Alright. You wanna start? You want me to start? How do we start without Chris?
Ken Johnson: 00:06I can start if you want. Welcome to Good Growing podcast. I am Ken Johnson, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming to you today from Jacksonville, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. We are going to be talking about horticultural rules of thumb. So things we often discuss, in the garden that may or may not have any scientific fact backing them up.
Ken Johnson: 00:36We'll put it that way. And you know what I'm not doing by this by myself? I am joined, as always, every single week by Emily Swihart, horticultural educator located in Milan, Milan, depending on where you're from, Illinois.
Emily Swihart: 00:50Hi, Ken. Yes. Milan, or if I'm feeling fancy, I'll say Milan.
Ken Johnson: 00:54But Anywhere outside of Illinois, that's Milan.
Emily Swihart: 00:58Pretty much. Pretty much. But no. Good to see you. I know we were together last week for a bit of a team meeting, and that's always lovely to get together.
Emily Swihart: 01:06But now we're back in the Zoom box. And this topic, I think, is gonna be really fun just to kinda dive into some of these common phrases, guides, you know, what have you, the things that people maybe are familiar with that we as horticulture educators maybe have said before, kind of in passing, but maybe haven't fully explained or delve into. So I think this will be a fun one, and we have quite a few to to go through. So I think maybe we should just dive in.
Ken Johnson: 01:38Yes. And I think we're only kinda kinda only scratching the surface on some of these. So this could be
Emily Swihart: 01:44Yes.
Ken Johnson: 01:44Some of these squirrel them away for a later date when we have nothing else to talk about.
Emily Swihart: 01:49Yeah. Well, and I'd be curious. So there are probably, you know, dozens more of these that listeners and viewers would be familiar with or have questions about. Like, I we all welcome some of that feedback. You can make a comment or email us.
Emily Swihart: 02:03Maybe we could do a part two later on down the road.
Ken Johnson: 02:08Yes. So I I think to start off, we should probably talk about the rule of thumb etymology because there is some I think this could be a little bit of a controversial term nowadays. So I guess rule of thumb, the general meeting is just kind of an approximate method for for doing something kinda based on practical experience rather than theory or research, something like that. So it may or may not hold up to scientific scrutiny, we'll say. I think some of these we talk about do have some science backing them up.
Ken Johnson: 02:41Others, yeah, are again, are more observation experience. It is widely, I guess, believed or or rumored that the rule of thumb is based on, I guess, common law English common law that a husband could beat a wife as long as the stick was no long no wider than their thumb. But there there have actually been a lot of papers written about this, and there from what I have read anyway, nobody can find any source, for this in English common law. So there is no law saying, that this is true. Sometimes it's it's hinted at.
Ken Johnson: 03:23There's even some, you know, in the nineteenth century in The United States. You can look at Wikipedia. It goes into a lot of detail, where there there were some cases where they they kinda talk about finger size and it being okay, because they weren't very big sticks. But then there's a Supreme Court ruling saying, you know, husbands have no right to to whip or beat their wives. And even if they did, the size of the stick doesn't matter.
Ken Johnson: 03:49It's how bad you do it. So there is no despite the the kind of the widespread belief that it's about, spousal abuse, there is no evidence that that is actually the case. Like, sounds like it came into came into vogue more in the the seventies, nineteen nineteen seventies. So there we go. Get that out the way.
Emily Swihart: 04:12Well and I am very glad that those are the findings because it would have been much more uncomfortable for us. No. I I I appreciate you diving into that. I didn't know I do believe I had heard that at some point, like, that there was not much of a a foundation for that belief, but I'm really glad that you you dove into it and set the record straight just for us right right now. So, well, we both kinda brought to this conversation, like, in our own rule of thumbs, the guide that we we either favor or know a little bit more about or wanted to look into.
Emily Swihart: 04:49And so I think I'll go ahead and follow up your explanation of the etymology of rule of thumb with an urban forestry related guide that I do cite quite a bit. I I'll I'll break it down, and then I'll explain why I bring it up in conversation quite often, any chance I get. But it's the thirty twenty ten rule of urban forestry. And so this is it has been designed or perpetuated as a way of trying to help guide a discussion about urban forestry and the need for diversity in the urban forest so that kinda, like, catastrophic tree related events could potentially be avoided or that we could mitigate risk when it comes to the urban forest. And so things like Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, even things like oak wilt.
Emily Swihart: 05:46Like, we've got a lot of threats to the urban forest that are oftentimes species specific. And so we use this rule of thumb to try to encourage plantings of it thirty twenty ten. Sometimes I'll say it ten twenty thirty. It's the same thing. But the 30 refers to having no more than 30% of any family in the urban forest, species population, no more than 20% of any one genus, and no more than 10% of any one species.
Emily Swihart: 06:20And so this was this is sometimes cited this the researcher, doctor Frank Santamore, he's a research geneticist with the US National Arboretum, wrote a paper and kinda referenced this guide. He also, in that same paper, it is said that said that he's not the the one to propose it. So he was also kind of citing somebody else's work. He doesn't go on to say, who, originated originated the idea, but he's kinda giving credit for popularizing this idea. It's catchy.
Emily Swihart: 07:01The challenge with it, and this has been where the conversation has evolved too, is that it's probably not diverse enough if our communities do achieve a ten, twenty, 30 diversity in the urban forest. Basically, what that means is so if you if you have achieved this, you only would really have 10 different species in your urban forest, and you could potentially only have five different genus representation in the urban forest. And a lot of our threats do focus on, you know, trees at at the genus level. So emerald ash borer attacked fraxinus. So that is at that genus level.
Emily Swihart: 07:47So if you had achieved the ten, twenty, 30 goal, you would still have 20% of your urban forest in ash trees, and you would lose 20% of your urban forest. Maples are of high concern for me. We have a lot of them planted, and a lot of things want to eat maple trees. If we have 20% maple trees and we just lost 20% ash trees, then we're out 40% of our urban forest. So you you could do this with other species.
Emily Swihart: 08:14I like to pick on maples just because I think we overplant them, and I like getting emails about my hate for while I'm hating on maples. It's just it from my perspective, it's an over planting thing. So that's the ten twenty thirty rule. I have heard of communities who are are working very, very hard to achieve ten twenty thirty and go beyond, and so it is attainable. I know one community in particular has attained to this, and they are going much farther with it, both at the neighborhood scale.
Emily Swihart: 08:50So as a community, it's a largest community. They've achieved the ten, twenty, 30, focusing on trying to to reach beyond that. But now they're looking at a kind of a neighborhood scale because there are some neighborhoods that have really high populations of oak trees. You know, like, at the neighborhood scale or the community scale, they've achieved this goal. At the neighborhood scale, they haven't.
Emily Swihart: 09:14So were oak wilt to hit this, you know, population of oak trees, this neighborhood would have a catastrophic loss. So it's doable. It's challenging. It takes a lot of concerted effort from the part of the urban forest managers, citizens. Because remember, the urban forest is not just our public trees.
Emily Swihart: 09:33It's also the trees that we plant in our front and backyards or in the private property. And so those all make up that urban forest. But it's a guide, and I do appreciate having some sort of guide and some sort of target to aim for because we do need more diversity in our urban forests. But that's the thirty, twenty, 10, or sometimes, you know, ten, twenty, 30, depending on which way you wanna go rule.
Ken Johnson: 09:58Well, I guess it's easy to remember too, like a lot of these. So Yes. It's general guidance, maybe not the end all, be all. And if you think about ash trees, you'd hear of places losing 40 plus percent of their their tree canopy in towns and stuff. Or if you go back to Dutch elm disease, you know, 40 plus percent of trees.
Emily Swihart: 10:22Yeah. And I think too, like, keep in mind, so, like, that's looking backwards and trying to learn lessons from the past. You know? I was trying to use chestnut blight. Like, there's been a number of examples of this that has occurred in The United States.
Emily Swihart: 10:34And then, you know, around the world, there's other examples. I would also put a a note here, just a little asterisk by by this that says, we don't know what's coming. Right? We live in a global exchange. We have, goods being imported and exported daily.
Emily Swihart: 10:53And that is often how we get some of these catastrophic biotic diseases or or pests that come in undetected. So, by diversifying our urban forest, we're kinda, like, hedging our bets. We are, you know, trying to, like, build, like, a a diverse portfolio. So if something happens to one species, we can hopefully have a little bit of security in another. So well, Ken dropped off.
Emily Swihart: 11:23So I'm gonna go ahead and move on to the next one, and I'm sure Ken will rejoin. We're having those Internet issues again. But this is one that we've heard Chris say quite a bit, and we've all kind of adopted as our own, which is to mow. It's related to turf grass. So mow high, mow often, and use a sharp blade.
Emily Swihart: 11:41Why is this a phrase that we have all kinda latched onto and enjoy using when referring to turf grass? Well, it's easy to remember, kinda like the ten twenty thirty, but it's also a pretty good guide for how to take care of your turf grass. So when we're mowing high, we're doing that for a couple of reasons. And when we say high, we're talking approximately about a four inch height for most of our turf grass species that we have in the Midwest. Kinda the couple of reasons we're doing this.
Emily Swihart: 12:12So we do it first so that we can maintain some sort of shoot on the grass. Like, we need these blades to be doing photosynthesis, to feed the grass roots, and to make sure that we just have a healthy stand of turf grass in our yards. We wanna make sure that there is enough leaf material left to do photosynthesis to continue to support those plants. It's also I was reading that it is related to having some shade on the roots, and this makes a lot of sense. So having, a little higher stand of blades above the the roots and and the soil can help shade, the soil, keep it a little bit cooler, a little bit nicer conditions for the roots to grow, preventing direct sunlight from hitting those roots and drying them out and causing some damage and stress.
Emily Swihart: 13:04You can tell when a lawn has been mowed too short because a lot of times you'll have that yellowish green, pale yellow green kind of color on it. You can tell that it's suffering. And so a lot of times that will be related to it being just mowed too short. So you're going to want to raise that blade up the next time you go out and mow the lawn. The other kind of related recommendation or related issue that can be caused when we mow our grass too short is that it becomes a little susceptible to weed germination.
Emily Swihart: 13:36Weed seeds are not shaded out. They are given an opportunity to germinate and grow, and we know they grow oftentimes faster than our turf grass does. And so they can take hold and kind of ruin the aesthetic and then also diminish the health of our our lawn. So that's why we mow high. When it comes to the frequency, similar to maintaining a a leaf blade that is gonna provide enough support for, the plant.
Emily Swihart: 14:05If we wait too long and we have too much blade and we take too much off of the plant, first, it can kinda suffer because it's, been adapted and and adjusted to having so much more plant material on it. And you've got grass clippings, remaining on your lawn. And so if you do not remove those, you can kinda have a matting effect and and shading out some of your turf grass, which can cause, some challenges for those areas. Acts like a mulch, you know, on it and shade it out. Also, like I said, if you wait too long, you take off a lot of that leaf blade, and it just stresses the plant out.
Emily Swihart: 14:40You know, like, when we talk about pruning trees, we talk about removing no more than 25 to 30%. It's similar with turf grass. Like, you don't want to take off so much of the plant that the plant is, stressed because of that pruning or, in this case, mowing, job. And then finally, we wanna use a sharp blade because a dull blade dull blade, excuse me, or, or having an improper, cutting angle can, like, tear the top of the grass. You've seen it before where it just kinda shreds the top.
Emily Swihart: 15:09It doesn't make that nice clean, cut, and this can be stressful for the plant. It can also be a point where, you know, disease can can, enter into the plant and cause that in combination with the stress can be detrimental to the health of our turf. So so like Chris always says, mow high, mow often, and use a sharp blade.
Ken Johnson: 15:33There we go.
Emily Swihart: 15:34Yeah. Alright. What's our next one, Ken? What do we got? Oh, a favorite.
Ken Johnson: 15:43Right. Right plants, right place. It's usually what you see. And I and I have heard others people add right time, because I think timing is important too, especially when we start talking about some of certain plants that's is more important, than others. So, we talk about right plants.
Ken Johnson: 16:00So, again, making sure we are citing the plant that we wanna grow, in the proper conditions or figuring out what your conditions are and then picking the proper plant. You can do it either way. Probably looking at your conditions and then picking the proper plant is going to be a better way to do it than trying to force a plant that you really want into a situation that you're gonna have to do a lot of work. So, like, making sure your proper hardiness zone, the sun or shade. You know, if you put a a shade floating plant in full sun, it's not gonna do well.
Ken Johnson: 16:33Plant that needs full sun is not gonna do well in shade. Proper soil type, you know, if they can they tolerate clay soils, sandy soils, drainage. You know, can they tolerate any kind of standing water for a short period of time? Do they need sharply drained soil? So I think those are the site conditions people typically think of.
Ken Johnson: 16:55One thing I think is often overlooked, especially when we start talking about woody plants, trees, and shrubs is mature size and growth habits. So that little, tree you get from the nursery that looks great around the corner of the house, that grows into a 80 foot tall oak tree and is taking off your roof because it's growing into it. It's probably not you need to put that a little further away. Pest and disease resistance, you know, we're talking about tree fruit or fruit and vegetable crops, looking at, resistance, help eliminate some of those problems. Or if you know you have issues with certain diseases or insects in your landscape, you probably wanna avoid things that are really susceptible to them.
Ken Johnson: 17:34Maintenance requirements. You know, another thing that's overlooked a lot, like, you're gonna grow tree fruit, you're gonna have you're gonna be spraying. You're gonna be pruning. If you don't wanna put the time in to do that, maybe go go to the farmer's market and buy that stuff instead of just having a disease riddled insect infested plant that you're just gonna be disappointed in and frustrated. So, again, you know, finding that right plant for the conditions that you have or matching your conditions to the right plant.
Ken Johnson: 18:04That's getting it to the right place as well. So, again, matching your your plant with those conditions. And then, at the right time, so, you know, planting stuff in the middle of summer, while you can do it, that may not be the best for the plant because we're gonna be happy to water quite a bit, especially if you have a dry year. You know, we've we've gotten decent amount of rain, but here in in West Central Illinois, we've gotten kinda dry as of late. So if you've you've planted something, you're gonna be watering a lot, especially if you just planted it in the summer.
Ken Johnson: 18:39And we we just talked about turf. You know, ideally, we're planting that late summer, mid August to mid September, so that gets established. And then it can start growing again in the spring before the heat of the summer. So you've got almost, you know, eight months for it to get to get well established. Before we get into the heat of the summer for a cool season grasses, they tend to go dormant.
Ken Johnson: 19:02You know, typically, we're looking at early spring, early fall or spring spring and early fall for planting stuff so they can get established before either winter sets in or before the heat of the summer gets in, or they're better established. Sometimes it can take several years for that to happen, but the the more established they can get, the more successful you'll be with those plants, and you're not having to to water maybe quite as often. So right plant, right place, right time.
Emily Swihart: 19:34Yes. This one I mean, everyone has heard us say it on this podcast, in presentations, in, like, all the places. It it and I I will add to that that the plants know, like, what they want. Right? So this also to me speaks to the idea of, like, paying attention to the plants that you're planting and what they are, like, genetically predisposed to to like.
Emily Swihart: 19:59Right? And so, you know, fruit trees generally don't like to have, you know, wet feet or or be in, like, those kind of, like, soggier soils or those waterlogged soils. Even if you put a fruit tree in a place like that, if you're not paying attention, you know, to right plant, right place, like, they're not gonna adapt. Like so like you said, it is going to cause some more issues for you, the human, later. Maybe adverse health effects for the tree or the plant later on.
Emily Swihart: 20:24So I just like I like that saying because when I or I hear it or whenever I say it, it makes me think, like, let's do what the plants want us to do. Like, we are caring for them. Let's do that well. So anyways
Ken Johnson: 20:40And one thing I didn't mention was pH. I got it's overlooked. Yeah. So that's that's tried to grow blueberries in Illinois. More often than not, you're gonna be disappointed.
Ken Johnson: 20:48So, again, if you're wanting to grow something like that, amending your soils and stuff, which is which can be a lot of work if you're trying to drop drop a razor pH quite a bit.
Emily Swihart: 21:00Yeah. Yep. Okay. Oh, next one on our list is one I don't know that is is as well known as some of these other ones. And so, those of you who have not heard this saying, let me introduce you to it.
Emily Swihart: 21:16It is the idea for perennials, is what we're referring to. So, that they will sleep, creep, and leap. So this kinda three phrase adage refers to the establishment of perennials and how they then perform for us in the landscape. I come from a natural resource background, native plant enthusiast, kind of running those circles for most of my life. So a lot of times when I'm talking about, like, sleep, creep, and leap, it is from the native plant perspective, but a lot of our ornamental perennials will do this as well.
Emily Swihart: 21:52So the idea is that this kind of breaks it down into a three year establishment journey that they're going on. And so in year one, a lot of times we will see perennials sleep. They will seem to not be doing much besides surviving. There won't be a lot of vegetative growth. We won't see a lot of blooms, if any blooms.
Emily Swihart: 22:15We can kind of be frustrated by this sometimes, especially for planting ornamentals. One of the things I think of is, like, my peonies. If I plant them small, sometimes it'll take a couple years for them to bloom, and I really want them to bloom right away because they're gorgeous. So I have to remind myself that in the first year, they are sleeping. And what they're doing, it's not nothing.
Emily Swihart: 22:39Oftentimes, what they are doing is they are limiting above ground growth because that's gonna be sacrificed during the winter months, but they're trading more vegetative growth for development and root growth because that's really what helps them survive the winters. And so it is, an evolutionary strategy that they put on enough vegetative growth to do photosynthesis and feed root development, but that's it. We're not producing flowers, which takes a lot of energy. We're not gonna do any seed development after a bloom because all of that energy is gonna go into root development. From the native plant standpoint, we love that because they have these massive root systems, do a lot of soil building, sometimes can, live for very, very long times.
Emily Swihart: 23:27And so, we want them to have those roots become, you know, well developed and established. Then the second year, it depends on the species. So the second year is the creep year. You might see some increased vegetative growth. You might even see some flowers on some of our more prolific blooming, like, native plants.
Emily Swihart: 23:49I'm thinking of, like, your coneflowers. Oftentimes, we'll do a second year bloom. You'll see, like, black eyed susans, sometimes gray headed coneflower, some of the ones where you see a lot of blooms produced anyways. A lot of times you can get blooms, that second year. You can choose to leave them or not from a management standpoint.
Emily Swihart: 24:10You can choose to leave those flowers on, Or that second year, you can choose to remove them or mow, mow high across a a native planting so that more energy goes into root development. But by that second year, they're creeping along because they do have a little bit more root established than they did in that first year. The third year then is where the magic happens. And this year, oftentimes, you will see it leap. That this is kinda when you let the prairie run, like, whether it's a ornamental planting or, you know, a kind of a wild prairie land planting or your ornamental plants.
Emily Swihart: 24:46Often by the third year, if they've been well cared for, if we haven't had just some, extremely dry year or really hard winter, you know, some of those, like, outlying things that affect all of our plant growth regardless of whether they're new plants or not. That third year, they leap. You're gonna see a whole bunch of blooms. You're gonna see a lot of vegetative growth. You're gonna really kind of achieve, that look that you probably were hoping for.
Emily Swihart: 25:10And so this is also the year when your maintenance goes down. We talk a lot about, like, native plants being lower maintenance, and it's like, well, yes, and, we need them to establish. And so this is also helping to guide that establishment, where in that first year, you're making sure you're keeping weed suppressed. You're letting them, have the space and access to sunlight to develop roots, let them sleep. Second year, they're a little bit more robust, but you still wanna make sure you're on top of the weed control.
Emily Swihart: 25:41You can choose to mow it or not. That's that's on, kind of your land management plan. And then that third year, usually, we let it go, and we leap, with the you know, the full bloom. So I like this one. I think it's fun to say.
Emily Swihart: 25:56I think it does a nice job kind of describing what a native planting can do because that's sometimes unfamiliar to folks, and sets the expectations, kind of according. So, Ken, are you are you have you heard this one? I've I've heard this one for a while, but I again, I don't think that it's maybe as common.
Ken Johnson: 26:14I've I think I've always heard it referred to when you're talking about native plants, not necessarily our, quote, unquote, normal perennial flowers.
Emily Swihart: 26:25You're folks, if you wanna respond to that is.
Ken Johnson: 26:28Your your typical, I I guess, garden perennial plants, selling native plants. Yes. And I think a lot of the I I think think a a lot lot of of it's it's geared more towards seeds. Like, if you're planting plugs, you you're cutting out usually a year.
Emily Swihart: 26:42Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 26:43You're already at you've you've passed the sleep stage. Now you're getting into the the creep and leap a lot of times.
Emily Swihart: 26:48Yes. That's an excellent point. Yep. So plugs would be with, like, little small started plants. A lot of times that sleep creep and leap that sleep is the year when they're germinating from seed.
Emily Swihart: 27:00So you're doing a direct seed type of planting. So, yeah, good job. Thanks for thanks for pointing that out.
Ken Johnson: 27:06And then you do dormancy too, which could add another year depending on what you're planting. So
Emily Swihart: 27:12That's a whole another podcast. Overly complicated. These are supposed to simplify things. So let's move on. You kinda looked into a houseplants question or or adage, and so it is and there's some spelling that we need to do for this.
Emily Swihart: 27:30Right? So Yeah. Water weekly weekly. So WEAK. Oh, y.
Emily Swihart: 27:38So for a like, weekly as in dilution, and then weekly as in the time frame of a WEAK week. So what does that help us
Ken Johnson: 27:49Yes.
Emily Swihart: 27:50Do for our houseplants?
Ken Johnson: 27:51So so that's the idea of of watering weekly. Weekly is you're adding a week fertilizer, once a week. Like, as you think about our we're we're hopefully and are typically growing our house plants in as a soilless media. A lot of times it's, peat based. Maybe coconut coir is becoming more you're seeing that more and more as people are getting away from peat, or sphagnum, beet, whatever you wanna call it.
Ken Johnson: 28:18So these do not have really a whole lot of nutrients in them to begin with. You know, when you first buy it, you may have some slow release fertilizers in there. May last you three to six months depending on who you're buying from. But over time, those are gonna dissipate you're gonna have a you're not gonna necessarily have whole lot of nutrition nutrients in that soil. So the idea behind this is you're taking your fertilizer, and typically our fertilizers are a lot of times are formulated more for outdoor plants.
Ken Johnson: 28:43You're putting on a much higher concentration because you're you're doing this over a much larger area. Whereas in your pot, you're in a restricted area, you get too much fertilizer in there, you get burn, you get salt buildup, not table salt, but the chemistry, ionic chemical salt. That can build up over time and cause problems. So, typically, you're diluting your fertilizer's half quarter strength. Again, read the label.
Ken Johnson: 29:09It'll tell you how much you may need to dilute, and you're adding that that weak, not strong weak, fertilizer on there on a on a consistent basis. Maybe not weekly, that may not be the best idea, but you're doing this consistently. So you you have those those nutrients available in the soil for those plants. You know, an alternative to this would be would be to get your slow release, the little pellets. Osmocote would be an example of that.
Ken Johnson: 29:36That will slowly release those fertilizers over time so you don't have to worry about mixing up a liquid fertilizer and applying that. And I think another thing for for house plants, you know, watering weekly, that may or may not work. If different plants are gonna have different water requirements, I would not water a cactus every week unless you're doing a very little water. For that, it's gonna depend on, you know, the type of plant, how big the plant is, the the conditions they're growing in. Do you have a really dry house?
Ken Johnson: 30:09Is it you know, during the winter when they're not actively growing, they're not gonna need as much water. So, you know, that calendar watering could lead you down a path that you don't wanna go. It could end up overwatering or or potentially underwatering your plants. So, you know, it's it's nice if I go, I'm gonna water every Wednesday or two. Pick your day, but that doesn't always work.
Ken Johnson: 30:31It's better to whether do the lift test. So lift that pot if it feels light. If you've watered it and you know how heavy it is when it's well watered, you know, you can lift that, get a feel for that, stick your finger in there up to your your first or second knuckle depending on how deep that pot is, to give you an indication. That that's gonna be a better way, you know, when you're actually watering, your houseplants.
Emily Swihart: 30:57Well, thank you for putting all those caveats on there. I do like to just follow this one just straight because I'm just so bad at house plant care that I I need that weekly schedule. It's a survival of the fittest situation at my house, and so I just I do the weekly weekly if they're lucky, and sometimes we have a loss. But I think it is important, like you said, to note, like, they're growing in a soilless medium that like, this is not like growing outside in the ground. And so it does we need to supply some nutrients to them.
Emily Swihart: 31:35And so And And go ahead.
Ken Johnson: 31:38So and and when you are doing the fertilizer, you're you really only wanna do this when they're actively growing.
Emily Swihart: 31:42Yes.
Ken Johnson: 31:43So during the winter, when a lot of our houseplants aren't doing a whole lot because we don't have enough light, There's really no sense in adding that fertilizer when they're not actively growing. It's just gonna build up and and cause problems potentially.
Emily Swihart: 31:56Yep. Yeah. I kinda for me, again, notoriously bad at this with the houseplants. But, like, about February or about, excuse me, November is when I just kinda put the fertilizer away. I don't know if you have a month to shoot for.
Ken Johnson: 32:12They don't get fertilized.
Emily Swihart: 32:14Okay.
Ken Johnson: 32:16You got a lot of rough looking houseplants. Well,
Emily Swihart: 32:21we know what we could do. It's been a matter of doing it. So
Ken Johnson: 32:26Yes.
Emily Swihart: 32:27The willingness. Yeah. I used to, I'll be so I used to be very good at houseplant care because I had, like, a set day of the week. It was Sunday afternoons. It was just, a routine that I did, and somehow I got out of it.
Emily Swihart: 32:43I don't have, like I don't think it was a certain event. Like, I I just one day didn't and then never did again. So
Ken Johnson: 32:53It's comes down to am I gonna keep the small humans and animals alive or keep the plants alive and the mammals
Emily Swihart: 33:01are You keep making the right choice, Ken. You do keep making the right choice. Oh, Alright. So pollinator syndrome. So I'm gonna let you go ahead and talk about this because there's nuance again with this one, and you're our entomologist.
Ken Johnson: 33:22Yes. So pollinator syndromes are kind of the okay. The the is the idea that flowers have these different traits or characteristics you can look at, and you can use that to predict what type of insect is going to pollinate them. So these plants and these insects have coevolved, and over this coevolutionary process, you know, the the the insects are adapted to pollinate a particular type of flower. Those flowers have evolved that way to make this interaction more efficient, for the plant to get fertilized and for those insects to get food, whether that be pollen or nectar.
Ken Johnson: 34:00So looking at things like flower color, the shape and the size of the flower, the fragrance, does it have any, what does it smell like, how much nectar the plants produce, where that's located. You know, they have a long nectar spur where you have to have a long long tongue to access it, or is it shallower or things with short tongues can access it? How much pollen is available? You know, there's some plants put out tremendous amounts, some not so much. When the plants bloom, again, the scent that they're giving off to attract stuff, things like that.
Ken Johnson: 34:35And by by looking at these traits, you can predict what the pollinator may be. So, like, things like bee pollinated flowers often have blue, purple, white, or yellow flowers. They're sweet smelling. They have nectar guides, which are usually, different patterns. They could be lines.
Ken Johnson: 34:52They could be rings, usually visible under UV light, which we can't see, but bees and other insects can Kind of think of them kind of as like a a big billboard like here, come here. All the nectar pollen is this way. Bee pollinated flowers tend to have open or tubular flowers with a landing platform so they can land while they feed. A lot of have sticky pollen that's very rich. This is a major food source, plentiful nectar, things like that.
Ken Johnson: 35:20So you look at those, and you can predict what type of of insects or if it's wind pollinated or if it's a bird, bat, what have you, pollinated. There is some I don't know about controversy, but some arguments that some of these don't go far enough. So there's a a paper that I haven't gotten all the way through. Pollination syndromes in the twenty first century, where do we stand? Where may we go?
Ken Johnson: 35:50And they kinda outlined some of the short they call them shortfalls, for, these pollinator syndromes. So it's oversimplification of complex plant animal interactions. So we're we're lumping everything together regardless of how efficient it is at pollinating a plant. So, it is one issue. Sometimes they only focus on specialized systems.
Ken Johnson: 36:19They use we use this information to predict what's kinda pollinated, but we don't necessarily follow that up with observations as to whether that's happening. A lot of it's just these are really too general, too broad, and not necessarily backed up with a whole lot of a lot of research. But I think it is still a good a good predictor. And, like, if you're planning a garden, you know, you're you're designing a a native plant garden that you wanna attract pollinators to, looking at these different flower types and trying to just provide that diversity of flower type. Again, it's gonna draw on a more diverse group of of insects and pollinators and stuff.
Ken Johnson: 37:00I will say there is there is one kind of popular famous classic example, whatever you wanna call it, of Darwin's Orchid. So this was a orchid, that Charles Darwin predicted there was a it's got a really long, nectar spur on it. So he predicted that there was a moth that is gonna have a really long proboscis or tongue. It's gonna be able to pollinate it. At that time, that insect was not known, but that insect was discovered decades after his death.
Ken Johnson: 37:29So he kinda predict based on what that flower looked like, he predicted that there was that this particular insect that nobody knew about would be the pollinator in it. It did actually exist. So that's kind of the the classic example of of how this how these work and how you can use that to predict stuff.
Emily Swihart: 37:51I do love that, the Darwin Orchid Store. Like, I just think that that just shows human brilliance. You know? Like, you can observe things. You can make predictions, and I love that that that kind of panned out.
Emily Swihart: 38:03Sometimes it doesn't, but I love that that one did. Also, I have a pollinator color guide hanging right here, and Ken, I rely very heavily on it. I'm kidding. It's nuance. So, like, I you know, you said, like, what that paper was articulating about, this is an oversimplification, and we like to you know, these are, like, their specialized systems that, like, require more nuance.
Emily Swihart: 38:29And then I think you said, these are predictive. There's not always a lot of research to back them up. But I'm like, this is just like the story of the plant world still today, right, or the natural world.
Ken Johnson: 38:41That's why we're calling it a rule of thumb.
Emily Swihart: 38:43Yeah. Yes. We really like oversimplification because these are complex. When I say these, I mean, like, everything. Right?
Emily Swihart: 38:52Like, soil biology or, like, literally all of it. They're complicated systems. And so why wouldn't we simp try to overly simplify pollinators and insects as well?
Ken Johnson: 39:06Yeah. I mean, I've got, you know, pollinator presentations where, you know, I talk about this, and half the pictures I use that I've taken, the insects are visiting flowers that do not match the syndrome that they're Yeah. That they're kinda matched with. And and again, just because you see an insect on a flower, you know, how much pollination are they actually doing? They may not be all that efficient, so it doesn't really Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 39:29Matter. But they're on that flower, so they get lumped into that that syndrome sometimes. That's I don't This is a this is probably a podcast episode in itself, getting into all the the nuance and stuff.
Emily Swihart: 39:43Mhmm. Yep. I appreciate your guide, though, because people do want to help. They do want to plant plants for, you know, pollinator support. And so having kinda like those those floral guides and that diversification of, you know, form and color and size and is is useful.
Emily Swihart: 40:02So thanks. So this next one we're gonna touch on is a proportion, rule of thumb that we were mildly familiar with, and then we started diving into it. And there's kind of a couple different applications for it. And so, it's a seventy thirty rule. And, again, it's for it's a it's for helping to guide, at least when I was looking into it, most practically from a design standpoint for the landscape.
Emily Swihart: 40:34So trying to help guide, plant choice or design choices so that we have, a structured design, a structured landscape in the end, or, I suppose you could translate this into other design, you know, artistic explorations. But there's structure complemented by whimsy, more, like, loose forms, some more, you know, less static elements. So what does this look like? Well, in design, it might be you've got, you know, 70% plants that are are shrubs, that are are predictable form, that are, you know, uniting colors and and kinda tying all together. And then you've got 30%, and you just throw in wild shapes or you throw, you know, kind of a a mix in there.
Emily Swihart: 41:29Spontaneity is incorporated into the design. We we also kinda discovered this with plant palette. So it can also be applied to it's been recommended in different forms. Doug Tallamy is is one of the most well known, I think he's credited with it, but I'm sure he would tell you, and I'm guessing he's not the first one to recommend this balance of seventythirty in your native to non native plant selection criteria. So if you have 70% native plants, you are going to be providing a high level of ecological services to pollinators and other creatures in the landscape, birds, mammals, you know, that are gonna be using our landscape.
Emily Swihart: 42:20With 70%, you can achieve a solid ecological function. And 30%, you can have some fun. You can incorporate your roses. You could do your peonies. You could do your nonnatives that maybe are not providing the ecological benefit but are incorporated into the garden in a smaller quantity so that it's, you know, still gonna be able to function as habitat.
Emily Swihart: 42:41So I heard I was reading it was described as it prevents equal weight chaos. And I kind of liked that term because that can occur when you got fifty fifty. You know, if we want if we're trying to be very equal in design or in in, you know, native to non native plant distribution. It almost kinda, it becomes kinda chaotic either visually or from a habitat standpoint where there's not enough natives maybe to support, you know, the maximum level of of populations for animals. Or you're trying to have it all look the same, but nothing really looks like it's balanced because it's it's fifty fifty.
Emily Swihart: 43:28So seventy thirty might be a good rule of thumb for design applications or plant selection. There were other I haven't found one that was, for your financial portfolio. This is not the podcast to get financial advice from. So I just saw that pop up, and I immediately closed that window. But I think that there's other applications for this ratio in life.
Ken Johnson: 43:52So another, like, gardening related one was seventy thirty reliability rule. It's not pop up a couple times. So 70% of the plants you plant are gonna be proven, plants that you that you know are gonna do well, and 30% of your experimental, try something new type. So I don't know. You know, probably maybe not the best rule for your perennial garden, because it's gonna be a lot of work, maybe more of the vegetable garden.
Ken Johnson: 44:16So you're 70% tried and true. So if you grow every year, you know it's gonna do well, and 30% of your stuff is your I'm gonna try this because I can type stuff. My Yeah. Your car issues probably flipped on that. But
Emily Swihart: 44:31I know I've been doing it wrong. No. I like that's a that's a good one. I haven't actually ever applied that to to the strategy for planting the vegetable garden, but I do like that. That's a good guide.
Emily Swihart: 44:44I'm gonna tell my husband that and be like, honey, this is the 30%.
Ken Johnson: 44:48Yes. Yeah. I I would do the seventy thirty for experimental stuff with your annuals.
Emily Swihart: 44:54Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 44:54Maybe not your perennials, but you've got years invested just to find out if it's gonna work or not.
Emily Swihart: 44:59Yes. Yeah. I but also to each their own. Like, some of our, you know, viewers and listeners and some of us are pretty adventuresome. So, you know, that kind of could be could be fun too.
Emily Swihart: 45:13Don't don't tell people what to do, Ken. You
Ken Johnson: 45:19do you. Yeah. I I would caution about going all in on the new stuff on perennials. We'll put it that
Emily Swihart: 45:26way. Yeah. Same. Okay. We have one more, and it's watering related.
Emily Swihart: 45:34So one inch of water per week. What does that mean? Why why one inch?
Ken Johnson: 45:41Yes. That's that's a recommendation. I think I think we I think I think I we've all probably given it over time, at least in Illinois. And the idea is that typically when or rule of thumb is plants need about an inch of water, whether that's through rain or irrigation per week during the growing season, particularly the summer in order to kinda thrive survive for sure, maybe thrive, but it just kinda depends. So with this, a lot of the times at this, we're looking at, like, the evapotranspiration rates.
Ken Johnson: 46:12So this, we're looking at the evaporation of water from the soil as well as transfer transpiration from plant leaves. So how much water is leaving the plants in the soil, into the atmosphere, and we're basically, we're trying to replace that so plants don't get water stressed. You know, with and I think under moderate temperatures, conditions, things like that, yeah, that inch of water per week, will hold for for a lot of things, our turf, a lot of ornamentals or vegetables. But, I get kinda like with our house plants, that's gonna vary depending on the crop or the plant we're trying to grow, the time of year, you know, when it's 90 plus degrees outside and especially which doesn't really happen very often in Illinois. We don't have a lot of humidity.
Ken Johnson: 47:00We're getting a lot of evaporation and transpiration. We're probably gonna need to add more water, and we've had drought, you know, kinda building up over time. There's not all that moisture in the soil plants can draw from, so we're probably gonna have to be watering a little more. We think about fruits and vegetables, you know, plants that are producing fruit when they're sizing up, or even things like corn. When those things are sizing up, we wanna have plenty of water for those because a lot of they're pumping a lot of water into that stuff.
Ken Johnson: 47:31So we prob we may need more than an inch of water, you know, when our tomatoes you think about tomato, there's a lot of water in there. May need more than an inch of water per week in order to get those really to size up, properly. So and and again, it's a good general rule of thumb, but depending on on the environmental conditions, the plants, we may need to do more than a inch more than an inch of water per week. You may think about newly planted trees. We're probably giving them more than that as we're getting them established.
Ken Johnson: 48:04General rule, but
Emily Swihart: 48:07Yes.
Ken Johnson: 48:07May need more. May need less too.
Emily Swihart: 48:11Yeah. And what you're talking about are generally the smaller sized plants in our landscape, annuals, maybe some of the smaller less no. I'll just say smaller sized, perennials. Where I'm going with this is our trees usually need more than that. So kind of a rule of thumb for newly planted trees in particular, but this goes for established trees too, especially for having a a particularly dry spell, is between five and and ten gallons of water per week per inch caliper.
Emily Swihart: 48:49So there's some measurements you're gonna need to take or I kinda know your, the size of your, trees the tree trunk diameter at approximately, like, you know, shoulder height. It varies depending on the size of the human measuring it, but that can give you a rough estimate. So approximately five to 10 gallons of water, on the tree. And what we wanna do with, all these waterings is we wanna make sure that water gets into the soil. So one of the adages is to water deeply into the soil.
Emily Swihart: 49:24So what that means is we just want that water just to percolate down into where the root systems are. And so for trees, that's generally between six and eighteen inches below the soil surface. So you put the water on slowly and let it kinda soak into, that soil profile so it's not running off. It's not just soaking into the top layer, you know, a couple inches where it might be watering your perennials that you have growing under your tree or the turf grass, god forbid, that we have growing underneath our tree. Ideally, we wouldn't have turf grass or perennials growing under our tree, but, you know, we want that water to kinda get through that top layer of soil and down into kinda where those tree roots are.
Emily Swihart: 50:05And so
Ken Johnson: 50:07And if if we're constantly watering shallow, that's where a lot of the roots will start developing. Yeah. And we wanna we want those roots as plants get established. You know, we talk about this with turf grass. You water it shallow, but then you wanna water deeply to drive those roots down so they get deeper down in the soil.
Ken Johnson: 50:25And they can tolerate some of that those periods where it dries out a little bit.
Emily Swihart: 50:30Yep. Yep. Alright. Well, Ken, that was a lot of good information. I'm not doing the ending.
Emily Swihart: 50:41You do the ending. I was I was going to say let's see. Those were a lot of really good rules of thumbs. I liked kinda going through those. We haven't done kinda much of this lately.
Emily Swihart: 50:52Kind of the q and a vibe, but with a different different angle. So I I enjoyed that. Thanks.
Ken Johnson: 50:59That's so good. Yes. If people think of any others like we mentioned at the beginning, put them in the chat or not the chat, in the comments if you have what you're listening to. Ask a comment section or email us, and maybe we'll do some more down the road.
Emily Swihart: 51:13I think that'd be fun.
Ken Johnson: 51:16This is all messed up since Chris is in here.
Emily Swihart: 51:18I know. Shame on him for leaving us to our own devices.
Ken Johnson: 51:27So GoodGrowing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Emily Swihart. Thank you, Emily, for hopping on today and talking about some of these rules of thumb.
Emily Swihart: 51:40Oh, it's my pleasure, Ken. It's always fun to to catch up. Then, like I said, these were fun. This is, you know, kind of a different twist that we would do for for going through different snippets of information. I like when we can find a way to address something, you know, like, pull together some different different things we wanna talk about and make a whole podcast out of it.
Emily Swihart: 52:02So appreciate it. And I think we should do this again next week.
Ken Johnson: 52:08Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're gonna have Jack Schooley on who is a new hort educator with U of I Extension. We're gonna talk to him about orchids. So get all your orchid growing questions answered, hopefully. I know I've got a whole lot because I have not been very successful over the years, probably due to lack of care.
Ken Johnson: 52:30Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you're watching on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.
Disembodied voice: 52:42University of Illinois Extension.
Ken Johnson: 52:48We're cut that out. Okay.
Emily Swihart: 52:51Well, that's fine. Okay. That's I'm fine with that.
Ken Johnson: 52:53I don't know. Chaos.
Emily Swihart: 52:55This is our Midwestern chaos.
Ken Johnson: 52:57Lots lots of blooper reels here.
Emily Swihart: 53:02This will teach him to go on vacation with this. See? Off the rails.