Watch us on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5y6VlnF24go
Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are going to have horticulture educator Sarah Vogel with us to talk about evergreens, all things evergreens, and probably holiday decor. We're gonna dive into that as well. But before we get to Sarah, you know I'm not doing this by myself.
Chris Enroth: 00:28I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:34Hello, Chris. You can call it an evergreen extravaganza.
Chris Enroth: 00:38Oh. That sounds sounds lovely. I feel like I didn't dress up enough for this show today.
Ken Johnson: 00:45I wore my green shirt yesterday. I don't know why.
Chris Enroth: 00:49Well, you look Christmassy today. I really like it. So, yeah, props. Good nice outfit.
Ken Johnson: 00:53I do what I can.
Chris Enroth: 00:55And and we also might we should be, like, having some bubbly or something because, Ken, this is our three hundredth episode right now that we are recording. Well, not episode episode, but, you know, total things we There you go.
Ken Johnson: 01:13300 recording or something.
Chris Enroth: 01:15That's right. 300. And we have we've been doing this since 2020, March, the month and year that will live in infamy, but we've been putting one out every single week. I think we've taken one week off last year in Christmas.
Ken Johnson: 01:35Yeah. It's it's kinda crazy. When you stop and think about it.
Chris Enroth: 01:38Yeah. It it is a lot. It is a lot of work. So, yeah, here we go. Podcast number 300.
Chris Enroth: 01:46Yeah. Exciting.
Sarah Vogel: 01:47It was really nice of you guys to start a podcast on the month that I started here in extension. So that was that was kind. You shouldn't have.
Chris Enroth: 01:54It was all in your honor, Sarah.
Sarah Vogel: 01:56Continues to be. Thank you.
Ken Johnson: 01:58Sarah's Sarah's starting. We better start a podcast.
Sarah Vogel: 02:00That's right.
Chris Enroth: 02:01Who's that? Sarah Vogel? What, in Decatur?
Sarah Vogel: 02:05Oh, Someone call the papers.
Chris Enroth: 02:08Quick. Let me get this out on a podcast. Well, yeah, well, I am so happy to have you here with us today, Sarah, for to celebrate our,
Chris Enroth: 02:18number 300. Yes.
Sarah Vogel: 02:20I love a good party.
Chris Enroth: 02:22There you go. Yeah. So from across the state, we'll all clink our crystal ware or whatever fancy people do when they celebrate stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 02:33Cheers to to everyone. Yes. We all have our cups of water nearby.
Sarah Vogel: 02:42Only water.
Chris Enroth: 02:43That's right. Wouldn't be anything else ever. Well, I you know, people don't like it when we banter too much up top, so I guess we better buckle down and and get to this episode number 300 talking about evergreens. So, Ken, would you mind kicking us off, please, this week?
Ken Johnson: 03:02Yes. So I think the the first question we had is what is kind of some of these definitions? So, you know, what's an evergreen versus conifer, deciduous conifers, all of that that goes into quote, unquote evergreens.
Sarah Vogel: 03:17Yeah. So that is a really good question. You're right. It is a common it is a common one. So we just start with the basics, evergreens versus our deciduous trees.
Sarah Vogel: 03:27Our deciduous trees are those that drop their leaves during the growing season, typically one time. Many of our deciduous trees are flowering trees also called angiosperms and not to get down the taxonomic rabbit hole here but essentially our flowering plants or flowering trees they're gonna produce a fruit, right? Which is that protective covering over a seed. So most of our deciduous trees are flowering trees or angiosperms and these angiosperms are about 150, I think a million years old ish and they include most of the plants that we know today are fruit and vegetables, trees and shrubs, flowers and grasses and so on. But for many millennia prior to that time, plants did not bear flowers or a fruit covered seed.
Sarah Vogel: 04:20And these plants are classified as gymnosperms which means naked seed. So aptly named and conifers or our cone bearing plants are gymnosperms which technically and botanically does not have a fruit covering the seed. Though we often read and kind of refer to cones as the fruit of the plant. And so conifers are known to be more like two fifty or 300,000,000 years old. So they were around for a long time before plants kind of quote unquote learned how to flower.
Sarah Vogel: 04:55Some of those include deciduous conifers. In fact I wanted to mention ginkgo, one of my personal favorite deciduous conifers. Super cool tree is a conifer and so that stinky little treat that the female trees drop and fall, not technically a fruit but a fleshy cone. So they smell great. If any of your viewers or listeners have not experienced that I highly recommend it.
Sarah Vogel: 05:23There are other there's another conifer I can think of like off the top of my head, the u. Our u also has a fleshy it's called an arrow around its little seed. So originally you asked about evergreens, but what does that mean for evergreen? So we hear the terms evergreen and conifer kind of used interchangeably but they're really not. Evergreen means just that it's green all the time right?
Sarah Vogel: 05:46They typically retain their leaves throughout the growing season or occasionally shed and replace them. So because we have deciduous conifers like our Ginkgo, like our Bald Cypress and we also have flowering plants that are evergreen like our American Holly. Not all conifers are evergreens and not all evergreens are conifers. I hope that thoroughly answered that question.
Ken Johnson: 06:16It did.
Chris Enroth: 06:18Quite thorough. And it just goes to show these plants, they don't necessarily follow the rules all the time or the categories that we like to put things into.
Sarah Vogel: 06:30Yeah. Well, I like to get down the taxonomic rabbit hole. It is it is in my nature to categorize things and and figure out what goes where and how everything fits together. So I really like learning about, you know, the classifications of things. Mhmm.
Sarah Vogel: 06:46So you're welcome for nerding out today.
Chris Enroth: 06:51Well, I I guess let's let's can we go you you mentioned that we have evergreens and we have conifers. So we have, like, southern magnolia. We have boxwood. These are broadleaf evergreens. They're holding onto their leaves just right alongside with our needled evergreens, our scale like evergreens, and we have our deciduous plants.
Chris Enroth: 07:13So, like, what's the what is being gained, if anything, by these evergreens holding on to their leaves, needled or broadleaf?
Sarah Vogel: 07:23Yeah. Yeah. So, like, what's the point? Right? What are they doing?
Sarah Vogel: 07:26Deciduous trees, essentially they lose their leaves to save water and energy during a cold and dry season. Yes winter is typically a dry season for us. Evergreens retain their needles, pine needles or more scale like leaves like our Easter Red Cedar or Arborvitae. They've retained those because they can handle tough weather. They've got different kind of stomatic activity so the pores that open and close kind of on leaves they've got different kind of waxy coverings around their needles and so they are a little more built for that.
Sarah Vogel: 08:06And we do still I mean we still see it like if deciduous trees held on to their leaves because of the leaves are so such tender tissue it would cause damage. You know some of the even during really cold weather we already see tip die back on deciduous trees. So you'd see a lot of tissue damage but we do see that sometimes winter burn on some of our evergreens too. Know boxwoods or other things if they're in a really harsh environment and a lot of lot of things happen. The stars align.
Sarah Vogel: 08:38They can experience winter burn. So sometimes people take, you know, action to protect our evergreens against that.
Chris Enroth: 08:46Yeah. Spray them with antidesicants and or wrap them in burlap or something like that to keep the wind from pulling all the water out of the leaves.
Sarah Vogel: 08:56Right. Right.
Ken Johnson: 08:59Alright. So perhaps we should talk about some of the, I guess, maybe more common evergreens we see in our in our landscapes here in Illinois. So we've got a list of them. Just wanna start with, I guess, one probably everybody should be familiar with this is pines.
Sarah Vogel: 09:17Yeah. Yes. That's what I think a lot of times when we see, like you said, see evergreens, it's a pine tree. You know, if there's a cone on it, it's a pine tree. So we do have some native species as you mentioned.
Sarah Vogel: 09:30But essentially pines are those trees that have kind of world branching. Know kind of rings of branches that come out from them and they grow only from the terminal ends. So they only grow from the ends of the branches. So if you're pruning a pine tree or something along those lines, you cut past where that terminal bud is that branch will not grow back. That's kind of something different about pines.
Sarah Vogel: 09:57So there is a way to prune the candles to keep a nice dense form. But yeah the pines do have cones but then so do some of our other evergreen species, gymnosperms. We have spruce trees. Well for instance, let me back up here. The pine trees since we're talking about you know their waxy coating on their needles.
Sarah Vogel: 10:22Pine trees generally have longer needles and they are born in groups called fascicles. Most of our pine trees that we see around here have two to three needles per fascicle. The Eastern White Pine which is an Illinois native it has five needles per fascicle so that's an easy identification tip when you're out there. Kind of gives it that nice soft feeling to it, the five needles per fascicle on our white pine. So those are in bundles.
Sarah Vogel: 10:51When we get to our spruce trees or our fir or Douglas fir, those again have world branching patterns but they have lateral buds present and their needles are born singly usually. So they'll have like a little attachment to the twig and their needles are a little tiny and there's a lot more of them. And when you prune those type of trees, like I said, they have lateral buds. So as long as you prune back to a bud, you will see regrowth on those.
Chris Enroth: 11:21You know, I I also I named my oldest child fascicle. I'm just gonna let everyone know that. Come here, fascicle.
Sarah Vogel: 11:30Yeah. He loves it. Does. Joy.
Chris Enroth: 11:34Yep. Sorry. Fun with words.
Ken Johnson: 11:41So then for, like, your your spruce and fur, is there a way to differentiate those from one another?
Sarah Vogel: 11:48Yes. There is. Let's see here. Yes. There is a way to differentiate those, but I didn't come prepared with that information.
Sarah Vogel: 12:01Some of the some of the needles will be kind of square shaped to like roll them in your fingers. They'll have kind of a you know a square shape to them. Some are paler on one side than the other. Gosh, Chris, you're a good tree person. Spruce
Chris Enroth: 12:23I I will say spruce are terrible when it comes to pruning because they're pokey. So you need gloves definitely when you're you're pruning like blue spruce. I think Norway spruce also has kind of a prickly nature to its to its needles. Furs are a bit softer. I I don't know enough about the two different types, like, bud arrangement to be like, yeah.
Chris Enroth: 12:49I'm looking at a fir tree or I'm looking at a spruce tree. I just know that if it hurts and I'm touching it, it's probably a spruce. Yeah. Or if it's blue, it's probably a Colorado blue spruce.
Sarah Vogel: 13:02Yeah. Well, another good example of a kind of a blue colored one is the white fur or con color fur, a b's con color, and it it could look like a Colorado blue spruce maybe from a distance but when you get up close it smells good to me but not to others. I think it smells kind of like oranges or citrusy scent and other people say it smells like cat urine. So toss-up there but get close, take a big whiff. That's another you know another way to identify lots of trees is like not just you know our needles or leaves but like where is it growing?
Sarah Vogel: 13:43What does it smell like? What's the form from far away?
Chris Enroth: 13:46Mhmm. Or check and see how many neighborhood cats live in the area. Maybe that's the problem.
Sarah Vogel: 13:51So true. So true. That can really give some history on a tree. Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 13:56Alright. So I I did a a search. Spruces have needles that are attached individually to the branches via short wooden peg like structures called pulvini. Spruces retain their needles for four to ten years before shedding them. When the needles are shed, the pegs remain attached to the branches, making spruce branches feel rough after their needles are gone.
Ken Johnson: 14:19Needles tend to be stiff, sharply pointed, making them somewhat unpleasant to work around. And then firs have needles attached individually to the branches, black pegs unless the branches are not rough after the needles are shed. And then the base of the fir needle is expanded into a round base giving the needle appearance of a suction cup tipped dart.
Sarah Vogel: 14:39Okay.
Ken Johnson: 14:40And then spruce needles are the four sided. So when you roll between your fingers, you can tell. This is courtesy of Ohio State.
Sarah Vogel: 14:49The Ohio State?
Ken Johnson: 14:51The Ohio
Chris Enroth: 14:53Which one? Yeah. What also back to the scent. So I have a a cut tree in my living room right now. I'm, like, 90% sure it is some type of fur.
Chris Enroth: 15:08There was never an odor to it. I was so disappointed in, like, not having a smell because I know that a lot of the the cut trees, like balsam fir, con color, all of them have usually, like, a pretty decent scent. And this one, I just must have gotten a lemon. I'm not sure, but it just no worries.
Sarah Vogel: 15:27I free.
Chris Enroth: 15:28I guess so. Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 15:30Darn it.
Chris Enroth: 15:30I did I did crush the buds, though, and it had, like, a citrusy odor. So maybe I do have some con color. I don't know. I maybe they hybridize, and I just got, yeah, I just got some weird fir tree in my living room now.
Sarah Vogel: 15:48That's true. You could have gotten a weird one or and possibly, I mean, lot of times on Christmas tree farms, they're growing those things so quickly that some of the, you know, this whatever chemical structures that would make some of the fragrances that we experience don't always have time to fully develop too. So they're like, you know, growing really quickly and not getting all of the genetic predispositions that others would. So Interesting.
Chris Enroth: 16:17Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe this helps answer the next question then because this same tree, odorless as we call it, fir trees typically have a stronger branch that can hold up stronger the bigger ornaments. This thing, it has these, like, wild branches coming out of it, almost almost like it was maybe fertilized a little too much, maybe promoted a little too much more excessive growth, and the the branches aren't as strong as a typical fir. There there is.
Chris Enroth: 16:50Mhmm. You got it. I think it's just
Sarah Vogel: 16:52Quick growth. Not always strong growth. Yep.
Chris Enroth: 16:55There you go. I think that's what happened.
Sarah Vogel: 16:57Yeah. Yeah. So and there no no shade on the that was a tree joke. No shade on the Christmas tree growing industry. You know, they they're cranking them out, trees that we get, but they you're right.
Sarah Vogel: 17:11Like, just like a maybe a hothouse tomato compared to the in ground one kind of, you know, comparison, I suppose.
Chris Enroth: 17:17Okay. Mystery solved. It is a Christmas miracle. Thank you.
Sarah Vogel: 17:20Anytime. Solving the world's problems,
Ken Johnson: 17:23David. I
Chris Enroth: 17:26do have one more burr question. Is a Douglas fir a true fir tree? What how does that fit into the old furry world?
Sarah Vogel: 17:37It is not. That's a great question. In fact, when you see it spelled, it's Douglas it's hyphenated. Douglas Douglas dash fir. And the scientific name for it, you got me, pseudo psuedo mensizii.
Sarah Vogel: 17:53So pseudo like the p s u e d o, that means false. Right? So it's kind of a false Suga, and Suga is the genus name of something else. The
Chris Enroth: 18:09Suga canadensis.
Sarah Vogel: 18:11Is that right?
Chris Enroth: 18:11That is. Yeah. That that's right. That is, Suga canadensis. Isn't that arborvitae?
Sarah Vogel: 18:18No. That's Thuia.
Chris Enroth: 18:20Thuia. That's right. Suga is Canadian hemlock.
Sarah Vogel: 18:24Hemlock. Yeah. Thank you. Pulse hemlock.
Chris Enroth: 18:28Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 18:28And they do look those do look very very similar the Douglas fir and the hemlock. And I think there's to ID between them, not only the size of the cones. Hemlock are really small I think. I don't remember about Douglas fir but also I think the needles are kind of one has two flanked needles, and the other ones are kind of singly flanked, if I remember correctly.
Chris Enroth: 18:50Yeah. Yes.
Sarah Vogel: 18:53Cute See, I'm not I'm not only answering identification questions. I am bringing up more for further stuff. This is education. As
Chris Enroth: 19:02as every good educator does. Yes. The Suga no. The Canadian hemlock has very cute little cones. I almost Ken, can I call these pine cones?
Chris Enroth: 19:17Can you clarify?
Sarah Vogel: 19:20Real much.
Ken Johnson: 19:24So we We put up instructors.
Sarah Vogel: 19:26Thank you.
Ken Johnson: 19:27Yes. There we go. So we can we can talk cones. I did look this up because I am as guilty as anybody. I see a tree with a cone on it.
Ken Johnson: 19:36It's pine cone regardless of whether it's a pine or not. So the pine spruce and firs will all produce cones, but you can differentiate them, from one another. And this is also courtesy of Ohio State because I don't remember any of this stuff. Let me see here. Where'd it go?
Sarah Vogel: 19:54Spruce are elongated and they have little scales that are kinda two tipped on them. I know that.
Ken Johnson: 20:00Yes. So
Sarah Vogel: 20:01Chalk one up.
Ken Johnson: 20:03So female cones of pine spruce and fir start development pointing upward. Mature pine and spruce cones are pendulant or hang downward from the point of attachment to the branch. Firs remain upright or erect. Cones consist of scales attached to the central stalk. Maturity of the scales of pine and spruce remain attached to the central stalk, and the entire cone frequently falls to the ground intact after the seeds, which so the seeds are in between those scales after those are released.
Ken Johnson: 20:31The scales and seeds of fir cones break loose and crumble away from the central stock while it's attached to the trees when fir cones drop, it's just like a central stock that's not intact anymore. And the thickness or woodiness of the scales determines how flexible it is. So pine cones tend to be thicker and woodier, than spruce cone scales, which are more papery. So pine cones tend to be more rigid than spruce cones are. So
Sarah Vogel: 20:57Excellent. Chris and I are nodding our heads like we wrote that. Yes. That's exactly right.
Chris Enroth: 21:04Yes. Been retained in the short term memory banks.
Sarah Vogel: 21:07Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. And then so some things in the the cypress family, like our bold cypress and I guess our our thuia, our arborvitae cause that is also known as a northern white cedar and our eastern red cedar which is true. They're all in the cypress family and they too have cones but they're they look a lot different.
Sarah Vogel: 21:30So on bald cypress they're kind of cool little spherical cones that start out really green about the size of golf balls I guess they get at maturity and they have a little geometric pattern on them and that's where they split when they finally mature and open up and release the seed. Those are really cool. On an arborvitae, the cones are they kind of open up the same way, but they look a little bit they almost look like I'm not gonna confuse it for a pine, but like pine buds when the buds,
Chris Enroth: 22:02the
Sarah Vogel: 22:02terminal buds set in the fall. It's kind of what arborvitae cones look like to me.
Chris Enroth: 22:08Art so I I see people kind of offer these for sale juniper berries because I think sometimes people might use this to create a product called gin. But
Sarah Vogel: 22:21Oh, tell me more.
Chris Enroth: 22:24Think it's one of is it one of the main flavor? I don't drink gin, so I don't really know much about it. But I think it's one of the main flavor components of gin is juniper berries, which are actually cones. When you're shopping, you know, you might be looking for cones now, but they're probably being sold as berries.
Sarah Vogel: 22:42You know, that's inter I don't know for sure either. I know that's where gin kind of originated. I don't know if it's still made from it. It's kinda like the potato vodka thing. Like, not a lot of vodka is made from potatoes anymore, but I'm not sure about the gin and and Juniper gowns.
Sarah Vogel: 22:58I bet we're gonna find out here in a second.
Chris Enroth: 23:00We should fact check us, Ken.
Sarah Vogel: 23:02Yes. Yes.
Chris Enroth: 23:05Ken's doing the editing this week too, so he can always go back in time and fix this.
Sarah Vogel: 23:10Yeah. So the eastern red cedar is again one of our natives and just a really cool tree. It is a pretty prolific grower. You find it you know kind of all over Illinois and if you don't weed your garden or things like that you might find them growing natively all over the place because the wildlife really enjoy that tree and get a lot out of it. So those little fleshy cones with seeds inside are being dropped everywhere, deposited by birds and so on.
Chris Enroth: 23:39It's one of my favorites. Yeah. I really like it. I I know people might not, especially if you have any grassland or something. And they can be a little dangerous in a prairie fire, but, I I still do like them quite a bit.
Sarah Vogel: 23:54Yeah. And they have really cool needles or leaves too. They're the you know, if you're using the forest trees of Illinois book, say, for instance, or any identification there, what we would refer to as more scale or all like leaves so they kind of overlap each other and look really scaly on both cedar and arborvitae. And I mentioned this to you before, cedar trees are one host of the cedar apple rust. Things in the apple family are the other and so in the spring people might see these kind of brown sphere like structures that open up and have holes and start to ooze orange goo out of them, the little horns and that is is one part of the cedar apple rust fungus infection.
Sarah Vogel: 24:42Good times. It's actually
Chris Enroth: 24:44Good times.
Sarah Vogel: 24:45Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 24:47Yet not to go down the crazy pathology hole, but I just think it is so neat that some diseases or some, you know, organisms like that evolved to need these two hosts of cedars and apple trees or cedars and hawthorn trees. There's a there's a couple of these out there, and, hey, I I think it is a pretty neat little evolution.
Sarah Vogel: 25:09Yeah. Same. Yeah. It is pretty interesting to look into that.
Ken Johnson: 25:14And going back to gin, by legal definition, gin must have juniper juniper berries in it to be called gin.
Sarah Vogel: 25:21Is there a certain percentage or, a content?
Ken Johnson: 25:24That I don't know, but it does have to contain it.
Sarah Vogel: 25:28Good. Interesting. I I don't really plan to get into gin, but I love that for gin drinkers. You know we mentioned some of the broadleaf evergreen. So when people not uncrafty people like myself, but when people are doing their holiday decorations and so on, it might be branches from everything that we've been talking about our pines or spruce, fir branches.
Sarah Vogel: 25:55You might also see broadleaf evergreens like the holly that we mentioned or even I've seen boxwood branches used as well. And I imagine just like a Christmas tree, would probably have to keep those things kind of moist.
Chris Enroth: 26:11Or frozen it seems.
Sarah Vogel: 26:16Hollies are a really cool plant too. I think that they are just a really interesting plant. Not everybody I don't know. They're really weird irregular growers and not that fast, you know, at growing. Not a super fast grower, I guess, relative to other woody species, but they're just so cool and they attract so much wildlife.
Sarah Vogel: 26:39The male compared to the female flowers and the fairies that they make I think is kind of a fascinating relationship too. And what a cool plant to be native to here.
Chris Enroth: 26:49Mhmm. Well, you, do you have anything to talk about when it comes to ewes or taxes? So this is a pretty common foundation plant I see everywhere.
Sarah Vogel: 27:02Yeah. So both, well all, you, arborvitae, and hemlock have more that random branching. Not the world branching like we see in our pines and spruce, but kind of this more random branching. They do have lateral buds present and they'll also have dormant buds. So they are really common.
Sarah Vogel: 27:23They can really take a at least for you and arborvitae they can really take some pruning like heavy pruning and are really resilient. As long as you're not cutting into that dead zone, the evergreen dead zones that you don't cut into that. And I mean honestly on ewes I would anecdotally I have seen them chopped back to like the ground and come back pretty healthy and strong. So I wouldn't suggest that with everything but they are a pretty sturdy plant. Not a native or anything like that.
Sarah Vogel: 27:56What else about you? I don't know if they are in the landscape for my own personal you know perspective, I really like a more natural branching. So if you're gonna prune them I would get it in hand prune them and select your branches to remove. But also a lot of times when they were put in they were installed to maintain this manicured kind of more formal look too and that's how a lot of people like them. So going to do that, that's just fine.
Sarah Vogel: 28:26For ewes we you know we're gonna use a lot of this stuff like we said for decorations in the wintertime so you can prune lightly then and anytime is a good time to remove the dead or diseased or broken branches. But we want to watch the kind of timing of pruning any of the rest of that stuff. So with our yew if we are shearing them, you really just want to be shearing the new growth to keep them healthy. Yes. You can cut back into the wood, but if you're trying to just maintain a shape and not reduce size, that would be a recommendation.
Chris Enroth: 29:05Western Illinois University is infamous for a 1992 event in which three Lippizaner Lippizaner stallions munched on some ewe while they were waiting between their performances, and it killed them. So, also, don't eat them because they are very poisonous, not only to horses, but to humans. I think there's an edible portion, but I'm not going to speak of that on this podcast.
Sarah Vogel: 29:33We do not speak of that. Nope. Yeah. Yeah. And you can generally tell yes.
Sarah Vogel: 29:38Don't unless you know for sure. Don't just put random plants parts in your mouth.
Ken Johnson: 29:44Yep.
Sarah Vogel: 29:46The yeah. And and you are pretty easy. I was going to mention too to see where that new growth is. But, yeah, don't when you're out there pruning them, don't put them in your mouth.
Chris Enroth: 29:56Don't eat them?
Sarah Vogel: 29:57No. No. And and as if we're mentioning shearing, not my favorite because it's not really the best horticultural cut sometimes we're doing the new growth but if we're doing shrubs we kind of want to keep it a little wider at the bottom. Really that goes for any shrub. You're not going to get light to those bottom branches if you cut it like an upside down triangle.
Sarah Vogel: 30:23So just a little word to the wise to keep a nice full shrubbery. I really got into the maintenance aspect as opposed to the identification. My apologies.
Ken Johnson: 30:33It's all good.
Chris Enroth: 30:34Everybody knows what a u looks like.
Ken Johnson: 30:36Right? Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 30:37The yeah. They are well, they'll be the ones with the little red arrows. There you go. Mhmm. Problem solved.
Sarah Vogel: 30:45You know, we don't have as I mentioned, we don't have that many native evergreen species because a lot of the we see a lot of evergreen species around Illinois and a lot of been introduced and planted and some even naturalized but we don't have that many that you know originate from here. That does not stop us from trying to plant evergreens where they are not suited to our moist fertile soils. So that's you know something if you have gotten a living Christmas tree or planted you know put a pine or spruce or something else on the ground. The site characteristics finding out you know if it's gonna survive or thrive in that that spot would be good especially when it comes to the the soil drainage, know, sun exposure, and probably pH for many of them. Probably soil pH.
Ken Johnson: 31:43As pretty as they are. Colorado blue spruce don't belong in Illinois.
Sarah Vogel: 31:48They do not, sir. They do not. They experience a lot of problems here. And when they are stressed out from the poor suited conditions around them, that's when they, you know, start to become more susceptible to diseases, which we see a lot too. Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 32:04And many are not salt tolerant, which we see a lot of the Midwest too in our wintery weather.
Chris Enroth: 32:12I do recall a few years ago it being quite popular or trendy to foster a Christmas tree, like a potted tree. You could rent it from a nursery or a tree farm, and then they would take it back and either plant it out somewhere, or maybe you could even buy it and plant it. I don't know if either of you have heard. Has this been anything people have reached out to you recently about? Because I haven't heard about it recently, but I do know a few years ago, it was quite a common question, question where to plant my Christmas tree.
Sarah Vogel: 32:44Well, haven't heard of it recently, but there's a family I know that has almost always done that buy a bald and burlap tree and kept it alive as their Christmas tree indoors and then planted it later when the soil wasn't frozen, maybe not quite spring. And they had a great big like two acre yard So they were able to do that or gave them to someone else, planted them elsewhere. I've not heard of the fostering one, though.
Chris Enroth: 33:14Mhmm. Deacon.
Sarah Vogel: 33:17I got a lot problems.
Ken Johnson: 33:19I've I've heard of it, but I think it's usually bigger population centers than Jacksonville where you find that happening.
Sarah Vogel: 33:27I see. I see. More thriving metropolis, you're saying.
Ken Johnson: 33:31Yes. Much bigger. And I always wonder with that, like, you you've got that outside. You bring it inside for I don't know how long this usually lasts, but then you put it back outside. What is that?
Ken Johnson: 33:45Going from cold to warm to cold, what does that do into the trees?
Sarah Vogel: 33:49Well, it makes me wonder about those things too. Like, if if it has to have a certain number of like cold days, you know, to put on cones or or whatever the case may be. So I'm not totally sure with Christmas trees how that would affect them, but you would think that it would. I mean some a lot of plants need a certain cold period to become florally competent is I think the term or be able to produce fruit. I am not really sure about that.
Sarah Vogel: 34:17It makes me wonder that and it makes me wonder so is that tree still like is it like a memorial tree then after that? And then if so, what if it dies? And what happens after that? You know, sometimes those programs get kinda sticky like that, I guess. Mhmm.
Sarah Vogel: 34:34I don't know. What are your thoughts on the on the cold weather requirements?
Chris Enroth: 34:41I think there is for some of those, they say you have to have, like, a maximum amount of time indoors. So it's, like, a week or less. And for certain households, maybe that's possible. I know for mine, we like having a tree, whether it's a real cut tree or a fake plastic tree. We like having that up for at least a month.
Chris Enroth: 35:07So that wouldn't work well in our household at least. So I think it sort of might maybe it varies on, person to person, if that's feasible.
Sarah Vogel: 35:15Sure. Sure. We just put our Christmas tree up yesterday. Once again, ten days before Christmas. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 35:27Leave it up two months after.
Sarah Vogel: 35:29We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. And be like, this thing is in the way. Get it
Chris Enroth: 35:32out of
Ken Johnson: 35:33It's never coming down.
Chris Enroth: 35:35Is it a real tree?
Sarah Vogel: 35:38No. We have a we have a pre lit artificial tree. And even though artificial trees gross me out or artificial plants in general, it's kind of convenient for us and I don't always feel like we're getting the best quality products sometimes from our cut trees and I don't like fire hazards. So Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 36:03Speaking of fire hazards, is there anything we can do maybe to limit something like that with our cut trees inside? Gosh. I Any suggestions? Don't put them in the house. Don't.
Sarah Vogel: 36:19Yes. Leave them in the ground. You I think once you get a cut tree home, if it hasn't been just recently cut, if you're, buying it off the lot, You want to cut a little bit more off if you can to kind of just like you would with fresh flowers so that some of those vascular vascular system can maybe try and uptake some moisture and just make sure it still has water that when it gets dry is when it becomes dangerous. And I have an uncle that was a that was a firefighter and then worked for the state fire marshal's office, and I have a very healthy respect for fire and safety when it comes to that. So that's just something that I'm like, boy, one mess up, and there are a lot of things that could go wrong.
Sarah Vogel: 37:10But I think if we do it the right way, the people are totally safe too.
Ken Johnson: 37:15Sometimes
Sarah Vogel: 37:17it comes in conjunction with other choices in the wintertime. Like, if we don't wanna turn the heat up, some people will, like, turn their ovens on and open the door and other things like that. So sometimes it's a whole host of things that could present danger, not just a Christmas tree.
Ken Johnson: 37:34Yeah. Oh, and if your Christmas tree is keeping it away from heating vents so it doesn't dry out as quickly and make sure your lights your wires aren't frayed or anything. And I think it's it's probably not as big of an issue as it was, you know, before LEDs were a thing. But, you know, LEDs are pretty cool compared to incandescent lights.
Sarah Vogel: 37:57Yes. And if you have for instance, we got a new puppy last year around Christmas time. So those frayed wires were plentiful and abundant. And I was kind of glad that we had an artificial tree. They were everything was chewed up everywhere.
Sarah Vogel: 38:14Christmas tree, presents, the tables, the kids, all of it.
Chris Enroth: 38:18Yep. Most wonderful time of the year, especially when there's a puppy.
Sarah Vogel: 38:23Oh, man. It was great. He still is. Yeah. The live trees are such a cool idea to then go put it back in the ecosystem.
Sarah Vogel: 38:31That is neat. There are other things that people have, know, can do with their Christmas trees afterwards. There, you know, I've heard of these programs going on and then just recently in Decatur I saw that they would offer again that sometimes the DNR or the city water plant or whomever will put on drop your Christmas trees here and they will go and put them in the lake in different spots to create fish habitat. That is not a call for everybody to go dump their stuff in the lake wherever they are you really need to make sure that that's okay that that it needs that otherwise you're not helping the ecosystem at all. You can always mulch your trees if they're not going be planted or take them to the compost facility.
Sarah Vogel: 39:18You can put the cranberry and popcorn around it and put it outside for wildlife And I don't know. I guess you could leave it inside for a little bit longer. Just don't put it by the heating vent. Mhmm.
Ken Johnson: 39:34Say if a tree is not defective, you can make potpourri out of it.
Sarah Vogel: 39:39You can? Yeah. I guess so. Okay. I told you I'm not crafty.
Chris Enroth: 39:49We usually have a cut tree. Well, we've had a cut tree the last three years, and we'll take it outside, and I'll just lean it up against our magnolia. And I'll just throw some suet feeders in there for the winter. And then usually by mid spring, it's all dried and dead. And I'll cut it up, and we'll just throw it in the fire pit.
Chris Enroth: 40:10But you do not wanna be putting these in to indoor chimneys or anything like that. No no indoor fires with these trees because of the resin that can develop in, these needled evergreens.
Sarah Vogel: 40:22Yes. Yeah. That that is would not be a good thing to do. Mhmm. Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 40:28That's a great idea to leave it out for the wildlife, though. I mean, that really provides some habitat.
Ken Johnson: 40:35When we were still getting live trees, we would I just chop all the branches off and use the the trunk as edging
Chris Enroth: 40:43Mhmm.
Ken Johnson: 40:43The stuff in the landscape. So lots of different ways you can repurpose it.
Sarah Vogel: 40:49What a great idea. Hang on. Let me write that down. Alright. What what else do you wanna know about pine trees?
Sarah Vogel: 41:01I mean, evergreens. For how long will you leave your Christmas tree up if you like to get it up a month before Christmas?
Chris Enroth: 41:13For me, it so we've we'll usually do after New Year's, maybe a day or two after New Year's. We'll start taking it down, and then I'll haul it outside and throw the sewage feeders in. It is actually, it's one of the most popular spots in the backyard when it comes to birds because I think they like that evergreen cover that they can get. Plus it's right against the big old deciduous tree. And so, yeah, I really think it's a good spot for bird watching.
Sarah Vogel: 41:44Nice. You know, the whole purpose of me coming on here for evergreens was to get Ken to reference the scientific names of pines again. But I really don't wanna get you guys in trouble. So we can So
Chris Enroth: 41:56how do you technically say that, Ken?
Ken Johnson: 41:58How do you say the scientific name?
Sarah Vogel: 42:01Well You're
Ken Johnson: 42:02speaking the Latin correctly.
Sarah Vogel: 42:03Eastern white pine would be pinus strobus.
Chris Enroth: 42:08Is that right, Ken? Is that how you say it?
Ken Johnson: 42:10I think technically it's penis, but you're saying you're speaking the Latin correctly.
Sarah Vogel: 42:15Yes. Yeah. See? I learned I had to finally look it up what strobus was in relation to and it's like not world but like oh, golly. I forgot now.
Sarah Vogel: 42:29Essentially in the refers to like the spiral nature of the cone and had kinda like some Fibonacci number golden ratio thing to do with it. So I don't know if you knew that. You know, I like to learn about the scientific terminology, so I thought it was kind of intriguing.
Ken Johnson: 42:46I I did not know that.
Chris Enroth: 42:48I didn't know that either. Some people are so clever with scientific names. Like, if I got to name something, it would be like like, Thooya Dave. This is, like, not creative at all. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 43:02That's I was looking at Dave when I thought of this name. Whoever Dave is. Here you go.
Sarah Vogel: 43:08Yeah. Highness lamp. Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 43:12Towel. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Vogel: 43:15I hear you. I hear you. I'm witty, but when it comes to it, not that smart.
Chris Enroth: 43:21Don't don't don't put any pressure on me or it won't happen. Yep. Well, that was a lot of great information about evergreens, needled ones, broadleaf ones. We are bringing a lot of these plants into our homes this time of year, so it's great to have a little bit of background knowledge on them. With the Good Growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Ken Johnson, Sarah Vogel, thank you so much for joining us from good old Decatur, Illinois to chat about evergreens today.
Sarah Vogel: 43:52Thanks so much for having me, and happy holidays.
Chris Enroth: 43:55Alright. Happy holidays. And, Ken, here we go. Episode number 300. We did it.
Chris Enroth: 44:01The last recording also, think we're doing for the year 2025. So holy cow. We've we've reached the top.
Ken Johnson: 44:08It's all downhill from here.
Chris Enroth: 44:12There we go.
Ken Johnson: 44:13Thank you, Sarah, again for coming on. It was great. And Chris, as always, you. And let's do this again at some point.
Chris Enroth: 44:24We shall do this again, let's say, 2026. It is that time of year when the year ends and the new one begins. So, we will see everybody in the year 2026. I hope hope, everyone has a happy holidays and a happy New Years. Listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening, or if you watch this on YouTube, watching.
Chris Enroth: 44:46And as always, keep on growing.