Keith: I'm here with Shannon from Garden Supply Company. We're talking about what's next what's next for Garden Supply Company and what the stuff we've got coming in and changes we're making. We're moving away from. Some of the mass produced products and going with more local products a new look.

Or an old look if you will, a modern sixties, seventies kinda look. But she's got a long list of stuff that we've, that we're bringing in that Renee and the girls are picking up in Atlanta and from local vendors. But it's exciting.

It's, we're changing it up and trying to come up with a new look. 

Shannon: Yeah, they're really doing an amazing job. Picking out some products turning our boutique more into an outdoor living space. Which is really exciting. Yeah. 

Keith: And, and working house plants, They go hand in hand. Yeah. Interior furniture with house plants and with. With new modern containers and that kind 

Shannon: of thing. Absolutely. And also that patio living. Absolutely. We've got some bistro sets coming in, the little table and two chairs. Sure. And then some family gathering type of things like outdoor games.

Which can always be fun. Yeah. There tons of fun serving sets. 

Keith: Yeah. We were just talking about how bad TV was. Yes. So that's getting away from tv, and getting back to board games and things that bring families 

Shannon: together. Absolutely. Some of that like backgammon almost. 

Keith: Sure. We did an outdoor living space recently and when I'm not out there, it still makes me really happy because it's I'm viewing it from afar.

. But it's, it's a covered space. It's got a ceiling fan and, there's outdoor furniture out there and it's just a, such a relaxing, fun 

Shannon: space. I've seen it and it really turned out stunning. And then the way you've brought in, Plants, like the white bird of paradise right out there is just, 

Keith: yeah.

And they're thriving out there because they're in the North Carolina humidity and got a fishtail palm out there in, real modern pots. And, that's a way you can change up the look of your, the front porch or the look of your back porch. Is to update the pots and get away from some of the big heavy urns and start incorporating, you know, more modern pots and containers.

Shannon: Some of the ones I love that Renee's been able to bring in are those lightstone. Or light white pots, the fiber clay. Yep. It has that look of concrete or ceramic but is so lightweight that I can pick it up all by myself. And 

Keith: especially like the two that we just talked about that are in my backyard the fishtail palm and the whiteboard of paradise.

Both of 'em are six foot plants, seven foot, seven foot plants. In the next week or two I'm gonna be bringing them in because of frost. You can separate the plant from the pot and easily carry both of them inside and give 'em a nice, warm spot for the wintertime.

Shannon: Absolutely. And really, even with those type of pots, you don't even need to separate necessarily. 

Keith: Exactly. They're light enough to. 

Shannon: for a one or two person job. 

Keith: Yep. Yeah, you were talking about the bistro sets. And I don't know, it's a folding type chair. I don't know if I'm, if I can destru describe it exactly, but we've got 'em on order now.

We've got a couple of 'em in but they're an old sixties chair. Mm-hmm. That kind of folds up a clam shell type of design. We've got 'em in natural Jude and we've got 'em in black. I love the look of that. It's beautiful. It's Mac May material and MACRA Mays come back in with, of course it has with with hanging house plants and wall hangings and that kind of stuff.

So that's a fun, fun piece of it.

I love 

Shannon: the palettes that we're bringing too. The colors of all of this. We've got this soft blue sage, green, matte gray, and a blush color right, that are. On point for the trends. They are, 

Keith: and I, we're talking about updating pots and containers, I think updating wall colors. We do it in the store all the time.

, every time we change a set or come up with a new idea we're do, we're changing the backdrop of the color. It's something you can do at your house too. Going out and picking some of these colors that are really, The color of the year or that fits with, the furniture you've got and the new stuff that you're bringing in.

Really update the space. It 

Shannon: does, and it's not that you have to revamp and redesign every single thing or change out all of your furniture. You can do it with just a quick little Walt color change or a pot color change. A blanket, a throw, some of. Some of that stuff that we've brought in too has 

Keith: been right.

And if you've got a room that's painted white, I just painting one wall in, in the background or two walls in the background, you can paint half the room and still give it a great updated look. Add some of this, a change of furniture, change of pots or containers, and I think you see, really see an update.

Shannon: Yeah. I'm also loving some of the things that they're bringing in, like gardener's diaries. Something which I think has been so beneficial for me in just tomato gardening. That's my big thing. Yep. And I'm keeping track of all of the plants that I'm doing while they're flowering or when they start flowering, when they're producing the fruit, how much fruit I'm getting, which ones are getting disease or.

Ones aren't. That's tons of fun. It's so much fun. It's beneficial for next 

Keith: year. Yep. I always love somebody that can do that. I could buy a hundred diaries. Never fill him out. Nothing's ever gonna get written in, unfortunately. Yeah. I I'm not trying to Yeah, no squash diary sales. No. No.

My grandfather used to write everything down , and he was a tomato gardener. And he kept notes on everything and he, Thomas Jefferson, he used to tell me, Thomas Jefferson wrote down everything, and I'd go back and read what Thomas Jefferson wrote. And I'm like, man, I need to do that.

I start something and I write on the first page and that's the end of it. So 

Shannon: maybe you're more of a flower press kind of a guy. Yeah. Or we are bringing in some of those pocket flower press 

Keith: journals. Oh yeah. Those Those are super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in a pansies. I always talk about, I'm always talking about pansies and how amazing pansies are, but.

Those press so beautifully. They do. It's a super easy thing and it's a fun thing for kids to do too. Absolutely. Have the kids, kids, especially girls, but the kids in general to pick flowers. , have 'em go out and pick pansies and then bring 'em in the house and press 'em.

It's a good project for a rainy day. And 

Shannon: perfect segue. The one, the last thing I wanted to talk about was how we're bringing in some of these tools and gloves. Things like that for children. . So we're bringing in that next generation and getting them interested early. 

Keith: My favorite thing to do, and hands down and I've, I think I've created thousands of gardeners, , is to hand them a plant.

It's like in, in the garden center when we've got plants that are not perfect. But we, I know they're gonna grow, , give 'em to a kid and as that next flower rolls out, I mean you've got a budding gardener kind of 

Shannon: thing. Absolutely. And succulents are a great way to continue that trend.

Yep. 

Keith: Cut a piece of a succulent off, hand it to 'em and let them watch the roots grow. Exactly. Yep. That, that I'm really looking forward to spring and the change...

What are some of your favorites, Shannon? 

Shannon: So we talked already in the previous one, about sun unicorn plants. Yeah. But now I wanted to talk about shade. Of course camillia is one of the first things that comes to mind, but so many people think about cams as being these huge. Giant shrubs and they don't have to be right.

We've got quite a few that are three to four feet tall and wide. The first one that comes to mind is the October Ruby Magic. . That's a great plant. Yeah. Flowers red in the late October to Christmas almost, and stays within that realm. Controllable. 

Keith: Yeah. So for people that don't know, su sanks are gonna bloom in the fall.

And then japonica is bloom in the spring. Su sank was are the smaller leaf cames and japonicas are the larger leaf and flowers that you know. . The su sanks are always the smaller leaf and smaller flowers, but they have more flowers. Japonicas will have great big rose like flowers or piney like flowers.

And and then they flower, winter into spring. 

Shannon: And truly the waxy leaf of that evergreen is so beautiful all year round. It is, it doesn't matter if it's flowering or not, it's a stunning shrub. It's, 

Keith: it looks perfect 12 months out of the year. 

Shannon: Exactly. And I know you know this, but I'm from Wisconsin and the only evergreens we have are conifers, right? And it's a very limited number of conifers. Yep. That will stand that zone. And so to be down here with things that will stay evergreen. And flour. To me it truly is a unicorn . 

Keith: It's the same as a crate myrtle in the middle of the summerside.

Exactly. People come down there oh my God, what is that plant? I have to have three of 'em. Yes. The Chails work really well. I The japonica, some of the larger japonicas really work well as a accent plant or something off the corner of the house. And in that case it's a smaller plant in a lot of cases than like in Nellie Stevens, Holly.

To . Put off a two story house or a, one and a half story house where you got, you've got the space for it to fill out. 

Shannon: Absolutely. And they can be worked as a privacy shrub as well. They can in the shade. Yep. Or afternoon. Yeah. 

Keith: Shade a little bit. The only thing with the chails that, that that people need to know is they're a little bit slow to establish and, but you put 'em in and you take, give 'em some.

And they're, they definitely have the value in the end. 

Shannon: Absolutely. One of my personal favorites, and I can't think of the name of it, is the it's one that flowers, pink, red, and white, but is all completely, 

Keith: yeah, I can't remember. Okay. It maybe Deb, Debbie to It 

Shannon: might be, we'll have to circle back to that, but we will the Andromeda?

Yeah. Or PIIs. Yep. My ultimate favorite. Yeah. In that 

Keith: section. That's a great plant. I always tell people to put one of one of 'em in at a time as a more of a specimen plant. , because they'll, they tend to grow on, irregular in shape, which is of the beauty of the plant. Like a Japanese maple almost take, they take character, but if they, if you don't if you put three of 'em in, it's likely one of 'em will be slow to take off and one of 'em will grow really tall and one of 'em will grow really wide.

So I always. Like 'em by the ones, but it is, it's a perfect plant. 

Shannon: It is the veining in that evergreen leaf. It's a narrow leaf, but the veining in the center is really pretty and I love how the new growth comes up. And is either bronze or the mountain fire red? Yep. That comes up. It looks like it's flowering through the summer.

Yeah. But that's just the new leaf growth. Yep. And then in the fall, those buds that come up and. Tiny little bell flowers. 

Keith: Yeah. It's a perfect plant, I think. . Absolutely. It really is. One of my favorites in the landscape is sweet Box Sara Coca. Yeah. That, that plant only gets four feet tall, four feet wide takes a little bit a little bit of time to get going, and it doesn't really want to be pruned.

It needs to have a natural, like waterfall type habit, like a. Like a versaci, but in the early, late winter, early spring, it blooms, and the blooms are insignificant other than they're very fragrant. Oh. So it's a nice shiny leaf plant and as, and the fragrance is there, so and it handles dry. It's something that's gonna handle dry shade really well. So that's one of my all time 

Shannon: favorites. Yeah. We've gotta talk about the anus as well. Yeah. Perfect plant, the woodland, ruby, and, but I also love the Florida sunshine. Cause when you have that deep, darker shade area that char yellow comes out like a So brilliant.

Yeah. It just 

Keith: looks like it's blooming year round. 

Shannon: It does. And it looks like it lightens up the whole space. Yep. 

Keith: That's a perfect plant. That's a plant that I love to break a leaf off of when I'm walking around the yard. and crunch it up in my, I just, I love aromatherapy, kinda Yes. But a very natural, just, grab a rosemary and grab a, a. A a niece and let it just the fragrance waft into the air. Absolutely. When I'm with working with a customer, and they're looking at it and they're like it's open. It's this, you break a leaf off and hand it to 'em and some people don't love that fragrance, but the people that do are like, okay, I'm sold.

It's 

Shannon: sold. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I love it. I love the Duke U as well, even though that doesn't flower. It's something local. No, but 

Keith: when the new growth comes out, it almost looks like it does. Like it does. It's really stunning. So the bright, that bright green almost looks like a flower when it's first starting to pop.

. And the, back to I know we talked about this in the sun, but texture's, I'm colorblind, so Yeah. . Texture's very important to me. . But the texture of a, of the you versus the. Some, like the Sara Coca or the the Florida and East the, big broad evergreen leaf. With that fine texture makes it, absolutely. At a glance that really makes everything pop. , what are some of your other favorites? Let's see. I 

Shannon: love the Mahoney. Mahoney is a good one. Great pollinator for the fall and winter. Yep.

That yellow flowering kind of pop of sunshine at the top of it Yeah. Is just stunning. And then how it changes to the berries that turn darker gray, blue. 

Keith: The bee and the bees go crazy. The bees love it. Yeah. The interesting thing about being a beekeeper, the interesting thing about a lot of the winter blooming plants, they really they attract bees really well, really easily.

And I think a lot of 'em are, a lot of the winter plants are fragrant. And I think the fragrance is there to attract. There aren't as many pollinators out, so they wanna attract pollination, so Sure. Mahoney is one of those. Fatia. Oh, fat in the landscape is amazing. It looks like a tropical plant.

It looks like something you might have to cut down or keep warm or winterize or bring in the house, but it's just hearty as can. And it, again, blooms in the dead of winter, big sphere like bloom that like no other plant has. And the bees go crazy over it. And it'll bloom late, fall through early spring, depends on the year.

But in the dead of winter it gets pollinated every year. The 

Sh...

And can tolerate full sun. Yeah. We get that question all the time. They want, they want something that's bulletproof, that, that flowers all year long, that's evergreen. That handles sun and shade. And there are few of those out there. Isn't that a plastic plant? , I mean, I mean, a plastic plant always works in that situation.

Exactly. But sometimes people just don't wanna stick that plastic plant. It gets sun damage after a while. It's kinda fade. Looks like a cemetery. I put a plastic plant in my mailbox thing. You know how that mailbox got plants in the back sometimes. Yeah. And my wife is like, Man, that plant's doing well. I'd just be it.

Spot it for my Kia. Yeah.

home run Ron. Yeah. So I just wanted to talk about that a little bit. One of my personal favorites is the Laura Petal. Yeah. Laura Pet's a great plant and so many people come in and when I talk about it with them, they immediately think about the 12 foot one that they have in their yard that's overgrown.

Yeah. And has been there for years. But there's so many other varieties that will. Actually do what they say they do. Exactly. Yep. That will stay small. Specifically, specifically that purple daydream. Mm-hmm. Purple. Purple Daydream's. A great plant. I love that one. Flowers twice a year stays that beautiful purple dark color.

Color. Yeah. The color's a good contrast with just about any other plant in, in the landscape. I think the way it contrasts with that dark. in any other landscape with Boxwoods or Hollys. Yep. Or blue plants or another plant. And I think we, we had talked about in that list is a gold thread, Cypress. Yes. You know, so you take the gold thread cypress and then put the, the lower pedal up against it.

Oh, it's stunning. Yeah. Those are two perfect plants. I really love those. And when you mention the sunshade, wet dry, right Nandina, so many people have negative opinions of it. They think it's invasive, right? Because it has that bamboo. Quality. Right. And there is, I mean, there's, the, the, the na and domestic I think is probably seeds itself and spreads a little bit more than other plants.

But even that, where I see it naturalized in the woods mm-hmm. , it's not clogging up streams or taking up native habitat. It's just an additional plant in the landscape. Exactly. And not on, like, so I, when I moved in four years ago to my place, there were several of the flirts. and sure some of them have send out babies, but the babies are making it look like a nice full shrub.

Exactly. The ones that have become a nuisance, I've just pulled out up the most and it's easy. Yeah. It's so easy, Lord. And Dan is a magical plan. I think I agree. The way the the leaves are bluish silver and then that new growth comes up, that bright red is. It's beautiful. Yeah. And nandina is definitely, you know, there are, there aren't a lot of plants that I think without, without question you can say wet or dry sun or shade.

Mm-hmm. , no insect, no disease problems. I mean, pretty hard to beat. The only thing, you know, Van Nandina, when it goes in, it takes a little bit of time. It, you know, it could shed some foliage, it could thin out. You've gotta, you've gotta push it with a little bit of fertilizer. But can handle the drought, can handle the wet, can handle shade.

So if you've got a situation where you're the, you know, front of your house isn't mm-hmm. , you know, half sun, half shade, that's a plant that can tie the whole thing in. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love the way it puts out berries over the winter, so it gives it that seasonal interest. Yeah. And so both of those plants that we've talked about are both I mean, it's a, it's a wide range of plants and, and heights and color and everything else.

Mm-hmm. . You've got obsession that gets three to four feet, you know, so it's three to four foot shrub or, or a flirt that gets, you know, 1, 1, 1 and a half feet. So you've got a wide range and they needed domestica that that'll get, you know, six, eight feet tall if you let it get that tall. Absolutely. And mushroom out probably to stick to eight feet tall.

So lower pedals the same way. You've got, you've got a wide range from, you know, a foot or two to, you know, 10 to 12. Right. Zoo lore petal and makes a nice tree, almost like a crate Myrtle. You just have to keep it brewed and mm-hmm. take care of it. Yeah. The dark fire is also one of my favorites.

It seems to hold the color so much deeper and darker than the rest. Yep. I love that one. Yeah. Dark fire is an amazing plant. Yeah. Another one too is the abi. ABIs a great, one of my favorite things about ABI is growing up there was, they were always pollinator plants. You know, you, they'd be covered in butterflies and bees and so that's a nice attribute to speaking to that they seem to flower more toward the fall or this time of year.

So when everything is. You know, losing its flowers, it is a great pollinator for, for those butterflies and bees. Yep. And it's definitely a 12 month plant. Mm-hmm. , I mean, it's, you know, great foliage in the spring, flowers in, you know, through the summer and fall. And then pink, you know, usually has a little bit of pink color in going into the, into the fall and winter.

Right. And that kaleidoscope, the way it changes color seasonally. Right. . Gorgeous. Yep. And if you don't like the yellow, yellow, green in the landscape there's the radiance. Yeah. Radiance is perfect. Mm-hmm. The Ralston by Burnum is one I wanted to talk about as well. Yeah. The, the that whole Ralston Plant series is amazing.

It's, it's a, it's a collective group of Chip, Chip sits in, in all of those meetings, I, I spent some time in those meetings, but we select the plants with a group from the abo. And local growers and the, a portion of the money goes back to the arboretum, which is a huge win. Yeah, absolutely. Double bonus.

Yeah. But the rawton a the Rawton by Burnham has probably been one of the better selections that we've made. I love that one. And the way it, it sits low the evergreen leaves, but then the, that red stemming that comes out. Yep. And then even taking on the fall color in. Foliage. Yeah. And that's one that I think you could probably easily say that, you know, you get a bloom in April or early May, you get blooms sporadically through the whole year, and then a really good flush in the fall, So mm-hmm.

I mean, I think it's, you can, you can say blooms three to four months, five months outta the year. Yeah. So that's a good one. And the height is perfect in the landscape and the, and that the. The texture of the foliage, I think, you know, is easy to put something against, you know, the texture and the color.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a perfect plan. I also cannot neglect the nano OSA Krypto area. Even though that's a green one, you know, it stays green all year doesn't flower, but it's still, the texture is so different than anything that's a conifer. Yep. That's, you know, that kind of replaces the Carissa Holly for me, I mean, and Carissa Holly, I still use lots of, but I've, you know, it's, you're better off having a plant that looks perfect, 12 out, 12 months out of the year requires no pruning, requires no real a.

Than to have something that's real showy, like an azalea old-fashion azalea that blooms for two weeks and then it's just kind of soso the rest of the year. Right. So that's a big win. And son or shade too. I mean, I think that the crypto meial will work into a fair amount of shade. The only thing I, I mean, the only d...

I think it's the key part of a business. It's having the right people and people that enjoy people; owning a local business is a core in the community. You want people to. To look forward to coming out and seeing people they know, you see the same faces.

You get the same advice from people, and it's, so it's not all about selling somebody, something. It's about creating a space. Where people can come and enjoy themselves, where they can unwind, people [00:01:00] consistently say garden supplies, their happy place. And when you need to be perked up, going and standing around in a bunch of green and flowers is not bad.

It's a great environment. But when you show up there and people that you've known for 25 years. they're seeing the same people, so their friends are theirs.

They're their friend that knows how to garden, a friend with an answer. I feel like that's probably like one of the biggest successes we've had is having a really good team. When we're looking for new people, we're looking for people that have a great attitude, that wake up in the morning, excited about going and doing something.

And that have an extreme interest in gardening. They garden with their grandmother or they garden with their mother or their father. Stay-at-home moms, that, it's more interest than it is like strong knowledge. And [00:02:00] then, when you have somebody that's excited about the world, excited about waking up and going out and doing so.

They'll figure it out.
Then we train, we're constantly training people and teaching people, but I just feel like, every time I go into a business that is thriving and that and that you're excited to go to it's because of the team. Yeah. Just, it makes all kinds of difference.

, we've got lots of people that'll that it's a second job for 'em, they're they've, a lot of times I'll find people regular customers that I've known for, you know, back to the, how long have you known some of these people? I've known most of my customers I've been there 26 years.

So it's they're like friends, they're like family, you're excited to see 'em when they come in. But then there'll be people. They'll come in. They're talking about what's going on in their life. And we just got back with the grandkids. I retired two weeks ago. And I'm like, well, you're gonna get bored. So when you know, it's somebody, I already know, it's a friend, it's, and you know, what kind of gardener they are and how much knowledge they have. And so we'll, I'll talk, people like that into coming into the team.

And it's just, I feel like having people that like [00:03:00] people and that and that like plants it creates an environment that's welcoming and people are excited to, to come in and see their friends basically. I just thought that was worth mentioning. I think it is crucial.

Making an inviting, fun place in the community where you've got, you've got a friend in the gardening.

Mulching is a, from a company standpoint, if you're paying somebody to do it, it's always an off-season thing. It fills a void when companies are slow. But if you're digging into a mulch pile, that's a hundred degrees. You also don't want to do it in spring or summer heat.

And the plants have already broken ground. Perennials are starting to come up, so you're mulching around them. It's something that, that I always recommend that people, [00:01:00] mulch and then and then power wash, get cleaned up for spring. So you know, planning to do that kind of thing.

So in the wintertime. Doing some of your plantings, ordering seeds, picking out plants at a garden center, starting to come up with your plan, and then planting in the winter is ideal. So if you do big planting, go ahead and get that out of the way. Disturb the dirt, get, pick your plants out and get the big stuff done while it's fantastic.

And the plants can acclimate to the soil. They don't require a lot of water. And then get your mulching done and get it done ahead of daylilies and perennials and stuff like that. That's going to come back up, it can come through the mulch, and it just has a nice, fresh look, and you're ready for spraying.

Instead of playing catch up, you're mulching around many different things or mulch, and then try to come back and put plants in. 

Joe Woolworth: do most people remove last year's mulch or whatever's left, or throw it right on top? Just throw it 

Keith Ramsey: right on top.[00:02:00] 

Every once in a while, I like to switch the mulch up. I think it's good for the soil. So if I've used hardwood mulch three or four, three or four times, I'll sometimes switch it up to pine straw to give it a different product going into the soil. But all that stuff, microbes break them down, and they'll build the soil.

Mulch is a little bit slower to break down. If I'm trying to get rid of mulch or if it's built up, you should put enough down that there would be a lot left on the ground. If you have 

Joe Woolworth: a lot of weeds in your mulch bed. Do you put it down? Paper. Yeah. So you can put 

Keith Ramsey: down paper 

Joe Woolworth: do you put that right over the old mulch?

Or do you have a dig that up or just, you can 

Keith Ramsey: yeah, just put it right over the old mulch and then put mulch on top. There are lots of new organic chemicals out that you can spray that are A broad. It's going to kill any wide leaps or grassy weeds.

So you can spray weeds. You can also apply pre-emergence before you do the mulch. But brown newspaper paper, packing paper, that kind of stuff. If you can put it down over the top of weeds and then mulch it out, it really [00:03:00] helps, but pre-emergence is something that if you put it down twice in the spring and once in the.

You can eliminate about 90% of the weeds you have to pull. Which I think is an excellent way, too. My pre-emergence makes pulling weeds fun. When you're getting into spring, I always say you've got your mulching done. Having a prepped annual bed that you change out regularly is super easy.

And it gives you that color that carries you through as perennials come and go. Perennials are probably one of the more popular things we sell these days because they correspond with pollinator plants, which are super easy to put in the spring-summer.

You can plant 12 months out of the year, but filling in some holes by adding new plants and various native plants is perfect for pollinators. I've recently told people to plant flowers for pollinators and pollinator habitats.

And then you'll have hummingbirds, that kind of thing. Show up in your yard. You don't [00:04:00] necessarily have to feed the hummingbird if you want to do something. That's a little on the different side. Add a bird bath, sand, or a handful of pine straw, and then add one to one water to sugar and feed the bees.

You can stand right in the middle of it. Honey bees will find it. They'll come in. They'll empty a bird bath in the afternoon. And it's a frenzied activity. It's almost like what, like watching a hummingbird. It is cool. It's a bigger experience. And you can let your kids go out there and stand in the area.

And the bees are just going to fly in and out. All they're looking for is the sugar. That's a nice twist on, yeah. Feeding 

Joe Woolworth: hummingbird, sometimes I look at people's lawns, and I'm like, ah, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm never going to catch that guy. You move into a neighborhood, but I like the idea of doing one thing a year.

There for ten years and all of a. Exactly. That was nice looking, yep. Environment 

Keith Ramsey: that you built in your yard. Sure. That's the other thing a landscape is not a once-and-done project. It's sometimes it. You can hire a firm and 

Joe Woolworth: for once and done, $75,000. [00:05:00] But then 

Keith Ramsey: you, but then a year later, there's something else that needs to be done, so too, so is, to me, it's, it is an ongoing project. So biting off small projects too, people come in sometimes, and they're like, I want this, and I don't want that. Not, I was thinking about putting a pool in, and we maybe want a pool house, and I'm like, okay let's start with, tightening up your patio and making it lush and, an inviable space put a, put an Arbor over your deck and put a ceiling fan out there.

So it's comfortable to sit out there. We did that this year, and it's been a game changer. Yeah. 

Joe Woolworth: I have a ceiling fan in my sunroom, and I just realized that it wasn't on a high. When I turned it up, I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. This is so much better out here. 

Keith Ramsey: Yeah. We sit out, we don't have a screen, but we have a, it's not a, it's not the labeled, big ass fan, but it's a big ass fan.

Yeah. It's a. Five-foot or six-foot fan or something, I picked it up at low. It was reasonable. It was three or $400. Yeah. Makes a huge difference. And it keeps all the mosquitoes away. Yeah. It just observes. It [00:06:00] keeps them at bay. So we could go out there and sit outside and read and have our coffee.

And it's been a game changer, and it wasn't a massive project. If you're 

Joe Woolworth: going to spray for mosquitoes. What time of year do you recommend? 

Keith Ramsey: So spraying form, you need to spray every, I think it's every 12 days or every 14 days. There's a life cycle. 

Joe Woolworth: for it.

And you need to convince your neighbors to do it too. You 

Keith Ramsey: No, you don't. We have a company that sprays for mosquitoes at the house. That's an organic company. Oh yeah. That's safe for bees. And I wish I knew their name. But if you look up organic bee company in care, they'll say it's garlic, I think, spray, and it does a fantastic job.

I've seen one or two mosquitoes this year in our yard, and our yard used to be filled with a mosquito. We've been really excited about that, but you must start fairly early. You can got, and you have to spray with the life with the reproductive cycle of the mosquito.

I hate the typical spray because it's a by ING product. It just kills any [00:07:00] insect, any pollinator, anything that crawls across it. And there are more beneficial insects than there are detrimental insects. So you're killing the whole environment.

You or you kill the lizards or the spiders that eat the mosquitoes. I lik...

And we've got some really good places around the garden center and, it's, I've been there 25 years, so I frequent all these places pretty often. I thought it

that's true. Every time I go to the pizza place, I run into

Epic. Exactly. And right down from the pizza place is Phil's Cigar shop, Tobacconists of Cary. I thought I would I would feature some of these businesses, and I think that they're a good combination for swinging over to the garden center and meeting a friend hang out at the garden center, go get lunch or go get lunch and then come take a stroll around the garden center.

It's something fun to do a place to. Down, right on the corner of Cary Parkway and Old Apex Road. There are some great businesses. There's a small pharmacy, that's a local business, Bee Well Pharmacy that I frequent pretty often when I need something for, or vaccination or whatever happened to happen to be doing.

It's a great little pharmacy.

Kinda off-topic, but the tobacconists, if you're a cigar smoker he does a great job. He's got a huge selection.

He'll bring in new stuff pretty consistently and fills a wealth of knowledge as far as what he's got in there and grab a cigar and then hit Salvio's Pizza. Salvio is just like two doors down. Yeah. Two doors down Salvio is, it's. It's an old-school pizza place it's been there.

As long as we've been there, I think it's about 25 years old. It's my and my family's favorite pizza place in Cary.

The other place that I had dinner there or picked up dinner there from last night is the Tangerine Cafe. I walked by for 15 years, for some reason or another. And one day, I was like, I'm tired of Salz. I've been there. , I'd been there two or three times in a short period of time.
I'm gonna check this place out. And it's a kind of Asian fusion. Unbelievable food. Great soup, great calamari, all kinds of just great food. I would recommend popping in there. They're just doing takeout right now. Still, it's a great spot to pick something up and bring it over to the garden center.

Find a little table or a bench and have your lunch. On the other end of the world. We've got the Abbey Road Tavern and Grill. They're known for their burgers.

You can sit out there and have a nice lunch, meet somebody over there.

Just a casual environment, And then down the road on Maynard. There's Big Mike's BBQ. And then there's Great Harvest Bread Company. Great harvest bread company is always just a nice fresh sandwich. They've, bread's baked this morning. They do all kinds of typical sandwiches and then And then, and they'll let you sample stuff while you're there.

And then you can take a little bread home with you, but both of those are good, really good stops. Pan a day, pick up some food, bring it to the garden center, and do a tailgate. It's a good spot to eat and check out some of these local businesses.

I think it's really important that people support local businesses.

Jason, what causes a swarm as I 

Bee Expert: I was going to say, swamp, this natural tendency is to make more bees as they grow in a colony or the cavity or space they're living in. Since that approaching, they will tend to outgrow that bee since that approaching and will naturally divide themselves, which means they'll cast out a queen and about a third to half of the existing bees in that colony.

And they'll relocate to another or try to leave [00:01:00] relocate to another location. If you see that, it's a great thing to see. Like in a cartoon, we, the cloud of bees coming through the sky. But when they land, they're going to land into groups all cluster together, usually on a branch or in a shrub or on a 

Keith: fence post or something like that.

So the queen and the queen land on the branch first, and the bees go from what. 40-foot swarm to, kind of get smaller and smaller you all are until it's telling us they're 

Bee Expert: attracted to the queen. So, when the bees swarm, many workers leave first, and they start to fly around. The activity inside the hive gets chaotic, and the other workers are forced to queen out with them.

They all fly up into a cloud or a group into this, in the sky, before flying back until they reach a spot where they can use all cluster together to rest and regroup before moving to their permanent home. 

Keith: Everything about bees is interesting. It's like a non-stop learning curve.

But the old queen leaves, and she goes with all the old. The fun thing about that is [00:02:00] they know what they're doing. They know that the whole deal, and they've all got a position in the hive. And they go pop as much honey as they can too.

So they can start building wax and start collecting resources. 

Bee Expert: Which in that whole process. So they'll engorge themselves with honey. They want to take as many resources with them to the new location. It takes a lot of energy to make wax and rebuild. They're reconstructing the whole.

So we're when they've done that, and they are in their resting group. They tend to be relatively docile when they've clustered on the branch. No need to be scared of them, really, as long as you're don't, I wouldn't recommend approaching them necessarily, but they're not going to leap off of where they are and come stinky or attack you.

They're in a resting mode. They don't have anything to protect. Home or brewed that they have to defend homeless bees, homeless B. So they're just looking they're in transition. Yep. 

Keith: Migraine. So, the other thing that I've found interesting is that there are many feral bees left. 

Bee Expert: No. When people talk about feral bees, it's [00:03:00] usually bees that a beekeeper has been managing or mismanaging, and they've either swarmed, or they've missed the swarm or the colony has left and relocated to another 

Keith: spot.

But Winnie the Pooh tree. They aren't around because of mites, insect problems, or disease problems. 

Bee Expert: So, these don't tend to live very long in nature. The honeybee is not native to North America in the first. 

Keith: place. So they need management.

They need 

Bee Expert: management. Absolutely. Because of pests that have been introduced over the years, mostly through commercial beekeeping practices. Have spread to all the bees, and without specific management, they will die. Yeah. 

Keith: That has to be a bummer if you're a beekeeper. If your swarm leaves, it's they're breaking up with you.

Like we're out. Yep. You got one job, beekeeper. 

Bee Expert: I'd wanted 

Keith: this one since I had an older customer and it was keeping bees for a couple of years, and he came in, and he said, These girls don't even know when they got a good home. They kept flying on [00:04:00] him. Probably because of 

Bee Expert: it couldn't be healthy bees.

I Healthy. Like I said, bees want 

Keith: to make more bees. Yeah. So when the old bees and the old queen leaves. And the reason they leave is that they're knowledgeable and they know what they're doing, and they have the resources and the Queen fertile, and she can lay an egg the next day.

And she probably will lay an egg in an unfinished cell the next day. So to start that whole process again, you got a thousand bees at the hatch out of a hive and in a given day and a thousand bees that die every day. So she wants to lay a thousand eggs as fast as they can build those cells.

But the exciting thing about it is you've got an infertile queen in the high. And she's got to do a mating flight. She's got to become fertile start to lay eggs. So there's a 12 or 15-day process there. But she. She's born into a hive. That's already got eggs and all stages of brood that are hatching now.

So she's got a 10 to [00:05:00] 10 days before you see any blip in the process. 

Bee Expert: And that is a healthy thing for them. They can prevent the disease from spreading throughout the colony when they do that. So if bees get sick, they may divide themselves. A lot of the sick bees end up leaving. What's left.

Can recover and 

Keith: maintain. Yep. It's really important that if you see bees are in short supply, they're in significant decline because of insect problems insect issues. But if you see a swarm, they're not going to make it on their own in the wild. You mustn't spray them, don't spray them.

We've gone out to rescue bees, and somebody's standing there spraying them with unbelievable chemicals. But reach out to garden supply company. And if you're local, if you're not local, reach out to Facebook B group, the county, almost every county in America has a big.

But you reach out to one of those guys, and they'll put, they'll get the word out there [00:06:00] to the beekeepers that, that are available, 

Bee Expert: the keepers want to catch these things, give them a home, and then take care of them. Sure, exactly. 

Keith: And you mentioned that there's not that many feral bees left.

It's probably somebody's. If 

Bee Expert: you see what 

Keith: Yeah, it's going to be somebody hive. There's a mite that's been around for about ten years, and that's a big part of the problem with bees. And it's why the loss rate with bees has gone way up, even when they're managed.

But if they're not treated for. Ultimately those hives are just going to decline over 24 months. And it probably won't make it to, it may not make it a year, but it was not going to make it two years. So when you lose a high. In a tree, say, they'll leave the resources behind, and you may get another swarm that goes to that tree, but you don't, but isn't that high as died out.

And then another swarm moves in because the resources are already there. I grew up in the country, and I remember honeybees would get in people's houses and stuff like that, but I haven't heard of like a swarm and a deck. Yeah. We could have to send you pictures that they happen mainly in the [00:07:00] springtime this spring.

It's a mid-March through mid June is getting way late for swarms, but you see a few then April and May. And it's, and again, as Jason said, there it's the natural way that a beehive, they multiply, you end up with two points. They seem to like houses branches in cars.

Yeah. So my dad tells this stor...

Jason, now we'll talk about the difference between nukes and packages. What do you think the biggest difference is between nukes and packages? Jason? 

Bee Expert: Timing. Timing is the. The advantage of getting an established colony over a loose assortment of bees, which is what a package of bees 

Keith: are.

And so packages usually come at what timeframe 

Bee Expert: packages are later in the season and are dependent on how the weather gums up through the south because most bees are coming up [00:01:00] from Georgia, and the lady gets them the less time you have to 

Keith: build. So if you get a package, you're not. You're likely not going to see honey that year.

Bee Expert: You be hopeful to build out your colony, fill out all the frames with wax, and have some food stores. You'll be supplementing to get 

Keith: that. I bought packages initially when I got into beekeeping ten years, 10, 15 years ago. And that was the thing I didn't even know about nukes when I got into it.

I knew I knew there were packages available, and I bought packages. But that was probably my biggest thing I learned down the road was that you could put a nuke in, and so our nukes come, what 

Bee Expert: 1st of March into February typically am. 

Keith: When you're in and how much, honey, could you harvest from a nuc?

It 

Bee Expert: is an established colony. So you've already got five full frames of these in different stages of development, a queen that's accepted and a colony that's actively working. So you put that into your hive, and in a few weeks, your calling will be filling out their box the amount of space they have to live in, and you [00:02:00] can start to gear them up to make honey.

So you can expect to get some honey depending on how well the weather and the season are. 

Keith: Sure. And the nuc and the queen, and there are many variables, but. The people look at nucs, and I think sometimes things think they're expensive. Or there's always a question of local nucs over Florida nucs.

I like Florida nucs because they come early. What's your 

Bee Expert: thought in general, I'm looking at bees. If I'm looking for something local, I'm probably looking more regional. So I wouldn't buy bees coming out of the Northwest and Northeast. I'd be looking for bees from the south or Southeast.

Sure. They don't necessarily have to be from the town I'm in, just from the general area that they're going to be forging on the same types of plants and have the same kinds of weather in 

Keith: general to deal with. So you, Florida bees that can handle humidity and heat, will thrive in North Carolina.

They'll do just fine. Excellent. Versus something that's acclimated to cold weather and, 

Bee Expert: general in general, any of the bees you're going to get, be it ones that are from more Northern climate or a Southern climate, they're [00:03:00] probably going to do fine. Anyhow, because bees will still go out and do what bees do forage on flowers.

Sure. It just, and it all depends on your goals as a beekeeper, too. So if you're looking to grow bees or if you're looking to produce honey for the different types of bees, you may. It May make a difference, but healthy bees are what you want in general. 

Keith: a healthy full nuc

It just gets you that quick start in the spring. We've started nucs in the last few years. Better than 60% of them, 70% of them produced honey. And, sometimes we'll begin to a nuc in a, in an eight frame or a ten frame box and let it build-out and then put a honey super on it and harvest honey depending on where we are with established hives.

But the other way you can do it is to build bees and build resources. 

Bee Expert: There'll be as if you're looking to have some pollinators. B's in general. Getting a nuc allows you to have to get them early enough allows you to take advantage of the full spring seat, 

Keith: right?

So you can put them in a hive body, and [00:04:00] then when they fill out, you can go ahead and add another hive body to it. So you have twice as many resources and the ability to split a hive maybe later on. 

Bee Expert: Absolutely. Yep. With the package bees, you're limited in time.

So you're going to get those later into this. Those bees are going to have first to accept the queen. That's been given to them to build out wax so that the queen can start laying eggs and start producing more of the colony and filling up enough of that space to reserve enough resources to get through. 

Keith: the summer and winter.

So then you're feeding, treating, and managing that hive from, say, April 1st or May 1st. All the way around until May 1st again, right before you're going to be able to harvest any honey. 

Bee Expert: Absolutely. So if you're looking at the cost of things and look certainly do are more, slightly more expensive overall, upfront, but overall over the year and trying to make them survive through the following year, you'll probably spend more than.

Providing resources 

Keith: for your package, be sure. So you're at Costco buying 25 pound bags of sugar to feed the bees instead of potentially harvesting honey the first year. [00:05:00] W what about the makeup of a package? As far as the workers, or how a package is, a package is just shaken out of a full-size hive, 

Bee Expert: right?

So the commercial guys are the producers of packaged bees who will go through their bee yards and select a solid colony and shake quantities of bees out of those hives to provide for the packages. So civil have a large box of many pounds of bees and take a scoop out, weigh them out 2, 3, 3, 2, or three pounds each, dump them into another box, and add a queen who's separated from that colony.

Keith: So you could have all forgers and no nurse bees potentially. Not all, probably, but not a good mix of. Absolutely. 

Bee Expert: You're getting a random assortment of bees that are pretty aggressively handled up until the time you put them in your hive. The likelihood of them doing well decreases as.

As all those issues 

Keith: occur to him. Sure. The other thing that I think with packages that people don't factor in is [00:06:00] that bees are something that we, it's a difficult scenario because we guarantee plants and stand behind our work and everything that we do at the garden center.

But these are something that comes with no guarantee. It's these fly. They're an insect. They and I've, we've had years where we installed 20 packages trying to build bees. We had extra packages, and we're going to install them in our own Hobbs. And, some of those packages fly away.

So you, you know, you don't know if it's worth it, you know, and you don't see what you're getting, you know, you, uh, sometimes you get crazy BS. Oh, we're going to build out this analogy. 

Bee Expert: to 

Keith: the end. No, but you could install ten hives and have two of them fly away or have five of them fly away.

So you've, if you have five, five of them fly away, and in one year, it's a 50% increase. Now you're paying 15, 15, $20 more than a nuc would cost. On the flip side, [00:07:00] You could buy a nuc, build out a hive, split it by in the first year, and have two packs. So there's a, there seems like there are so many advantages to buying a nuc. 

And when you think about it, i...

Something that's for the, an interior designer. My favorite plant what's my favorite plant.

Mother-in-law's tongue. It never goes away. It's the easiest plant in the world. If you don't, over-water it, I've got about 20 of them, and there are so many different varieties, colors, and [00:01:00] sizes. It's great. It's excellent put it on a, in a pot, on a buffet, or put it on a pot on a shelf.

As long as you don't go over water and I've, overwatered one in the last two or three years and started to lose some, partial part of the plant and had to put a little bit of heavier light on it to get it to come back around. What other bulletproof plants do you like for customers who don't want to mess with plants that much and want to be successful?

Snake plans will let me say this real quick something our customers get a kick out of is on our care tag. It says tolerate almost any abuse, and it couldn't be more accurate. Yeah, absolutely. ZZ plants are another one that is very. Similar in care. Yeah, I think that's why it's easy.

Plants have gotten so popular because it's another plant that you can stick in a pot. And if you miss it for a week, it's probably not going to kill it. If you water it twice in one week, you might. Dragon trees, from the dressiness family or another one, can just be ignored. Yeah, that's a great plan.

So all of these plants are something that you [00:02:00] could pick up, and you can get into the house, plant craze without having finicky plants in your home. Something, they say houseplants they calm your mood. They're great for depression—clean, pure about the air.

There are so many positive points to it. So if you want a plant that you, that's not going to create a lot of extra stress in your life that, don't pick up the hardest plant to maintain. Maybe don't start with a rare and unusual $500 Bonzai and worry about every leaf falling off of it.

Start there another good one. Yeah. Patho is path is the original house plan. You go to the Mexican restaurant, and there's Panthers binding all over the ceiling. There's a. All, doctor's office, and they're so easy to propagate. So it's fun to take a cutting and watch that turn into a whole new plant for sure.

Jade plant is one to me. There's so Jade plant is a pass-along plant. Usually, people that, that are buying water or having. I've, I hear all the time, with all plants but Jay plant in [00:03:00] particular and my grandmother had one for, a hundred years, and she passed it down, or we broke it up and rooted cuttings off of it.

So it's a memory sake plant. But that's one that takes very little water and hardly loses a leaf. It's. And it is telling by the leaves when it needs water, how they wrinkle up a little bit. Yeah, exactly. That baby Jade is the other one. I think it is a bonsai plant, but it's also just an just. It's just as easy as a Jade plant.

But a different look than that red stem and the green leaves and the variegated ones are also gorgeous. Exactly. Is anything else that, that you have on your list.

Succulents for some people, succulent succulents are great if you've got bright light. Absolutely. It's a bright light or lights them up, there's. It has led lights fluorescent lights. It doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive grow light. You can use just a simple two two-bulb shop light and create a situation where, sometimes adding some light to [00:04:00] a room that way, from underneath a table or something, and then having a plant stand there.

And that makes seed hymns and succulents thrive. And that's such a great way to. That artistic value in the plant and water on those is almost non-existent it's it may be once a month scenario depending on the heat and the light. But certainly a tiny bit of work.

I think that's the, just adding the color of a pot and a plant to a room does make a huge difference. Finding those easy plants, the sands of areas, or the snake plants are the ones that we've always had a vast display of because I like them.

And it, and I like them because I might water once a week. I've got a house that's about an hour from here that and I'll leave about 10 of them there, and I water them every month and a half. And very rarely do you lose a leaf. Every once in a while, we'll lose a lethal age out, and you're pulling it out, but then we would water deeply, and it'll make it another month.

Yeah. I have a Hubba, that giant [00:05:00] leaf one. I was in bright lightroom, and it flowered for the first time a couple of months ago, and the flower was vast and stunning, and it lasted a good long time. And that was exciting for me because you don't typically see them flowering. I've got a close friend that built a house near mine and Dennis. He's with clear light electric.

He's a good friend of mine, but he's my electrician. And I gave him a snake. And If Dennis can keep a snake plant a lot, anybody can own a snake plan alive. It may be his wife Stacy may have saved that plan active, but anyway, he's still excited about it. It was a housewarming present, and it was two years ago, and it looks better than when I gave it to him.

So that's how that's the scenario with us and severity or snake plant. Everybody should have one because it's just super easy. The other thing I like about these selections we've talked about is really, they can come in a small four-inch pot, or they can come in a 14-inch pot and you can have it as a floor plant or as a [00:06:00] tabletop.

Yeah. So a sense of various, some of them, some of them, the maximum Heights, like eight or 10 inches. So you can put it in a tiny pot. And then, as you said, have a plan in the corner of and then, if somebody wants something that's five to six feet tall, put it on plant stand, and it still gives you that vertical, height than a corner.

I'm excited about all the new plants we've got coming in. We've talked about easy to care for plants. Everybody should stop by and take a look. It's a kind of calming, enjoyable scenario to walk around. Yeah. I picked up this tagline, it's our customer's happy place, but we hear that.

So it's come in and walk around and enjoy the house plants. Cold, rainy days are warm and sunny in our greenhouse. So kind of fun. All right. Until next time everybody wants your plants, we will talk to you soon.

What do you think made the house plant trend spike up? I think COVID had something to do with it. It drove people to be at home and stuck and want to bring some life into their home. It also brought in some people with more disposable income and this new generation.

Who is starting to like house plants? Millennials seem like they've picked up houseplants. It's a—resurgence of the [00:01:00] the sixties and seventies. I was a kid at that point, but that was a time when houseplants were just huge. Macrame hangers and pathos growing all over, you're taking over your house.

We're back to that scenario, especially with young kids. I couldn't agree more. And the macrome trend is also back for sure, but I see the pictures of the people, the customers home, and it is like a greenhouse. That's the thing that gets me most excited is big plant shelves and hanging plants in front of a window and just people's plant collection and how excited they are about their collection of plants.

It's been a lot of fun from my perspective as well. Not only these younger people are coming in and teaching them about. Plants and caring for them, but also people who never got into it are now adults and have started to pick enough house plans. Yeah. The thing that amazes me a lot about it is the rare and unusual house plant scenario, and it's, it's gone crazy.

It's unbelievable. Yeah. [00:02:00] We brought in last year, like that tie constellation and the pink princesses, and just the opportunity for people to come in and see them was exciting. So these are plants that nobody else has. In many cases, people haven't seen before they're plants that are newly developed or newly crossed plants.

And, the first one I purchased them hard to believe that we're buying a house plant for $800. And scary for me too. Yeah. And now we've, we've—two of those in the $500 price range. And of course, there's the same plant available for $10 without the variegation and its uniqueness as a first-time out-of-the-box plan.

So everybody can get into houseplants at any price range, but it is truly unique. We've started the rare and unusual plant collectors that are out there. Showcase those and bring in more as they become available from our growers, right in the center of the house plant section. We have a couple of tables that are really [00:03:00] featuring all those right now.

And every week we get more on different Fridays. The houseplants do we have currently are just unusual or newer. And you two of my favorite are both anther Rams right now. One is called the king Ethereum, where the leaves will bend forward a little bit. Become about three feet long.

There's also. Black cardboard and thorium are spectacular. The black heart-shaped leaf with white veining and even spikes flowers. That's awesome. We're partnering with a couple of other local garden centers as well, too. Be able to buy in more plants that are harder to get, that have to travel a long distance, or you have to buy larger quantities.

Go into a local garden center. Not necessarily just a garden supply company, but there are so many of them that are just amazing. Fairview Homewood garden. Logan's garden hut down in a few coy about finding these unusual plants that you're not going to find necessarily a box store or something like that.

Absolutely. We [00:04:00] have a couple of them that I have seen a little bit of. Big box stores that were unavailable to us were under trademark. And now we're starting to get some of those in the Ravens easy and that Claudia network. Yeah. Some of the larger, there's an extremely large grower in the states and is rolling out some unusual plants to box stores.

And they're a little bit harder for us to get, so it's a little bit of a change of pace. They're there. They're growing them specifically for them. So it's a little bit harder to chase that. Definitely. What about caring for somebody that doesn't have that hasn't had houseplants before knowing what the light condition is or bringing in pictures helps us get a sense of what is considered bright light to them, or medium light, low light.

Low light plants can tolerate bright light and thrive in bright light, but colorful light plants need. Or need bright light. But watering is probably the number one issue I see with our customers who have problems with their plants. Too much [00:05:00] love.

. Babying it just a little bit too much, instead of letting it dry out between those waterings, they want to water a little bit every day or every other day. Yeah. The thing that I think what's interesting is when a plant looks dry if you're looking at the soil and it looks dry on the surface, if you push your finger into the ground, you can push it in half an inch and all of a sudden you can feel moisture.

And so the plant doesn't need any water yet. And, but people are watering them. I like to explain to people how to lift the plant in the grower. So they can feel the bottom, the holes, of course. And then also just the weight of it, right? Yeah. I always tell people the water every week, pick your day.

If you're off on Sunday and Sunday is a day you spend time around the house to water, try to water consistently on the same day. And that way, it's either a little teeny, a few drops of water or maybe no water at all, or, a good in good, heavy watering if a plant's dried out.

So yeah. It'll make it to the following week. Absolutely. And then when you're letting it dry out, that's decreasing your odds of fungal gnats. [00:06:00] Exactly. And, when a plant's overwatered, it's just not getting enough oxygen. So if it's sitting in water, it's smothering the planet. It just doesn't get the oxygen it needs.

And without the oxygen, it can't take up water. So it does. Letting a plant's not going to dry out as fast in the house, so it's just a check that with your finger almost as he is lifted. As you said, that's a great idea. 

Japanese maple in the wintertime with no leaves on it creates a fair amount of structure. So you can add plants and create the bones of a garden with hedges and screened plants and that kind of thing. And it, that greens the garden up with evergreen hedges and creates life.

That's there 12 months out of the year. And sometimes that plants when you look at plants that are boring it's because they don't do a whole lot, they don't change for the year. Giving them that the green and the [00:01:00] structure 12 months out of the year, really probably do more than something that puts on a big show for two, three weeks, or four weeks.

Something like a chameleon that limbs in the wintertime for two to three months. You create a green hedge behind something and it's there 12 months out of the year. Walkways and stonework are other ways to create structure in the garden. It gives you the definition.

It gives you something to look at what's there and it's there permanently. When you look at the cost of a walkway or a patio sometimes it's not really, something that's gonna last for 20 years or forever. So it's, the cost is not as much as, adding flowers to a garden or something you're going to, you're going to repeat and do over and over just boulders in the garden.

Very low maintenance but create a huge impact. People always hate buying boulders. They always think that you ought to be able to pick them up on the side of the road. Drive out to the mountains and throw on in your trunk, but it's the way that the Boulder and the shipping and the placement of it, but Boulder just adds a great accent to a garden.

And then, dry Creek beds, a lot of times solve [00:02:00] a drainage problem it just creates the definition and a backdrop or foreground for planning and adds a lot of winter interest ponds and streams are the same thing, pond and they add a lot of life to a garden.

It's you've got the running water and you've got you've created that structure and that backdrop for your plants through the year when they're coming and going. And then, the stone would be a one that's extremely low maintenance, not a whole lot to do with it.

Year in, year out. Would is another thing that you can add to do a garden in the wintertime. And when you've got a vacant space or you've got something that's really flat just adding a post or three posts to a garden gives you a place you can grow Vons on gives you some elevation, creating something.

That's got a nice finial on top or, a nice cut on. Or a light post so that you're creating some light in the evening so that you can see the garden and then put vines on it or something that's going to climb on its pieces, offenses or to give you some screen or, just even three sections of [00:03:00] fence, short, sorta short section, like a two or three-foot section that goes, it's either hung out there or that's on a post to give you a backdrop for like a perennial garden.

And then, gates or entryways are. Into new spaces do the same thing. They just create that structure that then in the spring you can come in or later when, or you can come in and plan around.

Yeah. Garden art adds interest. It adds color to all kinds of garden art, probably the most popular garden art that we sell these days is like a window. People are adding that to the garden and that's like a ponder or a fountain and you're adding movement in the garden, which is kinda nice.

That's an easy thing to do in the wintertime, and you're not spending a ton of time outside, but come out, look around, pick one out and then you're literally just stepping into the garden. Or sometimes people put it in a little bit of concrete, but it just it's a steak and it can just go straight into the garden and it adds, you look out and you see that movement.

I've got one in the [00:04:00] middle of a bunch of ornamental grasses. So when it's windy, the grasses are blowing around, and then I've got a windmill effect of the wind art. The other thing is from a focal point and a functional. Is having a fire pit when you look out there it's an inviting piece.

It's a reason to go out into the garden on a cool night. And I've said on another podcast, I love a fire pit when I'm working in the yard. On a fall day and you're picking up sticks and finding guns, you can enjoy the fire pit, but you're also getting rid of the sticks and the pine guns at the same time.

So it's an interactive way to be out in the yard and gardening benches, that, that same kind of scenario. It's a focal point in the garden. And when you look out into the garden and you see a bench it's inviting it's an, it's something inviting to the garden, it's although I find when I have a bench, I spend more time working in the garden or walking around the garden.

Yeah. They're fun to look at for me, but I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting on a bench. But it is a good focal point and, [00:05:00] planning a few plants around the bench and just creating a nice little quiet area parts in a garden is another one. I think most people think about it.

As being functional to hold plants, but structurally they're fun. Do you know what I mean? To do a bigger and in a garden or do a blue glaze pot and the garden adds the plants too. And a plant around it and really create the, using it almost like you would a Boulder. As the structure in a garden and then, a backdrop or a foreground in front of it gives you the color and it gives you a, gives you some in the garden, something to look at.

And then plants are always an easy way to create structure and a fairly low maintenance inexpensive way to do. But now it's just a good time to go to the window, spend some time looking at it on a cold day, walk around mark stuff out, figure out where you need elevation and where you need Heights.

And just get out in the garden. And, even if it's a few minutes here or there come out to the garden center and look around and take a look at stuff [00:06:00] inside and outside. And then pick out a wind feature or a fire pit to create something to enjoy in the garden. And as the weather warms up, we'll see you next time.

It requires a minor cleanup picking up sticks and debris, raking the beds out, and getting everything ready for spring. You usually want to cut your perennial plants that need cleaning up or pruning. And there's lots of pruning.

That can be done during the wintertime, so once you get through some of those projects, we'll touch back on pruning further down, but Once you get all the beds cleaned out. Mulching is a hot process. The mulch itself [00:01:00] creates a lot of heat, and when it's cool out, it's a nice thing to you'll go out with a heavy coat.

And, as soon as you get into that mulch pile, you'll be shedding layers. And so it's something I like to do, it's probably not a bad thing this time of year because I don't know about everybody else, but I had way too many calories over Christmas. And that's a calorie-burning project for sure.

Get you out, do something good for your heart, and burn calories. Mulch also holds moisture in the ground, and it contains a lot of heat in the ground. So it's good for plant roots. We say our plants repeatedly, but winter, fall, winter, and early spring is the time to plant.

You can plant 12 months out of the year. There's no, no better time than when the plants are dormant. But you get a plant in the ground, and it's in the middle of winter, and you put mulch on it. The reason it places this stuff in the ground in the wintertime is so good is that we've got the plants will [00:02:00] grow roots all through the winter.

And, but when you mulch it, you're adding heat to the heat, to the ground. You're going to grow a lot more roots, a lot faster. It knocks the edge off of the cold for the plants. So it's an excellent thing for the plant in the wintertime and then suitable for weed control. You're getting ahead of the head of the schedule your molten and things that you might get to germinate that are on the surface.

And then the cold weather is going to kill them out. When I'm cleaning up prepping for mulch, a lot of the debris that we have, I've got a fire pit, so I'm picking up sticks and stuff like that. I drop them in the fire pit, and I'm prepping myself. I'll break them up and build a fire at the same time.

And it's an excellent way to get rid of that kind of stuff if all, and, or take it, taking it out to the street. But sometimes, when we're working in the yard, depending on the time of the year, if it's cool, I will fire up the fire pit and keep dropping the Dixon or pinecones in as we're working in the yard, makes it a little more enjoyable.

And then compost piles. If you've got a, you're raking up leaves and debris, and cutting [00:03:00] perennials back North Carolina soil needs compost probably more than the heavy clay soil benefits from top dressing or digging compost in. It's worth every penny by the bag when you're planting because you don't have.

A decent amount of compost and good soil. Plants aren't going to do as well as they could. They'll probably live, but they're not going to do as well as possible. But when you got compost, that's just coming out of your compost pile. A, it's probably more alive than a bag of soil.

But B, it's free. And it gives you it's a shorter walk. You don't have. Package it up in a bag and put it at the curb where it has to go to a composting facility, and then you're buying it on the other end. When you start a compost pile, that's a good winter project if that's something.

I usually use a little bit of nitrogen in there. Nitrogen-fixing organisms are what break down the compost. Adding just a handful of any fertilizer or just a nitrogen-based fertilizer is good. It's good to get a compass fired up and hot, and then some compost starter, like a [00:04:00] stoma, has an excellent compost starter and a few cups of that to the pile as you're adding stuff debris, it will just speed the process.

And then every spring, I have some fresh worms too. We always order in worms and have red worms in your compost pile. We'll undoubtedly speed the process of breaking stuff down. The other thing this time of year I started looking at is I'll begin collecting seeds, looking at the seed rack, and figuring out what I'm going to grow something new for this year.

Seeing what's available, just making sure that some of my favorite varieties are available, and the seeds in the last few years have been hard to come by. The availability just hasn't been there. I like to get my sources in early and have them sitting on the shelf ready to go, and I can plan out my garden at that time.

Soil testing is something that I always think about. Winter, time's a good time to do it. The state does it for free. It's probably the single best thing you can do for your soil. Figure out where you're at with pH so that you can make some adjustments to the. And then knowing what it's lacking in micronutrients and then nitrogen phosphorus and [00:05:00] potash so that you can make those adjustments in your plant is getting what it needs.

Lime is inexpensive to add to the soil, and it just makes a huge difference. So in the wintertime, if, even if you don't get a soil sample out, just lime in your landscape line, lime in your garden getting lime out on your grass, people usually come in and buy one or two bags.

It's probably something in most cases where people need three to five bags; more extensive lawns need 10 to 20. It takes a lot of property to make a difference. And when you're adding lime, you're adding calcium. In the garden, that will be beneficial to, or tomatoes or peppers and that kind of stuff.

And that gives it time to break down, and it's readily available in the soil. And your stuff's going to do a whole lot better. In the last few weeks, we just have started looking at what we've started prepping for putting some bags together. For people who don't have the space or don't have a big garden outside planning, lettuce bags are all kinds of fabric bags now that you can [00:06:00] buy seeding those indoors.

You can start to harvest them indoors, or you can move them in. They're small enough, they produce a fair amount, and you can stagger that crop. So you could plant lettuce every week if you wanted, and in five or ten bags and then cycle through them as they're ready. And we talked about pruning. The one thing about pruning as you can see into the plant, see where to plant, where branches are crossing over, and you need to remove those. You also know the plant's overall shape, so you can start to shape it. If the plant needs to be reduced in size, you can cut the plant. Structurally pruning things that are, we're limbs getting too heavy.

You can take some of the weight off of it, and it's just all there. And it's all visual in the wintertime. It's the other time. The other thing that I'm looking at while I'm looking at pruning is the hard part of the garden, the bones of a garden, and figuring out structurally where we're missing stuff.

You can all things that need to be screened or a neighbor's window that you could block out. It's a good time. You. [00:07:00] To see that stuff. And, you get used to it as the winter goes on. Still, if you take a good hard look putting a plan or two in this time of year, a year or so from now, you're not looking at your neighbor's window, or they're not looking into your backyard or side yard, or if you've got an eyesore trash can and that kind of stuff that you want to screen that's a good time to figure it out.

And sometimes you got a deciduous plant there in the springtime. And...

[00:00:56] Most people don't want to delve in that deep, but like vegetables, you get warm season weeds and cool season weeds. And if you know what stage the weeds you're at, or if it's an annual or if it's a perennial. You can actually manage the problem a little bit easier. 

[00:01:10] There's things like chickweed that people come in the middle of spring and they said, I've got chickweed all over my yard and it's choking out my grass and I need to do something with it. And, it is choking out your grass and you do need to do something with it. 

[00:01:23] But the reality is it's not that crazy of a problem because the first hot day it's going to start to fade. it's On its way out. And it's knowing that you need to have the pre-emergence down ahead of that. So you don't get to that point is easier than managing the problem at that point. 

[00:01:38] And once if you're in a house or you're got a garden space and you've, and you start to understand what weed you have and what the life cycle is you can control them a whole lot easier. I always find that to me. Pulling weeds is a relaxing thing. 

[00:01:55] It's, you can walk through the garden and you can pull a handful of weeds until you can't walk through the garden and just pull a handful of weeds. You're raking a wheelbarrow loads of weeds, so it's staying ahead of the problem knowing when to put down pre-emergence.  

[00:02:10] If you put down pre-emergence, you can usually eliminate 90% of the germination and manage the problem and then pulling weeds is not actually painful. And it's something you can do in a short period of time. If you've got a weed problem, if it's a handful of weeds, you pull them before they go to seed. 

[00:02:27] So that you're not dropping new seeds. And then You just don't want them to get, out of control at that point. So you're going to, you're going to pull all the weeds or you're going to rake the weeds out or the other option is spraying them. And people always shy away from spraying, but there's  

[00:02:41] There are many organic sprays out there now that you can use. There's an iron-based product that works extremely well. And broadleaf weeds in you can't spray it on, on and around your plants, but it's not going to affect the roots of the plant. So it goes into the leaves. It's basically a toxic level of iron. 

[00:02:58] So it'll cause the plant to cave in. And then you've added iron to your soil for future say, you're going to have greener plants, which is a benefit. Fatty acids is another one. It basically just Smothers the plant can't take in oxygen.  

[00:03:11] And then there's all kinds of vinegar products on the market. Vinegar works really well. I recommend using a product that's that is the right percentage and something that's made for weeds over just experimenting in your kitchen, because I think people can cook up these recipes and then you don't really know what you're doing to the microbes in the soil. 

[00:03:32] You don't know what you're doing to the worms. So using a product that's labeled that's been tested is not a bad idea. There's a clove based product that does the same thing. It'll, take care of any kind of light weeds not a really serious perennial weeds, but it does a good job. 

[00:03:45] And then there's the standby that everybody's used for years that any more is the scariest thing on the market Roundup. I still think Roundup is a pretty safe product used in moderation. I've used it for years and been around it. I don't see, I don't see it being extremely detrimental in a home garden. 

[00:04:02] More of an issue when it's sprayed over our food in large quantities on farms that they could you'll see it over sprayed into, taking taken out native plants and that kind of thing. And. We're losing pollinators and that kind of stuff, but Roundup in the garden is not something that I'm shying away from. 

[00:04:18] It's something I use in my garden when I need to, otherwise I'm using something that's organic and and I would use it in the, in a perennial. I'd use it in a veggie garden, but I'd use it ahead of season over during, at the point that you've got food in there. And then the other end of that is pre-emergent, you're catching the weeds before the germinate. 

[00:04:35] That's the pre part it's before that seed germinates, you get the pre-emergence out and then it stops that seed from getting to the point where it's going to get a root into the ground and start to grow. And there's an organic option there too. Corn, gluten Corn gluten is a is a product that it'll do exactly what the chemical products do. 

[00:04:55] . It just slows the growth of the cuddle lead, and when it comes out of the seed, the seed will dry up and you'll eliminate probably 90% of the germination. Dimension is a product that we use both for crabgrass and the lawn And for weeds in beds. 

[00:05:11] It's not something that I would use in a veggie garden, but there's two or three different pre emergencies you can use in a veggie garden as well that are labeled for veggie gardens. And don't go into the plant. And then the other part of it is, it's like weeding, but cultivating the soil turning the soil and digging around the plants. 

[00:05:27] That makes a big difference in weed control. When you're in a perennial situation or within trees and shrubs, you can mulch, and mulching it'll either smother out weeds or it keeps the weed seeds from getting to a moist enough space that they can germinate. 

[00:05:40] And all kinds of mulches can be used. You could. You can shred your leaves and use leaf mulch. It's very effective, and it's good for the soil. You can use a Woody-type malt or bark mulch. In a veggie garden, a lot of times, we'll use paper or cardboard. Usually, you can just recycle cardboard from packages or a dumpster. 

[00:05:58] And then You can also buy just cheap rolls of brown paper and roll them out in a row. That does an excellent job because it stays dry. It's going to keep cutting down the light that weeds underneath it will get. And then it just gives you a good, hard walk-in surface in between yours. 

[00:06:16] Get to know the weeds you have and what you have. You can always bag of weed and bring it in. Now we got people that can. They can tell you what you've got and when it needs to be sprayed or when the pre-emergence needs to go out. The more you understand the weeds you're trying to manage, the easier it'll be. 

[00:06:34] Just walk through the garden and pull a handful of weeds. Just keep them under control and managed. And it's not the end of the world to pull a few weeds. We'll see you next time.

Wintertime in North Carolina is a great time to start prepping your veggie garden, pulling out, finishing up excellent seeds and stuff from the fall. And you can do additional seasonal plannings and cover them, or you can do cover crops, which is a perfect way to get green manure back into the soil.

When I do a cover crop, I usually do rye or like annual ryegrass or oats or, or white Clover, medium red Clover. The one thing I wouldn't do that sometimes you'll see in books is Crimson Clover, tall and beautiful in a field. It's beautiful on a farm, but it's big for a, for a residential garden.

Joe: And when you say cover crop, I'm not familiar with that. That means when you're not using it as a garden; you put something over the whole thing. [00:01:00] And what's the benefit of that. 

Keith: You're pulling nitrogen out of the soil. So you're holding the nitrogen at the top level of the soil.

So you're, you're pulling nitrogen up into the plant, and then you're creating green manure. So the, in the early spring, you go back in, and you cut it back down, and then you dig it around in, or you don't even have to cut it back down. If it's low enough, you dig it back into the. 

Joe: So it's better than just leaving it as open dirt.

Exactly. Which doesn't look good if it rains and gets all over your lawn. Anyway, that's the one thing I was going to say 

Keith: sometimes, I'll dig everything out. I'll turn the soil a little bit. I'll rake it smooth. And then I'll take something like oats, winter oats, or annual rye, and I'll broadcast it across the garden.

And then I just kind of rake it in with my hands or rake it in with rake water. It well. The other thing about it is it's just watching something grow is nice. And, and so all of a sudden, you, instead of having a garden, that's got an old, dead tomato in the middle of it. You've cleaned it up, and you've seeded it.

And then you've got all this incredible green lush growth coming up in the wintertime. So it's nice, it's a nice view too. It's [00:02:00] like watching, you know, new green grass grow in your, in your lawn after the summertime. Instead of a cover crop, the other option you can do is go in. Plant lettuce, mustard, collards, some of the cool season stuff you would typically do in mid-August or February 15th is when you would do things like broccoli and that kind of stuff that needs a cool season to get going, to be able to root in.

But going in and doing lettuce, you do the same thing this time of year prep. You prep the soil, you, you rake it out. You, you plant your lettuce, you plant it heavy and then cover it. And the lettuce comes back up. You've got some greens to harvest through the wintertime, and then when you cut it before, you've still got that green manure that you can kind of dig back into the soil, and it keeps the earth alive.

It gives the microbes something to break down and start rereleasing nitrogen. The other thing this time of year is the soil test is probably one of the things that I would say 90% of the people don't. [00:03:00] It's perhaps one of the more important things to perfect the soil and optimal plant growth.

And that's landscape plants and garden plants. But it's just one of those things. People, you know, data, and another day goes by. And I can't tell you the last time I've done a soil test in my yard, but it does make a difference if you're a new gardener or an older gardener and want to do something exciting.

And, and, and something that you'll see. Great results from going ahead and doing a soil test. Then once you get the soil test, people will bring soil tests to us, and we'll go through them with them there. They're not highly complicated if you've got a science mind, but many times, people look at them and glaze over and they don't understand what they're looking at.

But adding lime limes, probably the biggest thing that you can always add lime to, to North Carolina soil and, and almost most, I'd say 90% of the soil needs. But knowing the quantity of lime that you need is the thing. And so a lot of times you'll need [00:04:00] 20, 20 to 30 bags, an acre. Most people will buy 40 pounds, put half of it out, and think they've done something.

And they haven't. So it's just, it's a good indicator of how much time you need. And kind of a starting point. And so you, if you do a soil test, you put 20 bags of lime out two years later, you may need ten more loads. It's, it's something that's constantly changing. You get a baseline, and then you can go from there.

The other thing besides Lyme is fertilizer to, to the Mix organic fertilizer you can put out throughout the year, putting it out in the wintertime gives it a little bit of time to break down the microbes, start to break it down when we have warm weather. And give you a little bit more punch to the garden in the early spring.

I wouldn't recommend doing a chemical fertilizer this time of year because you don't want to push new growth. You don't want to make them if you have garden plants in them. And then and then we have a real cold snap, and foilage gets burned, or flowers get burned, 90% of the people don't plant [00:05:00] cool-season vegetables at the right time. So prepping right now, you're preparing for a February 15. Plant date for cool-season vegetables, and we'll get vegetables at that time of year. We get a few trays. We don't sell many, and then two or three weeks pass, and we sell a few more, and we get a few more in people are still planting them on up until April, but to be successful, I like to plant right around February 15th through about March 15th.

And then I cut it off. I think it's almost a waste of time after that. But we, you know, people are still coming in. They're looking for something to put into their garden. They're finally out moving around, and you know, they want to plant something. We still have them that time of year, but February 15th is like a great target date for cool-season stuff like broccoli and cauliflower and things that need time to root in and then push flowers at a later date.

The target date for the warm season stuff is like Ms. Moore, like April 15th. That's our last freezer. But there, I think a lot of people push that date. I [00:06:00] usually I'm planting tomatoes like the first you know, in, in middle of March, you know, we get a warm spell, and it looks like it's going to be friendly for two weeks.

I'll go ahead and start putting some stuff in the ground. But I don't see many great results from early planning, the tomatoes. I think they need that heat. To push growth. So they'll sit there, and they make grow roots. Still, they're not going to put a lot of top growth on, so things like tomatoes and peppers I'd usually wait until at least the 15th, and maybe even the end of the month when we have some heat. The other thing with tomatoes is that they like the warm weather when they're.

So if you put a tomato in the middle of April, into April. Stagger, the planning. So you plant, you know, a couple of plants a month later, plant a couple more plants, you'll have tomatoes throughout the season. And then from those plants, I like to, you know, if you buy a four-inch plant, you've got a giant plant going in, you can get more variety.

So you have, you know, if you buy for four-inch plants, you're paying a little bit more for them, but [00:07:00] you, you get a bigger start when you put them in. And then you've got more variety of types of tomatoes. You can grow. You can grow more petite cherry tomatoes. You can produce a giant sandwich of tomatoes.

And then, later in the season, you can take a cutting off of that plan. And just actually literally cut the plant, but a little rooting hormone in it, and then stick it straight into the soil and the toma...

[00:00:20] keith:  
 

[00:00:41] We're always talking about garden design and how we're gonna, how we're gonna do things, how we're going to mix plants up and different colors and textures and One of the things that I think comes naturally to me and not necessarily utilizing functional way, but just the natural curves and the things that make it feel easy to walk through a garden not straight lines and no sharp turns. 

[00:01:05] Not having plants come over the edge of a walkway and make you feel like you've got to lean away to, make it down. Nice, open, airy, inviting gardens. There are a few simple guidelines to help you bring more beneficial energy into your yard. No matter the size. 

[00:01:23] Size really doesn't matter. In a small garden, you can work with the garden that you have. You can apply different scales to your garden. Having walkways or paths that just have a slow-flowing curve. And not, I'll find a lot of times when I look at a house that people try to follow the house, they try to square everything up with the house. 

[00:01:44] And so they'll have a walkway that just follows straight down the side of the house or having occur in a nice curve to it. But on the other hand, people start putting curves in a landscape and. They'll put too many curves in the landscape. So it's got to be a kind of a really soft, gentle curve. 

[00:02:02] Something that you're going to enjoy, walking down. And then have a focal point either a bench or a fountain or a fire pit a big specimen plant and those All bring something different. A bench with plants around it, maybe a birdbath gives you, I find a lot of times people don't even sit on the benches, but it gives you that kind of inviting, walk down here and sit on the bench. 

[00:02:25] Kind of feeling which relaxing, takes your mind off of everything else. And it just gives you this serene water a lot of times. It, it muffles sound. So if you've got road noise or if you've got noisy neighbors sometimes the sound of water just has really soon. 

[00:02:41] So adding water to and having that as a focal point. So you see the water, it's a cooling effect. But, it also kinda mellows that space. And then fire, I think always warms the space up or gives you something, a space for entertaining, but again, it can be a focal point. 

[00:02:58] We just put in a big, hard. And before the Arbor was in and we had a fire pit out there, but the fire pits the center of the Arbor. So when you look out into the yard, it's, it looks like a space that you want to go sit in and cool evenings. Cool, cool. 

[00:03:12] Saturday. It's a perfect time to have a fire and have that, inviting you to get people over it. It really pulls people out of the house and out to a fire pit. But all of those things, great focal points, they all do something different. And, I've got a friend that I've worked with for 25 years and. 

[00:03:32] His yard is probably, it's the most intensely landscaped yard I've ever seen. And I left there one day and I was like, he's got something everywhere. Literally something everywhere. And the interesting thing is, you could, you can shift your head and there's a focal point and somebody might say it looks cluttered. 

[00:03:53] But to me, it was like every time I turned a corner, there was a focal point. There was something else. To look at, which was very interesting to me. It was, I left thinking and it's not cluttered to me at all. It's, there's something else to look at. There's something else to walk towards. 

[00:04:09] Something else that, engages your mind, which is interesting when you're out in a garden it's not just a boring space. It really pulls you out there and it has energy. And a flow to it. functional way. Doesn't have to be any great science or anything that's extremely complex. 

[00:04:26] I think sometimes, just the simplicity of a garden and then creating some focal points and having a nice flow to a garden is what functional is all about. The flow or cheek or you have life, it's like an energy force almost. But it's not something that you got to spend a whole lot of time on. 

[00:04:44] I think you when you've done it, you kinda know it, and if it's not right, shift stuff around or move stuff, sometimes having a really large plant to close, close to your space. It's like Evan wide aisles in the store, it doesn't feel comfortable to walk down a tight then I'll, or having big plants or overgrown plants, sometimes it's time just to cut them back and give yourself some more space. 

[00:05:06] Too many plants in a garden I think is always a, a negative because you don't have the space and you don't really have any negative space to, feel like there's room to move around or you just see-through. The other thing I think is that. The yin and yang of a garden. 

[00:05:20] The yang is soft, the plants the flowers and the yang would be the hard, structures and boulders and that kind of thing. Having a good balance, there are the key boulders to me we were in the plant business, but boulders to me are one of the most interesting things in the garden. 

[00:05:37] And they really do play, when you've got a flower sitting up against a Boulder, they really do play well together, and it's the contrast of the two that really make the whole thing work and thinking those things through and making sure that you've got good flow in your garden, nice steady curves, and then focal points I think will give you what you're looking for. 

[00:05:57] In the funky functionary world without making it any more complex than that.

[00:00:53] They don't get to go through very little stress through the wintertime. People always think they're going to be too cold. They're sitting out in the nursery in a pot. So if you can get that pot down into the soil, it'll start growing roots. We grow roots throughout the winter, so it's a perfect time to plant, but it's also a good time to go to the nursery and look at plants. 

[00:01:12] There's a lot of plants that bloom all winter long or throughout the winter Camelia is in the south or are one that just consistently bloom. There are two types of chameleons. There's a succinct that starts blooming in the fall. It's a smaller leaf and a little bit smaller flower, but a more profusely. 

[00:01:31] And, within this as sank as there are hundreds of varieties of pink, white, red, and lots of different size plants, but sank was start blooming in October, November. They'll bloom October, November, December, January for about two and a half, three months. Depending on the variety of the. 

[00:01:50] And then japonica is, which is a larger leaf, a chameleon and a larger bloom will pick up. And then they start, they bloom on, into the winter and in spring. So they'll start blooming in December, January, February, March, and finish up at the beginning of April. And chameleons are more like the japonicas are more like. 

[00:02:11] A large rose flower or a peony flower. It's a flower. That's probably four to five inches across six inches across. And full of ' full of color again, whites, pinks and reds yellow stamens woven through the flower. It's a great cut flower to bring in and use a vase or pot, floating. 

[00:02:33] But the chameleon is even without flowers on them have just dark shiny green leaves. It's a perfect plant, 12 months out of the year, to fill a space in your garden. So because  

[00:02:45] Joe: it blooms in the winter, does that mean it doesn't  

[00:02:47] Keith: bloom in the summer? Exactly. But most of the things that bloom in the winter bloom for a long period of time there aren't as many pollinators out so that they need a few warm days. 

[00:02:59] To get pollinated so they can produce seed. So of most, all of the winter-blooming stuff will bloom a lot longer than summer blooming. Summer blooming will come into bloom and azaleas are a good example. They come into bloom and they bloom like crazy when pollinators are out and then they go out of bloom and they're done. 

[00:03:17] So you get two to three, four weeks in blooms and then they wrap it up. Chameleons you really. Two to three months of solid bloom time. And that's from one bloom to peak bloom and then back down to one, but a really good show of flowers for a long period of time. 

[00:03:34] And the other thing that's interesting about winter plants is a lot of them are very fragrant because they need pollinators to pollinate. They're extremely fragrant to get the few pollinators that are out and about in the wintertime to come to them. Daphne is one of those plants. 

[00:03:50] It's the, it's a plant that smells It's just, it's got probably the most fragrance of anything that out there. I always tell people it smells like fruit loops and it really truly does when you smell it, it's a fruit loop cereal. If you can bring back that that smell, that's what it smells like. 

[00:04:05] But Daphne will bloom for a long period of time through the wintertime. And it's a plant that needs are a little tricky in our soil that Clay's heavy and if they get overwatered, They get they'll fail. But once you get one established and it's doing well it'll live, 10 years, 20 years. 

[00:04:23] I always tell people to plant three of them but don't plant them together, plant them and scatter them around the yard. It's a plant we guarantee for a year, but if you plant three of them, you're probably going to replace one. And, it's there, it's a tough plant to establish, but once it's established, it'll be one of your favorite plants through the wintertime. 

[00:04:40] Fatsy is another one fatty as a tropical-looking plant, big leafy foliage. And in the wintertime, it blooms with a round sphere up on top of the plant bees, and pollinators go crazy over it, and the winter in the middle of the wintertime. So when we have those warm days in the middle of the winter and either back out and try to forge for nectar pollen they're all over a fat. 

[00:05:02] And in that same kind of time, the same kind of hellebores is a perennial that blooms for a long period of time. It's an evergreen plant. Super easy to establish and very long-lived. Usually, once you plan a hell of, or you'll have them there for a. It'll seed itself and generate babies. 

[00:05:20] But it's it again is a great pollinator plant. One of the plants that don't really, it doesn't help much with nectar but helps with Poland and the spring is our conifers and conifers in the wintertime and is a good time to take a look at the garden. You've lost everything that's deciduous, or that dies back to the ground. 

[00:05:39] You've lost your perineal. And a lot of times a garden can look sparse. It's a good time to look at the bones of a garden and figure out, where are you really need something that's lacking? You can just, you've got a garden that was all perennials and there's really nothing there, at this point in time. 

[00:05:55] So to go out and put in evergreens in an area like that, like a. Conifers are it's, they're a perfect contrast to a chameleon. You've got the needle, evergreen, you might have chartreuse or golden foliage up against that dark green, big, bold leaves. So it's a great plant to add to the winter landscape red twig and yellow twig dogwoods are another one. 

[00:06:19] It's deciduous. But it's one that shows off in the wintertime. It's really, it's a, it's an, it's a nice leafy plant through the year, but in the wintertime, you've got really brilliant red foliage or red stems or yellow stems. And if you plant contrasting ground cover underneath it the red twigs with creeping Jenny or something like that under. 

[00:06:41] Really shows off the plant and then red twigs and snow obviously just makes it really up. A lot of the garden pictures we don't have very often, but when we do it, it really shows off that plan. And another deciduous plant with winter berries, which is a deciduous Holly Holly's is great for pollinators. 

[00:07:01] They're great for honey bees. And decking the halls exactly objecting the halls and in with Winterberry is actually definitely one of those plants. So it's deciduous. Holly drops all its leaves. And then it's got nothing but red berries all over it. When we can find it, it's always a great plant to decorate with. 

[00:07:20] You've got to stick that just covered in red berries and nothing else to distract your view. So the winter berries are super plants in the wintertime. In the spring, I didn't say it's almost even an ugly plant or just a leafy green plant and then nondescript. But it surprises you in the fall. 

[00:07:37] You'll see the berries in there. They're green and they're starti...

[00:00:20] Keith: good morning with black Friday, right around the corner we were trying to come up with ideas for our family just to create new traditions. And move away from commercialism. And it seems right now there's a backlog of products coming in and a shortage of this and that. 

[00:00:51] And when you stop and think about it, it's like half that stuff we really don't.  

[00:00:54] Joe: Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. If all that stuff doesn't make it for Christmas. What's going  

[00:00:59] Keith: to happen, who's even going to want it. Exactly. I'm like, I'm really not going to buy a lot of gifts for people. 

[00:01:06] I'm going to do things for people I'm going to cook for them, or I'm going to plant a tree for him. Do an amaryllis bulb or something like that. Something that's, that's a little bit longer lasting and that one's more of a  

[00:01:17] Joe: memory. I like I have a woodshop in. Last year. I didn't get to do it much this year or two years ago, I built everybody in the family's gifts and it was a blast. 

[00:01:26] Keith: Exactly. , it means a whole lot more save any  

[00:01:29] Joe: money. No, you don't get  

[00:01:31] Keith: to save any money. You're not necessarily going to save any money, you go out and you buy a bunch of presents and a bunch of gifts or a bunch of toys for a kid. . You know what I mean? 

[00:01:39] They use them for what they, the kids going to find their favorite toy out of 25, and that's what they're going to play with. And the rest of them end up at Goodwill or pass down to other family members or neighbors or whatever. But if you plant a tree for a kid and you involve the kid in planting a tree, you've taught him something, you've spent time with the kid. 

[00:01:56], it's, there's just a whole lot more value there in my opinion. And that, my parents, planted a tree when I was born. Every time we went back by the house, it was, that tree was still growing in front of the house and it was always a topic of conversation. 

[00:02:07] So it was always a connection to that house. And it was a connection to what my parents had done for me when I was.  

[00:02:13] Joe: That's pretty common or I think it used to be people would plant a tree when they move into a house, so they could kind  

[00:02:18] Keith: of right. Track, watch it grow. Yeah. And, plant in a like a one-foot Japanese maple when your baby's born and seeing it grow to 12, 15 feet, as your child grows and it's something that's long-lived and it's, it's a great  

[00:02:32] Joe: memory and the kids probably that's my tree when they're out. 

[00:02:34] Keith: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's. A friend of ours had, they've got four boys and they, they planted a tree for each one of the boys. They would argue over which one, their parents, they thought that parents liked this one more than the other one because the tree was better.  

[00:02:50] Joe: It was a better tree. 

[00:02:57] Exactly.  

[00:02:57] Keith: But there was much discussion over why they got that tree. So that was that's one thing you can do planting a tree or baking cookies with kids or that kind of thing, starting any kind of a tradition, but black Friday is always boggled my mind. 

[00:03:13] I've never participated in. It just seems like a rush to buy something that would have been discounted or this it's going out a date or that's last year's product. And it's not really necessarily a discount as it's marked down because it's last year's product.  

[00:03:29] Joe: I wonder if so it has less appeal to me now than it used to. 

[00:03:32] And I was younger because it was a family tradition. So what you're saying is we'd go out on good Friday and shop, and then Amazon came around, and then the family moved to. And I don't go good Friday shopping yet.  

[00:03:42] Keith: Yeah. I've literally never done it. And so it's a, it's interesting to me, but I, every year I'm like, maybe I should, maybe there's something I'm missing, but I don't think so. To me, I think it's almost like this year. To fix the supply chain and to revamp your viewpoint go out and buy something locally, shop at a local place, or go to a farmer's market or a small independent store and just skip the black Friday spending put that money in, invest that money or invested in the community and buy local. 

[00:04:10] My family, over Thanksgiving, we always my mom was in the florist business and so she always, we always make Rees and it's my uncles and aunts and cousins and we're all just clipping stuff out of the yard. And we make Christmas reads and it's just a creative thing to do. 

[00:04:26] And everybody's hands-on and it's. But any kind of crafting project or, something you can do with family and be able to, just to enjoy life and make memories more than buying more crap that it's going to end up in the dump.  

[00:04:40] Joe: Yeah. I like the idea of them having an experience. 

[00:04:43] It might seem like it's less cause it's not around as much, but at the same time they might be the things that your family members end up treasuring  

[00:04:49] Keith: the most. Something, take pictures while you're doing these projects or having an event. Our host to the hive is a way that I think a lot of people do gifting. 

[00:04:57] They'll a husband or a wife will buy host to the hive. For a spouse or a family member. But it's, it's a way that you're giving back to the environment. , you can participate in beekeeping and involve your kids in the whole nature of it. 

[00:05:09] And it's hands-on learning. You can get out and you can get into a hive and see the bees. Lauren all about bees and not have to own a high of yourself so that, doing something like that something that's pretty hands-on and, but the host diet program,  

[00:05:23] Joe: you  
 

[00:05:24] Keith: also get honey. Exactly. And there's a lot of host of hives out there. They range in price from $400 to about $2,000. And the interesting thing about our host to the hive is it's the cheapest. But we also instead of some of the hosts, the hives will be 1200, $1,400. And if you get honey in your hive, you get. 

[00:05:46] If you don't. And what we do is we average the honey out. We'll harvest the honey and everybody ends up with 10 jars of honey. You end up with 10 pounds of honey, which is more than most people would use in a year. So it gives you honey, that you could gift as well. 

[00:05:59] But it's a sure way of getting honey if you're a beekeeper there are years that you don't necessarily harvest honey. So we work really hard to make sure that the bees are, moved around and in areas that there are nectar flows and stuff like that. So it's a pretty successful way, to keep bees and actually make sure that you're getting honey every year. 

[00:06:19] And it's good local honey. So it's, it makes a difference i...

The picture year-round and then they get the hydrangea planted, they come out and they look at it and they realize it doesn't have blooms this time of year and they plant it and they wait for it to go into bloom. And it goes into bloom and it's an absolute, amazing show of color, especially the second, third, fourth year and every year thereafter.

But then we get into our summer heat and Everybody starts worrying that, their plants and dying and but [00:01:00] I get the feeling that everybody thinks that plants are supposed to, they're like, it's like it's plastic.

And like they're supposed to look perfect all the time. And there's a certain amount of acceptable spots on the leaves and brown tips. And by the time we get to July and August, that people are flooding the garden center and they want a solution, and the brown spots, they're, some of them are or water spots where the leaves have been burned.

Some of them, are light fungus issues. Brown tips that are just, it's been too wet or too dry. And you can't control the, you can't control the rain or the drought scenario we're in. 

Joe: And if you miss it a couple of episodes back yet, Steven on, and he was talking about how you guys recommend people bring in clippings or pictures and you can help diagnose absolutely 

Keith: and we want to do that. What I wanted to talk about today was just, not, you want to worry about a plant if you really think it's in decline, if it's losing stems or if it's, and there's always things you can do to improve the plant, but somebody will come in with hydrangea and it's got brown [00:02:00] tips and it's got black spots on it and the blooms are drying up and is it okay?

And it's perfectly okay. It's just what you're supposed to see. By late August or early September, October. I'm totally disappointed in the plant, and it's, there are four seasons for every plant, and when we have in North Carolina, we have four perfect seasons. The spring that plant's going to be coming off of winter sticks, and you're going to see these buds open up and they're beautiful green leaves which.

Produce beautiful, blue, pink, puffy flowers, most of the summer. And then as this flower starts to spend and we run into the hotter part of the summer, the leaves start to kinda crumble and they're not looking at their perfect stage. And that's when people come in and they're in a panic But I've felt like people needed to take a step back and think about what a plant is supposed to look like.

And, early on I had a customer come in and, we'd sold them a red maple and a. [00:03:00] Young couple, and this is 20 years ago, but they, they said, we bought this red maple from you and it's done great all summer and it was beautiful, dark green. And now all of a sudden it's turning red and it's, it's an educational process.

And so you have to say the red maple part is that it turns red in the fall, so just educating people that, plants are going to change through the season and kind of, but and not, the red maple part that's the peak of the maple.

That's as good as it gets, the next question would be all the leaves are falling off of it. And it's not a, it's a deciduous tree, it's not evergreen. But just to lower your expectation. Of what a plant can do for you? All in the fall.

All year long, in the wintertime, some of the most like a high drank back to the hydrangea is an amazing plant, but it sticks in the winter time, there's nothing but sticks, so kinda know that's coming and plan for it, so you put some evergreen plants in front of that and then put those behind. So when these sticks are coming up from behind the evergreen plant, all plants are different hydrangeas bloom off of old wood. [00:04:00] So you even them up and you take that, it's going to be the buds that come off of the old wood that is going to create the bloom. So if you cut your hydrangeas to the ground, you're not going to have blooms the following year.

It really depends on the plant and that's where coming in and getting advice, make sense. And when people come in, you want to. If it's a hydrangea and it's got spots all over it, if it's got a spot here or there's really nothing to do, the leaves are going to fall off and you can clean the leaves up and that'll rectify the situation for next year.

If it's out of control then maybe it adds a little bit of a fungicide something like triple action. That's going to it's natural and it doesn't affect the bees. But the biggest thing is, it's rectified the insect or disease problem and then fertilize at the appropriate times, and fall is a great time to fertilize.

A lot of people, do most of their gardening in the spring, it's just kinda natural. Everybody wants to be out there doing it. But if you do fall fertilization, you're fixing that plant for next year. Basically, you're giving it the food and the nutrients and everything.

It needs to really be as good as it's going to be next year. And that's, that was [00:05:00] the next piece of this scenario. People want a solution to their problems. They've got black spots on their plant and you sell them triple action. And triple action is going to do a nice job of not allowing the black spots to spread, but it's not going to remove the black spots or the lines in your eyes, it's not going to make them go.

So it's people come back in a month later and they're like, it's not getting any better. And then you have to say, it's not going to get any better until spring. When the new leaves come out, so it's, that seasonal expectation of what you can do and what you can't do.

And when something's got when the leaves are eaten up or they're eaten up by an insect or they've got a disease on them and you spray them, you're removing that disease and you're slowing down the damage that's done on the leaves, but you're not going to fix those. And you have to wait for that next season.

Every plant loses foliage at some point during the. So you got to wait for that plant to push out new foliage and fertilize it. And, so it's going to be as [00:06:00] happy and healthy as it can next year. And then be ahead of it next year. If a plant gets in the same insect problem every year, it's planning ahead and making sure that we get that under control azaleas are classic for a late.

The lacewing do all their damage in May and June and 90% of the customers come in and come in wanting to do something in September and October because they've gotten back out in the cool weather and they're looking at it and they're like, oh my God sounds eating up my, and nothing's going to get fixed until the new foliage comes out next year and you're actually applying a systemic and that in the spring, To prevent the lacewing from eating the leaves in the, in the early spring, it's a, you 

Joe: want to help people avoid, you don't want to hit that plan out and put a new plant, right?

Exactly. You want more plants, but your money on more plants, but 

Keith: that one's going to come back. It's going to come back. It's going to do well. And a lot of times with our, with warranty scenarios, people are like, the plant looks terrible. I want a new one. And, that's the worst thing in the world to do is getting into a cycle of replacing a plant because the customer thinks it [00:07:00] looks terrible.

Joe: Yeah, insects are bold or those situations could be recreated 

Keith: exactly the same spot. So you got to treat those. Yep. Yeah. And you've g...

Good for you. And at the 

Joe: time of this recording, it's fall. Finally. 

Keith: Exactly. Getting out when it's when the temperatures are right Time to put the pumpkin on everything. Exactly. The pumpkin in your coffee, pumpkin, you can rub it on your body. Every everywhere you look, it's pumpkin-flavored something.

Pumpkins just fear fall. I think they are scared for sure. Yeah. So getting outside in the fall, [00:01:00] getting outside in the spring just creating a space an outdoor room, basically. I think is important someplace where you can get out, and you can really enjoy life. And do you know, light gardening sometimes?

Being outside doesn't have to be yard work and hard work. Sitting in a chair, pulling a few weeds, having a cup of coffee, sitting down in the evening, having a cocktail. 

Joe: You mentioned in an earlier podcast the Japanese saying of bathing yourself in green. And there's something to like just a peaceful state of mind for when I go sit outside, and I can see all the plants in the backyard, and everything's green everywhere.

It is just a lot more peaceful. 

Keith: it is for sure. And it doesn't take a lot of time to get those rewards. A small stroll through the backyard or sit outside for a few minutes. This time of year, we'll get our fire pit going.

And I'm burning pine and sometimes just twigs and sticks and pine cones that are out in the yard. So sometimes it's not an Oak hardwood-based fire. So sometimes it, it's a fire that burned for 15 minutes, you sit there and have a cocktail or have a cup of coffee or something and It's really [00:02:00] relaxing to have 

Joe: a couple of guys over.

And I like to call it, offer up burnt offerings as a friend of mine used to say a little bonfire in front of your mouth. Exactly. Then a 

Keith: campfire. Yeah. And if you're going to be smoky, you might as well have a cigar. Yeah. Yup. Absolutely. Sometimes creating that space, and when you think about it from a room perspective, it doesn't have to be. It could be your straight up the full backyard, a couple of chairs in front of a fire pit.

All you need. But sometimes creating a room-based feeling. You've got this space. It's totally private screen plannings on one side so that you're not seeing that neighbor add an offense or an, or a trellis and some vines. So that you actually create a small intimate space that you can invite people into, or you can go out and have a little sanity from your wife, from your kids or your neighbors and your job, what are some 

Joe: good growing vines that make sense that won't take over your entire yard?

Keith: Kudzu, no katsu now that's the one that does take over the neighborhood, 

Joe: [00:03:00] my entire backyard. And it's climbing in my trees. And I had some guys over, and we were smoking cigars, and one of them was the head of the. Neighborhood HOA. And he was like. You should really trim those. Those are going to kill your trees.

So now my trees are covered in a vine that is dead leaves in the middle of like perfectly everything else is 

Keith: green and terrible. Yeah. So there's all the calamitous are nice. They bloom in the spring and summertime. It's a nice small vine. There's an evergreen Clematis. That's more medium to large.

It's got a nice tropical evergreen folly. It's one of my favorites. And then it blooms in the spring. It's got one-inch white flour. That's fragrant. And usually, when somebody has one, and it blooms, we'll sell one to their neighbors because the fragrance is so nice. And it wafts over into the neighbor's yard.

It's that large of a plant. Do you need to 

keep 

Joe: them a certain distance from your house because they will climb your house? 

Keith: Certain vines have will actually attach themselves to the house, IVs cross vines, another one cross, the vine is perfect, but it will [00:04:00] attach itself to the house and the building.

Some people like 

Joe: that, look, it's 

Keith: bad for us. I don't think it is anymore. It depends on the type of side, and you wouldn't want to put it on Mason, night's siding or something like that, the brick with brick or some of that stuff, it's okay. On a wood fence, it's going to be okay.

It's probably going to. I don't think it's going to shorten the life of the fence. But once you go with that, look, you're probably going to have to stick with that look kind of thing. It's hard to power wash the tentacles that are going to hold on. And the air routes that are gonna pull to hold onto them, to the fence.

But people with pergolas, 

Joe: is there any vine that people like, though? Yes. 

Keith: So grapes are great on pergolas because they hang down from the pergola, and you can pick them. They're messy. They can be messy. Yeah. The evergreen Clematis is a great one. I've got an evergreen Clematis that comes up about 10 feet and goes over about 10 feet.

So it's a pretty large vine. It'll cover a garage. If you did a little small pergola over a garage, it'd come up over a garage, and a half and [00:05:00] go all the way over and all the way down the other side, one buys. You don't need one on each side. Yeah. Typically I would recommend one on either side if there's that option, but it will go all the way over and hang down on the other side.

So it's a decent size. 

Joe: vine. Oh, there's something like really coolest sounded about going outside on your pergola and just eating grapes, though. Yeah, 

Keith: Yeah, absolutely. And the whole edible landscape thing is nice. Blueberries are one of those things you could use as a privacy hedge.

But they create a border. They give you good fall color. And then they produce tons of fruit. I've got a friend that's got 20 blueberries, and she probably picks 30 pounds, 40 pounds of blueberries a year. It's absolutely ridiculous amount. What do you 

Joe: recommend here in our area for, by way of hanging plants, 

Keith: hanging plants?

Mixed hanging baskets are always good. When you get three or four different plants and if one of them fails for too dry or too hot, the other three maybe, finding that that's what they're looking for. So when you have one that doesn't do as well, and you've got three or four in there, the hanging basket kind of keeps on growing up.

[00:06:00] You're constructing your 

Joe: outdoor room. You got maybe a trellis with some vine. You got some other plants. a couple of walls. How do we get 

Keith: So the, we've got screened plants, things like our providers or tea, olives a plan that's gonna get, eight to 12 feet tall.

You could trim it as a tight hedge or let it grow out more leafy. They create your walls. You've got a trellis, you've got a screen planting along one side, and it doesn't have to wrap all the way around. It's not as you don't want to create a box and block yourself in, but create that wall where you're getting some privacy, maybe even from your house, where you can slip away from your teenage kids for an hour.

Yeah, block a neighbor out that's gotten. It was too noisy or too nosy. The step of walls, we've got a product. It's a ground cover product called step a bull. There are probably 12 or 12 or 15 plans. That you can use as a ground cover. You're, you either have a stone ...

And then there'll be very few rabbits.. right. 

Joe: now, in my neighborhood, the rabbits are winning. 

Keith: Yeah, absolutely. It's like some scary movie or something. There are rabbits everywhere. 

Joe: Yeah, I'll pull into my driveway at night, and the light will shine, and it will be three or four rabbits scatter like cockroaches. 

Keith: I've got a little beagle that loves to chase rabbits, squirrels and. The rabbit poop on the front sidewalk, I think, is just they're just messing with him, really. He's asleep, he's locked up, in the house, and they're out there eating all our plants.[00:01:00] 

Our neighborhood 

Joe: definitely does have a set of Hawks. There are two or three that in one of them is pretty. And I got a tiny dog, and yesterday the big Hawk landed on the railing to go downstairs where my dogs go outside, off the back deck. Wow. We sit in there. Like I saw that little dog, 

Keith: I wouldn't think right now a dog would even be of any interest. There are so many rabbits out.

But, they're they, when people come into the garden center, and they've planted these plants, and they've lost all these plants, do you know the neighborhood rabbit? And there's 

Joe: certain plants that rabbits really they're probably the expensive ones. Yeah. 

Keith: It's always they're going to start with their favorite plant, and they work they'll work their way down, so it's you'll find these plants that, they're rabbit resistant, or they're not rabbits aren't supposed to like them. And once all the rest of the plants are gone, they're going to eat that one too. Yeah. You're trying to get people good advice. And eventually, the advice runs out.

Joe: No, really like certain vegetables, but if it's served and it's the 

Keith: only food exactly. I want something green, and all there is 

Joe: spinach. 

Keith: a piece of bacon in it.

You put bacon [00:02:00] on anything, and it tastes good. Deer are another thing. The population of deer and the more houses that go in, the more the deer gets squeezed. There are all kinds of things you can do to deter deer and deter rabbits. Repellents are one of them. They, you're spraying the plant down.

You need to do it consistently. Every time we get torrential downpours or a week's worth of rain, you need to go out and reapply. And you also need to reapply when the plants are coming out of the ground in the spring. They're the size of a baseball when they get to the size of a beach ball. If you haven't resprayed it, the repellent has been diluted basically by the size of the growth of the plant.

So you need to add more, more repellent. The other thing you can do is you can do fencing, and you can do it. A fishing line is a good deterrent for deer. You can run fishing lines just around trees in your yard. And when they're walking along, you can put flagging tape on it when they stop for the flag and tape, they see the fishing line, and then they won't pass through that.

They don't like the deterrent. Being tangled up in fishing lines. Yeah. It's a good way of doing it [00:03:00] inexpensively and then 

Joe: nothing worse than walking through a spider web. 

Keith: Exactly. And especially this time of year in the fall, October timeframe, there are spiderwebs everywhere. It seems like they're saving up a meal for the winter, we carry several repellents, but I must garden as a repellent that we carry that it's made in chapel hill. It's a local, small company. It's all organic. It's a product that I absolutely love. I love the owner. I love keeping things local and spending money. It's been, I must 

Joe: like I M U 

Keith: S T I must garden.

It's been widely tested. There are lots of things. People always have solutions for everything that you can a bar soap mothball, all these other things. The thing with mothballs is, they're poisonous. My parents used to use mothballs on hostas to keep rabbits away. They turn around, and I've got a mouthful of mothballs, so I get my stomach pumped when I'm two or three years old. So the quick, cheap approach isn't necessarily the best.

No, but they do work. 

Joe: [00:04:00] hostas all over the place. Like it was just too much. And I'm not a giant fan of the plants. I would have paid rabbits to eat those hostas, but they wouldn't touch them. 

Keith: That's the way it works. Now, the other thing is, when the population is right, they're not coming into your yard like the deer literally walked down my side. They don't do a lot of damage because I've got so many plants that they'll nibble here and nibble there.

And when the population gets to a point. A new neighborhood comes in as those deer get squeezed into another, an older neighborhood out of the woods that's happening all over our area. It's happening all over our area. We've been recommending bow hunters actually because we're removing some of the population, and we don't have wolves in our area.

Joe: I think I saw an email from the game department about that. 

Keith: Yeah. So it's we've got a list of bowhunters that we can recommend to people and, you find a nice, safe place on an acre or bigger. A five or 10-acre area in a town or around town is ideal. You find it you find a good bow hunter, and they [00:05:00] remove three or four deer.

You're affecting the population over time. And it kind of, it's almost a, must it without removing some deer you've got here that are going hungry. Now, they're they're crossing the road more often, then you're removing deer by a car accident is the 

Joe: solution the same.

Keith: I don't know what the solution is for rabbits beagles, a good solution for rabbits. I've gotten ours trained where they walk in a circle because we've got one of those dog fences. It's a beacon in the house, and it sends us, sends a signal out a certain distance. And when the signals running out, that's when the dog gets zapped.

So the dogs know their circle. They never get zapped that rabbits, know, the dogs are. So they come out of the woods, and they make this circle all the way around our yard until at nighttime. And then they come right into the circle. And now the dogs are inside you. Now the animals get pretty darn smart trapping rabbits, I guess maybe and, have a heart trap and moving them to a different location.

And, or a beagle, a beagle, a good scenario, some little yappy dog. [00:06:00] Fencing, there's all kinds of deer fencing, fencing. Your entire yard is an option. But it's, it's a little bit more expensive option and 

Joe: it wasn't traditional fences. Rabbits are going to go right under like vinyl fans. 

Keith: like a vegetable garden, you'd need a metal fence. And the deer fence that you can use is a fairly inexpensive plastic fence that you can't see in the distance. So it's not doesn't really break your vision into the woods.

Joe: I see many people who have done it before tried to put chicken wire and the gaps under their fence to keep out the right. If you 

Keith: can, if you can, create a barrier down low that will help with rabbits, for sure. But then you get a couple of rabbits in the fence.

Yeah. Yeah. I finished 

Joe: it. And then I was like. Finally, I was sitting out on the deck the weekend. That's where I got the. And al...

[00:00:33] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. I've got Steven Petrilliac here who works with Garden Supply CO as well. He manages our nursery. Today, we want to bring people up to speed on the art and the science of landscape design. The importance of getting good advice before you start to spend money and make sure that the money that you're spending is investing money in your property and not just throwing it down the drain. 

[00:00:59] picking the right plant for the right location. There's so much science behind plants. There are plants that need to be in the shade, but need to be wet. There are plants that need to be in the shade. that need to be dry. There are full sun plants. 

[00:01:13] There are plants. That'll cover both of those ranges, but if you go in and you invest in 10 or 12 plants for a screen planning and you put a full sun plant in the shade, in the end, you've basically got nothing. And then just, getting good sound advice, working with a professional somebody that you know, is going to back up what they're, if they're installing it or if they're making recommendations that they're going to guarantee those plants and follow through. 

[00:01:36] I had a customer the other day that actually did the consult with us and ran into somebody in the neighborhood, decided they were going get a second quote from them, got the second quote. And it was the exact same price as what we were had quoted, but the guy was there and we've done multiple projects for him. 

[00:01:54] And they're a really good customer, he just decided to pull the trigger. He liked the guys, he seemed nice. The guy came in and put in a few plants. He spent a couple of thousand dollars and the plant dies when he called them back for the warranty, he didn't warranty it. 

[00:02:09] They don't warranty plants, it's we sell bees and because bees are flying insects, we don't warranty them, plants are main business and we feel like that, know, if you get the right person, the right plan and you get it in the right spot, that we can warranty it. 

[00:02:23] And we do warranty, all of our trees and shrubs for a year. He came back to us and he was, very discouraged. He couldn't understand why this got in warranty, his plants. And I explained to him that, they're living beings. , it is easy to lose them. 

[00:02:36] If it's not part of their business model, then they may not be able to afford to warranty, or they just may not want to warranty, but, picking the right person to do the job and then getting the right advice. I think  

[00:02:49] Steven: there's a lot of factors that come into play when determining the right plant for the right spot. 

[00:02:53] Like you said, if you're going for a screening plant and you're not well informed on how large the thing is actually going to get. There are some screening plants where you just want to have a drug, that's going to get 10 to 12 feet tall. So you wouldn't need something like larger growing arborvitae and that is a lot where people have come in and chosen something or a spot because they liked the color or they liked the texture. 

[00:03:14] And it performs well where it is, but it gets to a point that has just completely outgrown its space. And then you've got to start back at square, one again.  

[00:03:21] Keith: When you're talking about, a screen or a privacy hedge picking the right spacing is another thing. 

[00:03:26] It's 10 feet works as good as seven. But it's going to be three or four years longer. Three feet, the plants they're going to crowd each other out and the root zones are going to compete. You can take a Burford Holly or a needlepoint, Holly, and you can put them three to four feet on center and the plan will thrive in that environment. 

[00:03:44] You take something large, like arborvitae and you cram them together and they're going to age out twice as fast as they would. You've spent twice the amount of money going in, and it's going to last half the time, even though it's a perfect plant, maybe for the location. all of these factors and it's so inexpensive to have a landscape designer come out when you start factoring in, it's going to be a fraction of the cost of the whole project, it's always bothersome me when you pull up into a neighborhood, And somebody's piecemealed it. They put a plant here and a plant there, my yard tends to be that because I'm a plant person and I collect plants and I want one of these and one of those, a lot of times a new plant will come out and I'll plant three of them in the yard so that I can test them out. 

[00:04:24] And I can actually give people definitive answers about that plant, but when somebody is doing design work, we're not recommending putting in a hundred different types of plants. We want to do it more like you paint a house, you pick a couple of colors or  

[00:04:36] a piece of stone and a piece of Hardy board, and then this color, and then a trim color, you want it fairly simple so that it's big and it's bold and it's impactful.  

[00:04:45] Steven: And that's where I think going back to the spacing is important. Not only of course, with screening or head rows, any bed that you're planning. 

[00:04:52] I always stress to the customer over planning as an issue. You might want all this color, you might want all these different things. But before long it's easy to get overwhelmed and overcrowded in the garden. And next thing you're leading yourself to failure. So I always tell people, get all your bones in and that gives them the opportunity to come back seasonally and, find new things that they can add to the garden. 

[00:05:12] And of course, yeah, we can go ahead and do a full-blown design. That's. Turnkey done. You don't have to add to it cause you got plenty of customers that just want to come in and they want their yard redone. And that's great, but doing it little pieces at a time and having somebody give you the right advice on the spacing so that you don't end up, killing yourself, trying to maintain it,  

[00:05:30] Keith: and as far as the cost goes it's, it's a fraction  

[00:05:33] if you do a $3,000 landscape install, it's less than $300 to do an on-site consult at your house. So it's 10% of the cost, but it's everything. As far as the outcome of the project you wouldn't build a building without having an engineer or architect look at it. It's the same kind of scenario. 

[00:05:51] You're throwing money away when you don't have a good plan. You look at it, if it's a six or $10,000 job, it's you're down to three or 4% of the cost of the whole project and it's a project that's going to work, landscaping's never a hundred percent even if we're putting in, say like a hedgerow, We get one plant that's too close to a large tree and either gets too much shade or it gets too much root competition and it doesn't do as well as the others, but getting the right plant in the right place, we can usually make adjustments to that plant. 

[00:06:20] More water, more fertilizer a little more light and we can have that plant come back around, but there's nothing a hundred percent about it. It's not as cut and dry as painting a house. And that's why it's even more important. To really get that advice. When Steven was talking about spacing, one of the things that you're, when you're talking about costs, he's talking people...

[00:00:20] Keith: And I brought in Steven Petrilliac who manages our nursery and we were talking about all the number of things that people are bringing in this summer leaves and brown spots on them and insect problems and plants that have been overwatered and underwatered. So we thought we would talk about that today and give people options as far as what they can do. 

[00:00:55] One of the things that we always recommend doing is taking pictures, bringing in samples. We can usually diagnose a problem. And then make recommendations as far as how to rectify that. What kind of things have you been seeing in the nursery, Steven? 

[00:01:07] This time of year, we're seeing a lot of fungus and disease bacteria. Viruses can be another issue. There's a lot of stressors right now, we go through one of the driest Springs on record to now, I think 10 or 11 inches above what the average is, which can really get plants stressed out and confused. 

[00:01:24] So a lot of the pictures people are bringing in yellowing leaves, spots on leaves dropping off trees. And I think a lot of the causes are. Related to the weather conditions under fertilizing or over-fertilizing is another issue that can lead to those problems. 

[00:01:39] We always recommend either bringing in cuttings or sending us pictures or bringing in pictures. We can properly diagnose the issue give them the right treatment and go from there.  

[00:01:49] Keith: One of the things that, we've talked about a number of times is watering issues over-watering, and under watering and how, it sounds like we're clueless when people ask, if, we think it was overwatered or underwater, and it's the same kind of. Look over water, the plant doesn't have oxygen and takes up water. 

[00:02:04] So it does have a drought. You're sitting there looking at a plant and it's sometimes it's, it's just it questions and just be able to figure out. Exactly the issue is, but right now over-watering is always one of those things. It's a little harder to rectify because it's more of a planning issue, a height that the plant, elevating the plant in the ground. 

[00:02:22] Sometimes it's raising that plant up or diverting water from around that plant. With heavy clay, it's almost like having a bowl and you get that plan in there and it's hard to have that water to drain off.  

[00:02:33] Steven: And I think a big factor too, is, a lot of times customers can come in with issues and they feel like they might need to be defensive. 

[00:02:41] The biggest thing for me is for them to be completely honest about whatever the issue is. So if we ask, how often you're watering, tell us the truth right off the bat. We want the customer to be successful with everything. Whether it's a plant that they got from us or they didn't get from us. 

[00:02:56] So a lot of times they'll try to find a way to tell you that they're watering it the way that they think you want them to water it. So they'll tell you they've watered it, two or three times a week. And then, the next thing is well, how long are you watering it for, do you go out there and spray it with a sprinkler for a few minutes, or especially newly planted plants need to be deeply watered less often as opposed to constantly watering for short amounts of time, I feel like that's  

[00:03:21] Joe: when I go to the dentist and he's have you been flossing? 

[00:03:23] I'm like, you see my mouth? Why do we gotta play this game, man?  

[00:03:29] Keith: And you're like, yeah, I floss every day, twice a day. I floss in the morning. I philosophy lunch. We do get a lot of that. And it's, I think people want to do the right thing and they want to feel like they did the right thing, they don't want to be part of the failure in the process, but, educating people to water correctly or to plant correctly is what we're there for. And then when something's not working out, if they can bring in pictures and bring in cuttings, we've got like a huge staff of people. And if you're not in our neighborhood or right in our area, go into I think sometimes go into a Home Depot or Lowe's, those guys don't necessarily know horticulture. 

[00:04:06] They don't understand the science behind the plants and so going to a local garden center. In our area, a garden hut, a Logan's a Homewood for the garden state, one of the local garden centers, that's got people that are really knowledgeable about plants and, it takes quite a few years to be able to look at a plant in the landscape Or look at a picture or look at a leaf and really be able to diagnose, and typically, a lot of times it's not definitively, it's 90%. 

[00:04:33] This is, it's an over-watering scenario. 

[00:04:35] Joe: So you mentioned earlier, you get a lot of fungi because there's been so much rain lately. How do you treat that? What's the treatment look like?  

[00:04:41] Keith: for So there's, it's given the plan a little bit more light sometimes it's true. 

[00:04:46] It's treating it preventatively with a fungicide. That's another thing that I see people come in and they'll say and this kind of bridges to the whole pollinator scenario. A lot of the pollinator problems are chemicals and pollutants and things that are going on in the environment. 

[00:05:00] But people will come in and they'll show you a picture of a bottle. And they're like this work and, homeowners don't understand the difference between an insecticide and fungicide. It's something to spray on a plant and, and, or a, an insecticide that's made for something that you're gonna use in your home or an insecticide that you're going to use on your plant. 

[00:05:17] Can I spray this on the plant? No, absolutely not. It's for spiders, in your house. And then, just understanding the difference between a fungicide and insecticide in or a systemic. There's foliar systemic, so you can spray on the plant and it goes into the leaves and then there's systemics 

[00:05:30] You can put on the ground that the plant takes up and protects the plant from the inside out. But fungicides is what you would put on this time of year for fungal related issues on the leaves or in the  

[00:05:40] Steven: roots. It's funny you say that thing about showing us a picture of a bottle. So if it's not an existing customer that we've already had in the store they're used to going to ACE hardware or Lowe's or Home Depot. 

[00:05:51] So many of the new customers that we have that come in and they're like I bought this and then I went back and I bought this and they got these two or three different products that they've gotten from Lowe's that they did or did not have any guidance on. And that's where I'm like, okay, going forward, just come here first. 

[00:06:06] Being in ahead of the game, not everybody walks around their yard every day, checking out every plant. But the worst thing you can do is just wait till the last minute and then try to play catch up.. Especially things that you've planted recently, keep an eye on, if it starts to turn color or you start to notice anything about it catching it before it's too far gone is the best thing you can do. 

[00:06:25] Keith: . And on that note there's a lot of insect and disease problems that a lot of times somebody will come in with a pow...

[00:00:54] They're a friend of yours. One thing that always blows my mind and always makes me feel really good is when I see people that haven't seen their friends run into each other in our garden center oh my God, I haven't seen you in a year. And then they stand there and I'll, I'll jokingly say, Is it in place just to catch up, however, we're supposed to be buying plants or whatever, it really, that's the best compliment in the world when two like-minded people or two people that go to church together, two people that, they went to school together, run into each other in our in, at garden supply company.

[00:01:28]Or if I go out and I'm at Logan's trading. And I run into one of my customers. And it's funny because I'll be at Logan's trading and run into a customer and they're like I don't shop here that often. And I'm like, oh, I do. They're embarrassed almost that they're not shopping at  The Garden Supply Company.

[00:01:43] And I'm like, oh my God, it's a phenomenal place. It's where I go when I need a break from Garden supply company. And I want a garden I'll run down to Logan's and wander around and have the same experience that my customers have when they come to us. And then I'll eat lunch at the cafe. It's a really relaxing, real-life small business experience.

[00:02:06]I talked about in the last episode, stopping in the Garden Hut. I got down there and I had tomatoes. I was in between fresh tomatoes and tomatoes are like a religion to me. I can't wait for that first homegrown garden, fresh tomato, or a farmer's market tomato.

[00:02:22]And I stopped in the Garden Hut and Nelsa grows all these crazy tomatoes and she grows them in her parking lot. She's got a farm, she grows them on. So people come to her for fresh tomatoes and the spring and in the summertime.  I picked up a couple of tomatoes and, that whole experience of just being there and being in a local business and picking up something that's fresh.

[00:02:42] And it's I know where it was grown and I know Nelsa didn't spray toxic chemicals on it.  That feeling is amazing. And then supporting your friends and businesses. Is a key. We had talked about the local spending with respect to the fact that when you spend locally at all stays, the bulk of it stays in the community.

[00:03:00]Very few of our checks go out of state. And a lot of them are as close as possible.  The nursery industry as a whole it's mind-boggling. You can go to another local garden center and ask them how they do something. How do you market, or how do you do this?

[00:03:14]And they're totally sharing with information. Our industries It's an anomaly. It just it's like family. We get to a trade show and you're getting back together with all your friends and people you've known for years. And wholesale growers that we deal with I've been dealing with for 25 years.

[00:03:29]The same people Landis halls, Carol plant center. He owns the farm several farms and he delivers. The plants on his truck himself, on a regular basis. And every time I see him, it's like seeing an old friend. We started growing plants and when I asked him, how do you do this?

[00:03:45] Or how do you do that? he's forthcoming with that information and just shares how I can compete for, growing plants that he's selling to me, but we're still trying to buy as many plants as we can from him, because it's important to us, to maintain those relationships and

[00:04:01]these people are friends. That is your community. The people that you call when you need something and boom, they're there, they can deliver it. Yeah. Yeah. I think 

[00:04:08] Joe: [00:04:08] you hear so much focus on community as if it's something that's more difficult than it is.

[00:04:13]If only we could build community, we live in one.,

[00:04:16] Keith: [00:04:16] yeah, it's not hard to do,  but if you walk into a large box store, you can make a connection there and you can build community. It's probably not likely that the community's going to stay there for you, but when you're dealing with a smaller business, the owners there. I've got Chip Ford that has worked for me on an ongoing basis. He pretty much manages me. He's been there 24 years. I've been there 25, Steven that's been there for, 15 years.

[00:04:42] Katie, runs the whole thing for me. She's been there almost 20 years.  We've built a community within our business people will ask me, like how long do you think you're going to work?

[00:04:51] Or when do you think you're going to retire? And I'm like I don't know that I'll ever retire completely because in the springtime when my customers are coming in. I'm getting excited because it's getting busier and sales or sales are moving along. The biggest thing is, I get to see my Fairweather friends.

[00:05:06]None of my friends come out in the wintertime. It's the wildest thing, so I really truly have fair-weather friends April pops up and all my friends go out to see me, they want advice. We catch up on what they've been doing or what they're, what's happening with their family or their kids. I get to watch customers come in whose kids

[00:05:22]we're riding, when we had pony rides, they'll bring a picture of them on a pony and they're applying for a job and they're 20 years old or they're 16 years old. And the community of high school kids that we've had over the years, we've taken kids from absolutely useless with no work experience whatsoever to some really good aerospace engineers.

[00:05:43]I'm not saying I taught them anything about aerospace engineering, but I taught them how to work and gave him work ethic,  that's a wholly separate piece of it. All these young people that kinda, that kind of move through and that, that grow up in our local community when somebody spends money at our store,  the average is about $27.

[00:06:01] That, that leaves the community. When you spend money at a large box store $57 leaves the community. You're talking about a drastic difference in as far as jobs go  52% of the jobs in America are small local businesses, which is kinda mind-blowing.

[00:06:19] When you think about how many box stores are out there. So that's the value scenario. There's 

[00:06:24] Joe: [00:06:24] local owned businesses are not the ones that are doing the bare minimum when it comes to paying their employees are just barely hitting minimum 

[00:06:31] Keith: [00:06:31] wage. Exactly. They're paying better wages, but they also employ a lot more people, 

[00:06:35] Joe: [00:06:35] crazy stat you were just talking about.

[00:06:37] So if you spend money locally on you spend a hundred dollars at a locally-owned place, $32 is going to leave the community, but 68 is going to stay. But if you spend it at a non locally owned, Plays $43 is going to stay in the community and $57 is 

[00:06:53] Keith: [00:06:53] going to leave. Exactly. We've got 60 to 75 employees, that in that range.

[00:06:58] And when we pay them,  they're turning around and spend...

[00:00:55]owned by a local individual and that makes a difference in the community. Seeing somebody that, on a regular basis and most of the business that I do, I try to do that way. And it's not based on, financial benefit but it just feels good.

[00:01:08] It's a smaller scenario. The service is always higher. Yeah, service is something that Over the last few years I think is, has just about been eliminated for most businesses. 

[00:01:19] Joe: [00:01:19] It seems like if you're cutting corners, it doesn't seem to be the logical one to cut, but it feels like from the chain stores, it is one of the things on the list that seems to go down in quality for sure.

[00:01:29] And it could just be that it's harder to manage. I'm sure they're not purposely neglecting it, but 

[00:01:33] Keith: [00:01:33] still I don't know. It's years ago somebody told me there's a there are three things on a triangle. There's price, there's quality, and their service any great business can probably provide two of those pretty well.

[00:01:45]You have to pick two, you got to pick two, you either have to reduce the quality. The reduce the service or reduce or increase the price. So there's a balance there, and sometimes you pay a little bit more with our business in particular. The thing that I find about service is that the service is what creates the value,  it's a science-based business and it's heavy and science and design.

[00:02:07]I've got to have be pretty creative, I've got to be able to put together textures and colors and different things like that. And then I got to have the science to know that, that something's going to grow in wet or dry or sun or shade. I'm providing that customer with all that information for them to be successful.

[00:02:21]That just creates a ton of value. I expect the same thing out of bond brothers. When I go down to bond brothers, I've been to a lot of local breweries where the beer isn't really necessarily that great. They're trying their best, but they haven't perfected it.

[00:02:35]When I walk in there, the atmosphere is amazing. I see people that I know that are local in the community. And I know that, that it's individually owned and, and so partner and, It wouldn't have the same 

[00:02:46] Joe: [00:02:46] vibe if you were going down to the Miller Lite brewery.

[00:02:49] Keith: [00:02:49] Yeah. And so you're, people that are from the community, the guys at bond brothers are all plant people. We do a lot of partnering with them.  We just partnered with them on a living wall and their new location on Chatham street.  I know they like plants, they know I like beer. It's a good partnership.

[00:03:04] Joe: [00:03:04] It creates character in your neighborhood, as well as like you were saying, everybody like the rising tide floats all boats. If absoluteness for everybody, when you've got local business owners that are interested in what each other are doing and find ways to work together.

[00:03:16] Keith: [00:03:16]  Sure. Flower, cupboards small company that I've done business with for 25 years. John, when I go in there, he's going to have the best flowers that you can source, they're not aged out. They weren't cheap. They're going to be a little bit more expensive.

[00:03:31]But they last three times as long as anything else that I buy. It's a better value, he knows his trade. I grew up in a florist and. My mom had a florist. And to me, it going into a small florist means something me, but the quality and the value that, that I get out of John's flowers are pretty amazing.

[00:03:46]Joe: [00:03:46] When I go to a small business where they're passionate about what they do and you're dealing sometimes with the owner or somebody that the owner is training to be passionate about something that they're passionate about. You feel like you matter more? Absolutely.  They really want to help you solve your problem.

[00:04:02] That's the, sometimes when you're in a larger maybe box store type of scenario, they're trying to, yeah. They're trying to either just get done with their job. And they don't really care if you solve your problem because they're not really incentivized to or passionate about helping you 

[00:04:18] Keith: [00:04:18] solve your problem.

[00:04:18] When you talk about the box stores, I'll watch Lowe's, which is a local company. 

[00:04:22] Joe: [00:04:22] Lowe's the home improvement, not the food store. 

[00:04:25] Keith: [00:04:25] Yep. It Lowe's home improvements. So local store, so yeah. They're a local North Carolina big box store.

[00:04:30]I've watched them over the years. Perfect. The garden industry, which is pretty interesting. They've slimmed it down, dumbed it down and they do a really good job with a mixed pot or hanging basket, a throwaway plant. They charge more for it than you actually would think it's, but it's nice.

[00:04:45] It's in a, it's in a shiny pot. And they figured out a little niche that works for them. But when it comes to selecting plants if you went in there and ask somebody for advice on a plant, you're probably going to fail. They just, they weren't able to do that.

[00:04:57] They were never able to do that. And so they figured out a different scenario that works for them. But you're not going to get the advice. You're not going to get that enthusiastic person that knows plants. And that really wants to point you in the right direction.

[00:05:09]We partner with a couple of garden centers that are in the area garden hut, Nelsa's in Fuquay. When you, when I walk into Nelsa's place, I can always find something that I like and I own a garden center. Last year I was in there and they had fresh homegrown tomatoes and I left with tomatoes in a plant that I didn't have.

[00:05:28]But you can expect that kind of thing. Logan's trading is another one, downtown Raleigh very similar to our business. But totally different in a lot of ways, and a lot of our customers shop all three of those places. Yeah. And 

[00:05:39] Joe: [00:05:39] even when investing in garden supplies from what might be your competition, at least you feel like your money is going into the local economy.

[00:05:47] Absolutely. Whereas when you're going to a box store, it's not helping your city. 

[00:05:51] Keith: [00:05:51] No, not at all. 

[00:05:52] Joe: [00:05:52] So it's and they pay some employees and that's great for. Local 

[00:05:56] Keith: [00:05:56] stuff, but right. So when a target comes to an area they won't come until basically, our tax base pays for their building.

[00:06:03]They won't put a building up until it's free. So they get enough tax, incentives to get that started that their building is paid for. And we sure as heck didn't get that, we've paid ou...

It's more intense gardening. You're gardening with excellent soil and really good soil blends. And then, high nitrogen high Fertility. And then you're getting as much yield as you can out of each square foot. Square foot gardening, there are all kinds of recipes for soil.

My biggest thing is to add three or four different types of soil so that you're. I'll usually start with a soil conditioner as a base. It drains well, and it continues to decompose. It's got the right nutrient mix. And, but the drainage is the key.

And then I'll go with a peat-based some based product, an espoma organic potting soil, or a Coast of Maine raised bed mix. But all of those have the right nutrients and the right mix for planting straight into. And then I always add vermiculite. Vermiculite is. It's like Micah. That's been blown out.

And so Micah, they basically heat it, and it's got the perfect consistency for growing seeds in.  I'll use that to top dress, some of these things when you're going to plant lettuce seed and that kind of stuff, but the square foot gardening there are good guidelines online.

As far as what you can put in a square foot. But like on an arugula plan, you're putting four of them in a square foot. So you've got four arugula plants and four arugulas. We'll keep people in arugula if you're not using it straight in a salad for, full time, year-round, almost it's a plant that will almost get Woody, and it'll grow for a year or two, and then you pull it out and replace it, but you can use it throughout the summertime.

A lot of the cool-season vegetables, we'll try to bolt and create flowers. And so you want to, you basically want to harvest it often enough, so it's not bolting. Cause when it, if it bolts and produces flowers and seed, it'll eventually just die out. Because of the nature of the plan, it's a biennial or an annual most of the greens some of them. You can see if you're seeding lettuce, you could see it across the whole square foot.

Basil, you can put two to four plants in a square foot. Beets and broccoli or Brussel sprouts cabbage. Some of those bigger things are one per square foot. They're really gonna, they're going to grow out, and they're going to push outside that square foot if they get really big.

And you can always cut some of the leaves off the edges to create more space for other things. The other piece of a square foot garden is a cool season, and vegetables start to end. You can pull out that section and go ahead and pop something back in. If it was getting springtime, Yeah, April May start getting hot this time of year.

Your lettuce starts to fail. You harvest the rest of it and eat that lettuce. Then you go in with peppers in that same space. So it's a nice thing because one foot by one foot, you can turn the garden over in the spring. And then the same in the fall, as the pepper as you harvest those last few peppers.

August to September timeframe, you want to be putting a lot of the broccoli and the cabbage and stuff in, and that's a good time of year to start dropping that kind of stuff back in. You pull your peppers out, and you put your broccoli and cauliflower and that kind of stuff back in the bed.

If, as far as fertilization goes, No, you can add fertilizer to a square foot garden at any point in time when I'm turning it over. I'm usually adding like an organic plant tone—Biotene to the soil and then every year. So you want to do a soil test, and then you can add the right nutrients to adjust that out.

The libraries in North Carolina have a soil test.  And the garden centers usually have soil tests, and then you send it to the extension service. NC State will do the test for you for free.

Or you can drop it off. It's on borough road and behind the fairgrounds in Raleigh, but getting a soil test is a great idea. And then we've gotten soil kits at the store that you can pick up there a little faster than the state does it at their own pace, just as the state does.

They get as many of them, they get piles of them in at one time, and then they have to work through that whole process.  It'll basically tell you where your nitrogen is and how much nitrogen per thousand square feet to add.

And people will bring them into the garden center, and we'll go through them and make recommendations. If you're using organic fertilizer, organic fertilizers are slower to make a difference in the soil. A lot of times, organic fertilizers have to be broken down by microbes.

In nature, and have to have moisture and whatnot where a chemical fertilizer. And when you're talking about veggies, how always like to remind people that a chemical fertilizer, not a chemical, it's a chemical chemically produced to get the nitrogen level up to where you really need it.

So I'm never worried about putting a chemically produced fertilizer in my veggie garden. I would rather have good strong tomatoes and have actually had something that works out and produces tomatoes than wait for that fertilizer to kick in. And sometimes it requires pounds and pounds. It's different. It's put a bag of fertilizer on, or put a truckload of fertilizer on, to get the nitrogen to where you need it.

With organics, I always use organics in a garden because. You can build that soil slowly but surely. You can get the nitrogen where it needs to be and get away from using as many chemical fertilizers because they are readily available. Some of them are quick release.

Some of them are slow release. And then when they're gone where the organic fertilizers continue to. add fertilizer to the soil as they break down 

Joe Woolworth: [00:06:19] good resource that you would suggest to people for recommendations or even like a grid, layouts, gardening. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:06:25] Yeah.

There are all kinds of stuff online. There's a square foot garden book that you could take out and take a look at. One of the keys is to plant is based on the sun. And the timing of the vegetables, so if you've got tomato plants, you're going to put them, you're going to put them in the very back of the garden.

If the sun's at your back, you want everything in front of those to be able to get some sun. If you have something like lettuce and try to grow it into the summertime or later in the spring, you could do it behind the tomatoes and actually use tomatoes as a screen.

 Or planning the rows where the sun's going to go down the row. So if you've got, if you've got a lot of tall stuff and you don't want, and you don't want them to layer the garden down towards the sun, then you can plant them, plant the rows the other direction and have the sun sung actually make it down the row.

But that's a little more difficult and requires a little more space. Usually 

Joe Woolworth: [00:07:15] in North Carolina, Cary, specifically, which is where we are in the garden supply company, is very proud of our giant trees. Is there a better, is it good to have your square foot garden in direct sunlight or. It was a bunch of tall trees.

Does that make a big difference? ...

And I I'm bored to death with drinking water. So I started modeling basically simple syrups out of blackberries or out of we had Georgia kisses this winter.  I would muddle or squeeze the orange and then add fresh local honey to it.

And I found myself drinking a lot more water, so it was a healthy thing. Okay. If you don't know 

Joe Woolworth: [00:01:10] what muddling is, it's basically like a wooden stick that looks like something that you would tenderize meat with at the end

Keith Ramsey: [00:01:16] You just kind of smash up the fruit, break it up. Exactly.

And if you don't have that, it's squeezing it.  Mash it with the end of a knife. It could be as crude as you want it to be, but and then that bleeds over to cocktails, which is also a very important part of gardening, in my opinion.

And a nice, slow walk through the garden, or out working in the yard for half an hour after work when you're unwinding and There are lots of different things in the garden that you can use in mocktails and cocktails. And there are some fruit plants, blackberries, and raspberries. Both thrive in North Carolina.

So when they're in season, using them fresh is an amazing thing. You've got an abundance of them. As they pile up, you're freezing them and storing them for the wintertime. So again, you can bring them back out. You can do slushy drinks with them, put them in the blender or just, muddle a Blackberry Blackberry Bazell.

Basil is a fragrance that everybody loves, that it's a flavor that everybody seems to be really popular right now. And then there's Bazell sprays, which I'm not really sure if I want a rim spray that smells like myself, but it's a very current fragrance.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:17] I've never heard of that flavor combo. Blackberries and basil, to me, it's like a great seventies funk band. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:23] Exactly.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:36] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the stage: Blackberries and Basil... Do you put basil in a cocktail? Do you just put the leaf in? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:38] You can model it, or you can just put the leaf in for a slight, for more of a fragrance in the drink, and then a slight additional  flavor, so if you muddle 

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:45] it, it's more strong, and if you don't, it's pretty exactly like LaCroix Basil
, have you, the koi water? Yeah. There's a great joke about LaCroix water. It's like the flavor of LaCroix routers. Like somebody standing two rooms away and yells at the flavor.

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:01] that's exactly it. You can make a simple syrup out of all of that stuff. You can use it in your ice water, in the big cup that you carry with you during the day it makes the water a lot more enjoyable in my opinion. And then mixing it with vodkas or rums. That's a great combination, iced or doing blackberries, as more of a blender drink, figs is another one.

 Is a little bit on the odd flavor, not as common, but But figs make a great thing to muddle and put in a drink now, like just the whole 

Joe Woolworth: [00:03:27] thing, you muddle it up. Yup, 

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:28] yup. Or blend it. And it's a great flavor to add to something. Blueberries are another one in all of these blackberries; raspberries, figs, blueberries are all things that you can grow in North Carolina.

They grow like a weed. Once you get them established and they're all organic, they're not. It's not anything you have to spray.  That makes it a big plus. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:03:47] What's your go-to recipe right now? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:49] This time of year, when I'm busy as can be, it's probably water with either blackberries or  Georgia kisses.

  I actually made marmalade out of Georgia kisses and honey, and then I'll use a teaspoon of that in my water. So I've got that LaCroix kind of flavor. I've got a little bit of sugar or honey. And then I've got that orange marmalade; I love oranges, but 

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:11] yeah, it's great.

Cause none of it's processed. It's not like simple syrup or anything like that. It's exactly all organic. Yup. Like whole food acceptable type of exactly. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:19] Yeah. And you're doing it, and you're doing it, adding the liquor. Exactly. And they go perfectly—three Gluck's of vodka. There are a dozen herbs 20 herbs that you can use in the same kind of scenario like lemon thyme; lemon thyme's got a great fragrance, great flavor, and then name.

These are great band names. Yeah, they are great band names.

The fragrance of lemongrass and the And flavor of lemongrass is amazing. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:47] Lemongrass, I'm unfamiliar with it. I've seen it like in one of those health food places where you can take a lemongrass shot with your smoothie. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:54] . It's a really strong lemon flavor, and it's where a lot of the lemon fragrant oils come from. It's an annual grass you planted in your herb garden each spring, and it grows like a weed. Like grass doesn't, then you're harvesting. As you have a need for it, and then it dies in the fall, and you have to replace it in the spring.

people will dry it and use it as a dried Ingredient; pineapple Sage is another one that I'm super, super good in a drink or water. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:05:20] I, since I sent a garden supply company line of beverage addition coming, it

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:24] might. I think it would be better, actually, if we just had a bartender stand in there.

Joe Woolworth (2): [00:05:29] Yeah, they were like, you can get a, you can sit down and have a beer out Harris Teeter like you need a place to sample the delicious garden, herbs, and fruits, right? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:37] We've got Bon Brothers keg at the store so that customers can enjoy a beer. In the late afternoon, when they're walking around shopping for plants.

So maybe the same thing, we just bring in a local bartender that day and have them mixed drinks with herbs and various things, and the kids will love 

Joe Woolworth: [00:05:52] it. They get out of the mocktails. And exactly you take your fancy waters and give them fun names. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:56] Yeah. So Stevia is a thing that I always love to hand them with kids; it's. Yeah, it's a sugar substitute.

It's an herb, then. And it's, again, it's an annual, it's something you play in the early spring, but Stevie is a great thing. I like your taste in leaf, and it's that sugar flavor. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:06:10] So you could use it Stevia to make l...

Keith:   I want to talk to everybody today about our host of the hive program and bees in general. We've been doing this host-to-hive for two or three years. It's a perfect introduction to beekeeping. It's a way to keep bees long-term without having a hive in your backyard.

[00:00:55]Some people are allergic to bees but are interested in and want to participate.  It's more and more of a struggle to keep bees alive anymore. There's colony collapse, and there are a few different insect problems, and there are few different viruses that bees get. Yet they're absolutely a must for the pollination of certain crops.

[00:01:13] Many of the crops that we get at the grocery store need bees to pollinate those crops. We must keep raising bees and then keep splitting hives and maintaining the population we've got currently.  If you're thinking about keeping bees, I feel like it's important to start with two hives.

[00:01:32] There are years when we have 40% losses, and commercial beekeepers, in general, will have 40% losses. So it's getting harder and harder to keep a hive. It used to be that. You can set a hive out, and you'd have an 80 or 90% success rate. Now we're closer to 50 50 success rate.

[00:01:51] If you're not willing to keep two or three hives and study bees and really understand bees. Then host a hive is a there's a great program. You can paint the beehive, make it personal. And then we keep the hive, and we move them around to different nectar sources.

[00:02:08]That's one of the issues with bees in North Carolina is the nectar sources are mostly in the spring and then very light in the fall. So you end up having to feed the bees in between to keep them healthy and happy. What we try to do is we'll put 12 hives on a trailer, and your bees go on vacation, basically.

[00:02:27]We'll take them out to Asheville, beautiful view great nectar source. It's probably one of my favorite things about beekeeping is finding the perfect window. We have to close the bees up at night when it's cool. And then we have to make that Trek. And get there before the sun gets on the bees, and the bees are ready to fly, and it's too hot for them.

[00:02:50]Tends to be by the weather last-minute scenario. You know where you've got a schedule and many things that you can control in your life. This is not one of them. So I'll look ahead at the schedule, and then I'll figure out a time. It looks like Thursday morning is going to be the time.

[00:03:05] to move the bees. So we'll prep them on Wednesday night. And then I get to be chauffeured to, to Asheville. I'll jet out to Asheville, to a friend's farm. We'll set the bees up. We give them bear protection. Bears love both the larva from the bees and the honey as a protein source and sugar source.

[00:03:25]We'll put an electric fence up around to protect them from the bears. And you get to spend the day in Asheville or the day in the night in Nashville. And then you. Head back. So how exactly 

[00:03:34] Joe: does the host of the hive program work? You're going to take the bees that I'm hosting out to Asheville, right?

[00:03:41]What are the benefits for the people that are hosting the 

[00:03:43] Keith: hive? We have highs locally at the garden center and in various locations around the triangle. So if your hive is in Nashville and you want to see it hive open or want to participate in a hive?

[00:03:56]We'll open it, we'll schedule a time, and we have you come out. You can either gear up, or you can match from a distance. Sometimes we'll do group events where we do a screen room. And pop a tent up. They can stand in the screen room, and we'll, we're suited up on the outside, and we'll open the hive up and, we'll do educational things with kids.

[00:04:16] We'll show them the queen. We'll show them what brood is. Show them the difference between brood and honey in a frame. And it's a good way to get your feet wet if you wanted to keep bees down the road too. So you're slowly learning the process of opening the hive and how you go into a hive, and that smoke relaxes the bees and gets them to start gulping up honey in a kind of a survival instinct and make some really easy to work with.

[00:04:41] So we'll give them a little puff of smoke. You don't have to give them a lot of smoke and then. And then open a high for the person that sponsored a hive to pull stuff out and, and then other people want to be a little bit hands-on, and we'll have a day where they can actually go into a hive and pull the frame out themselves.

[00:04:56] I always say beekeeping's like putting your hand on a hot stove. It's you're not supposed to do it, but you're going to go ahead and test it. You know that glass unit. To make sure it's off, why would you do that? You've been burned before. Beekeeping is much the same. You're going to get stung.

[00:05:11] It's inevitable, any beekeeper that keeps bees has been stung, we get nucleus hives, which are five complete frames with the queen, and we'll buy those in the spring and unload three or 400 of them.

[00:05:23]There was a day that I was stung a hundred times. It's funny that when you've been stung by something. You think everything that flies stings is the same, but honeybee stings or a quarter or a half of what a hornet or a yellow jacket, or a lot of these other flying things are.

[00:05:39] So they don't hurt that much. And if you're not affected by a bee sting, they don't really bother you. Once you get into the hive and you get comfortable, You'll find yourself just mesmerized by what's going on. Probably two years into keeping bees, I would find myself open a hive and pulling a frame out and just leaning on the hive, and the bees are flying all around me.

[00:06:03] I dive, and almost as if you're looking at a piece of coral. A million things live in there, and they're all doing different things at different times. You can sit there and stare at that one piece of coral for 15 minutes, you can't believe that something, this new thing, just popped out of that space, and it's changing colors, and different things are going on.

[00:06:25] Same thing with bees it's when I was growing up, they would, you could buy an ant colony. And you sat there and watched the ants lay eggs and move the eggs around and tunnel, and bees are probably one of the most complex insects out there.

[00:06:40]It's similar to ants. They're just fascinating to watch, inside the hive or outside of the hive. When I first started keeping bees, people would say, they're so relaxing. I go out there with my coffee every morning, coffee or cocktail, and it's, and I'm like, I don't think I'm going to be drinking coffee or cocktails with my bees.

[00:06:57] And sure enough, a month in, I'm standing there; I can't wait to see what's happening today because the weather's warmed up or the hives are really doing well. And you want to get a quick visit in, so you're drinking your coffee and watching the bees. Something about that

[00:07:11] hum of the hive is like the yoga home. It's very relaxing, and you'll find yourself mesmerized by them. 

[00:07:18] Joe: So if somebody 

[00:07:18] wanted to host a hive with Garden Supply Company; what does that look like? What does it entail? 

[00:07:22] Keith: They go onto the website or come into the store, and they sign up; it's $295 a year. And then we provide them with a hi...

Keith:   Today, I’m talking about gardening for mental health. There are lots of articles out there more about gardening and how good it is for mental health. Something I figured out a long time ago for myself personally, not recognizing it, but no matter how bad a day I’d had, if I got out in the garden, touch the soil serotonin levels, go crazy in your body. It’s an easy place to relax.

[00:01:03]Joe: One of the few options we have in the pandemic 

[00:01:06] Keith:. Yep. So golfing, golfing has gone crazy. Gardening has gone crazy. The basics: you walk out of the house, and oxygen levels improve. When older people used to tell me they needed to get out in the sun and get some vitamin D to me, it was sounded like a lot of fluff.

[00:01:24]The older you get, I think the more vitamin D deficient you end up and, I feel totally different when the sun comes out, it’s the landscape looks brighter. Everything around you looks better. It’s, it just feels you feel so much better to be outside. So you say you’re breathing better oxygen, fresher air getting more sun.

[00:01:42]The other thing about gardening is just practicing acceptance. Stress, a lot of times, comes from trying to schedule and control everything around you. There’s, there’s only a certain amount of stuff that you can control in the landscape. It’s mother nature.

[00:01:56] That works. Yeah. You can do your part, but then what happens. You’re out there, and there’s a lot of different components to it. You may be looking at your vegetable garden, and two vegetables are failing miserably. It’s gotten too hot, and there’s nothing you can do to cool them off.

[00:02:11]Just accepting that’s the way nature is. And 

[00:02:14] Joe: yeah. And if you have a high-stress job or something, I’ve heard people say that it helps you slow down, but I don’t know if it’s slow. It just helps you embrace the fact that. This is how long it takes. Like these things take how long they take.

[00:02:25]And it’s I like that word that you’re using. I think it’s more about acceptance than forcing you to slow down. Yeah, 

[00:02:30] Keith: absolutely. And maybe it’s why I’m good at gardening. I’m not a control person at all. My management style is to point you in the right direction.

[00:02:41] Just let that ship sail. And I’ll come back around in about a week or two or a month to write that to that ship if it’s, heading in the wrong direction. But I tend to let you know, let things go, and let the way they turn out.

[00:02:56] So it makes gardening fun. It’s like being in the studio today. We’ve got a, we’ve got a bluebird that’s right at the window. And you’ve been trying to get in for the last 20 minutes knocking noise. It’s not the door. It’s the window. Hold the mic over there. Next time he tries it.

[00:03:14] Yeah. He’s he thinks that he’s got another bluebird in the reflection, so he’s mad. He’s not pumping up his chest. He wants to fight. He’s not happy at all. And you could try to change that, but probably not going to happen. So we’re going to, we’re going to live with our little friend.

[00:03:31]As far as accepting what’s going to happen, you do what you can do. You prepare the best you can come, prepare, prepare the soil, get the plants, the right best plants, and then accept the results. Do you know what I mean?

[00:03:43] That’s life, and it’s harder for some people than others, but gardening is a good way to learn that and practice. The other thing is, letting go of the idea that things are going to be perfect. Vegetable gardening, in particular, There’s lots of highs and lows.

[00:03:56] It’s, you get it in you till the garden everything’s fresh and pretty. And then. You get, come back a month later, and certain plants are doing better than others. Things are starting to produce fruit or greens, or you can start to harvest things. But it’s never going to be perfect.

[00:04:09]And then at the end of the season, it’s, you’re pulling out dead plants that are still producing but don’t look good and are near nearing the end. So just getting used to the fact that things aren’t perfect. The fixed mindset or growth mindset. When you make mistakes, it’s a growth opportunity.

[00:04:24] It’s not worrying about it, especially vegetable gardening or landscape gardening. I think it’s always good to get good advice. Especially when you’re talking about trees or talking about Woody plants larger projects so that you don’t make as many mistakes. Still, when it comes to perennial garden or flower gardening, growing a vegetable garden, it's

[00:04:42]Fun to go out there and experiment, try this, and try something else if it doesn’t work. That’s part of that whole growth thing. And while you’re going through all these processes, it’s It being outside, in general, is just a fun, fun place to unwind. Yeah.

[00:04:57] There’s 

[00:04:57] Joe: so many options that we have when it comes to spending our time. And so many of them in our culture feel like they have immediate results. Like I want to watch this movie so I can escape reality for two and a half hours, or I want to go shopping so that I have the thing that I want, but gardening is seasonal at the end of the trip.

[00:05:10] Like you have to think about it in terms of it’s going to be this year. I want to do this thing. Yeah. Which is a completely different mindset to put ourselves in than we normally are in. 

[00:05:20] Keith: Yeah, it is. And it’s I’ve got a friend that just passed several months ago and every summer he would plant every spring he planted a huge garden and he, he called me, and he’d say, I need corn and I needed, silver queen corn. I’m growing silver queen this year. It’s butter corn. And I would provide him with all the seeds because he lives in Virginia, and we’d go to the Lake in Virginia, and then I could help him pick the garden. In every fall, as the corn dwindled and the raccoons ate the corn one year, he had a bear rolling around in the corn.

[00:05:49]He would say, I’m not growing a garden again. It’s I’m done with this. He said, you can buy corn at the farmer’s market cheaper than you can, then you can plant and garden, and when May rolls around, and he’d call me, and he’d say, I want to quit and plowed that garden. And he said, this year, I think I’m going to use buttercream corn, or, he would, it would be something else.

[00:06:10] By the end of the season, things weren’t looking that great in the fall. And they were all drying up, he was feeling the feeling and the downside of gardening and, but give him a couple of months to rest in the wintertime, and he’d be right back at it.

[00:06:22]Yeah. And then, and then you get those re you reap there the rewards of their, fresh silver queen corn, you’re pulling out of your garden. It’s just after the crop has gone, and he would kind of get down about it all or anything that had gone wrong, or that thing about that darn bear.

[00:06:37]Joe: I’ve never done it as a good or that a couple of months go by and Hey, do 

[00:06:39] Keith: it again. I’ll do it one more time. Yeah. So I fell last time. It’s good. My new I’m like, I’ll do it. I’ll try it one more time. Talking about my friend that the other one of the other points to the whole mental health is the connection to other humans.

[00:06:5...

[00:01:00] they're always worried about using chemical fertilizer, so I thought I'd talk about that and why it's important sometimes to use chemical fertilizer. It's chemical chemically produced, but it's just chemically produced to increase the amount of whatever element they're trying to try and to increase it.

[00:01:16] So to get nitrogen high enough to grow tomatoes, you really need some chemical fertilizer, in my opinion. Its organic fertilizers are a good thing for building soil. It's more like taking a multivitamin chemical fertilizer, like a perfect punch. It's gonna; it's gonna really put that plan into a growth model.

[00:01:33]Joe Woolworth:  To enrich it with nitrogen is something that occurs in nature. I think most people would probably be afraid that they'd put something weird in it. We're all thinking, what will we eat? I don't want to put monologues 473 in my body.

[00:01:45] Keith Ramsey: It is. So it's, it's chemically produced. It's, they're extracting nitrogen out of a natural source and just boosting the 

[00:01:52] Joe Woolworth: they're not trying to make it taste good. Exactly. What all this weird stuff and food. Exactly. 

[00:01:56] Keith Ramsey: It's not you're 

[00:01:57] Joe Woolworth: feeding your fertilizer. 

[00:01:58] Keith Ramsey: Stop that immediately.

[00:01:59] No, there's no 21, a red dye. Nitrogen is the key element in fertilizer for plant growth. There are pretty much nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, but those are the main elements. The nitrogen gives you plant growth and gives you that dark green color. If you, when your plant's yellowing generally all over the plant, usually that's a sign that it lacks in nitrogen.

[00:02:20] Sometimes, that can be a sign that the nitrogen can be there and the pH is off. So getting the pH right. So that the plant can actually accept the fertilizer that's there is important. Potassium's there for plant quality. It helps and aids in flowering and stem growth.

[00:02:36] It's all derived from rock phosphate. And if you apply rock phosphate to the soil as an organic phosphate, it really requires probably a year or two for the phosphate to break down. So adding a chemical phosphate is important.

[00:02:50] If you want to affect the plant, this year or immediately, phosphate is linked to storing energy, the process of photosynthesis. So general plant and health and quality flowering and rooting. Potassium, on the other hand, is it's really there for plant vigor and strength.

[00:03:05] Many times, root crops like potatoes or carrots or that kind of thing will need extra potassium to build that strong tube or root that you're going to eat. And that's an easy thing to get it, organically. It also helps the potassium also helps the plant resist disease.

[00:03:21] And then, there are all kinds of minors and so sometimes doing a soil test if you've got a plant or if you're particularly if you're growing crops of plants say you've got multiple blueberries or a blueberry farm.

[00:03:33] Soil testing is important because if the plant needs magnesium or manganese or iron, sulfur, copper, zinc, boron, those are the main minor elements a plant will use. If they need those and there's deficiency there, you can't just broadly add those to the soil.

[00:03:51], They're in many general-purpose fertilizers and are available in a lot of chemical or organic fertilizers. Still, if you're really deficient in one or two of those, it'll make a difference. Iron's a classic example of a soil lacking an iron, And you're adding nitrogen to the soil because of the plant's yellow.

[00:04:09] Sometimes, it just needs a handful of iron to make it make that difference. And in the olden days, people would add old nails or leftover steel to the soil around the tree. And then the iron would just, as it as the iron rusted it would become available to the plant, and they would leach down into the soil.

[00:04:25], You hear old-time gardeners say, throw a handful of nails in the bottom of the hole when you're planting a tree, and that would keep the tree really dark green and actively growing. 

[00:04:35] Joe Woolworth: Wow. So that's a lot of variables. There are three main components. There are five or six other sub-main components.

[00:04:40] And it depends on where your soil is, what plans you're growing. So when you go into a place like a garden supply company, how many choices for fertilizer? 

[00:04:49] Keith Ramsey: So there's a lot of different choices. I usually tell people not to get too bogged down in the details, even though we started in the details.

[00:04:56]Adding fertilizers to the landscape or to the lawn at the right time of the year in some form or fashion, the plants utilize the fertilizer and then every few years doing a soil test. Have a baseline. Do you know, especially if you're buying a new house or starting a new garden, getting a soil test upfront and getting a baseline so that you can head in the right direction is a good idea?

[00:05:16] And then just updating that every three to five years kind of thing. 

[00:05:21]Joe Woolworth: You mentioned the comparison of like multivitamins to types of fertilizer, are there a couple that always works really well for baseline?  

[00:05:30] Keith Ramsey: You go with these lawn fertilizers, for instance.

[00:05:31]I think it's essential. I follow up the guidelines from a lawn program in Virginia from the Virginia extension service, but. It's the sod program. And so you fertilized September, October, and December. The two main differences in fertilizers from in the, in that you're going to put down in the fall are a starter fertilizer, which tends to be high in phosphorus.

[00:05:54] So you want it for root growth. And so you're trying to establish good, strong roots, and you don't want to push that plant really hard with nitrogen. So it's lower in nitrogen higher and phosphorus and potassium. So that's what you start with within September, and then as the grass plant matures and starts to root in.

[00:06:09] Then you move to something higher in nitrogen because you want to push that plant to have top growth so that it also needs to grow more roots. And it's more established by the summertime,

[00:06:19]the difference between organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer, so if you wanted an organic lawn, I recommend doing it. 90% of the time. Going back to chemical fertilizer, because if you do an organic fertilizer in the lawns, not getting enough green and it's not growing enough roots, it doesn't have everything it needs.

[00:06:39] The lawn will be lacking. And then it's, you're talking about an environmental issue. So if you put a lot of chemical fertilizer out and it's not a slow-release fertilizer, it can leech, and you lose that fertilizer. And it's not necessarily great for the environment, but if you use a.

...

[00:00:55]when we talk about bones, evergreen plants, the hardscapes, the walls figuring out where you need more structure or figuring out where you need a ceiling or a canopy that you can do with a tree or an Arbor entry to do a different area of the yard, with the, with an Arbor It's a great time of year because the trees are deciduous.

[00:01:13] In the middle of spring and summertime, you're in your backyard, and you've got total privacy as winter comes on, you've got six months of deciduous trees dropping their leaves. Suddenly you can see, straight into the neighbor's house, you can see TV when it comes on, you can see the lights.

[00:01:28]Yeah, 

[00:01:29] Joe Woolworth: we just moved, and I didn't even realize that my back neighbors existed until all the trees 

[00:01:32] Keith Ramsey: fell down. It's definitely a, I built a house a few years ago, bought the lot, and built the house at the Lake. So it's a country setting. Leaves drop. There's an old camper sitting in the woods, on the lot next to us. I never saw it. It doesn't bother me at all.

[00:01:50] Cause I'm there during the summertime. But when I go there during the wintertime, it's not the site that I want to see. It's not pretty. 

[00:01:56]Joe Woolworth: you can get a better sense of your land, but what specifically makes a lot more sense in the winter than in the summer when it comes to yard work.

[00:02:03]Keith Ramsey: There are all kinds of things you can do in the wintertime. Looking at your lawn, and if it's not dark green doing more fertilization, that's a, it's a great time to do fertilization. It's a great time to do all of the ground covers. You can do dormant seating top-dressed it with black soil.

[00:02:19] And then in the spring, you're going to get germination pretty quick. You can do lawn fertilization, like I said, mulching and pine strong. There's no better time to do it. Perennial plants are, have died all the way back to the ground, or you've got that is not looking at its prime, and it needs to be cut back. Ornamental grasses need to be cut back. In February, you start cutting your roses back. There are all kinds of dormant pruning that can be done. And when you're looking at a tree in the wintertime when it doesn't have foliage on it, you can see that we're branches are crossing or branches are rubbing or taken in and lifting a canopy a little bit so that you can walk under it.

[00:02:55]So that you can see through it, a layer in a Japanese maple. It is just so much clear when there aren't leaves on the tree. So you can do that kind of stuff. But doing all your cleanup, all your pruning the stuff that requires a fair amount of effort, and you pretty much produce your own heat.

[00:03:12] You know what I mean? When you're moving around, and you're really actively working, on a day when it's. 25 degrees to 40 degrees, whatever it's comfortable outside, a light jacket, and you probably end up taking it off. Mulching in particular, though, hardwood mulch is what I always recommend.

[00:03:28]it's organic, it's natural, and color. It's consistent. It's readily available. It's a by-product. When you're standing next to a mulch pile, It might be a hundred degrees inside that mulch pile. You're shoveling mulch, and heat is actually coming off the mulch.

[00:03:43]It's not a comfortable thing to do, and it's 80 degrees outside. Looking at your landscape, looking at the definition, digging some edges so that you've got that golf green look to the yard, given the lawn a better shape and then creating beds or around the lawn.

[00:03:58] But getting that kind of stuff out of the way, the perennials aren't up yet, you've got everything trimmed back. you don't have to be tender and delicate around the plants at that time of the 

[00:04:07] Joe Woolworth: year. Is there any planting that makes more sense to do in the winter that will either benefit you in the winter?

[00:04:13] You'll see some blooming, or it will be a benefit in the coming season. 

[00:04:16]Keith Ramsey: I'll never stop talking about this and that. And nobody will ever really believe me, but winter's the best time to plant stuff. dormant planting is ideal. You put stuff in the ground.

[00:04:28]Our ground never freezes. Hard enough that you can't dig. we might, you know, the very top crust of the soil, my freeze plants grow roots every day during the wintertime. So the most stressful time of the year for plants in June, July, and August, September. the further you can get from that period of time, the more roots you're going to have.

[00:04:46]And again, you go outside, something you can do with your kids, go pick a tree, Go pick a handful of shrubs, plant five or six blueberries, You're not going to break a sweat, doing it. It's the prime time to do it. Now. Plants will be rooted in usually when plants not well-rooted in you get sporadic growth.

[00:05:07] You'll see one little twig, pushing growth on three sides of the plant. Once a plant gets rooted in, you'll see a good full flush. So when you plan the wintertime by spring, you'll see it. Good. Full flush planting in the wintertime is ideal. 

[00:05:21] Joe Woolworth: planting in the wintertime dormantly is anything you should be looking at to the plant you might need to address?

[00:05:27] Do they need as much watering? Is it just 

[00:05:29] Keith Ramsey: put it in the ground? , you still need to look at a plant. On a weekly basis, basically. If you look at a plant and it looks good, are you looking at a plant, and it's dry, you water it. we tend to have enough moisture in the wintertime.

[00:05:40] there are lots of winners. You'd never have to water. But it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on them. Winter winds, cold temperatures. All dry plan out, whether it's got foliage on it or not, foliage is a really good indicator of being dry. When we talked about plant wilting, you can look out the window and see this it's wilted.

[00:05:57] It's either too wet or too dry. It's hard to tell from what if it's wilted, but if it doesn't have foliage on it if it's a deciduous plant, it's a little harder to tell. So you do need to go out and check them periodically. But it's typical that you don't have to do a lot of watering, if any, watering at all during the wintertime.

[00:06:14]It also saves. Most of us pay for water now.  It saves on the water bill to plant during the wintertime here in North. 

[00:06:21] Joe Woolworth: Carolina, we very rarely see any snow. Are there any specific kinds of plans did you have to watch out for when there's a frost warning? 

[00:06:27] Keith Ramsey: Not really most of the plants that, people are always when they buy plants, they'll call back and say, is there anything I needed to do?

[00:06:33] I need to wrap my plan up. If they bought a planet, a nursery, and it was outside, it's rare That we cover plants or that they would need to be covered in the landscape. We might cove...

[00:00:59] In the Chinese culture, they would go out into nature, and they'd find plants and put them in a pot, and they'd start to train them like an older tree. The idea of growing a Bonsai you're trimming the roots, and you're trimming the top. So that, so by trimming the roots, you're shrinking the foliage on the plant. The more you trim it and the more fibers the roots get, the smaller the foliage gets. One unique part of that is when the plant flowers, the flower stay the same size.

[00:01:27] So you'll have an Azalea plant. You Bonsai, after several years, the foliage will start to shrink, get smaller and smaller. The limb shrinks the inner nodal growth shrinks. And when the plant flowers, it'll still have these large flowers. Fruit trees, Apple trees, Berry trees will always have really large.

[00:01:46] So it's a little distorted look. 

[00:01:48] Joe Woolworth: I didn't know that you could bonsai another type of plant. I never heard that. 

[00:01:51] Keith Ramsey: before. Yeah. So Bonzai is literally just potting a plant. Bonzai has grown into that shape of plant that you see, at a Juniper, but there's, you can really, truly bonsai any plant.

[00:02:02]it's going out and finding a plant. That's going to mirror the look that you want. If you wanted to, if you wanted the look of an old Oak tree, with that tree's structure coming up and a big trunk and then just a canopy, there's a number of trees that you can use outside.

[00:02:18] And there's a number of trees you can use inside. So there's, you definitely have to choose whether you're doing a Bonzai for inside or for outside and pick a plant that's going to do well in the environment that's your trying to place a plant. Yeah. You 

[00:02:30] Joe Woolworth: mentioned the process was trimming the routes as well as trimming the foliage back in.

[00:02:35] So, how do you trim the roots when it's an outside plant? 

[00:02:38]Keith Ramsey: it's a containerized plant. Say once a year, once every two years, you pull the plant out of the pot, and you're literally trimming the tips of the roots and some of the larger. Roots so that you don't have one large taproot going down anymore.

[00:02:52]You tip that taproot and just put prune in the top of a plant, the growth comes up, you prune it, and it splits, and you end up with multiple stems coming up instead of one stem. So basically, the same thing with the root, you're going to go in and trim the roots. It's going to split, and you end up with more fibrous roots.

[00:03:11]And the more you shrink that root space or, the more it's out of proportion with the size of the tree, the more that foliage just kinda starts to shrink. There are lots of different styles of Bonsai. It's picking a picture of a Bonsai offline or out of a book. Something that you've seen, a real bonsai that you've seen somewhere, and it's mirroring that.

[00:03:32]And in a lot of cases, they're mirroring. Older plants in a landscape, the Cedar tree that's grown on the side of a mountain, that's been windswept for years, that you see on a hiking trip, some at some point, you take a picture of that, or you have a picture of that in your mind, and you're trying to prune that tree and wire that tree so that it has that windswept look,  and

[00:03:54]I think karate kid is part of why I think, in the last few months, the last year, I think that resurgence of. That Cobra

[00:04:08] Joe Woolworth: Kai Netflix 

[00:04:09] Keith Ramsey: series. Yeah. Everybody's 

[00:04:11] Joe Woolworth: back into bonsai. Exactly. So Mr. Miyagi was always in there working on that tree.

[00:04:16] What kind of commitment is it to properly Bonzai a plant? Cause it seems like if you pay attention to the movie, it's about six, seven hours a day. 

[00:04:23]Keith Ramsey: You could spend six or seven hours a day, but you'd have to have it like a thousand bonsais. It's a really minimal commitment. It's more about getting the plants in the right location and then keeping them watered.

[00:04:35] If you're going to do multiple bonsais, Bonzai is something you'd probably want to if you're going to take a two-week vacation. It's like having a dog. You don't want to tie it up in the backyard. You want to get somebody to take care of it, at least give it some water.

[00:04:47] Every couple of days, Bonsais tend to dry out faster than other plants. Because they've got a small root base. Couple of things that you can do, just a simple timer where you get an irrigation system that comes on, and if you don't have an irrigation system or putting them under a full-time irrigation system, but what 

[00:05:04] Joe Woolworth: would you look for in the plant if you.

[00:05:07] As a sign that you were over-watering or 

[00:05:09] Keith Ramsey: underwatering?

[00:05:10] So overwatering is usually the whole plant wilts, just like any plant we look at.  The whole plant tends to shut down cause it doesn't have oxygen, and it's not getting any water when a plant doesn't have oxygen, they can't take up water, say you're so the whole plant kind of wilts. A dry plant usually yellows from the inside or loses foliage from the inside of the plant.

[00:05:31]So you'll see yellow leaves on the interior of the plant versus the exterior plant, maybe still wilting. It depends on the type of plant, but those are good signs. But placement is another thing it's, If you can take, a plant that, that needs full sun. You can put it in an area that's getting morning sun till maybe one or two in the afternoon, or that, get some morning sun and some afternoon sun, but it's in the shade in the mid-day, just having it in that right place is key.

[00:05:59]But you can select a plant. You can go out and buy a bonsai. We, we sell bonsais, a lot of garden centers sell bonsais. And, but you can also go with the picture to decide whether you want an interior Bonzai or an exterior Bonzai. If you've got an exterior plant where many people go wrong, they'll go out, and they'll buy a Juniper.

[00:06:18] And it's got a great bonsai shape, it's in a Bonsai, ceramic pot. They bring it in and set it on the coffee table. It's going to be sudden death, it's just not, there's not enough sun to dry, not the right environment. It's an outdoor plant and it needs to be outdoors. Outdoor bonsais can be utilized inside.

[00:06:37] But it's a rotation thing. They're going to be there for a couple of days and then you move them back out. You bring them in for a party, you move them back out. You're going to have company, you bring him in, you set them on an end table, and then shift them back out. Interior plants, you can do things like ficus trees, all the interior trees Shefa layers.

[00:06:55] And our Arbuckles make a great Bonsai. You want to highlight a plant for a highlight area or a low light plant for a low light area. But deciding which way you're go...

[00:01:01] There's about 3000, 4,000, maybe an unlimited number of varieties of Maples.  It's not like you just have to have one Japanese maple in your yard.  There are tons of different colors; there are different sizes, there are different shapes. One maple compliment another maple.

[00:01:16]You can plant mixed like a mixed border of Maples. There are Maples that leaf out chartreuse. There's Maples that leaf out. Burgundy. When you break it down into two, into really two large groups, there's Palmatums, which are a large Palmate leaf, and most of that 99% are upright.

[00:01:34] There's a couple of holdouts that are weeping palmatum, so that's a big Palmate,  leaf. The other half of the plants are dissectums. So a dissectum is a dissected leaf. It's the Lacy leaf Japanese maple, and most of those are weeping varieties that are going to stay smaller and that that gets wider than they do tall.

[00:01:55] They're typically a focal point in a landscape, and they need to be placed well. You don't want them in with a bunch of round shrubs. Because it's going to be around plants, and they'll just blend in. You want them sitting out on their own with ground cover underneath them or boulders or rocks around.

[00:02:13]Both varieties do really well in North Carolina.   They handle our clay really well. Some of the varieties of pushing Angie year, so they are, they're slow-growing other varieties of growth, three, three feet plus. So you can buy a one-gallon maple and have a, have full-size tree in three, four years.

[00:02:32]So it's not necessarily an expensive plant. Now, a lot of times, people look at $300 plant. That's shorter than a, say, as an October glory, red maple, and, but a red maple, might push four feet of growth in a year.  And it's a much, much larger tree, which is why Japanese Maples work well in the type of lots we're building on now and small courtyards.

[00:02:56] it's a plant that'll grow in a pot and live in a pot for 15, 20 years if it's treated appropriately. 

[00:03:04] Joe Woolworth: I know that people like to go and purchase a Japanese maple, like from a big box store, but a lot of people run into a problem with their mislabeled, or they're not even the tree that, that they're 

[00:03:12] Keith Ramsey: purchasing.

[00:03:12] And there's, and knowing what your planning is. Yes, half the, if you go and you pick something up, and it's just a seedling maple, you don't really know what you're getting. It's something that's been cross-pollinated. You pick up a hundred seeds, and every one of those plants might be genetically different.

[00:03:28] The neat thing about Maples is,  they are crossed, and then they're grafted a lot of times. Typically they're grafted. And they're grafted for strong rootstock. And then for whatever the beneficial qualities of the top of the plant are whether it be color or the shape of the leaf or the growth habit. 

[00:03:46]

[00:03:46]Joe Woolworth: If you're going into the garden supply company with your eyes on a Japanese maple cause you got the perfect spot in your yard, is it just as easy as just planting wherever you want? Or is there a little bit more to it than that? 

[00:03:56]Keith Ramsey: I think it's, it's like anything you want a tree that's going to be.

[00:03:59] Portion it to this space. if you're doing an upright tree coral bark, Japanese Maples, or one of them, the top trees we sell the bark in the wintertime is a coral color. So when it doesn't have a leaf on it, The trees showing off. It looks great, and they're all Japanese Maples are asymmetrical.

[00:04:17] So there, each one of them is a piece of art. Everyone's very different. And the older they get, really the more character they get and the prettier they get.  The dissectum's, because they're weeping, really needed a space of their own. Most shrubs are the same shape as a dissect them.

[00:04:33] So when you start blending them all in, it just looks like another blob in the landscape,  if it's not out on its own. So you know, a lot of times off of the corner of a sidewalk and a driveway, somebody will put one under planet with flowers or a boulder, or something like that so that you can see the character of the tree and it's out there by itself.

[00:04:52]If you've got a tighter spot up around the house, you wouldn't want to do something like a Bloodgood that's gonna end up 20 feet wide. But a coral bark is a, or a seiryu. A Seiryu's an upright Japanese maple that's actually a dissecttum. It's one of the, one of the oddballs unbelievable spring green color.

[00:05:12] And then the fall color is a brilliant orangy red. But a tree like that, the coral bark or seiryu, are both small to medium-sized trees. So it's something you can plan off the side of a foundation, close to your house, with the appropriate spacing. 

[00:05:28] Joe Woolworth: I know in our area here in the Cary area, the triangle area of North Carolina, we have a lot of neighborhoods that are established with really big trees.

[00:05:35] And then we got a lot of new development, and sometimes you move into one of those new development things, and you're starting from scratch, right? It's a Japanese maple, a great tree to plant for having some significant growth in a couple. 

[00:05:46] Keith Ramsey: of years. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, it depends on the variety of there's varieties that put on an inch.

[00:05:51] And there are varieties that put on three to four feet. Picking the right tree and that's the key, whether you come to the garden supply company or you go to the Homewood nursery or Logan's Go someplace go to a small garden center where their plant knowledge is there. Picking plants without having good advice is really a waste of money. Just going in and grabbing a plant and slapping it in the ground. It just does not make sense. So going and getting the advice, the knowledge, people who have grown plants for years and years that know what the characteristics are and what will fit and what space. Picking the right plant for the right place is key.

[00:06:29] Joe Woolworth: Yeah, because I imagine everybody's got different goals. Somebody just might want an attractive tree. Somebody might want a lot of shades. Somebody might want something that doesn't grow very fast because they hate raking, 

[00:06:38] Keith Ramsey: and then there are lots of people that just collect Japanese Maples. I've probably got 15, 20 different varieties.

[00:06:45]and add in a couple each year. Now you mentioned 

[00:06:48] Joe Woolworth: that earlier that a lot of them come with grafted in, what does it take to graft in a Japanese maple into another kind  

[00:06:54] Keith Ramsey: it's a little bit of an art and a lot of science, but it's; basically, you're cutting a groove into the end of the rootstock.

[00:07:01] So ...

[00:01:23] and you can plant all the way into the wintertime.  It's a nice time of year to work on a landscape project because you're not pressured. You can do one section at a time and you can work all the way through the winter. Plants establish really well during the winter months.   They're going to grow roots every day through the wintertime.

[00:01:39] So it's a time of the year that you can work outside and it's not too hot for plants. Aren't going to need a lot of water. This time of year, we're starting to get pansies and mums, that kind of seasonal color, and pansies are an amazing plant. They'll hold up to the cold weather.

[00:01:54]They're out there underneath the snow, as the snow melts, they come back to life and then they're usually flowering heavier than they were before snowfall.  Pansies are something that is easy to put in and just give you huge rewards. 

[00:02:06]Joe Woolworth: When's the ideal time to put in your pansies?

[00:02:09] .

[00:02:09]Keith Ramsey: month of October really is probably the ideal time. We start bringing pansies at the end of September.  But all throughout the month of October, and then we bring in larger flowers in November so that people can continue to plant them.
 

[00:02:22] Joe Woolworth: What does the process looks like if I want to put in some pansies, I head on down to garden supply, and then what?

[00:02:26] Keith Ramsey: . We can walk you through that. I think the key to an annual bed is really just building a great bed. It's building up the soil, putting in soil conditioner, putting in potting soil. And when you see commercial beds around town, that's the way it's done. , it makes  planting an

[00:02:40] an annual bed, just super easy. You can pull a flat of pansies and plant them in less than an hour. And that's, having the bed prepped and then the right soil is also what gives you the professional results too? That's, what's going to give you flowers all winter long getting the fertility, applying something, that's got a high phosphate fertilizer that, you can pick up at any local garden center, like garden supply company. 

[00:03:01]Joe Woolworth: So that's not like a complicated to get my soil tested kind of stuff. I'm just buying some products from the garden supply. 

[00:03:07] Keith Ramsey: That's it's really just a simple recipe.

[00:03:09] I'll put down a bag of soil conditioner on the bottom and then I'll top dress it with a bag of potting soil and then use half a bag of soil conditioner mixed into the potting soil and I'll dig that into the clay. So you're opening up the clay and you're giving it a deeper root base place for the plant roots to root down into the existing soil.

[00:03:29] But then you can plant directly in that mix. And then I use the other half of the bag of soil conditioner just to mulch the top of the bed.  You don't want to mulch with heavy bark soil because it just,  takes all the nitrogen out of the soil. And then we'll use an annual perennial fertilizer and it's a granular product.

[00:03:46] You can just, you broadcasted across the bed and water a man, and it's really. Pretty simple process. 

[00:03:52] Joe Woolworth: If there were a formula for it and to make it easy, let's say you buy a hundred dollars worth of plants. How much are you planning on investing in the soil so that you really make sure you get the most out 

[00:04:03] Keith Ramsey: of it?

[00:04:03] An average annual bed would be a flat of annuals. And so garden centers really have the best pricing on annual flats. None of the box stores anymore carry flats of annuals. They carry different types of packs or bigger pots. But we carry a 36 pack flat.

[00:04:20] That's $25.  It's less than a dollar, a plant. And then, you basically need two bags of soil conditioner and a bag of potting soil. So, with the fertilizer and the plants, it's probably, it probably doubles the cost. So for $50, you've got a six-foot by two-foot bed of color that lasts from October until April.

[00:04:40] Oh, it's really a deal and it's super easy to put in if you prep the bed that way, it's all about knowing how to plant like a professional landscape team would on a commercial. 

[00:04:49] Joe Woolworth: So you mentioned that this is also a great time of year for landscaping. The weather's not so crazy.

[00:04:53] What are some of the common things that people are putting in the fall when it comes to landscaping in their yard? 

[00:04:57] Keith Ramsey: So really, you can plant just about anything. There are a few perennial plants that really like to be planted in the early spring as it warms up. But 95% of the perennials can go in this time of year pansies all kinds of heuchera.

[00:05:11] There's a whole range of cool-season things that you can plant with pansies violas will handle a little bit more shade than pansies. It's a pansy-like plant. But then trees and shrubs when it cools off the top of the plant's not going through any stress and the soil temperatures are still warm enough through the entire winter that plants will grow roots.

[00:05:29] The idea is that it's just a fading season. It gets a little worse every day but it's never a bad time to plant in the wintertime. Once you get the plant in. You're going to start growing roots. And you're basically trying to establish as many roots as you can.

[00:05:42] Before we get into that July timeframe where it's really hot and the plants stressed. It's losing moisture. 

[00:05:48]Joe Woolworth: When I think of fall, right when I first got to the width of it, I know a lot of people think pumpkin spice, lattes, and stuff like that, but I think bonfires. Absolutely. I think it's time to start a fire in the backyard.

[00:05:59]Keith Ramsey:  The other day we had a seafood boil for some employees and friends. A bunch of people got together. It was that. Perfect fall temperature. We had the pizza oven at the store cranked up and we, we had gotten all the fixings from salvias pizza to make pizzas.

[00:06:14] We had we're putting fresh Bazell on it and just. Absolute perfect evening, but we had four fire pits that have been sitting there for, I don't know, probably six months towards the back of the store. It's been summertime it's hot and it hadn't really been the time. We sold all four. Fire pits to friends and family that were there.

[00:06:35] Yeah. We fired one of them up. Everybody's standing around it. , you're seeing the fire in the fire pit. It really is just a perfect time of year. And it's also, you can't have an open fire and Cary and most of the cities around here, but you can have a fire pit going.

[00:06:51] It's also a nice way when you're working in the yard. To pick up a few sticks, get a little fire going in your fire pit. And then, just ease into a Saturday evening, with marshmallows or drinks arou...

Joe Woolworth: [00:00:20] what is an annual bed?

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:22] Every year, people plant annual flowers. 

An annual is something you're going to replace in the spring, and you're going to replace it in the fall. So, you end up with really good color spots in your yard. I always like to tell people to pick three good spots and an area in their yard so that they're focal points. Put one or two types of color in there so that they really draw your eye to that space, and they kind of hold space as perennials come in and out of bloom.

Joe Woolworth: [00:00:48] What's the difference between an annual and a perennial?

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:49] So an annual you're going to replace every year. It's, it's an annual event. It is something you've got to change. It makes it easy to remember. Perennials are going to come back year after year. But both of them provide you with a lot of colors, the downside to a perennial.

[00:01:04] people get all excited about them because they come back year after year, but the downside to them is they go into a big wave of blooms, and then they come out of bloom, or they bloom at one time a year, and then they. They don't bloom until the following year. Where annuals, you put them in and they're going to, they're going to hold that space.

[00:01:20] 90% of the time, if you prep the soil right, you're going to have really, good quality annual beds, and they're going to, they're going to perform well. There's always a downside or a weather-related event where annuals don't really do it that well, but typically you put an annual, and it's kind of, it's going to bloom from the time you put it in.

[00:01:37] planting time would be, kind of an April 15th to June 15th, and that's going to bloom around until frost. So, you're going to have blooms until, pretty much the end of October, November 1st. I usually recommend that people pull their annuals out a little bit ahead of that and replace them with pansies or vials, cool-season annuals that will bloom from the October timeframe all the way around until spring.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:02] when you're getting ready, and you're deciding, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to make this pot here is going to be an annual Potter. This bed is going to be an annual pot. What? What sizes do you need? when it comes to choosing a pot or choosing a bed, is it dependent on the plant, or do you

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:16] know it's in relationship to the space that's around it, and what I usually tell people when they're making an annual bed is to do something that they can plant in.

[00:02:24] 1520 minutes, some, you know, half an hour at best. Something they can plan with a cup of coffee or a cocktail. You don't want it to be a really large, you know, a lot of work. But the prep and the bed and getting there, getting the soil right, and getting the fertilizer right is the key.

[00:02:39] To really have him professional results.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:42] It's a recipe. What's the, what's the elements of the

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:44] recipe? So, the recipe, we usually start with soil conditioner, which is the cheapest soil amendment you can buy, but it's probably one of the better soil amendments. It's a pine bark-based product. 

We'll add that to the base.

[00:02:55], you know, an annual bed that's maybe—two foot by four foot. You had a bag of soil conditioner to the, to the base, to the bottom, and then we come back through with potting soil on top of that. And then we use soil conditioner to mulch the bed instead of mulch, because mulch takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil.

[00:03:13], but once we get all that out, we put the, we, we add fertilizer to the top of the bed, at the recommended rate. And then dig that into the clay because clay is a really good soil amendment. Or it's a good, good soil base. It holds nutrients really well and, and holds,

Joe Woolworth: [00:03:26] Oh, really? My art is mostly clay, and I thought that I couldn't grow anything.

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:30] cause that's our home run.

[00:03:31] Yeah. So, clay holds nutrients well, it is full of mineral-rich, and it holds water really well. The downside to clay is that it's dense, it's hard to work with. And then it holds too much water. So, when you, when you add soil conditioner doing it, you're lightening. You're lightening up the clay.

[00:03:47]but you never want to remove the clay and add a bunch of, you know, if you take, if you dug a hole and remove all the clay and you add your really good soil to it, it's basically like a bowl of cereal, you know, it's just, it turns to mush. And plants are sitting in too much water. They don't have enough oxygen, and they've died from drought, basically.

[00:04:05], but once you get all that done, you dig it in. You can plan an annual bed, and you know, five, 10 minutes, you can because it's just fluffy.

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:13] Do you recommend people, like do the pre-ground kind of seedlings or you start with seeds?

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:18] typically, you're starting with a pre-ground, seedling. If you start with seeds, I always recommend doing it.

[00:04:23]in the, in the house, under lights, and getting the seedlings hardened off and ready to go, which is, which is a good possibility too.

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:32], remind me again, you said the best time of year to plant.

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:35] it's April 15th through about June 15th, probably ideally April 15th through May 15th. For getting annuals in, and it gives them the ability to get started before the hot part of the summer, even though they're hot weather plants, they get a chance to get rooted in and get established before it gets hot.

[00:04:52] On the flip side and in the fall, you want to plan them between October, which basically is ideal. Yeah. When you're putting it, you know, you're putting an annual bed together. If you do all the prep work, you're going to have professional looking annual beds. When you drive around town, you see these beds that landscapers have put in.

[00:05:08] that's what they're doing. They're prepping the bed. Growing up, I heard people say, you know, dig a $10 hole for a $5 plant. Which I always thought was absurd. It's, you know, it's a lot of soil, and it's a big expense. And that's not really even the case. It's more like dig a $5 hole for a $5 plant when you do that prep; you're really going to get the results out of it.

[00:05:27]. And then when it comes to—putting, annuals and pots. We do, we do something very similar. If it's a very large pot, we'll take a small nursery pot, turn it upside down in that pot, so we're not using so much soil. And so that it drains well and it's light, and you can move it around.

[00:05:42] So you're basically just creating a cavity of air in the bottom, in the bottom of the

Joe Woolworth: [00:05:45] pond. Those giant pots. I even move in it.

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:48] Yeah. Yeah. So, it's just a space taker. And then, you add soil conditioner about halfway up the po...