Cool Tips for the Summer Heat

It's July and we are surrounded by tomato mysteries. Why are listener Jaime's tomatoes doing weird leaf stuff? Why is Gabe's one "volunteer" tomato plant so gigantic? How can a home gardener transform their tomato nightmares into tomato dreams come true? Gabe and Rebecca also sing the praises of a cut flower garden and offer tips on cutting Hydrangeas for lasting blooms in the vase. By the way, anyone else's hydrangeas going gangbusters this year? And finally, Rebecca debuts a poem called… 10 Things I Hate About Slugs.

All this plus recommendations and endorsements!

Visit gardenforwildlife.com and use the code LEAFINGOUT for 10% off your purchase.

Recommendations:
Growing Floret
https://www.floretflowers.com/growing-floret/

Floret's list of recommended bulb and plan sources:
https://www.floretflowers.com/favorite-bulb-plant-sources/

Green Thoughts by Elenor Perenyi
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/129540/green-thoughts-by-eleanor-perenyi/

Dramm Rain Wand
https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/watering-and-irrigation/nozzles-and-wands/7084007

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Transcript

00;00;05;24 - 00;00;09;27
Speaker 1
Welcome to leafing out a podcast about gardening. I'm Gabe and I'm Rebecca.

00;00;10;06 - 00;00;18;24
Speaker 2
We're here to let you in on gardening secrets. Answer your questions and inspire you to make the world a better, more beautiful place. Starting in your own backyard.

00;00;18;24 - 00;00;22;16
Unknown
You can think of us as your fairy garden parents,

00;00;22;16 - 00;00;28;10
Unknown
I'm trying this out. I don't know if it's. It's probably too dorky. I don't think we're going to probably stick with fairy garden parents,

00;00;28;15 - 00;00;30;04
Unknown
The bumblebees of your garden.

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Unknown
So today, we're going to be talking about

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Unknown
weird tomato leaves.

00;00;33;11 - 00;00;44;19
Unknown
And we're going to give you some tips for cutting flowers from the garden. And we're also going to talk about something I've been preparing for you for a long time, which is

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Unknown
ten things I Hate About Slugs.

00;00;47;20 - 00;00;48;07
Unknown
So

00;00;48;07 - 00;00;50;25
Unknown
we have a little garden mystery. My friend Jamie.

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Unknown
was wondering what's wrong with her tomato leaves, and she sent us some pictures,

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Unknown
which,

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Unknown
maybe we'll post on our Instagram if you want, if you want to check it out.

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Unknown
and we're going to do a little bit of,

00;01;00;05 - 00;01;02;14
Unknown
doctor garden here. Amateur

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Unknown
MD detective work.

00;01;03;25 - 00;01;09;29
Unknown
okay. Do you want to describe what she said? Yeah, it was mostly photos of the leaves,

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Unknown
the leaves are are, very yellow, except for the veins, which are still green.

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Unknown
And Jamie was like, you know, I'm not so bothered by it. As long as the,

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Unknown
plants are still producing lots of fruit.

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Unknown
is this a problem? Is it fine? Who knows?

00;01;25;19 - 00;01;34;01
Unknown
So being endlessly curious, like we are annoyingly curious in our house. I said, well, let me just look at look into it

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Unknown
So

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Unknown
what we think the problem is that these tomatoes are having is called intervene fluorosis.

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Unknown
will we know that that's the

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Unknown
symptom.

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Unknown
but there are a few different things that could be,

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Unknown
there's a lot of things that could make your tomato plant have yellow leaves. This could be overwatering where you're getting root rot. And like, the plant actually isn't sucking up enough,

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Unknown
water and it isn't sucking up enough nutrients out of the soil. It could just be like way too much fertilizer in the soil.

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Unknown
If you're fertilizing a lot.

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Unknown
But the specific thing where, like, there's the dark green beans in the yellow leaf. What I found out,

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Unknown
is that this is almost always going to be caused by, magnesium deficiency, specific magnesium deficiency in the soil. And so,

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Unknown
this is actually a really easy thing to treat.

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Unknown
just use, Epsom salts and there's some instructions online.

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Unknown
If you're having this problem, you just look up, intervene all choruses or like, you can look up,

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Unknown
tomatoes with green beans, yellow leaves or something like that. You'll get there really quick to magnesium deficiency and you use Epsom salts and,

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Unknown
there's all kinds of stuff online. It's really easy to find about what exactly you do.

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Unknown
There's like a specific ratio of how much Epsom salts you mix in with water, and you spray the plant and like, pour some on the,

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Unknown
soil and it should correct it. And this is kind of a good thing to know in general about correcting any kind of problems where you start seeing,

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Unknown
bad leaves on your plants.

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Unknown
You can correct the problem and those leaves might not recover, but you will stop the problem from,

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Unknown
continuing and worsening. So if you're like, I did the solution and I like went to all this effort of like getting my Epsom salts and mixing them. Spraying. It's annoying. And the leaves look the same. That's okay.

00;03;22;01 - 00;03;32;17
Unknown
You might have solved the problem and the leaves might not get green again. Once they're yellow, I think they usually kind of stay yellow, but you've probably kept your plant from worsening

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Unknown
because

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Unknown
eventually, it'll stress the plant more and more and more until it stops being productive, stops giving you tomatoes.

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Unknown
a stressed out plant is also really vulnerable to, like,

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Unknown
fungal infection and spider mites and all that kind of stuff that you don't want to deal with because it's gross and annoying and weird,

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Unknown
and any part of the leaves that aren't green aren't photosynthesizing. So you can think about that

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Unknown
when you think about the scale of a problem.

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Unknown
and obviously you don't want to spread.

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Unknown
So speaking of tomatoes, Gabe, how are your tomatoes doing this season? They look good to me. But what's your assessment of your tomatoes? My tomatoes are doing really well overall.

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Unknown
I planted a bunch in the area that I normally plant them, and I do

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Unknown
add a bunch of compost every year, but I'm not,

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Unknown
big on fertilizer.

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Unknown
Even, like fish and moles or something. I don't think I fertilize in this year. And then there was one volunteer tomato

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Unknown
that is what you have to say. What's a volunteer? Okay, sorry. A volunteer being like

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Unknown
it's seeded itself. It's not a planted. It's a plant that just appeared. Just appeared from something.

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Unknown
From a tomato that dropped last year. Yeah.

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Unknown
that's in a new spot, which I think maybe gets a little more sun, but not a lot more sun than the rest of it. And that one is enormous. I mean, it's, you know, these are, you know, vining tomatoes. I have them sort of in these cages, but that one's, like, taller than me.

00;04;47;15 - 00;05;00;15
Unknown
It's like twice as big as the next biggest tomatoes. That's leading me to think maybe I have, like, depleted some of the nutrients in the tomatoes, like in the bed. So should be adding more fertilizer, more compost.

00;05;00;15 - 00;05;11;01
Unknown
do you think that that happened or does it have something to do with self seeding in place versus being started as a seedling indoors under grow lights?

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Unknown
It's possible, but I mean with a tomato, they really like the long season. So I started those tomatoes. The ones that I started, I started in the garden window. So that actually should have given them an advantage over the one that was outside.

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Unknown
so you grew seedling tomato seedlings inside and you started them like before.

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Unknown
Well before

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Unknown
our last frost date. And that's right. So that you would get a head start. That's right. And then

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Unknown
after the last frosty, you took your tomato seedlings from indoors and you planted them in this bed. And when you planted them, there was also a seedling that had already started. That's a good question.

00;05;42;20 - 00;05;55;13
Unknown
I don't remember the seedling when it was little. I sort of only noticed it when it was, you know, a foot tall or so, and I was sort of like, yeah, like, I guess I'll leave this for a while. And then it kind of got bigger and bigger. And then I think I asked you guys like, do you want me to rip this out?

00;05;55;15 - 00;05;56;22
Unknown
You're like, can I just leave it?

00;05;56;22 - 00;06;22;26
Unknown
and now it's outpacing all the other ones. Like by far I have some really weird is some mysterious tomatoes or some mysterious. It's interesting to me how like, different people in different parts of the country are like, grow your own tomatoes. They're so easy. And like for us, we're like, what is the exact science we can do to make these tomatoes productive as early in the season as possible and make them healthy and grow cherry tomatoes so that the squirrels don't steal them.

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Unknown
Because if you grow like big heirloom tomatoes,

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Unknown
too many heartbreak possibilities for like waiting for it to ripen on the vine. And then as soon as it's like almost ready to pick, the squirrel takes it and like you buy it and frozen in. And then that's the rocks. Yeah. Tomato nightmares. Yeah. Tomato nightmare. A lot of tomato nightmares out there.

00;06;41;05 - 00;06;55;05
Unknown
I mean, I think I'm not positive about this, but certainly the farmers that I know who grow tomatoes, grow them in greenhouses, like even in the summer, you know, they're opening up the side of their greenhouse, but they're controlling

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Unknown
all the water, nutrients, etc. they're going into those tomatoes. They're, you know, the greenhouse increases the heat, but they're not fields of tomatoes growing outdoors in the growing outdoors in the elements.

00;07;08;13 - 00;07;26;20
Unknown
Yeah, you're right. You're right around here in Rhode Island. That is that is how it's done. Yeah. I've seen farmers growing, rows of cherry tomatoes, but not not large tomatoes. Anyway, if you're planning if you're seeing how things are doing in your garden with tomatoes this year, I'm thinking like, oh, this is a pain or something's up, like, how can I make this easier?

00;07;26;22 - 00;07;37;12
Unknown
Try cherry tomatoes next year. It's so easy. And like you will get some drops. You'll get tomatoes, you'll enjoy them. You'll pick them off the vine right there. And they're wonderful. It's very satisfying

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Unknown
So it's

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Unknown
the end of July.

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Unknown
this is a time when I feel I think a lot of people feel like you're well past the honeymoon stage of spring, early summer, or I'm planting the seeds and it's getting warm, and I'm so excited to wait for everything to be abundant. It's so perfect. Look forward to it. We're in that like gardening. Why do they do gardening in the hot time of the year?

00;08;03;28 - 00;08;06;28
Unknown
Yeah, I'd made a mistake about this. Yeah.

00;08;06;28 - 00;08;12;18
Unknown
I would say the two things, if you're just going to limit it or you want to water and you want to weed,

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Unknown
now is the time of year if it's really hot where you are, and it hasn't been raining a lot.

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Unknown
it can be just so hot that the soil can get pretty dehydrated pretty easily,

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Unknown
and you can water a lot and think that you've done a lot of water on and actually the water is just like we've talked about this before, but passing through the soil.

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Unknown
So as you're watering, if you're seeing stuff that plants in your garden that look like they're still thirsty,

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Unknown
poke around, just poke around in the soil, either with your finger or with like a screwdriver is a really good tool to do this with. And,

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Unknown
make sure that your soil is moist, like a couple inches down if you're watering a lot.

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Unknown
And if you because sometimes you like, disturb the the surface of the soil and you find that the first

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Unknown
half inch is wet and then underneath it's dry soil.

00;08;56;10 - 00;08;57;18
Unknown
So that's happening,

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Unknown
you know that you want to

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Unknown
water,

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Unknown
really heavily

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Unknown
go over everything and then come back 20 minutes later and do it again and then come back 20 minutes later and do it again, like while you're doing other stuff in the garden or something.

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Unknown
And that'll start to really, actually soak through. And I'll use this opportunity to mention the I mentioned before, which is, if that sort of series of watering sounds exhausting. soaker hoses are fantastic, even if you just, you know, maybe you have a vegetable bed, some small area where you can just, like, hook it up. I have a little

00;09;29;28 - 00;09;32;15
Unknown
timer that's it's not even like a programable one.

00;09;32;15 - 00;09;42;19
Unknown
It's just like you set it for half an hour. Whatever you want it. It's like one of those, like, Christmas light timer or whatever. Yeah, exactly. The Christmas light timer. But for water. Yeah.

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Unknown
and it just it will give that slow, steady drip of water and it will work its way well down into the soil

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Unknown
because otherwise,

00;09;49;19 - 00;10;03;20
Unknown
got always warning about hydrophobic soil. Why? Because we killed plants this way. So many plants, so many dead plants. It's like the horror movie of dead plants from hydrophobic. Like, just, like messing up so bad and not realizing.

00;10;03;20 - 00;10;06;09
Unknown
if you're watering and the water is

00;10;06;09 - 00;10;18;19
Unknown
either sitting on top or just kind of running off, but really not soaking in, you have some degree of hydrophobic soil. and again, the solution is simple. It's just that sort of slow, repetitive watering.

00;10;18;19 - 00;10;39;04
Unknown
Or if it's a pot, you can soak it in the sink. but you really, when you're watering or when it rains, you want to see that water pretty quickly soak right into the ground. That means it's almost being sort of pulled down into the ground for the moisture that's already in there, like water on the kitchen counter, getting absorbed into a damp sponge.

00;10;39;12 - 00;10;51;09
Unknown
Yeah, it just soaks right in. That's what you want. And then the second thing, weeding is really important this time of year because your weeds are going to seed. So if you're,

00;10;51;09 - 00;10;55;12
Unknown
know, you don't have a ton of time for gardening. You don't want to be spending a lot of time out there,

00;10;55;12 - 00;10;57;05
Unknown
and you don't want to be spending a lot of time weeding.

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Unknown
The thing I would look for is any weeds that are, flowering.

00;11;00;25 - 00;11;09;24
Unknown
the weeds flower. Then they create seeds. Those seeds spread. And where you had one plant next year you might have ten. And as long as you get that weed

00;11;09;24 - 00;11;12;26
Unknown
you're going to create less weed pressure next year.

00;11;12;26 - 00;11;31;01
Unknown
If you have like 10 minutes or 5 minutes and you're like, there's so many weeds, I really ought to do something about this. But it's 90 degrees outside and like, there's mosquitoes around. Just see what you can do in, like five minutes to grab the weeds that have flowers that are starting to flower. Because if you can do that,

00;11;31;01 - 00;11;35;04
Unknown
the cost benefit analysis is on your side for that kind of weeding.

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Unknown
I just try to do my best and try to, like, just stick my head in the sand about the rest of it,

00;11;40;20 - 00;12;00;02
Speaker 2
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00;12;00;02 - 00;12;20;28
Speaker 2
I was just looking at their, the plants they have in stock and it's really cool. They I was like, oh, what are these prices for? Because I sell plans, buy packs and then they will ship you like three plants in a pack for really affordable rates. It's like more affordable than some of the local nurseries. Here I was really I was really taken aback when I looked at the pricing

00;12;23;25 - 00;12;26;15
Unknown
So let's talk about, cutting flowers.

00;12;26;15 - 00;12;30;19
Unknown
am so happy this time of year, going outside and,

00;12;30;19 - 00;12;38;05
Unknown
cutting a bunch of greenery and flowers and bringing it in and creating, like, a beautiful, enormous flower arrangement. It

00;12;38;05 - 00;12;39;23
Unknown
I love experimenting and

00;12;39;23 - 00;12;44;24
Unknown
making things really dramatic and crazy with stuff that is right from our own garden.

00;12;44;26 - 00;12;46;29
Unknown
but there are a few things that I've sort of picked up.

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Unknown
about how to do that in a way that will look beautiful and also make your arrangements last as long as possible, because different,

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Unknown
flowers and stems

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Unknown
behave differently

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Unknown
once they're in cuttings.

00;12;58;24 - 00;13;01;29
Unknown
so I thought I would like, share some, some hot tips about that.

00;13;02;02 - 00;13;18;17
Unknown
something that a lot of people have that make beautiful cut flowers, hydrangeas. If you have hydrangeas at your house, you might feel like, oh, I can't bear to go outside and cut the blooms off like it's it's such a beautiful part of the garden.

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Unknown
Please, I'm begging you. Like, get out your sharp pair of clippers and cut like five blooms.

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Unknown
You really probably won't even notice the difference on your plant. And this can create

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Unknown
an amazing, abundant arrangement in the center of your kitchen table or whatever.

00;13;34;24 - 00;13;36;25
Unknown
the one thing about hydrangeas, though, is that they can,

00;13;36;25 - 00;13;40;10
Unknown
the blooms will go limp and will really, really fast.

00;13;40;10 - 00;13;42;03
Unknown
the reason for this is like super intuitive,

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Unknown
the wound that you make when you clip the plant wants to heal.

00;13;46;01 - 00;13;48;03
Unknown
This is true for any plant, right?

00;13;48;03 - 00;13;49;14
Unknown
what you need to do is

00;13;49;14 - 00;13;51;15
Unknown
keep that from healing so that the,

00;13;51;15 - 00;13;58;25
Unknown
water will keep getting sucked up into the plant. So here's what you should do with hydrangeas. What I found that works is you want to

00;13;58;25 - 00;14;13;25
Unknown
cut, like, right above, a node where kind of two leaves are going across or where there's, like, those two little, bumps on the stem and cut on a diagonal so that you're exposing as much of the inside of the stem as possible.

00;14;13;25 - 00;14;16;07
Unknown
when you bring it inside, you,

00;14;16;07 - 00;14;19;16
Unknown
get that into water right away. And then usually what I do is I kind of

00;14;19;16 - 00;14;21;18
Unknown
put my flower cut flowers into a,

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Unknown
you know, mason jar or something. And then,

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Unknown
get out my, like, beautiful ceramic glaze or whatever.

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Unknown
And,

00;14;28;25 - 00;14;32;21
Unknown
figure out how I want to arrange them once I have everything on my kitchen counter.

00;14;32;21 - 00;14;38;25
Unknown
I take my hydrangeas, take my clippers again, hold them under water, hold the stem under water

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Unknown
and cut make your cut

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Unknown
under the surface of the water.

00;14;41;27 - 00;14;51;26
Unknown
And that way you are not letting any air get up into that cut. And you want that the really big diagonal cut in the stem.

00;14;51;26 - 00;14;53;02
Unknown
you can also,

00;14;53;02 - 00;15;01;04
Unknown
you can make a second cut that kind of goes right up the stem, like you're bisecting the base of the stem. Splitting it. Yeah. Splitting it.

00;15;01;04 - 00;15;02;16
Unknown
so that you can,

00;15;02;16 - 00;15;04;09
Unknown
get even more water going up there.

00;15;04;11 - 00;15;06;10
Unknown
Another thing I've tried that I think works.

00;15;06;10 - 00;15;07;12
Unknown
after you do that,

00;15;07;12 - 00;15;08;11
Unknown
you have a little pot of,

00;15;08;11 - 00;15;13;11
Unknown
just boiled water or like a little mug of water, hot pot, hot boiling water. And you

00;15;13;11 - 00;15;25;19
Unknown
take the stem and you dunk it in there, just the tip for like 30s. And then you put it right into your water and your beads and you want like it's little air touching the cut as possible.

00;15;25;19 - 00;15;26;00
Unknown
So

00;15;26;00 - 00;15;41;02
Unknown
I'm sure I look totally nuts doing this. It's not like racing around, like not letting be exposed to air for long, but it will really make your hydrangeas last for what they should last for like a week or more rather than just the next day. You come by and they've all flopped and it's really depressing and sad.

00;15;41;05 - 00;16;00;24
Unknown
And if you don't have hydrangeas, here's a pitch to get some, because they make gorgeous cut flowers in the summer. But also you leave some blooms on the plan. They will dry in the fall and then you can cut them. And it's like having sort of a free dried flower, this beautiful, what is the word for it?

00;16;00;24 - 00;16;08;12
Unknown
Halo. Oh, I was going to say that, the of the football phosphorus.

00;16;08;12 - 00;16;10;11
Unknown
you have this beautiful shape

00;16;10;11 - 00;16;23;05
Unknown
have, like a panicle, panicle, hydrangeas, beautiful panicle if you have panicle, hydrangeas, if you have panicle hydrangeas. that. Yeah. You can have all winter long. Yeah. We do that like in our bathroom.

00;16;23;08 - 00;16;34;08
Unknown
You know, in summer it's like so nice for have guests or some fresh flowers in the bathroom. So classy. I always feel like super like am I alive? Is together. If people come over and they're flowers by the bathroom

00;16;34;08 - 00;16;42;04
Unknown
don't know. Certainly when I started gardening, I, I was drawn to growing vegetables as something that was sort of useful, like, oh, that's cool.

00;16;42;04 - 00;16;44;03
Unknown
You grow something and you eat it. Whatever.

00;16;44;03 - 00;16;49;13
Unknown
and that's great. But flowers, I think kind of bang for your buck wise.

00;16;49;14 - 00;16;55;28
Unknown
you can have a sort of constant supply of really extraordinary flowers for cutting

00;16;55;28 - 00;17;13;26
Unknown
with a pretty limited space in a way that this is not too not growing even, you know, whatever plant your one corn plant, do whatever you want as far as vegetables, but you need kind of a lot of space to have a comparably, abundant, abundant supply of vegetables.

00;17;13;29 - 00;17;32;05
Unknown
Yeah, I agree, I've been frustrated growing vegetables because we don't have tons and tons of space. We have like a lot of space compared to many people, but we don't have tons of full sun. And so it's hard to not feel like a scarcity mindset when you have like just a few peppers on the pepper plants or whatever else.

00;17;32;06 - 00;17;46;07
Unknown
We need them now. Or should we say if that's not how you want to feel, but in comparison, yeah, the cut flower game is awesome, like the dahlia plants that you can just keep cutting and getting more and more zinnias are great for those.

00;17;46;07 - 00;17;50;23
Unknown
it's just so rewarding and so, so wonderful to,

00;17;50;23 - 00;17;57;22
Unknown
do my dishes in the kitchen sink and be looking at this beautiful arrangement that's right out of my garden that I grew myself.

00;17;57;25 - 00;18;00;27
Unknown
I'm impressed with myself. My guests are impressed.

00;18;00;27 - 00;18;10;12
Unknown
and it kind of expands like the the space of your garden into your home, too, because you're with your garden, with elements of your garden. When you're inside your home.

00;18;10;12 - 00;18;13;09
Unknown
speaking of hydrangeas, why are they so amazing this year?

00;18;13;14 - 00;18;22;23
Unknown
Does anyone else notice that your hydrangeas are, like, awesome this year? And they bloomed early? I was talking with, someone at a nursery that I just went to,

00;18;22;23 - 00;18;26;29
Unknown
we were both comparing notes from different, like gardening Facebook groups that were in,

00;18;26;29 - 00;18;28;14
Unknown
about how the hydrangeas.

00;18;28;14 - 00;18;29;16
Unknown
winter of

00;18;29;16 - 00;18;36;08
Unknown
2022, 2023, there was a really late, terrible frost here in the northeast that,

00;18;36;08 - 00;18;38;08
Unknown
killed the flower buds of the hydrangeas.

00;18;38;08 - 00;19;01;18
Unknown
So a lot of people's hydrangeas didn't bloom much. But that meant is that that whole summer, the hydrangea plants were all, like, absorbing all of the photosynthesis energy and just storing it and not using it to flower that much. And so this year, we had a really wet spring there. It's been tons of rain. Hydrangeas start with Hydra because they love water.

00;19;01;18 - 00;19;03;05
Unknown
They love rain, they love water.

00;19;03;05 - 00;19;10;26
Unknown
so the combination of no flowers last year and like ideal circumstances this year has made it a great year for hydrangeas.

00;19;10;26 - 00;19;19;07
Unknown
but generally, in terms of your best practices for cutting flowers and making a bouquet from stuff from your garden, here's my advice get

00;19;19;07 - 00;19;24;21
Unknown
Tons of one thing if you have. It almost always looks good. Just a big bowl of

00;19;24;21 - 00;19;25;16
Unknown
cosmos

00;19;25;16 - 00;19;27;24
Unknown
looks incredible every time.

00;19;27;26 - 00;19;38;20
Unknown
If you're not going to do one thing, I recommend doing three things. So maybe one type of flower, another type of flower, and a couple of stems of something

00;19;38;20 - 00;19;39;09
Unknown
green

00;19;39;09 - 00;19;57;27
Unknown
or purple foliage. If you have something like that, whatever. Something that's for the foliage. And, you want to work with odd numbers. So get like three stems of one flower, three stems of another flower, and three stems of your foliage thing, or like five stems of one flower and three and three, something like that.

00;19;57;27 - 00;20;05;15
Unknown
and the other thing that's like a basic principle that has been working well for me is just thinking about textural contrast.

00;20;05;15 - 00;20;12;08
Unknown
if you're going to cut like two types of flowers or if you have your hydrangeas and they're so great and you're like, oh, what's something else I could mix in here?

00;20;12;08 - 00;20;13;09
Unknown
the hydrangeas

00;20;13;09 - 00;20;14;24
Unknown
each one is really big.

00;20;14;24 - 00;20;18;08
Unknown
So if you have a different type of flower that is really,

00;20;18;08 - 00;20;39;05
Unknown
fine and delicate or loose, that will look really nice. The same goes for, like, if you have one big dinner plate, Dahlia and some loose tiny stuff around it, or feathery stuff, or just something that feels really different from what that Dahlia bloom looks like, it's going to make for a nice contrast in your bouquet scheme for colors.

00;20;39;05 - 00;20;48;10
Unknown
big white flowers and tiny white flowers, that looks like a certain thing that we can all imagine. If you have really big white flowers and really tiny like dark purple flowers,

00;20;48;10 - 00;20;50;25
Unknown
both are going to pop against each other,

00;20;50;25 - 00;20;59;08
Unknown
But whenever you cut flowers, cut them in the garden, bring them in, make another cut on the all the bottom of the stems right before you put them in the water.

00;20;59;15 - 00;21;11;26
Unknown
And that's going to give you the most, most life and then change out the water every couple days because fresh water is always happier than musty. You get bacterial growth in there. And that can interfere with the,

00;21;11;26 - 00;21;17;09
Unknown
plants and just make it stinky. Oh, and strip off the leaves that are going to be sitting in the water,

00;21;17;09 - 00;21;20;06
Unknown
strip off almost all the leaves on your stems.

00;21;20;08 - 00;21;32;14
Unknown
and just leave the leaves that are going to make it look nice and full the way you want it to visually look, because those leaves that are all, like, bunched together and stuck together in the vase, that's going to create room for like mold and bacteria and rock, stuff like that.

00;21;33;03 - 00;21;57;26
Unknown
Ten things I Hate About Slugs. I hate the way they're slimy. I hate their gross trails of slime. I hate the way their feelers move because it's actually kind of cute, which makes me feel guilty for wanting to kill them. I hate setting up and maintaining beer traps for them. I hate dead slugs. I hate when I'm enjoying the garden at dusk.

00;21;57;26 - 00;22;04;25
Unknown
And then I look down and I see an entire flower covered in tiny, horrible slugs.

00;22;04;25 - 00;22;13;29
Unknown
I hate holes in hostas and other beautiful plants that suddenly have holes in them. Not from

00;22;13;29 - 00;22;16;25
Unknown
native insects that I'm fine with

00;22;16;25 - 00;22;19;18
Unknown
slugs creating holes in my plants.

00;22;19;19 - 00;22;34;20
Unknown
I hate it. I hate how even the cool things about slugs are truly disgusting. Like how their mucus tastes bad to predators and that's why birds don't eat them, and how sometimes they get stuck together in the middle of

00;22;34;20 - 00;22;38;27
Unknown
slug coitus, and to disentangle themselves, they simply

00;22;38;27 - 00;22;47;03
Unknown
chew off the slug penis. I'm sorry to say slug penis on this podcast, but if I have to know it now, you do too.

00;22;47;03 - 00;22;57;15
Unknown
Number ten. I hate having to pay good money for the only thing that works to treat them, aka murder them, which is Sluggo, which I recommend you buy. I love Sluggo.

00;22;57;17 - 00;23;14;20
Unknown
It's iron phosphate. There's a bunch of different, types of it. You don't have to buy the Sluggo brand, but I think that's just iron phosphate. You can pick up handfuls of it and throw it around the garden, and it works. So I recommend it. This podcast is not sponsored by Sluggo, but it should be.

00;23;14;20 - 00;23;16;17
Unknown
Recommendations, not tips.

00;23;16;21 - 00;23;26;16
Unknown
well, we went to first episode of Growing Florette last night, an HBO show that's really lovely. Lots of gorgeous gardening footage. You can stream it on Amazon Prime too. Yeah,

00;23;26;16 - 00;23;33;27
Unknown
But growing Florette. Look it up. Florette is an amazing company. Their website is so cool and fun to just check out.

00;23;33;28 - 00;23;53;11
Unknown
They have great recommendations for like, if you're thinking about where to buy fall bulbs now, like daffodil bulbs, they have a great thing on their website that recommends, other companies, but you can buy bulbs from and like information about those growers. So useful. So cool. The show is beautiful. Really beautifully done.

00;23;53;11 - 00;24;04;02
Unknown
and my friend Jo, shout out to Jo, a couple days ago gave me a book, that I highly recommend called Green Thoughts by Eleanor Perrine.

00;24;04;04 - 00;24;30;19
Unknown
and it's a book of essays and it's all about gardening. But she's a really great writer, and it's not instructional. Exactly. You'll learn a lot about gardening by reading it, but for example, is organized alphabetically. So like, two roses are next to like, rocks as, like it's just organized alphabetically by the, the title of the essay.

00;24;30;21 - 00;24;57;17
Unknown
and so it's a great, like, summery beach read casual whatever. You're not going to feel like, oh, I need to be taking notes or, you know, it's it's sits on the shelf next to the, Rodale book of composting. but they really don't share anything. Our house is full of these kind of books. and then the last thing I recommend is the dram rain wand, which is, a great product.

00;24;57;17 - 00;25;22;27
Unknown
I think it's about $25 dram dram is a great company. Dram to. Yep. Dram, rain wand. Rain wand. Yeah. What does it do? so it iterates the water. It's a very simple attach it to your. It's just your hose. and it's like a long pole. Aluminum hollow pole with a, like, shower head. Shower head? Yeah.

00;25;22;27 - 00;25;24;15
Unknown
It looks exactly like a shower head on the end.

00;25;24;15 - 00;25;35;17
Unknown
it delivers a lot of water very quickly without, a lot of pressure. So if you've ever been like me, really, like, I have five minutes to water, I'm going to go out there.

00;25;35;23 - 00;25;52;14
Unknown
I need to water everything. Really fancy, dump a lot of water in this stuff, and you turn on your hose full blast and you wind up, like, basically like digging a hole in the dirt because you're knocking over your planking of your plants, cause you're, like, blasting away with a lot of water. The dram rain one eliminates that problem.

00;25;52;14 - 00;25;56;25
Unknown
You can, like, really soak a plant. You could deliver a lot of water very quickly without,

00;25;56;25 - 00;26;14;16
Unknown
that pressure. Again. So it's not displacing the dirt knocking over your plants. And it's just gentle. It's beautiful. It's classy. That comes in beautiful colors. Awesome. sponsored by Dram, random dram rainwater, we take it. But I feel like an elegant garden, which when I use it.

00;26;14;19 - 00;26;16;04
Unknown
That's what I would say. Yeah.

00;26;16;04 - 00;26;33;15
Unknown
Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you have a question you want answered on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at leafing out pod at gmail.com. Or you can DM us on Instagram. We're at leaving our pod over there. And please, if you have a second rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

00;26;33;15 - 00;26;35;12
Unknown
happy gardening. So you out there?

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