What doesn't mean when the plant tag says partsun, part shade or sun and shade. How literally should we take these recommendations? Let us brighten your day, enlighten you on the subject here on the Gardening Simplified show coming to you from Studio A at Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs with Stacy Hervella me Rick Weistanar engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, Stacey, it's quite easy to understand full sun for a plant or a shade recommendation. I think I can handle
that pretty well. But when they start talking about parts son and part shade, first of all, isn't part son and part shade the same thing? And this is coming from a guy who can confuse etymology with entomology, which really bugs me. So I guess let's start here. What kind of shade are we talking about? Structural shade, filtered shade, seasonal shade, parts sun, part shade. Aren't they the same thing? I mean, I know I'm getting caught up in the weeds here, Stacy, but kind of
tough for me to figure those out. Well, you and a lot of people. I mean, I've definitely heard from a lot of people that they get confused. So let's just get this right, you know, get this out of the way right off the bat. Parts sun and part shade are
interchangeable, okay, at least for us. So if speaking for proven winters colored choice shrubs, the way that we use those on our plant tags is interchangeable, and we specifically opt to use parts sun over part shade because the sun in terms of the plant performance, is the more important part, not the shade from when it comes to most shrubs. So we use parts sun and what we mean that to what we intend that to mean is four to six hours of sun each day or filtered light all day. Okay, does
that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. You know. My approach always has been, Okay, if this is a sun plant and the tag says it's a sun plant, don't put it in the shade and vice versa. But as far as part shade or part sun is concerned, I don't know. I just kind of I just kind of wing it. So, but that description is good as a matter of fact. In the Gardening Simplified Catalog, you're right, it says full sun six hours of bright sun
each day. Part shade is foward to six hours of sun daily or filtered light throughout the day. And then shade is less than four hours of sun a day, and I guess that that's a pretty good way to define it. So again, in my mind, partsun and part shade are the same thing for to six hours of sun per day. And yet what time of the day? Right? Yeah, absolutely, because I think the afternoon sun
off you, is hotter than the morning sun. The morning sun is great because it dries the dew off the foliage of roses or plants, helps to decrease disease. And then the next question that comes to mind, Stacey, is how do you figure out how much sun you have? Because most people do not have a light meter in their back pocket, right, And even if they did, light meters don't just say okay, you're reading is full
sun. They gave you it in lumens, and no one to my knowledge has done the translation work to say, okay, this many lumens over the course of the day in a spot equals this much light. But I do think that there is a simple way that one can test it, and that is if you can stand being out there for certain parts of the day, then that is shady and if it's hot, if you go out on a hot summer day and it feels real hot and sunny, if it's like that
most of the day, you've probably got sun. If it's like that part of the day, you probably got parts on. If it's like that, none of the day, you got shade. So what we're saying is that this part sun, part shade, sun shade, filtered shade, whatever is somewhat of an inexact science, like the hardiness zone map. It isn't an exact science. And you know, that's why we often say that gardening is art and science, because there is a little bit of that instinct intuition that
goes along with it. But you know, for us, you know, being a company that introduces new plants and writes tags, what we're trying to provide is the conditions under which you will see results similar to the photos on the plant tag, because that's what we really want people to have. I mean, if they're buying a plant we've sold them on the plant tag those pretty pictures, they're like, yes, I want this, I want it to look like this in my yard. And while that plant might be able
to survive in more shade, more sun. Whatever that looks like it won't perform, like we have set up your expectations to perform. And that's what's really important to us, is how can you recreate the conditions for this success home. So the plant tag is there to help the plant thrive, not survive, yes, exactly, not just survive, survive, thank you,
important word to interject, not just survive exactly. You know, I think I was thinking about this subject, and I was thinking that if I were a plant, I think the tag that they would make for me and staple on the lapel of my jacket here would be sun. Because I love the sun. I love summer. And as a matter of fact, I wrote you a little limb a rick about that because I'm really popping the vitamin D right now. I can't wait for spring. I'm really lacking sunlight. It's
making me quite uptight. I'll pop some Vitamin D and drink some hot green tea and maybe I'll be more polite. My houseplants are experiencing depression. It's causing a slow digression, and so I have conceded that therapy is needed with a sun lamp in her vengean. So we're a lot like plants. Stacy, Well, I have a question for you. Yeah, So if you're talking about the plant tag you're wearing and it's full sun, what's your hardiness own? I gotta be a Zone nine or I think you're gonna go I'm
living zero coal tolerance. It's something else now, of course, that does bring up a good point, and that is the sun tags in the shade tags sun or shade or part shade. Uh, it's going to be a little different dependent on where you are in the country also because full sun in Georgia is going to be very different from Toronto, Canada. Absolutely, and
you know what you started talking about this earlier. I think it's a really really good point for us here in Michigan, most of the Midwest and certainly the North, that time of the day that you get the sun is less important. We don't have. I mean, we might have a couple of very very hot days, but for the most part, our afternoons are not
scorching or outside the realm of what most plants can take. But absolutely, when you get into those warmer climates, I would say basically, you know, from Virginia south Ish over west to Oklahoma, that afternoon sun can really change the plant's ability to thrive in that area because it is so hot and at that point you've had hours of accumulated heat, and so how stressed is the plant getting And so in those cases, you know, it does become
much more important to pay attention to those shade needs. And that's why plant light tolerances are typically listed as a range, and people often get confused, but you know, we can only have plant one plant tag for each plant. If we had them for every region, it would, trust me, it would be a mess. As nice as it would be, it would not work out as well as it might seem. And so we put that
range so that people can, you know, make the right decisions. And I say this often, but it's why shopping at a local garden center is so important, especially if you aren't familiar with what you're doing or looking at new plants. The local expertise in what that plant will tolerate, how it will actually thrive and not just survive, is crucial because they're the real experts.
And I think Stacy's going to take us down this road and plants on trial because two plants that I think of as we talk about this topic, one is hydranges because I personally believe hydranges need a lot of sun to bloom well. And yet some people stacy consider them to be a shade plant. Yes, I'd say they are widely considered to be a shade plant, and generally I would say that is a not an appropriate assumption exactly. So we'll get into that and then for me personally, as a matter of fact,
I was just chatting with Kevin Hurd from Proven Winners about this. I remember Colius when I got when I first got into the industry over forty years ago, Colius was strictly a shade plant and it would be blooming its head off by July. Now, via genetics and plant breeding, the Colius really doesn't put its energy into blooms and we can have it right out there in the hot sun. The label or the tag on Colius has changed through the years.
Yeahs has changed, and people sometimes do need to reconsider all of their assumptions about that because of plant breeding. Yes, so take it with a grain of salt. Apply the same principle we did with the heartiness zone map, and that is we're talking about ranges. We're talking about in the ballpark, but at the end of the day. Regardless of what the tag says, the proof is in the pudding and the plant will quickly show you whether
or not it's happy in the light environments. It will and read the tag and read the labels. Plants on trial Coming up next, Stacy will introduce us to a plant and will continue our talk on this sunshade part shade filtered shade stuff right after this. Stay tuned Proven Winter'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. Creeting's Gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. We're going to put a plan on trial. But as is often the case, I have a few last words for our previous topic. Great so do I good perfect great minds. You know, we gave people a lot of good information about light, but we didn't really talk about what to look for. If a plant is not in light that you know that would make it happy.
So if a plant is in too much shade, you're going to see a lack of flowers. You're going to see dull colored leaves, and the plant is going to be more sparse and open and not unless dense and rounded. Those are typical signs that the plant is in too much shade. But flowering, I would say, is probably one of the biggest, and fruiting if it's a fruiting plant, know, if it's in too much sun, what you're going to see is basically an inability to keep it watered no matter
what you do. Now, don't get that confused with overwatering, because an overwatered plant and an underwatered plant both wilt but hard to keep it watered. Browning around the leaf edges and the leaf tips, and the plant just kind of looking sort of beige and sad. You know, it's hard to explain unless you've seen it, but they do take on this kind of like bleached sad look, a bleached look and burnt along the margins of the foliage.
Yes, you're gonna see that. I wanted to mention. If you go to proven winters dot com and you're looking for a plant, let's say you're looking for a hydrange. There's a icon on the website that says light level and you can click on that. Now here's the choices they give you full shade, part shade to shade, part shade sun, or shade part sun to sun sun. Yeah, they really break it. It's a little over complicated, and I think there's a little bit of a lack of consistency since
many different people contribute to that website. But there's lots of other places to find out any For the most part, anytime you find out a light requirement of a plant genus of say Salva or whatever, you're going to be able to extrapolate that to most of the other members of well and working in the garden center. I've got to say that the tags for proven Winners Color Choice
shrubs are fabulous. I mean, when you're out there working with customers, anyone, whatever their level of gardening ability is, but you open up one of those tags, you pretty much find what you need to. Well, that's what we try to do. We want people to be successful, we really do. And last word on this before we move on to today's plan on trial. If your plant is not in the right amount of light, you can move it. Yes, so it's not a forever commitment, unless
it's a tree, and then you've got bigger problems literally and metaphorically. But you know, for the most part, you can absolutely move that plant. Early spring is a great time to do that. You can even do that through spring or in fall, whenever the plant is dormant. So it's not a you know, life sentence if you have misplanted your plant in terms of light conditions, so you know, obviously all of the plants in the proven
Winter's Color Choice line need light. Plants need light to photosynthesize. It is a crucial part, although often omitted, part of the photosynthetic equation. You can look it up if you are curious. They don't always put light, but the photosynthetic reaction must happen in the presence of light or it doesn't occur. It's incredibly important element. Yes, so some people will skip that.
One will write light over the arrow that shows the conversion. But now I'm just being pedantic and I'm trying to say something really important about a plant here, and the plant on trial today is fairy trail bride hydrangea. Wow, beautiful, Now you call that you said I would probably pick a hydranga because they are a plant that is often very confusing for people in terms of light. Now Here in our trial gardens in West Michigan, we grow the majority
of our hydrangeas in full sun. So that is to say, again at least six hours of bright sun each day. Now, that said, our hydrangeas are mulched within an inch of their life. We have a very nice thick blanket of mulch over them, which they love because they have shallow roots and they are irrigated, so those two things can help a plant take more
sun. But that said, in a milder climate like this, where our summers you know, again, we might have a few days in the hundreds in you know, over a hundred, but they're few and far between. For the most part, our summers are you know, around eighty five degrees eighty three eighty five degrees. Now, if you live in the south, yes, absolutely, your hydrange is going to need shade in the afternoon because for all of their wonderful qualities, hydrangeas are just not that efficient at using
water. And when they are in a very hot climate and they're in a lot of sun, they're going to lose water faster than they can replace it. And you're going to have a wilted hydrangea all the time, which you know is fine short term, but long term we're just kind of like, why am I growing this sad looking thing because it's moping all the time? Yes, not a moped, A moped, my moped. That was a good one. I'm writing that one down, all right, you can use
that one, Okay, thanks, But this today's plan on trial. Fairy trail Bride hydrangea is uh. It is a plant that has really kind of opened my eyes to the fact that a plant light needs can be about more than just the number of hours of sunlight they need for successful photosynthesis and health. Now, before I get into why that is, I want to kind of paint a picture of fairy trail Bride hydrange for you. It's a newer
hydrangea. You may have heard of it. It was originally introduced in Europe as Runaway Bride hydrangea and one best in show at the Chelsea Flower Show in twenty eighteen. People went bananas for it. They kept saying, you guys going to have this in the US. Well, it is finally here. It's sold under the name Fairy trail Bride Hydrangea because we felt like Runaway Bride was a little bit depressing. Speak now or forever, hold your peace,
and you know it's not a runaway plant. It's actually a very lovely plant. It's a different type of hydrangea. It's related to big leaf hydrangea hydrangel Macrophylla oka, but we call it a cascade hydrangea because it has a very different habit. So most hydrangs are really rounded, fairy trail Bride is very horizontal and the branches almost have like a garland or cascating type effect. So
it's very, very different, really beautiful in the landscape. It's perfect if you can plant it, like near a wall or someplace where this unique habit is really going to shine. And to make it even better, the flowers are set at every single leaf note or where the leaves meet the stems on the plant, so when it's in flower, it is just a mass of blooms. It flowers so much almost completely obscures the foliage. And this is actually one of the few, if not the only, spring blooming hydrangees.
Huh. Now, a lot of people get viburnums confused because viburnums are very much spring blooming and people think they're hydranges. Fairy Trail Bride's coming along to mess with everybody's expectations by blooming in late spring, but it is actually truly a high range, so late spring, so if you're having a late May early June wedding, it may be ideal. It would almost be certainly be
ideal, Okay, at least here in Michigan. And it does get its name Fairy Trail Bride or Runaway Bride because it has beautiful, pure white flowers. They are lace cap flowers, but there are mophead versions that will be on the market in the Fiy Trail series next season. So exciting, very exciting, but you're probably wondering. Okay, get to the point about the light. This show is about light, and I have been enlightened, as it were about this plant. So when we first introduced it, we sold
it as hardy to USDA's one seven, which is not very hardy. Most hydrange of macrophillas and relatives are hardy to at least USDA Zone five, if not usda'son four. And a lot of people were very disheartened by that because
it's a beautiful plant and they were super duper excited about it. But the reason that we were more conservative about its heartiness is because it does bloom earlier and so it has those flower buds on the plant in late winter and spring, and a lot of times here in Michigan will get those frosts, you know, late April through Mother's Day. Seems like it never fails. We
have a frost on Mother's Day almost never fails. And so even though the plant could survive in terms of actually living in colder climates, what we were afraid of is that it wouldn't bloom well. And you know, we want people to be successful, so we're trying to give people the information they need to actually be successful well. Over the past couple of years, what we have learned, and this is very interesting, is that the plant is perfectly
hearty. And yes there is this issue of the earlier buds, but if it if you cite it in part sun or part shade, however you want to think about that. So we're going four to six hours of sun each day in this case, we want morning shade for this plant. We have found is that if you do get those frosts or freezes in spring, when
the plant is starting to leaf out and butt out. That that prevents the frost crystals from melting immediately as soon as the sun hits it, and that slower melting than it gets just by sort of gradually warming due to exposure of the warmer air temperature reduces or eliminates the damage to the flower bud tissue. That's fascinating, you know. I think about how in the nursery industry sometimes when we have those marginal frosty mornings or nights, will irrigate get a coat
of ice on the plants and allowed to nature to take its core. Yeah, so this is kind of the same concept. So we have changed the light recommendations on this plant and are specifically only recommending parts on or part shaped however you want to put it. But again I always go with parts shaite with parts sun, and we are specifically recommending that shade in the morning so that you can eliminate that dramatic melt of the ice crystals and damage to the
plant. And I think going with partsn as opposed to part shade is being positive. Yeah, and it's fuer letters. I like it. Letters. These things matter when you're designing to so shout out to our designer Shannon on that one. Another great thing about fairytrail Bride Hydrangea. It was developed by a gentleman named Ushio Sakazaki in Japan. And you may not have heard his name before, but if you have ever grown proven Winter's plants, you are
you have definitely grown his work. He is the breeder behind super Tunia, Vista Bubblegum. Oh really he is just and some Yeah, he is really just an absolute brilliant breeder. I'll put some links in the show notes at Gardening Simplified on air dot com so you can read more about how he managed
to basically revolutionize petunia breeding. He's also the breeder of blew my mind, of Volvulus, a plant that I really like you grow a couple of years in a row, Lemon Slice, super Bells, Lemon Slice, Caliber CoA, and a lot of the other Vista Bubblegum, super tun News and of course Fairy trail Bride Hydrangel because his true love is hydrangees. I'd love to meet him, Yeah, I would too, way to go. We'd have him on, but I don't know how confident he is in his English skills.
And there's also a twelve hour time difference, and I would not require him to join us at one am Japan time to join us on the show. So it's a really incredible plant. We're now saying it's hardy USA zone six to nine even five if you cite it carefully with all this information in mind, four to feet four foot tall and wide and really just an absolutely beautiful plant that everyone will make you well. Everyone will say, what in
the world is that I need to know? And now that everybody got a raise where we bumped up the hardiness zones a little bit, maybe you want to try it? Yeah, you definitely should. You can learn more at Gardening Simplified on air dot com. We're going to take a little break. When we come back, we're opening up the garden mail bag, so 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 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. Greeting's Gardening friends and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. It's my favorite time of the show where we answer gardening questions.
I love answering gardening questions, don't you. Yeah, it's fun when people like ask you to party or you know, like all right, well you better have a photo. But I do love it because I do get stumped. But I love when I'm stumped because that gives me like a new topic to explore. And I don't stay stumped for long, so that gets my stump of approval. Yeah, outstanding. Yeah, and I love it too because it reminds us we're all in the same boat. It's so true.
Yeah, I mean, when you ask something, there's almost certainly someone else out there going, oh, yeah, I've been wondering that too. So anyway, if you have a question for us, you can reach us at Gardensimplified on air dot com. You can also leave a YouTube comment. Adriana will pass those along to us. You can put it on Instagram. There's so many different ways to reach us. So if you have a question, do ask. Spring is coming very quickly. In fact, meteorological spring is
less than a month away. Yes, and I go by meteorological spring even though it's tough to pronounce. Well, you know, it makes sense. It's a very nice, tidy way to think about the season. So I feel you on that. So what's our first question? Rick? All Right, Trixie's got a timely question. At what points should gardeners fertilize their gardens in spring? Great question. My cool seasoned vegetables are not growing very well, so Trixi's in Zone nine A. The fifteen day forecast shows highs in
the upper sixties with overnight lows in the mid forties to low fifties. My average last frost is around March tenth. Also, will organic fertilizers such as aspoma start working now or do they require heat in order to release their goodness to my plants? Thanks for all you do. So I think you want
to live where Trixy is living. Yeahs like you're kind of climate there, So Tricksy, this is such a great question, and I feel like there's a couple different components to it. So you have the vegetable issue, and fertilizing cool season vegetables is obviously going to be very different than just doing regular garden maintenance fertilization, And I don't know what cool seasoned vegetables you're growing, but certainly if you have unusually cool temperatures, they are going to grow a
lot more slowly. And that's just you know, a simple fact of them not being able to metabolize as effectively as they do in spring. So even if you're growing cool season vegetables, they're not going to grow like a vegetable at you know, the height of the season. So I would recommend that you continue to fertilize those, you know, using a liquid fertilizer like you would your your summer vegetables. But I would say probably looking at like once
a month instead of every week or every two weeks. What do you think? Yeah, you know, the the approach that I take, Stacey, is I look more so at soil temperature than air temperature. So Trixie's talking about frost or temperatures in the upper sixties, but when that soil temperature gets to fifty five sixty degrees, if they're sufficient moisture in the soil, then
I think fertilizer can be effective. Yeah, definitely, definitely. So speaking of fertilizer being effective at certain points, so organic fertilizers like a spoma, which as you know, we both love. We've talked about them many times.
They don't require heat in order to release, but unless the planet is actively metabolizing, they could release their nutrients through the process of weathering, which is just to say, the acids in the soil, rainfall, water worms, and other microorganisms, all of that working together to break down the grain of the fertilizer and make the nutrients available to your plant. That will happen
pretty much as long as the ground is not free. But again, if it's releasing your nutrients those nutrients and the plant is not actively metabolizing to take them up, then what can happen is the fertilizer can run off and it's just a waste and potentially polluting, or by the time the plant is actively metabolizing, it's not that the fertilizers the nutrients are already gone. So I do recommend going a little bit closer to the growing season. So I think
probably for you Trixy now ish mid February should be fine. But the thing to consider with requiring heat for release is time release fertilizers. So like your Ozma coat, Proven Winners has a continuous release fertilizer like that, anything that's that's engineered into a prill and intended it with. If it says something like fertilizers for six months, that is a time release fertilizer, and those do release their nutrients based on temperature, and they calculate that range of time based
on temperature a certain temperature. So if you live in a warm climate like Trixy does, and it's a feeds for six months, but yet you have a much warmer season than what was calculated, it's not going to actually provide nutrients for six months. They will actually go out sooner. Yeah, which is true, And I'm glad you brought that up because these prills are highly effective and great. They take some of the guests work out of it.
Ideal for containers or if you're a container growing some of your vegetables are flowers ideal and for folks who are keeping score at home. Stacy mentioned the Aspoma fertilizers, So those are the tone fertilizers like garden tone or tomato tone or plant tone. Yeah, love that Rose tone is my go to for all shrub fertilizer needs. So you can keep that in mind if anyone's wondering that. What's our next question? Uh, Yolanda writes to us, First,
I like to say I love your show. Thank you very mulch. You guys are fun and super informative. My husband and I have finally bought our own home, and I get to spend lots of time outside gardening. I read books watch videos like yours to learn, but there's nothing like hands on. You're right about that. I don't use any chemicals, but I can't seem to find a solution for the white fly problem in this particular garden. I've never seen anything like it. They congregate on the salvia, tomatoes,
even the mint. What's going on? What can I do? I've tried four seasons, but they seem to be multiplying each year. Help with numerous exclamations, Yorlanda clearly needs some help it. You know, Yorlanda is in a unique situation because most people think of white flies as just a greenhouse pest. Yes, so it can be very difficult to find good information about managing white flies outdoors. And they are typically an issue of warmer, milder climates
than us here in Michigan. But you can have them in Michigan. I had terrible white flies on my tomatoes last year, which must have certainly come from the greenhouse, but they just didn't go away, and so some of my tomatoes they really didn't do well, and I was just very disappointed in that. So it can happen, and if you have a mild enough climate, then they can keep overwintering and not die out. So most of the
control recommendations you're going to see do indeed recommend using something chemical. But I am going to put an alternative out there, and that is that white flies have a number of natural enemies, things like parasitic wasps, lace wings, which almost every garden in the US has a good population of lace wings, and all of these beneficial insects. It's primarily the larval stage of the insect,
or the baby as it were, that controls the pests. And if you want them to be in your garden, you need to make the adults feel at home. And what that means is planting more flowers. And what a great recommendation for pest control other than to plant more flowers. So look for flowers, especially small flowers, because these insects tend to be quite tiny, so they're not really necessarily going to make use of like a rose. They like things that are in the daisy family, which each flowers made up
of a lot of little individual florets, you know, yarrow. Also in the daisy family. Sweet Alyssum is another good example zinias. Yeah, anything with that compound center and smaller flowers plant more that will definitely encourage those beneficial insects and they should take care of it on their own. And another thing you can do is if you have a really badly infected plant, part go out there early in the morning and just snip it off and throw it away
exactly because they do tend to congregate the white flies. And I think great point, Stacy, and I think you look for that and you clip off some of those really infected foliage leaves. But the other thing to do is to inspect the underside foliage. That's where you want to attack. And Yolanda, if you decide to spray, I've had some success using insecticidal soap. And if you use insect decidal soap, the key element there is not simply
to sprits the plant. But again, you're gonna get dirty. Your knees are gonna get dirty, your hands are gonna get dirty, because you've got to get up under the plant. Now, that is one of those easier said than done things if I've ever heard one, and they're done that. But whether you are hand picking or spraying, do remember they are flies, so they like to fly up if they're disturbed. But if you go out there early in the morning, you'll get them before they wake up and you'll
have much better success. Sounds good. Ann has a question about a plant we love and is located in Ontario, Canada, zone five B and has two hellibor plants in a mostly dry, shady area. I only offer supplemental water when it hasn't rained for a week or two. They get about two hours of sunlight in the afternoon. They've been in the ground for two seasons, have not bloomed at all. Could you please advise what I should do
to get them to bloom. I have some hellibores in the same situation, and I find stacy that in dry shade I can grow hellibar foliage that they don't bloom. Well, yeah, they aren't a plant that particularly enjoys being stressed. I mean most plants probably don't, but I very often stress my plants, and my helibores don't appreciate it. So yeah, I think that you know in and did include a photo which we'll put in our show notes.
Now looking at her garden, she has a beautiful planting of lungwart in aurelia, And these are plants that I think for them to do well, you know, definitely there must be some amount of water because they could take far less drought than the hellibor is. But one thing on helibores is a lot of people don't realize if you have seed grown helibores, they take a lot longer to get to a blooming age than tissue cultured helibores. So if you don't know, or the plants are smaller, they just need to be
more mature. Tissue culture helibores, you'll pay more for them, but they'll flower much faster. And in dry shade. I've had success by simply adding organic matter. So if you can add organic matter, that's going to make a difference. Yeah, even mulch. Yeah, up and have faith. This should hopefully be their year. If not, well what else can you do? At least they have good foliage, which they're earning their keep. We're going to take a little bit of a 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 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.
It's time for branching news and Stacey, it's well super Bowl time and it causes me to think of the story of Sir Isaac Newton discovering gravity by having an apple fall on his head. Now, let me explain there's a lot of people who do not understand or know that there is a tool and instrument
around called the the cleg Impact soil tester. So this is a device where and the cleg hammer, so to speak, takes its name from Baden Clegg, who is an Australian engineer who dreamed up this device not with sports in mind, but basically foundations. And it's a hammer or a tool that drops weight like the apple on Sir Isaac Newton's head. That is alleged to have
happened to cause him to discover gravity. And that weighted hammer with a sensor on its nose drops from a tube on a defined height to the turf area or to the soil. And what it does is it measures the density of the soil. Now, how does this all tie into the Super Bowl? Well in the news this past week, the San Francisco forty nine ers made it to the site of the Super Bowl game and to practice, they get a field and they didn't like the condition of the field, And I guess
I can't blame them. Athletes have really concerns over how dense or compacted a soil is or how hard the turf is. Golfers do too, and so they use a cleg device to determine how compact or how hard the surface is. And there's your football lesson for this week. So did they do the cleg test to say, hey, this field won't work for us, we need a cleg of at least X number? Yes, they did. Isn't that any they travel with their own cleg hammer. That's a great question,
and it causes me to believe they do. They must somebody around has the cleg job drops the Sir Isaac Newton Apple and says this field isn't going to work. And of course, you know, high concern within the NFL and in football for things like concussions, and rightfully so, and so I'm just sharing this with you that there is such a thing as a cleg hammer and athletes have interest in it. Well, you know, I don't celebrate the Super Bowl. I celebrate the Superbowl. The Superbowl. And how did you
do that, Stacy Hi? You know, looking at pictures of owls and talking about owls and hoping to see an owl? You do bird watching on Super Sunday. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, hopefully you have some good snacks to go along with that. That's great, all right, boy, you are hot on the puns today. Superbowl is It's a phenomenon. I love it, all right. Well, hey,
as long as we're on the subject of wild animals. A power outage affecting thousands of customers in downtown Toronto was caused by an unlucky raccoon that wandered into the wrong place. Utility officials say so seven thousand downtown customers in Toronto were out of power last week. They did determined that the raccoon had made contact with their equipment at a downtown Toronto station. Uh, that poor raccoon. What is with the raccoons in Toronto. It's a phenomenon. It is a
phenomenon. It's like there's a whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, And I have tons of great raccoon puns, but they're all in the trash, so I won't share them with you. Here's a great story. I love this. A two hundred and eighty five year old lemon. Oh can you imagine that? A fruit? Oh? No, I can't. A two hundred and eighty five year old lemon was found in the back of an old cabinet drawer and was auctioned for one thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars in England.
So they had a nineteenth century cabinet that was brought to an auction house by a family who said it belonged to a deceased uncle, and a specialist was photographing the cabinet for sale when the lemon was discovered in the back of a drawer. The fruit was inscribed with the message and it was dated November fourth, seventeen thirty nine, and so the auction house thought, all right,
let's auction off this old lemon. They got one thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars for I. You know, I don't know that the lemons should have been separated from the cabinet. Tell you the truth. Good point. Well, the cabinet meanwhile, sold for forty bucks. What Yeah, the cabinet sold for forty bucks, but the lemon sold for one thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars. Doesn't surprise me. Lemons are simply the zest. And as far as this lemon from seventeen let's see, it's November four,
seventeen thirty nine, I say, bitter late than never. Indeed, yeah, ifty remark greck. Most kitchens around the world will likely have a jar of papri cut in the spice rack. But here's an interesting thing. Most people have no idea where prika comes from. They do not, and I will admit I didn't either. Well, there has been a bit going around on social media. It just topolic recently, so exactly, and I
did. I have to admit I didn't know. Now, I didn't think that there was some paprika tree out there, of course, Okay, but when push comes to shovel. I really hadn't taken the time to think about it. And essentially it's dried and crushed red bell peppers and other peppers. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people were surprised to discover that it is comprised primarily of your standard red bell pepper. Well, paprika was invented so that they could liberally coat it all over the top of deviled eggs, which
are about one of the most miserable rotten things you could eat. Controversial, You'll never eat one, yes on super Bowel Sunday and I will not be having devil days on su perb owl Sunday. Wow. Yeah, what does the paprika say when you knock on the door? Hold on? I'm Koman. I figured I threw a bit and I love this story from Bellevue, Washington. An inert rocket of the type used to carry a nuclear warhead has been found in the garage of a home of a deceased resident in Washington State.
So the Bellevue police responded. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is, as you know, one of my New Year's resolutions was to finally get my shed cleaned out. And when you clean out a garage or a shed. You never know what you're gonna find. And in this case with this gentleman, he had a rocket in his garage his shed. The bomb squad members inspected the rusting object and found it was a Douglas air to Genie. The previous designation was an MB one, which is an unguided air to
air ride bocket that is designed to carry a nuclear warhead. Oh dear, and it was just sitting in his grudge. Yeah, he probably planned to do something with it, but it never took off. So can you believe that when you clean the tool shed you never know what you're going to find. And then let's finish this off here. I was so overjoyed some time ago when punk Satani Phil did not see his shadow? Right I did he see his shadow? He didn't see his shadow. So spring is coming.
It's an opposite of what you would think it should be. Okay, So he didn't see a shadow, so we're going to have an early spring. This groundhog tradition is thought to have originated in the eighteen hundreds. But why should Pennsylvania have all the fun? So I just want to share with you that across the country there are other methods of determining whether or not it will be an early spring. Oregon has the Fufu hedgehog, Florida has a burrowing
owl. Oh yeah, North Carolina has Penny the Squirrel. New York has Kluck Satawny Henrietta the Chicken. Connecticut has Scrambled the Duck. Texas has b Cave Bob the armadillo, and Oregon also has Stumptown Phil the Beavers. So punk Satawani Phil has some competition for this prognostication of the spring weather. They should create an event where they all come together in cell tickets. I would see that. Yes, that sounds kind of amazing. I love it.
I love it. Hey, today's show has been a kick in the plants, and happy trellis to you until we wead again. Thank you Stacey, thank you Rick, thank you Adriana Robinson, and thank you to you all of you who watch on YouTube, listen to our podcast, listen to us on radio, of course, our website Gardening Simplified on Air dot Com, look for us on Instagram, and for all of that, we say thank you very much. Have a great week.