Reading's gardening friends, and welcome to the Gardening Simplified Show. We are coming to you from Studio A here at Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. I'm Stacey Hervella and I am joined in studio by the one and only Rick Weiss and of course our engineer and producer Adriana Robinson. And no, you are not imagining it. It is the beginning of this episode of Gardening Simplified. And we've switched roles a little bit because we have got breaking news. It's not
branching news. It's breaking news, true breaking it is. It's breaking news. Well, we're a little bit late, a little late on the uptake here because it did happen about a month ago, but it's the biggest news to hit horticulture since twenty twelve, and that is that there is a new USDA Hardiness Zone map. I remember the turmoil it caused in two thousand and two and two thy twelve or somewhere in that area. And here we go again. Yes, so there is a new map if you haven't heard,
and it has been everywhere. It is not causing nearly the consternation that the twenty twelve map caused. And you know, looking into it a little bit more, I found some interesting history as to why the twenty twelve map caused so many problems, and that kind of leads into many of the changes that we're seeing here in the new twenty twenty three maps. So before twenty twelve, there had not been a new USDA Hardiness Zone map since nineteen ninety.
Wow. Yeah, so that was a long span of time. So nowadays the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, who administers these maps along with the Prison Working Group in Oregon, they use a bunch of weather data. Now they're committed to doing it roughly every ten years to make sure everything is accurate. But at the time, no, they hadn't had a new map since nineteen ninety. So from nineteen ninety to twenty twelve, nothing new.
And the nineteen ninety map, which you know everybody was kind of basing their horticultural decisions on, was based on data from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six. A lot has changed since, A lot has changed, and so what what was happening? Of course, if you are old enough to remember the late nineteen seventies, and I was very young in the I remember
the late nineteen seventies, so it was very little. I was, you know, at the age where I would be like walking to school in the insanely freezing cold and heavy snow, and I remember, you know, snow days galore. So we had some unusually cold winters in the late nineteen seventies. So all of that time span from nineteen ninety to twenty twelve, those really unusually cold years in the nineteen seventies were kind of just dragging down everybody's
heartiness zone because it kind of skewed the data much colder. And so when they decided to introduce the new map in twenty twelve, they were using thirty years of data that took off those nineteen seventies years, and everybody freaked out in twenty twelve because it looks like they skyrocketed up in their zones, when in fact, all they did was just sort of change the view of the data that they were looking at. They just shifted it to more recent data.
So, Stacey, we're talking about the USDA Hardiness Zone map, and it's important to point out right at the top here, Essentially what we're talking about is the average minimum temperature on an annual basis. Yes, So that is what the USDA Hardiness Zone Map is based on, is the average minimum temperature. And this is actual air temperature. It's not windchill that an area
experiences. Again, it's an average, well, Stacey. So when we're talking about average minimum temperature, I watched the YouTube video where you explain the USDA Hardiness Zones, and I recommend to folks to go watch that video. It is a great explanation, Stacey, of why the USDA Hardiness Zone Map
is important to us. But within that video, you talked about the difference between Austin, Texas in Portland. I've been both places and yet on this map they have the same average minimum temperature, right, And so you're getting at probably my biggest pet peeve about the usc Hardiness Zone Map. It's the only system we have. It's not a perfect system, but it's the only
system we have, so we have to use it now. Because it's only based on the lowest temperature, it's not that useful for our friends and numerous listeners in warm climates because it's yes, cold is a very important measure of how how a plant will survive, but so is heat and so if you are living in a warmer climate, it's not really giving you any data to base that decision on. And you know, like Rick said in this video and of course put that in our show notes at Gardening Simplified on air dot
Com. Because it's based on the lowest minimum temperature. Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon are both considered USDA Zone nine. But again, you don't have to, as you'll hear me say in the video, you don't have to have visited either of those places, but certainly if you have, you will know how different sure those climates are. And if it's just based on how cold they get, so they're equally as cold, but they certainly aren't
equally as warm. They certainly aren't equal in the amount of time that they have their very hot weather. You know, in Austin, you're gonna have well over one hundred days of eighty six degree plus temperatures, whereas in Portland, Oregon, you know you're probably going to have you know, ten to twenty at most. So's it's the only system we have, but it really doesn't give us the full picture of what we can grow and how it will
survive. And if you try to grow something that's thriving in Austin in Portland. Because you're just looking at that Zone nine designation, it's not going to give you great success. And that's that's a problem for gardeners, and I think, well, that's where people like you and I come in. Rick.
It's also where things like your local garden center really are important. It's one of the reasons I think is so important, especially if you are a beginning gardener, to shop locally, because you know, not only are they experts in what will grow, but they're generally stocking, especially in the perennials, strubs, shrubs, and tree section, they're only stocking plants that will
actually grow in that area. Because I don't want you to be unhappy, and you know, come back and complain right exactly, And so I typed in my zip code and I moved from A six A to a six B. Yep, so here on the lake shore we're now six B and within your video. And again I recommend you watch this video because Stacey does such a great job with it. It really doesn't have that much of an impact on the plants or the plants that you can put in the ground, but
Stacy psychologically for me, it has people impact. Yeah, because you're a little bit closer to Zone seven, right, I'm a little more darerent. So you know, I'm glad you brought up the A and B thing because that's another really interesting thing that came out starting in the twenty twelve map and the reason that so the hardiness zones are divided in ten degree temperature and ten degree fahrenheit temperature increments, so the difference between Zone six is ten degrees colder
than USDA Zone seven. But in the twenty twelve map they introduced these A and B hardiness zones. And the reason that they did that is because the twenty twelve map was the first one that was based on geoinformational technology, so they were able to get so much more detail on where temperatures were being recorded and observed, and that is why they were able to get to that more granular level of an A and B within a hardiness zone. So that started
in twenty twelve, and of course it's continuing now. And so there's a five degree difference between the A and B part of a zone, so it's kind of like the halfway point between the ten degrees between each zone. So with more data, better data. Within your video, you also point out there were more stations. Yes, there's there's better data now, Yes, much more data, so more specific because they're using different geographical mapping systems to
map that data to our actual geography. And the twenty twenty three map is based on data from almost double the number of weather stations that there were in the twenty twelve map. So you know, I think people really freaked out with a twenty twelve map because there was such a huge difference from where they had been, But that map was essentially antiquated. So now here we are with the twenty twenty three map, differences are mostly subtle. People have either
stayed the same or like us, gone up half a zone. And another thing that I say in the video, which is so important for people to understand, is just because your hardiness zone may have changed, it doesn't change the hardiness of the plants themselves, so that system is still the same. Basically the key that everything is the plants are tested against that's the same. So you can just kind of look at that and maybe now experiment with growing
something a little bit hardier. But you know, I think that gardners have who really like plants, they tend to take a more experimental approach anyway, and I know I do, and I was excited. I was ready to plant bougainvilia and olander here a mission. Well, now that might be a little bit of a stretch. Now you're talking about zone nine zon ten stuff,
but certainly you know I've had success with zone seven stuff. We had a question the other week about figs, which I've grown very successfully here in my backyard. So again, it doesn't tell us the whole story. It gives us a starting point for understanding what we can grow. And then with that starting point, we can start as gardeners to consider what are the conditions in our yard? Do we have snow coverage when it gets to that lowest
minimum temperature? How long does that last? All of these other factors which again the USC Heartinesszone map doesn't cover. But that's sort of the art of gardening. It kind of the the USC heart Ones zone map gives us the science of gardening, and then all of that art stuff really comes from you and your lived experience as a gardener. And so again it's just a guideline, it's just a suggestion, and how risk averse you are. That is a very good point. I know as gardeners, I tend to be more
risk positive you as well. But there's lots more to learn about the USD Hardiness zone system. Do check it out. We're going to put links on our show notes so that you can find out what your hardiness zones actually is, if it's changed or not, and you can let us know on the comments on our YouTube. And while you're there, check out our video on the USDA Hardiness Zones. So listen, We're gonna take a little bit of a break and when we come back, Rick has got plants on trial,
so please stay tuned. Proven Winners 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 in the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, coming to you from Studio A here at Beautiful Proven Winners Colored Choice Shrubs is time. Four plants on trial and Stacy's given
me the keys to the car. Oh boy, we swopped cars today, we did and I get to pick a plant, and the plant, of course I'm gonna pick is Blue Didley chaste tree Vitex agnes castis, which is a mouthful, but it is one of my favorite plants. And one of the reasons that I love Vitex and Blue Diddley is the fact that in summer, to me, I'm not saying to you, I think to some other people it would it smells like vix vapo rub and that causes me to think
back on my childhood days. As a matter of fact, Mom would fix everything with four things vix Vapo rub, baking soda, saltine, crackers, and ginger ale. Those were the four go to things. And even today I love ginger ale. I love a drink like Werners, and when I drink it, people look at me and say, what's wrong with you? Do you feel sick? And I'm like, no, I enjoy it. But that aroma of vix vapo rub on this plant. But beautiful flowers attracts
pollinators. So the plant of the day, the plant on trial is Blue Didley chased tree Vitex agnes castis. So just remember Blue Diddley. Now I'm going to assume stacy that the name of the plant is derived from the famous guitarist Bo Diddley, and assuming that I looked it up, his real name was Otha Ellis Bates or Elias Otha Baits, so I can see why his
friends picked Bo Diddley. Good choice. Yes, so it is named for Bo Diddley, and also because the flowers are blue, and because Vitex blooms later in the season when people are in the garden center in spring most people are shopping, then they wouldn't see the flowers. So we really wanted to get that term blue in there so that people would, you know, when it's still an attractive plant when it's not in flower has very very handsome foliage.
But you know, people don't necessarily have the confidence to say, oh, you know, I'm sure this is going to look amazing in August, which is, you know, when it blooms for us. So it is that now I will confess I strongly wanted to call this plant. Ain't misbehaving. I want to hear this story. Yeah, and so well. I love the artist Fats Waller. He is just one of my all time favorite singers in the entire world, and he is the one who originally did ain't
misbehave and and then Louis Armstrong famously covered it. But so I love the song, and chaste Tree, of course does refer to chastity, and I kind of liked that little play on words. It's memorable, it's cute, But that is one I lost. Still a little bitter about it. Still try to suggest it now and then for certain plants. But blue dittaally it is, and that, you know, like I said, for the reason of it not typically blooming when people are in the garden center, I can
see it. Wow. Interesting. Yeah, So Vitex is known as chaste tree or to be chased, And there's a lot of different roads that I could go down here, and I'm not going to do it because this show is rated G for general audiences, actually rated G for gardening, so I won't go down that road. However, the seeds or the fruit pods were used by monks to put out the fire fulfill their vows of chastity. I mean, I'm not going to go any further than that, am I correct?
That is the legend. Whether it was effective, I could not say. Well, here's the thing. One of the reasons for talking about Vitex today and Blue Diddley, is that we're talking about hardiness zones. Yes, and I yeah, And when I first got into the industry, we viewed Vitex as a solidly zoned six plant. Now I looked at the Gardening Simplified Catalog and it's listed USDA six, but then behind that in parentheses it has five B the parentheses, So basically what we use that to indicate, and
we aren't the only company that does this. You'll see this on other plants as well, to indicate that it will be okay in Zone five B with in a more protected area or if you are able to protect it. So it's probably hearty, but it's not going to be one of those plants that you can just set in the ground and just, you know, hope it does okay. If you're in a colder area, you're just going to want to be a little bit more deliberate about where you plant it, maybe in
a more protected spot. Certainly it's going to need good drainage, which is a huge part of this. Really, anywhere that you can be successful with butterfly bush, you will be successful with Vitechs as well. But you're right, I mean, it's a very well known, very common plant in the South, and for years we would have people writing us and saying, oh, I was just visiting, you know, family and wherever, and I saw this plant and it kind of looked like a butterfly bush, but the
foliage was a little bit different. Can I grow that the foliage looks like marijuana that many many a person has mistaken it is just because it is palmately compounds, that's shaped kind of like a hand better than I which Speaking of which, by the way, I said parenthesis, no parentheses? Is that right? Or do you say parenthesis? I think I would say parentheses? Okay, because I said data, I said data and you said data, Well, you know, it's to call the whole thing off. Anyhow,
Hopefully our viewing and listening audience gets the idea here. And so my point was, if we're talking about heartiness zones, I love vitex and I love the aroma. We've already established that. But in zones where maybe it's marginally hardy, I approach it almost similar to another favorite for pollinators of mine, and that is carryopters. So the concept or the idea here, Stacy is
I want people to understand. I live right on the lake shore of Lake Michigan, and we moved from six A to six B with this new map, but prior to that, I was more inland, definitely Zone five. And so plants like a favor of mine, Carryopteris or Vitex, I would plant them. Or let's let's talk about a perennial Crecosmia. I think in most catalogs it'd be listed as a zone six. But I planted it anyhow and mulched it heavily. With the woody type shrubs. I'd get a lot
of die back, and I almost treated them as an herbaceous perennial. And as long as I was doing what Vitex likes, and you mentioned it, Stacy, good drainage. We get into the hot weather, that's when it really comes out. I consider it a pretty good drought tolerant plant. Oh it's very drought tolerant. Okay, yep. Yeah. And so that approach, taking a woody shrub and almost treating it like it's herbaceous, no different than bud lea. Some winters are worse than others. Am I correct here?
You're absolutely correct. And so these are plants that basically the plant will live. It's coming back from the roots, the actual growth that it's creating. Like in a heart, a regularly hardy shrub, the wood would persist and the growth would come from that wood. In these plants, which may die back in colder areas, the wood actually completely dies, but they are able to grow back from the roots. Another good example of this is a
lot of the crape myrtles like Astromia's do something similar. You know, in our climate, they might die back, but then again they might not. It really just depends on the kind of winter we have, how much snowcover we get, and of course how long those really cold periods of weather last. If it's if it just barely dips down to those extreme colds and then comes right back up, that's fine. If it stays cold for three days,
then you might have a problem. But you know it's I think that that you really just said it by taking that initiative and saying, you know what, these are cool plants and I want to grow them. Yeah, then that was you know all, you're amazing your friends and neighbors, and you're amazing yourself, and that to me is the real joy of gardening. Is kind of taking those risks and seeing what happens. And in your case, your where ward was a fabulous vitext. It smells like Vix vape rub.
I surprised myself all the time. Yes, exactly, it smells like Vix vapo rub. Now I never knows that until you said that, but you've mentioned it to us several times. Vix vapor rub was originally known as Richardson's Croup and Pneumonia cure salve and the yeah, and they couldn't fit it on the bottle, and he had a brother in law, a relative whose name was Vix, and so they went with Vix. This is the same guy in his marketing savagy savvy that invented vix Tarheel's sarspirella and Vix yellow pine
tar cough syrup. Oh wow, he had like a little empire of gold medicines. But I love the aroma vix vapel rum and that product really wasn't selling well until the pandemic Spanish flu pandemic of nineteen eighteen, and that's when it started just flying off the shelves and that's when it was my household name. Ever Sin It's interesting if you work for vix vapor rub and you want to send me royalty message me, but I don't think it's made with vitexs.
No it, but it has a similar kind of aroma. Actually, if you want that aroma, tranthis toman tosa. Yeah, plick tranthos. Definitely those have a great smell. Anyhow, that's my shot at plants on trial, whether good or bad, we did it, and I recommend you plant Blue Diddley Vitex. And if you still have no idea what we're talking about, check us out at Gardening Simplified on air dot com or on our
Instagram page or of course YouTube. You'll see the pictures of it. And if you have a full sun spot in your yard, it's deer resistant. It's a great choice to amaze all your friends and neighbors. Couldn't have said it better. Stacy and I will dive into the mail bag coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified Show at proven Winner's Color Choice, We've got a
shrub for every taste and every space. Whether you're looking for an easycare rose and unforgettable hydrangea or something new and unique, you can be confident that the shrubs and The white containers have been trialed and tested for your success. Look for them at your local garden center. Reading's gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. You know. One of the ways we love
to simplify gardening for you by answering your gardening questions. You bet you, and no matter what time of the year it is, you are always wondering about something an indoor plan and outdoor plants, and we are here at help. So if you have a question, you can reach us at help HLP at Gardening Simplified on air dot com, or visit Gardening Simplified on air dot com, or leave a comment on our YouTube, or leave a comment on
our Instagram. There's lots of ways to reach us with your gardening questions, so many choices, yes, so we do the best we can to get back to people. And I know this question from Ryan is our first question and he I have had this one on the list for quite some time. So what's Ryan asking? Well, Ryan asked us. Hi there, longtime listener, first time asker, welcome, Thank you thanks for asking. I bought this little seedling of a paperbark maple. Yeah, Ryan, one of
my favorites such a fai oh, fabulous plants and fortunate for us. Stacey seated next to me, so I can ask her acer grisium grissium. Yep, he nice one. I'm hot today. Anyhow, Paperback Maple a couple of years back noticed it was sending up a single leader. I was holding for a multi stem tree to really show off its legs, if you know what I know. I love that, Ryan. We always had that saying in the garden center industry. Sometimes you got to show a little leg.
Okay, that's great, So I cut it right down. To my surprise, this year, it only sent out a single shoot to one side, not the multiple stems. How the heck do you signal this tree into sending up multiple stems from the base? Love you, guys, and thank you. We love you too, Ryan Wild Well, so yeah, so it's a great question, and I have to confess I don't necessarily have a great answer. Boy, we're in trouble now. But Ryan did send pictures,
and of course we'll put those. They're going to be in the YouTube video and we'll put them on the show notes as well. It's kind of a difficult question to answer. So the first thing that I want to say, acer Grissium is an absolutely beautiful plant called paper bark maple. It has this rich cinnamon colored bark that peels when it's mature, and it's a trip a
try leaf maple, so that it's got palmate compound leaves. Just a very interesting and beautiful plant, beautifully sighted, backlit so the sun comes through that peeling bark. One of my absolute favorites, and birds love it. I found every time I had a paper maple, the birds just loved being in that tree for cover. So win win. But it is a very slow growing plant, and so one thing I want to first caution you against Ryan
or anyone growing this is they are sometimes grafted. So what that means is that the paper bark maple would have been grafted onto a different maple to increase its growth rate, because you can graft it onto a base of a plant that's faster growing and that will help the top grow more quickly. So it's hard to tell for sure, obviously without seeing the plant if it is grafted.
I would first will before you do anything else carefully look at the base to see if you see any difference between you know, a line where it might have been grafted, or a difference between the lower wood and the upper wood. Because if your plant was grafted, you definitely do not want to be cutting it back hard because that would mean that you're understock or you know, roots are going to take over, and that is not going to be nearly as interesting as the paper bar. I don't know what it is,
but it's probably not going to be as interesting as the paperwrock maple. So with that in mind, you know, as you'll see if you look at the pictures, Ryan's planet is fairly small, going along with this being a slow growing plant, and so my recommendation here. You know, plants have this concept of apical dominance. They want to just grow up, up,
up, unless something changes. And so basically what happens is that upper bud is a hormone factory that produces these hormones that stifle the growth of everything below it. So, you know, Ryan, by cutting it back, you tried to release more growth, but it just wasn't quite enough. So all
it did was put out this one shoot. So my suggestion, if indeed it's not grafted, is to go back to what we were talking about with compassing in the last episode, and with compassing, where you're cutting something back to get multiple stems, the roots of a mature plant act as an engine to fuel that growth. Now, I think that your plant is still pretty young and small, and so that engine, so to speak, is not
fueling enough growth yet for the plant to respond to being pruned. What you did is indeed the correct thing to do to try to get a multi stem habit, but I think that the roots just need a little bit more time to develop into a more robust root system to hopefully fuel more growth coming back
so that you get those multiple stems emerging. You know, this idea of a multiple stem versus a single stem tree, whether it's for a birch or a maple or even crab apples, those multi stem versus single stem they kind of fade in and out of style. I know once I went to a lecture on the crab apple trees in Central Park and they were trying to restore
some of them. No one produced apple trees like they did back in the early nineteen hundreds where they were known for having these low branching multiple stems, and so some of that pruning technique just gets lost. But that's a great thing about gardening. We can take it on ourselves. But I do think you need a bigger root mass before you do that cutting back to see the
results that you want. Yeah, and you know, Stacey mentioned apical dominance, so you have that terminal bud, and plants produce a growth hormone that tends to go to the terminal bud. If you cut back on it forces outward growth or new growth. Right, And that's the concept here. By the way, That's part of the reason I love june berries the way I do, because you can get june berries and those multi stems and they're so
pretty that way, so pretty, So I would agree. I think I think you nailed it to Stacey, and I would I'd let the plant establish and try again, and I think you should be able to get the multi stems again. Just look out for that grafting. Lee is wondering. I have two long hedges of hydrange of peniculata facing the south and north facing sides of our home. Some of the shrubs are starting to take on a tree shape instead of a hedge. Oh, so we're getting the opposite here?
Can it be? From the way I'm pruning them and spring. I'm attached to photo of one of the firelight hydranges to illustrate my issues. So it looks like we're looking at firelight and limelight. Yes, and could this could happen with really any panicle hydranges. And this is another one I don't have like a super good explanation for as to why this happens. I call it broomstick growth, and I've seen it here in our trial gardens multiple times.
For whatever reason, a panicle hydrange that will just send up these super strong, super rigid, pin straight shoots right out of the center, and that is the quality that gives them the ability to be trained as a standard or tree form hydrange, which people of course love, but sometimes it does it and I don't really know why. It very well could be related to proof kind of going back again to this concept of the root mass functioning as an
engine to fuel growth. So if you're pruning something really hard and it has a big root mass fueling all that growth, it's going to respond by putting that energy into you know, big thick shoots like that. So I would recommend if you don't want that that you prune those out. Just get your looppers and prune them out at the base, don't let them get too large. If they are large, I would just go ahead and cut them back
by about half to get more branching within the plant. But this is just a sort of I think, a strange quality the panicle hydrange just tend to have. And you know, again, it might be related to pruning and kind of the way the energy gets concentrated through the plant, but I've also just seen it happen and it just it's just one of those things. Lee hang in there, and as Stacey said, it's not your fault, so at least you feel that right. Wie rights to us. I have deer,
but I'm determined to have hydranges. Yes, Wie, way to go. They have made it through the summer and their colors have been stunning. Should I continue to spray them with liquid fence during the winter months, Debbie, I think you should do the same thing I did, and that is I built a compound, put up signs that say no deer allowed and that type of thing. So far, it's working. They've read the signs and they're saying, oh my good, deer can read. It's very polite of
them. Thank you. Well, the good news, and Debbie included pictures of her hydrangeas in the hydrangeas in the pictures are smooth Hydrangees Hydrangea arborescines. So this type blooms on new wood. In other words, it's not going to make any flowers for twenty twenty four until it starts growing in twenty twenty
four. Now that you can compare that to an old wood hydrange and old wood bloom Hydrangea, which if it were an old wood blooming like Hydrangea macrophilla or oak leaf Hydrangea Hydrangea corsifolia, those would have their flower buds for twenty twenty four right now. In that case, it would be absolutely imperative to spray them and make sure the deer didn't eat the buds, because then you're
plant wouldn't flower. Since you have a new wood blooming, it's not as important to spray them now because even if they eat the plant back, they're basically just kind of doing your pruning for you that you would normally do in the spring. They're not harming the plant's ability to set flower buds, which of course is the whole reason that we grow hydranges. But I would say that, you know, deer do love hydranges. The growth is very tender
and delicious apparently to them. And I would say, if you want your plants to grow fast and look their best, I would consider spraying them to just minimize the damage because I have tried to grow hydrange of arborescens in my yard and they have literally eaten them to nubs. So the plant can come back, but I mean just so little left. And if you look at Debbie's photos, which we'll have again in the show notes and on YouTube,
you'll see that they are pretty important part of her landscape. So I would say definitely spray them. You don't have to be as rigorous as you would if you were trying to preserve flower buds. Correct with a smooth high range, and you know, go back a couple of shows when we talked about cape Cod and the polar vortex and how big leaf hygh ranges were decimated. But the smooth high ranges on cape Cod this past summer were great. Yeah,
looking good. But definitely you're going to want to start look being real careful about your spraying in early spring because that's when they're really hungry, and that's when the plant's going to start growing and that's when they can experience the most stepback. So you can take it a little easy in winter if you want, but definitely mark your calendar for that early March timeframe and start mixing up the spray. So thank you everyone for your questions. We're going to
take a little break. When we come back. Rick has branching news to so please stay tuned. The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to you by proven Winter's Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning flowering shrubs and evergreens have been trialed and tested for your success so you enjoy more beauty and less work. Look for Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs and the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. It's time for branching news.
Not breaking news, but we don't make this stuff up. Ready set glow. Oh, the National Christmas Tree fell over? Don't look now? Well? Actually it was Tuesday, November twenty eight. High winds and gusts caused the tree to fall over, so they had to stand the thing back up in order to light it. At least, a Christmas tree looks best
when it's standing upright, and so they did that. But the reason I bring this up in Branching News Stacey, is that the previous tree, which was planted in twenty twenty one, was removed because it developed needle cast, which is a fungal disease that causes needles to turn brown and fall off. Also not a good thing for your Christmas tree. You'll have a Charlie Brown
Christmas tree. I found that fascinating, and I think they're looking to plant one again, but in this case they stood one up because the previous tree was afflicted by needle cast. And we see that on spruce trees. It's very common. So they you know, they are very susceptible to a number of diseases, and not least of all because they had a real heyday in the nineteen seventies and eighties and just were completely overplanted. Everybody planted. Everybody
play it like ornamental pair, same thing. Yeah, And so when you have a huge, massive plants like that, the disease can spread easily. That's right. That's why we always preach diversity on the show. Also, I think it's important this from Michigan Lanesburg, Michigan deer feasting on pines and spruce means the holiday tradition of cutting down a Christmas tree gets the axe this year at a tree farm in Michigan. I bring this up because it's just
sad for me and I feel bad for these owners. There's a video and the owner shows where he says, from here, up tree, too bad, but down there it's it's ruined, and boy, do I feel your pain. So he's basically saying that the deer population has gotten so heavy there's less hunters that he's having real problems with his with his tree farm. That's that is interesting because typically I don't think of deer as eating much spruce and
further not not super high on their list. But of course in a Christmas tree environment, the trees are frequently being trimmed, putting out a lot of succulent growth, and that does change things for the deer. They do like new growth more than old growth, so might not be an issue for someone with a sprucer for in their yard, but in an agricultural environment, different
story. It just makes me sad, makes me, you know, I get melancholy at this time of the year, and I want to just pour a glass of wine, put a Dean Martin record on and listen to it. And that's kind of what this story does to me. I mean, the owner says, here down the drain, twelve years of mowing and spraying and pruning, and the deer did it. Oh, it's really shame. Oh deer, it's tough to make a buck, all right. How are
Americans being echo conscious this holiday season? I don't know how many people think about being echo conscious during the holiday season, but I thought this survey was great. We're going to post it at the website Gardening Simplified on air dot Com. Check it out in our notes. So the way people do it is to reuse decorations from previous years. That makes sense, use reusable dishes,
avoid over consumption on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Coordinate with other guests so you don't have too much food, and you got to put them in those cool whip containers. Make homemade gifts, buy more locally sourced ingredients, compost your food scraps, offset any holiday travel, Serve more meatless options.
So kind of an interesting, kind of an interesting survey. I for me being echo conscious, I like to buy ornaments when they're fifty percent off or seventy five percent off and then donate the old ones to somebody who can use them. See, in my family, we've always had like ornaments that we have every year. We've never had like the stylish Christmas tree that's like going
with whatever kind of trend. It's always been like, oh, yeah, this is you know, the ornament I made in brownies in fourth grade and it's still going up there on the tree. I love that because this year had Max decorate the tree and all the ornaments are on one side of the tree and I love it. Beautiful. All right, we'd need to talk. A giant tumbleweed, roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, was spotted hurdling its way down a four lane road in California. This was posted in
social media. A lot of people picked up on this, and it was on x which I still call Twitter but whatever. The jaunty brown bundle of brush was captured on video and posted on November twenty one, and it is quite quite a sight to see this tumbleweed as big as a car rolling down the highway. Wow, amazing. You know, tumbleweeds are kind of like this iconic symbol of the West. But people who live around them, they can be a real problem. They can they can pile up on porches,
and they're not as easy to remove as leaves. It's not a problem we have to deal with here in Michigan. But you start looking that stuff up and I do not envy them, No, not at all. They fall under an umbrella of noxious weeds that, when dry, breakoff at the root, setting off a seed spreading expedition. That's what they're doing as they tumble out there now Here's this is interesting for me. I didn't know this.
It is believed they've hitched a ride from Ukraine to South Dakota and a shipment of flax seed back in the eighteen seventies and has plagued the country's dry arid lands ever since. So I think that that that's pretty interesting. Interesting, And not all tumbleweeds are made the same. They some grow more vigorously than others. So anyhow, very interesting to watch. I'll tell you what. Let's jump to a water park story here a minute and talk about drought.
As long as we're talking about tumbleweed in this age of water wise gardening, check this out in Houston. Slick City is the very first ever waterless water park in the state of Texas. How fun is that? Would you want to go to a waterless water park? Well, I mean, I assume you don't go hurtling down the slides into a dry pit anything. I think
you do fifty five thousand square feet with eleven awesome slides. We have different aerial attractions ziplining, swings, sport courts, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a different concept, unlike anything you've ever seen at an indoor slide park. A lot of us grew up going to a water park. This is a water park without the sun and without the water. It's a different concept. Yeah, that's a different concept. Well, and it's profitable year
round. You can't argue with that compared to you know, water park you can only go two when it's nice enough to be outside. I can't wrap my room mind around a waterless water park. But I suppose you know, it gets so dry and hot in Texas. Earlier we were talking comparing Austin to Portland for average minimum temperature, but the other climate issues so very very different. So I don't know it's so dry. How dry is it? Thank you? It's so dry they had to close two lanes at the public
swimming pool. That's how dry it was. Well, it sounds like you need to take a little trip to Houston and check out the waterless water park and report back. I'm going. I'm going. Doesn't sound too comfortable to me, but I'm going to give it a truck. Well, I looked at the pictures. People seem like they were having a good time. That's good. That's good. I would think that that's important. Australia for our final story here, Australia has too many sheep and farmers are giving them away
for free. Australia's mutton glut has sent prices tumbling and some of the farmers are compelled to give their sheep away to save costs instead of rearing them on the farm. Wow. So driving the large sheep flock, and here's how it ties into gardening and plants, because again we often talk about drought driving
the large sheep flock. Were three years of above average rainfall in Australia's sheep regions, so their flock has reached seventy eight point seventy five million head, the largest since two thousand and seven because it's been raining a lot and the grass is growing. I think that's that's very interesting. So there's hearing the sheep with you, and they're not sheepish about their intentions. Don't be a bleeding heart. They'll find a good home. So are they giving them to
other farmers or just home to homeowners? Want a pet cheap? Anybody who wants them? All right? Interesting? I think it's a bad idea. Okay, that's it for today's show. Boy, we packed in a lot today. We sure did well. There's a lot to say it, a lot going on, and I want to remind you, and I'm sure Adrianna Robinson will put the links there to Stacy's USDA Heartiness Zone map. Watch that. What a great explanation and of course we got to expound on that today
too and I enjoy doing that. Always a privilege and pleasure to do the show with you, Stacey Adrianna Robinson. Thank you so much for all you do and most of all, thanks to you for tuning in watching the Gardening Simplified Show. Visit our website Gardening Simplified on air dot com. Have a great week.