it in combination baskets, in a container or a hanging basket, that plant plays in incredible. You know, Biden's is another one, a great supporting role in a
beautiful basket. I think that that for me, that characteristic of having almost like a hazy type effect is sort of where my brain goes when it comes to flowering supporting plants. And the supporting plants don't always need to flower, like you were saying about like a groundcovered uniper. Yeah, they don't necessarily have to be center stage. When you look at perennials like you look at silver lining, artemesia, or a workhorse like day lilies. They can be
very beautiful. The blooms just last a day, as the name notes. However, they are a workhoorse in the landscape, and I think day lilies really play a supporting role in the landscape. Iris and peonies their time in the spotlight is short, but after that they still play some aspect of a
supporting role. Yeah, definitely the iris now because you know a p and and foliage eh, you know, it's just kind of there, but iris foliage is very much of a strong structural element that you're grateful to have well beyond the time that the flowers have bloomed. Absolutely so, the supporting role plants play an important role. Let me give you a limb a rick that popped into my head to talk about supporting role plants. No drama, no diva, no worry wart. They know their role to lend support. Oh
high ranges. They get all the press to Pogonia's I acquiesce. I'm just trying to be a good sport. I'm content to support and console according to a public opinion poll, Roses win the popularity contest and Jasmine, you've always impressed. I guess you're just on a roll. And that's what happens, Stacy, is that plants get on a roll and pretty soon you see everyone in the neighborhood planting the same thing and not necessarily thinking about the important role
that supporting role plants plan. You know, it's so true, and honestly, that was one of the reasons why I was very interested in getting into gardening, because my mom was living in a newer subdivision. And that's what happened. One person calls a landscaper, they say, hey, they did a good job. Everyone starts calling that landscaper everyone and gets a cookie cutter landscape. Because people are a little bit afraid to go out there and choose
plants, They're a little bit afraid to stick their neck out. So it does end up becoming like kind of you know, predictable, because it's it becomes a little bit of an epidemic. So it's good to think outside the box and to also understand, like we've already said that these are not hard and fast rules. How you use something, where you plant something will largely
determine whether it is playing a supporting role or not. But I think for myself again, the importance is some sort of like light ethereal texture in the garden, so it's not like a big blob that's just taking all your attention. And ideally some soft color that kind of just blends along with everything. So I happen to have the answer. Here's the winner of the best I
have the envelope. Please, I'm going to let you open that up, Stacy, and let me say that the supporting role plant in a landscape ape does not detract from the leading actor, but rather there you go. There's our winner. Would treill Us for best supporting Role. Oh I get it now, Thank you very much. I should have seen it coming. With gardenings Simplified Plants trial that's next here on the gardener Super. I love that premiere and it could stand on its own as a fan proven Winner's Color 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. I think that that for me that care green garden friends, where we are talking about your saying supporting roles, and that can mean a lot of different things, as we have already determined. But Rick,
you haven't told me what plants play supporting roles in your garden. Well I knew would trell us be controversial, but somebody has to win. And I still think that My favorite supporting role plants, whether it's in a container or in my landscape, are ornamental grasses. Okay, whether annual or perennial, that's mine. Any particular one. Oh, I love miscanthus morning Light. I love the proven Winn's annual grass called Vertigo. I love that plant,
a proven Winner's plant Skyrocket. They're all great, but I think they play just this fabulous. You know. They don't detract from the star, the leading actors that maybe are high Drangers or some other blooming plant, but boy, they do a great job of supporting that rotating cast of whoever is the
star at the particular mart. So I was thinking about what is a supporting plant in my garden, and there's two plants that came to mind for me that I feel like play a supporting role Number one is meadow rue the electrum, so I have a very nice slowing population of that. So it's tall, it's very thin, and it has that again that I just can't get rid of, this like hazy, like cloudy texture that to me makes it
a supporting role plant. So it's tall, it gets these really dreamy little flowers, very delicate foliage, and what I love about it is that it just pops up wherever it will go. If I don't want it somewhere, I just pull it out, So it kind of has that effect of tying everything together. So that's in the very small, shady part of my garden, in the sunny part I love. And it has not really fully taken
off from me yet, but I'm hoping that it will flex. So I don't know if you're familiar, if you've ever grown it before, but it has the most beautiful, amazing blue flowers and that blue so it has like kind of a silvery blue foliage, very fine, very easy to you know, like easy to blend with everything. And then that blue it's just the particular shade of blue that it is. It goes with everything. I like
that. So you're choosing color to be that support role like the blue in flax, whereas with myself ornamental grasses, I choose them because they're good dancers. They dance in the landscape. They provide movement, which I think really provides that supporting cast. Yeah, I think air and space is absolutely a non negotiable on here. What that looks like to you is really something to determine. And I think another important part of having a supporting role plant is
repeating it through the garden. Yes, you know, it's not a supporting real plan. It's not just like hey, I put one here and now it's supporting the rest of the garden. The supporting real plan is almost like a theme. Like you can think about it like if you listen to classical music in a symphony, there's theme in variation. So it's sort of a theme that unites everything in your garden throughout. It can be front to back, it can be within a single bed. It's an element that's repeated,
I agree, throughout. They just don't show up in the credits at the end, like the key grip. Always feel sorry for that person the credits. You just have to stay till like the very bitter end to see that person for what they do. Yes, they definitely should. They work hard.
So as far as plants on trial go, you know, I think very often and a lot of the plants that we have listed already as supporting role plants are typically perennials or sometimes annuals, but very often they are herbaceous plants, the ornamental grasses, the two that I just mentioned, and so thinking about shrubs as a supporting role plant was a little bit of a challenge for me, but I did think long and hard about it, and in
the previous segment I mentioned that for me, one of the ultimate supporting role plants, and I wish I could find it at a garden center so I could plant it in my garden to actually have it have a supporting role. This Euphorbia chloralata just a beautiful white native euphorbia with white clouds of flowers in
late season. So that's what I'm going for. You know how, nowadays, don't know if you've seen this, but like if you buy a pack of markers for coloring, they nowadays they come with a blending stick like a thing that you can use to kind of between the colors and it blends them together. So that's why I'm so hung up on sort of these cool these like cool blues and whites, And so for me, a supporting roll shrub would be happy face white potentilla. Boy, you surprised me there, I
did. I thought it was going to be nine berg, that was gonna be nine bark. Yeah, nine berk oh see. I think of nine barks is a real kind of a you know, look at me showstopper, because they're they're fairly large, and they're very colorful. Do you have an envelope for me? I don't. I don't. I wish I would have. I wish I would have. But I picked happy face white potentilla because
it does kind of fill this role. So if you're not familiar with potentilla, it is a plant that I think a lot of people will just kind of, you know, yawn at right, particularly if you were joining us from Canada, where it is used very widely, and especially in gas station and municipal plantings shops. Yeah, and it deserves more credit than that because it is an extreme durable, extremely hard working plant, and it's native.
It's native to North America. There are actually a number of different native potentillas to North America, and you may be familiar with some of the ones that are considered more weedy, but those are herbaceous potentillas, so they dive back to the ground completely, whereas this is a shrubby potentilla, which was actually
reclassified by taxonomists into a new genus called dazafora. But as is often the case when taxonomists try to switch things up, which they may have a very good reason for doing so, but the horticulture industry tends to take umbrage at these types of changes, and they just say, well, no, we're not using it, like, we're not changing because people are so familiar with potentilla. Didn't daz afora have a starring role in the Batman movie? She
may have, oay. But the thing about potentilla that always makes me laugh is I think most people do know it as potentilla, but very often on tags you will see a common of shrubby sink foil. Yes, I have never once heard anyone use that term. No, it's not a good name and it never stuck. So I really don't think daz afora is suddenly going to come along and supplant potentilla for these woody potentillas like Happy Face White,
so potentilla it is. We're going to stick with it. We're gonna acknowledge that we know about the name change, but sticking with potentilla for right now. Now. Happy Face White is of course white flowers, so pure white flowers. And the thing about the Happy Face series, there's two major features that make the Happy Face series different than other potentilla's so very very large flowers. The first plant in the series was a yellow one, so the Happy
Face yellow potentilla. That kind of gave a series its name. It literally looks like it could be one of those like seventies have a nice day happy faces. So that's where the name originally came from, yes exactly. And since then, as we've added more and more colors, we've just kept them. So we have happy Face yellow, Happy Face orange, Happy Face Pink Paradise, Happy Face Hearts which is pink and white, and Happy Face white.
So I think any of them can play that supporting role depending on the other colors in your garden, because all of them have that same sort of delicate, hazy like quality. The other thing that makes the Happy Face series so different. Oh my gosh, you can't stop these things from blooming. They are the longest. They bloom like an annual even though they're a shrub. So for us here in Michigan, they will start blooming at about late
spring and that will not stop until frost. And if we get like just a single frost that does not keep coming and take it out, it will keep going after that. They are extremely extremely long blooming. It's such a tough plant. We mentioned that at the beginning. If you're pulling into a convenient store to get like a slurpy or something, it's hot outside, and they're usually planted in gravel or I call them, you know, the riot rocks or whatever, you know, that between the sidewalk and the street,
and they see to be thriving. Yeah, they are. They're so they are very hearty. They're hardy down to USDA Zone two, which is extremely cold tolerant. Yeah. Now, as is often the case with plants that are extremely hardy, it's not extremely heat tolerant. So it's only heat tolerant through about USDA Zone seven. But in the areas where it can grow, so like if you're in Canada and northern Michigan, Minnesota, all of that.
It can take the heat in those areas, but you're not going to want to put it in an area where you know it's going to be really, really hot for a very long time in the summer. It's more one of those things where it's just we get periods of intense heat. But for us, it blooms all summer without stopping. And that, to me, I think is another great reason to think of it as a supporting world plant. Because it's sitting there and it's foliage. It has palmately compound foliage,
and so what that means is a shape like a hand. So it's a five little leaflets make up an individual leaf, and they kind of have this palm shape to them, which gives it that nice soft tech. I love how when the foliage comes out, it has a silky, silvery kind of look, and then you have these flowers that just really do not stop.
So that's what you're looking for in a supporting role plant. Now it gets to be two to three feet tall and wide, so a low grower, more of that groundcover type role that we were talking about, but you can freely mix it in with whatever in your landscape, and I think it's always going to do a good job of accentuating everything else, letting everything have its role, letting everything else shine well, just you know, taking up space
and looking great doing it. Good thing would trell us one before you petitioned for Happy Faced White potent tilla, you've sold me well. They were competing in different categories. You know what Trellis was in the garden structures category, and now we're talking about best plant in a breast shrub and a supporting role. Happy Faced White got potentilla. So really nice plant doesn't get enough credit and certainly doesn't get enough credit for how much heavy lifting it can do as
a design element in your gardens. So take a peek at it on our YouTube channel or just visit Gardenings Simplified on air dot com. I have love pictures of it there and you can see it there and supporting in your face. We're going to take breaker acknowledged garden now. Happy face White is of course white flowers, so at proven winter's color choice. We've got a shrub for every taste and every space, whether you're looking for an easy care 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. Like seventies, have a nice day, happy gardening friends, and you welcome back to that gardening. I like what's going on out there. I know what's going on in my garden. I know what's going on more or less here in West Michigan and our trial
gardens here at Proven Winter's Color Choice Shrubs. But I don't know what's going on in your garden. So I love hearing about it, don't I do too. I love it. So if you have something going on in your garden you just want to celebrate, or you have questions, just visit Gardening Simplified on air dot Com. It's very simple. You can fill out a contact form there, and you know, while you're thinking about maybe contacting us, we want to just give you a heads up that we are going to
be doing a dog scaping show. We're going to be a dog scaping series all about gardening if you have dogs, making sure you have a dog friendly
yard. I'm sure Adriana will be contributing greatly to this as the dog owner among our little crew here, but we'd also like to hear from you and we want to hear your dog scaping tips, your dog scaping ideas, and what we really want is your pictures of dogs in your garden and so if you submit those at Gardeningsimplified on air dot com, we are going to pick a winner at random to receive a plan Geek t shirt just like this one. Of course, doesn't have to be like this one. We have one.
It's more of a and a sex style. If you don't like the girly style, it's going to be totally up to you. Whoever the winner is, we will have your size and we will send you that. So please do send us your submissions this week or next so that we can include those in the dog Scaping show. Yeah, send us your popular pictures. We want to see a picture of you with your dog and your landscape and dog scaping is a great topic and we're looking forward to doing these shows.
Many people, of course have dogs as pets, and the dogs have to coexist with some of your favorite flowers and plants in the landscape and garden. How do you do that? We'd love to hear from you. How you do it, and of course we'll share with you also pointers on how to properly dog scape your yard. Yes, no free puppies, just free shirts, so please do reach out there at Gardeningsimplified on are dot com. Very simple. So Rick, what a we got in the mailbag today? All
right? Tom's writing us today says Hello, I love your show and listen all the time on Apple podcasts. And of course the Gardening Simplify show is a radio show, it is a podcast, and it is a YouTube show. So Tom, thank you very much for listening on Apple podcasts. You both are so knowledgeable. I'm in the western Chicago suburbs. Can you cover the topic of growing lavender for people that don't have ideal soil to support it? How can the soil be changed to accommodate lavender? Raised beds, till
in amendments, remove soil and add a custom mix. Great question, It is such a good question, and so many people wish they could grow lavender and they've had no success with it. And really there is no secret exactly to growing lavender. There is just one very crucial key and that is good drainage. Exactly, good drainage, especially in winter. You know, you don't usually use lose lavender in the summer from a lack of one. You can use it from overwatering it. If you have clay soil. Typically when
leaven doesn't survive, it's due to winter wetness. So this is similar to butterfly bush, similar to carryopter. It's also known as blue miss spyreea. We've talked about Russian sage. All of these plants that they need really really good drainage all year round, but they especially need good drainage during the time of the year when it is cold out and the soil is not frozen, so there can be like cold wet water just sitting around those roots. That
is the fastest way to kill them. So, you know, for anyone with clay soil, your challenge is going to be making sure that the plant is not planted too deeply. You want to make sure that I usually say plants it high, so that the base of the plant is slightly above rather than even with your soil surface. Now, I would not recommend going crazy and trying to like change your soil. That to me is just not a practical thing to do. But definitely plant high, Definitely plant early, and
This is a really crucial thing. Anytime you have these plants that are susceptible to winter damage, the earlier in the season you are able to plant them, the longer time they'll have to grow roots into their home and be able to better withstand the challenges of winter. And I have certainly fall planted lavender plenty here in West Michigan, but my soil is basically like a dune,
so it's very very sandy. I have no trouble with that. But plant early, plant high, and then be real, real careful with the water, so you know, be careful as when you're watering it. If you have clay soil during the season and in the winter especially, be careful that the plant isn't positioned where it's going to get dripped on. And a lot of times if you have it like under the eve of a house, or if you have like downspouts that are going to it anything like that, that
can really cause harm to the lavender. Well, I think the key time with lavender is to make sure first of all that we have it in a good sunny spot. We want as much sun as possible. And then I'm in full agreement with Stacey the key here is good. Now, I would suggest what you do in an area where you want to plant lavender. Dig some holes, then go get the garden holes, fill those holes with water, then step back and watch what happens. If it drains readily, we
may have a good spot for lavender. If it doesn't, you're going to have to add organic material and try and improve the drainage in that area. Assuming that this is clay soil, and if it is clay soil, don't add sand and rocks. Adding sand and rocks to clay soil equals concrete. And I agree with you Stacey, it's fall and winter in early spring when the damage is done and will lose those plants if they're just floating in water. Yeah, that's the toughest time for them. And I did want to
mention that this is a very underrated part. I said drainage is key, and that is true. But the second key is picking the right lavender, because not all lavenders are created equal. Some lavenders are much hardier than others, some are much more tolerant of less than ideal conditions. So had Coat is kind of like the gold standard of hardy lavender for those of us in
the Midwest. Munstead lavender is known to be a bit hardier, so it's not quite as attractive or as fragrant as had Coat, but Munstead would be a good choice to start with. And then there's two newer ones that have come out over the last say ten years or so, phenomenal and sensational, and I have heard nothing but good things from people who normally have real challenges growing lavender. They've both done great for me. But I have ideal lavender
conditions, so my experience in this case does not really translate. But I would say, look at those varieties and maybe plant one of each before you commit to a big lavender hedge or a big lavender planting, and see how they do. But you know, I have heard from all sorts of gardeners who have tried it in cold climates and clay soil that phenomenal really has done phenomenal for them. I've had success with the proven winner's variety. I think
it's Sweet Romance. Sweet Romance, Yeah, yeah, that's Sweet Romance is a great to great variety. But drainage, drainage, dream drainage, and the right plant for the right place. So this would be a great opportunity to check out a local garden center and speak to some experts there on what they recommend for your area. Alicia is wondering, my Clematis flowers are looking really chewed up this summer. Can you tell me what is eating them or
what usually eats them? I'm also considering a predatory insect order. Websites say you should release them before it becomes a problem. Which predatory insects should one order to keep the usual suspects from getting out of control? Is there a best bet insect to get love the show, especially the mini science and botany
lessons from Stacy. That's fantastic, that's very nice of you, Thank you, Alicia, and the pronunciation lessons, because right off the bat, it's either clematis or clematis, that's the other I'm however, as long as you get the plant on at the end of the day, it's all right. So, Alicia, I looked up your I looked this up, and you know, my first thought when I looked at that your clemitist flower was beetles.
Beetles leave a very distinctive damage, and they're pretty generalist food flower predators. You know, there's a lot of things that eat flowers that are very specific. Oh, I only will eat this flower, whereas beetles are just like it. It's flower tissue, I'll eat it. But when I started looking it up, I found that the biggest predator of clemitist flowers and the damage of the pictures I saw online lined up exactly with what you're seeing is
earwigs. Oh yeah, you see the faces in the studio right now if you're not watching us on YouTube, and so you know. The beetle damage tends to be. This is gonna sound a little bit funny, but I'll put some links in the show notes and you can see what I'm talking about. It tends to be a little more organized beetle damage Japanese beetles, notwithstanding
on clematists like from vine weavels, tends to be very neat. It's just kind of little notches at the edge of the flowers, whereas the earwig damage is messy. It very often leaves brown spots, which we're seeing on alicious clemenis there. So I believe this is earwigs, and earwigs are most active at night, which would also maybe explain why you haven't really seen the culprit doing the damage. So I was reading about earwigs and the number one recommendation
is actually trapping them. I do not know of any beneficial insects that you can use against earwigs. That doesn't mean they don't exist. I just don't know of any offhand. But they say trapping earwigs much like you would use a bait for slugs. So you got the little tuna can or catfood can or whatever. The ideal bait for earwigs is oil that tuna was in. Yeah, so not something you're nestless. Oh, you don't want to leave
in the hot garden, but you can't tuna fish. So the other thing that you could try was they said you can put olive oil with some soy sauce. If you like to cook typhoon, you could try some drops of fish sauce in there. Apparently they love oil, they love fishy oil. But I will say Stacey that years ago, when most people had newspapers delivered to their home, one of the best ways is just to roll up some newsprint at the base of the plant soaking wet, and the next morning take
a look in there. You'll quickly know whether or not it's earwigs that are causing problem, and look for where they're hiding during the day. And since newspaper's hard to come by right now, maybe get some of those like Penny Savers at at the Gary Store something like that. So trap for the earwigs, see what you can find. I think ear rings are the culprit here and just physically removing them from the plant. You'll have to continue to be
vigilant about that, but that should do the trick. We'll put some more resources for where you got a website to a big lavender, you've got to take a little break. They do. Really, I've had success with the proven winner's variety. I think it's sweet romance, Sweet romance. Yeah, yeah. The Gardening Simplified She is brought to you by Proven Winners, 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 and the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show today for branching news and interview with Don Snewink. Thornapple Woodlands dot com. Don Snewink has been on the Gardening Simplified Show before you're familiar with him. A b expert, pollination expert boy, just all around good guy guy who loves nature. Just fun. Wow,
thank you. I'm almost blutching over here. I didn't know where else to go with that, Don, but it's true. It is just always fun and fascinating to talk to you. And of course we're doing this for June is pollinator month. And before I get into that, boy, you gave me a heeducation here on the word pollen and pollinate. You got to make sure to get it right. So a pollinator is a biotic agent that moves pollen from one flower to another, whereas a pollinizer is a plant that provides
fertile pollen. I guess I better get that straight right off the bat, right. Well. Wow, I'm really impressed because I'm still trying to get that all figured out for myself. You got it right away. And of course when you talk about pollinator, we use an I, and then when you talk about pollen we use an E. Well I get a little confused after a while. What is up with that? I've always wandered, So I thought, who better to take it to than a word guy like yourself.
Well, I'm not necessarily a word guy. Don I mess words up.
Sticky is the word expert. That just seems strange to me, Stacy that it'd be p O L L E N and then when we pollinate it they throw an I in there instead of an E. Well, you know, English does crazy things sometimes it takes other words and it you know, it's obviously a noun versus a verb situation, and I'm sure if I thought about it there, I would figure out other words that this has happened to you where the verb form has an I in it and the noun form has
the e. But you know, fortunately there's autocorrect, so we'll all be okay. I think there's Isn't there a Latin base involved here too? Somehow? I? Yeah, I believe so too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now that we got that out of the way, let me ask you a question Don, and again we're talking to Don sneink Thorn apple Woodlands and
boy Don shared some YouTube videos with us too that are great. We'll talk about that in a moment, but just a few thoughts on pollination I'm going to ask, you're right off the bat don, why is pollination important? I mean, I have a good idea why. But shouldn't we ask that question from the start? I would think so. And when we're talking about food, we like to see good seed production, which allows that plant to produce a good fruit around those seeds. So the more seeds they produce,
the better the fruiting is. So pollination is important because it aids in the production of seeds. It's how plants reproduce. It's a good answer for me. You nailed that one. I'm speechless. Okay, So as far as honeybees are concerned, while they're doing that, I've heard you use this term before, flower fidelity. What's that exactly? Yes, honeybees of flower fidelity, which means that they are faithful. Fidelity refers to faithfulness, so they're
faithful to one type of blossom for each trip out of the hive. So a honeybee flies from the beehive, the first blossom that goes to, let's say, is a dandelion. Every blossom that goes to thereafter on that trip out will be a dandelion. When it comes back to the high it unloads either it's load of nectar, pollen load, whatever it is. It can go back out and it might go to a different type of blossom the second
time around, but it's going to stick with that type of blossom. So this is why the orchardists will mow the fields of dandelions under their orchard so that the honeybees aren't tempted by dandelions. They go right to the apple blossoms. Wow, that is fascinating. I didn't know that. So now when they venture back out, are they going to be like, hey, you know, I noticed some apples and flour, I'm going to go check those out at this time? Or is it just like whatever they happen to bumble
into first? Right, All right, well I just landed on an apple. Yes, I'm harvesting apples for the next five minutes. I would guess that there's a hive mind at work here too, you know. That's why we call it a super organism, where all the bees work in a kind of a symbiotic relationship and function together as a whole. So some bees are coming back with loads of nectar or pollen, and they're doing a special dance inside of that colony, telling the other bees where they ought to go next
and for their next load of pollen. So I think once the honey bees get fixated on a source of either nectar or pollen, they'll probably stay with that source until that source is no longer available. Well, I'm a little afraid to ask this, but you know we've all seen bees, bumblebees,
honeybees carrying loads of pollen. Now where are they carrying the nectar? Are they literally ingesting it and then bringing it back into the hive and sort of regurgitating it, or is there some secret nectar organ that I'm not a yeah, Yeah, it's the crop we call it, or the Yeah, there's a honey stomach. So honey bees of two stomachs. They have a honey stomach and then a I call it a food stomach for lack of a better term. There's a one way valve between the two stomachs. So they're gonna
take a snack and the way home. Open up that valve a little bit, let some of that nectar go into their food stomach. That gives them energy to get back to the hive. And then yes, Stacey, they can regurgitate that to another bee. They connect proboscis the part of their mouth. It's like a straw connect proboscis where the receiver bee and that hive one of the bees live in its first three weeks in the hive, transfer that
nectar. Chemicals are added by the bees' bodies and that transfer and that turns that nectar into honey. Wow. So tiny stomachs they are, I'm sure they are. But while they're collecting nectar, they're also the pollen is and attracted to their bodies as well. So yeah, it's a double duty. Where does the fermentation thing come in? Done so that we can make that's right. Honey bees cannot digest pollen. The grains they cannot digest. So
the honeybee and this is its protein source. Like for the kids listening, it's eggs, meat, fish, peanut, butter. That's what we eat for our protein. Honey Bees use pollen for their protein. So they when they get back, they're carrying that big heavy load of pollen in it in its pollen basket and indentation on its back legs. Honeybee gets back into the hive, turns and backs into a cell and unloads its pollen from its back legs. Turn around, using its head like a ramrod, crams it into
the bottom of that cell. Once we get maybe half filled in that cell, the bees will cap that over with a little bit of honey. That honey then ferments the pollen cracks open that pollen green, which allows it then to be digested by the bees, and we bee keepers call that fermented product bee bread. Yes, I'm I'm convinced that using honey for fermentation is a good thing based on what I know about honeybees. It's the oldest, it's
the oldest fermented drink. No the mankind and recommentioned it earlier, mead exactly. So the star of the show is the queen Bee. And I'm watching a YouTube video, and Adriana will share that YouTube video. Of course, this is a YouTube radio show and podcast. Those watching on YouTube can watch it here. Boy, that queen bee is something else. And then this YouTube video continues, and don you're out there putting a mark on their back with a marker. I couldn't believe it. What in the world are you
doing out there? That's right, I'm marking a queen because if I get a queen in that high that's marked with a dot then I can spot her easier in the hive if I need to find her, or if I go to a program and do a show. I like to have a marked queen so people can find that queen bee in the traveling observation hives better. Plus it tells me how old that queen is. So when I mark that queen, I write it in my notebook that I just freshly marked that queen and
I got a date for that. Because a first year a queen her hive, their goal is to make enough honey to live through the winter. A second year of that queen's life, their goal is to swarm, So we treat a second year colony totally different than a first year colony. Oh, how swarming party, that's exactly right, Yes, yes, And I did a lot of things this year. We had a lot of bee hives that live through the winter this year, a pretty exciting phenomenon which I haven't had
much good overwintering success the last few years. So that made my beekeeper life very busy for the month of May because I had to do things hive manipulations to keep my hives from swarming. So marking that queen bee, in other words, you mark the bee obviously we can see it in the video, also being easier to spot. But so you're a trained professional, But is it difficult for people who are not trained in beekeeping to spot or find the queen? Yes, I would say it is. It's hard to find her
if you've got a hive full of bees. Fifty thousand bees could be the population around fourth of July. It's hard even for a trained beekeeper like myself to find the queen. But I'm with practice, With practice, learn what to look for in your eyes, just kind of hone in on different characteristics of that hive that seemed to help the queen zoom into focus. You would think the crown and the scepter would give her away, right. I was
going to say, train on where's Waldo books in the off season? If you know that's funny, But you know I really trained on is my indoor observation hive where I have a tube where the bees can fly in and out of the house through the wall. I'd never I would never cut a hole in my house for anything, but I did for a tube of bees. I love it anyway. When when our kids were little, my son and I used to sit one on each side of the observation. We'd race thee
could you know, we play games with our kids like that. We'd race the su you could find the queen the first, and then we'd sit there for a while and we'd say switch and we'd both switch sides and look again. So that trained my eyes to look for the queen. And you know what's interesting. Kids can find a queen easier than almost anybody. When I need to find a queen bee, I'd bring one of my kids out to the r because they just I don't know if their minds focus better because they're
not so full of adult clutter. I just don't. I don't know what it is, but it's amazing. That is interesting, don So. June is a National Pollinator Month and we focus on pollinators in the landscape during the month of June. Any favorites as far as flowers are concerned, you know, we talked about the flower fidelity in your opinion and in your work with honey bees. Any favorites during the month of June that you want to point
out. Definitely it would be in the clover families. And I know that Clover's not a proven winner, right, I love it too, and the beehive. It's a proven winner to be because when the clover starts to bloom, that's when honey production really kicks in. We've got so many types of clover. The white Dutch, the all psych looks like white Dutch, except it's got a per pinkish hue to it. Now, right now, the
yellow sweet clover is blooming. You want to look it up. You can see how that grows on kind of a stem and that that will bloom every other year. The first year it grows and it doesn't bloom it and it quote unquote dies, but from that same root system it grows again the next year and then it blooms, gets pollinated and produces by any Is that what we call that? Correct? Yes? Correct? Okay, good. Sometimes I've mispronounced that like bi annual. But it's by any all, isn't it.
So after the yellow sweet clover comes the king of all and that's the white sweet clover. It's very similar to the yellow but it's it's more prolific. The white sweet clover is and that is a mat for honey bees. And it blooms in June late from mid June till mid July, right during peak honeybee population and the warmest time of the year or the best. It's not the warmest time of year, but it's a good warm time of year, so we could a lot of honey bees flying and producing honey like crazy.
I love that with clover. You know, if I was to do marketing for the honey people, I would say, June, it ain't over until it's clover. Oh, that's right, right, And they said honey. Yeah, And the clover like white Dutch blooms from mid May all the way to the beginning of September. I love that. Bird's foot tree foil is another one that I really really like. Now I have to ask you,
do you are these planted? Did you deliberately plant these around your property or are the ubiquitous enough just surrounding your property that you don't need to do that and the bees can go out and forage for them on their own. Typically the honey bees travel from their hives about two miles, so it's not what I plant in my yard that's going to give me honey. It's what, as you said, is ubiquitous in the area, and there is typically
in the West Michigan in Michigan in general. Usually there's enough stuff blooming in your area, enough weeds blooming that they're going to do okay. And when we add to that with our plantings and our gardens and everybody does that, it's just bonus. Definitely. Don it's June, soon will be July. Do bees like hot weather? They do. Yes, They're a tropical insect, so it's natural for them to be active and hot weather. The long days give them good flight hours per day. So this is prime time.
And I love this time of year in the beehive because the verroa light which is a pest to the honeybees. The verroamite population hasn't grown enough that it's negatively impacting the hives too much, or we as beekeepers have taken care of the roamites enough to keep their population low. But some of the pathogens that affect honeybees kind of linger in the background at this time of year because the honeybee population is growing faster than the pathogen can grow to do its damage.
So after fourth of July, after mid late July, that's when we see the path the bad stuff taking over a little bit more. So this is a fun time of year to be a beekeeper. You might say it's a sweet spot. It's the sweet spot perfect. I love it. I love that perfect way to cap off this segment. He's all the buzz, Don snewink Thorn apple Woodlands. Don. I always get inspired when I talk to you, and I love your enthusiasm. Our website, right is Thornapplewoodlands dot
com. Is that correct? That is correct and people are welcome to look at it. Check out my blog, check out the YouTube channel. It's been fun adding lots of new material to the YouTube channel lately. And of course we'll put that link also at our website, Gardeningsimplified on air dot com, you'll be able to link to Don and yes, go to his website. I just love looking at pictures of you out there at work, Don, and appreciate everything you do. And thanks for joining us again on the
Gardening Simplified show. And I thank you so much for the opportunity. It's always a thrill to be with you folks. Thank you so much, Don, Thank you. Don. Well, there's nothing like a guest like Don where you learn something new every time they come on. More than one thing. Oh my word, I have to behive myself when he's on, cause you just get excited thinking about flowers, plants and bees. Yes, I certainly am. So thank you Don, thank you Rick, thanks Adrian as
always, thank you so much to all of you for listening. I hope we have a great week ahead.