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. It is a year in review. We are starting 2025, but we gotta look back at 2024, see how things went. I mean, that's what all the other online personality people seem to be doing at this time of year, so why not follow suit?

And you know I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by Horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. 2024 already seems like it was 2 or 3 years ago.

I know. Is it it yeah. It's been 2025 for at least 4 months. So, as we record this on January 7th, it's been a it's been a while. Oh, man.

Now how was your your holiday break? I guess start by that. I haven't seen you for a couple weeks.

It was good. Yeah. Didn't get a whole lot accomplished, but sometimes that's a good thing. It's It's it's good to be back. It's good

to be back, to have, like, a routine, know what day of the week it is.

Yes. There were there was a while there, but I had no idea what day it was anymore.

Yes. What day is it? Are we eating lunch, breakfast, or dinner right now? I don't know what's happening. Yeah.

It turns out I had a beer for breakfast that I was confused. But, so, yeah, I I actually, this is, like, my my kind of first ish day back at least in the office. Same for you, Ken?

Yep. 1st first day back in the office. First time I've had the alarm set in couple weeks.

Yeah. Yeah. Not going to bed at midnight, have to go to bed at regular time, and waking up early. Man, that retirement sure does sound nice right now as we sit here mid career. Some Many more decades ahead of us.

So, yeah, yeah, what we're we're gonna be talking our year in review. We're gonna talk about 2024. I guess listeners, viewers before the show, just know that Ken and I had to do a lot of memory jogging before this. We're I'm quite worn out from all of that, that effort of trying to remember what the heck we did. Seems like things happened so long ago.

I don't know. Ken, you're, like, saying, like, I can't believe this was a year ago. I thought this was 2 years ago or or longer.

Yeah. It's it's it's funny how time works sometimes. Sometimes it seems like it's forever ago. Sometimes it seems like it was yesterday. Yeah.

And sometimes both at the same time.

Exactly. Yes. That's how it can sometimes feel like, you know, with with kids and family and, yeah, some of those some of those things in life. But oh, so we used, good old analytics to help us, today. So we have our our kinda like our top 3 podcast, that that really seemed to resound with everybody from 2024.

And we broken them into 2 categories because they were different. One category for our YouTube audience and then another category for our audio listening audience, out there because they were different sets of episodes out there for each group. So, again, I guess, should we go with with video number 3? What what was, what was the 3rd favorite video of last year?

So this is of the stuff we put out last year, not every video we've done. Correct.

Yes. Yes. This We are

24. We're

right between the the January December of 2024.

So that was more than monarchs. So the other other insects you can find on milkweed, that milkweed community.

And that was a garden bite that you did. And I guess, you maybe if you, by chance, just now listening to us for the first time, we do, like, full episodes where sometimes we'll interview someone. So we'll just take a topic, and we'll just dive deep into it. But then sometimes, some weeks, you know, I gotta go, sit on a beach somewhere, or, you know, go on a cruise, you know, because I'm living it up in this world. And Ken's here, and he's gotta do this garden bite episode.

And so that week, it was just Ken, and he did this More Than Monarchs on milkweed, and that really resounded with folks. And I've always thought milkweed is this fascinating little ecosystem of a plant that has so much happening on it. If you can just take time to sit there and watch, you know, a couple of milkweed plants, you'll see just all manner of things occurring on it.

Yeah. And then mil and monarchs aren't even the only specialists on milkweed. You've got the tussock moth, beetles, and and true bugs and stuff that feed exclusive almost exclusively, if not exclusively, on milkweed. So, you know, we've we've kinda picked the monarch because it's, you know, the migration is the poster child for milkweeds. But there's a lot of other stuff you can find on there too.

And it's not bad to have them on there. They're not they're not gonna hurt the the monarchs. And though there's plenty of food for everybody.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's there's plenty of food, a lot going on on there. I think the main question a lot of people have with those other bugs or the, the oleander aphids or or aphids in general that seem to just sort of take over some of those older milkweed plants, and you get into what to do about that in in your podcast there.

Yes. Spoiler. Just wash them off.

Oh, man. Ken, gotta make them gotta make them click on the link, which will include links to these, in the show notes below if you wanna listen to them all. But but, yeah, Ken, you gotta gotta get those hits up. Those ad revenue, which we don't get, by the way, folks. We don't we don't do that.

So whatever ads they're showing you during this is nothing that we're have any part of. We're just we're just here to have fun. So our the second most favorite video from last year was plants that we would not plant again. And this one kind of surprised me that people enjoyed this. It was me, you, and Emily, and we sort of just sat around and complained about plants for an hour.

And people really liked it for some reason, and but that's good because it's pretty easy to sit around and just complain about the failures that we've had in our gardening world experience. So, yeah, I I thought it was a very fun episode to do. It was very easy for us to to do and talk about. So, yeah, the plants that we would not plant again, check it out. I I I think it's worth a listen.

I think, yeah, on stuff like that, you know, maybe it validates your feelings towards a plant. I mean, it makes it makes it feel like you're not the only person that doesn't like a particular plant for whatever reason.

And but sometimes things happen. Like, when Emily says she's she's not a a fan of, like, mountain mint, then the perennial plan of the year just so happens to be mountain mint. You know? They must have heard that and then like, you know what? No.

We're gonna make that the plan of the year for 2025. So, so sometimes it can validate it. Are there times you can disagree? And I I think some folks disagreed with us. We even kind of complained a little bit about milkweed too in that episode too.

So you can have plants, you can like plants, and you can still complain and be annoyed by certain plants. It's all happens in this big old sphere of gardening.

Yes. It's not black and white. Shades of gray.

Definitely is. Yes. More than 50 too. So yeah. Well, Ken, our our number one video, what what did people like watching the most?

So the the most viewed was plant problems we are seeing in 2024. And we do do we do that? Is that July, August? We did that. So just basically talking about, I guess, the more common plant problems we're seeing in landscapes or hearing about, people coming into offices or contacting us with questions.

So kinda getting everybody up to date on on what's going on.

Yeah. We're just sort of speaking from I mean, it was a little bit just like, yeah, as Ken mentioned, like, our experience sort of off the cuff. Like, you know, this seems to be occurring more and more this year. I think for me, it was like oak wilt. Just phone calls about, oaks declining, and and we're just seeing more and more of stuff like that.

And but it's really hard to talk about some some of those particular diseases, and I'm sure we covered this even in in that episode where, you know, for me to say this is oak wilt really would necessitate, like, a lab analysis saying you have oak wilt. Now there are some symptoms, especially when we're dealing with the red oak group, like, hey. If this oak tree dies within a month or 2 of first noticing symptoms, odds are pretty good. It's like a oak wilt, disease that's infected it. But, yeah, without a lab diagnosis to confirm it, it's it's hard.

But

Yeah. For me, Magnolia scale. I think I got more questions last year about that than I had the the 10 years previous. So it just seemed to explode. And, like, in Jacksonville, hearing from other people too seemed to be quite prevalent last year.

Yeah. That that blew up. It's interesting these pest population cycles, how they occur, with scale being the one last year. There was bagworms. Was it 2 years, maybe 3 years ago?

I strip everywhere, at least around the Macomb area. All these things were covered in bagworms. There were bagworms on on on plants you would have never seen them before. You know, we I I think, even it was it 2 years ago, me and Yukin were at Iowa State Fair, and we're finding, like, bagworms. They had had built their, little cocoons along this fence area.

There's a plant that they're using as the source material, but there's, like, bagworms everywhere. And you just started you just had a great old time pulling those bags off, pulling out the little caterpillars, and taking pictures of them.

I got I got interesting hobbies.

Yes. It's yes. Invite Ken to a dinner party, preferably one outside where there's lots of insects. It'll be a lot of fun.

Better everybody will leave and

I'll lose her out of tight. Oh, man. Well, so those are top 3 videos. What about our audio, for our audio listening audience? This is is it similar, but but a shift in things.

So, Ken, what was our our number 3, our 3rd favorite audio only podcast.

This was the native grasses in the prairie, Andrew Yard. So we had, Aaron Garrett on for this. So just talking about some of the different, prairie grasses that do well in in home landscapes. Maybe not your your big bluestem and and stuff like that, but smaller stuff like little bluestem and dropseed and and stuff like that. So ways we can incorporate those into our landscapes.

Mhmm. And

that that was a fun one. I I enjoyed speaking with Aaron about that that, and we had a really good conversation also. I think about buffalo grass, and kind of how using that in in the Illinois landscape, how it's really more of a western species, but you're seeing it pop up more and more in kind of this kind of the more trendy, type applications for it. People wanted to be sustainable. People wanted to use native plants, but still needing to have maybe a turf like surface within their yard.

So people look exploring buffalo grass, which I guess and then we described in in that podcast, and at least in my experience, it doesn't do terrible, but it doesn't do great here in Illinois. It's sort of just in the middle. Kind of gets overtaken by cool season grasses, and then sort of it's still there, but it's just growing in within the the fabric of the lawn.

Grow nimble well. It grows everywhere.

Yeah. I'm growing that not on purpose.

But Me too. That's most of my yard now.

Yeah. I'm just embracing it. It it doesn't look too bad, you know, when it's green, but right now, it's not green. Definitely not green as a warm season plant. But, yeah, nimblewill.

Nimblewill is probably one of the top weedy grass questions I get, these days. It's it's about nimblewill. There's there's another one, though. Actually, I did spy this question in my inbox. I haven't gotten to it yet over the break.

Somebody took a picture of of their lawn. They wanna know what's wrong with it. So, 1, I saw nimblewill in there. 2 is tall fescue, the pasture type, not the turf type tall fescue. So they're like, what's wrong with my lawn?

Like, well, oh, where do we start? So but, you just reminded me, Ken, of my question I need

to get to. Some grazing animals.

That's right. Well, our audio listening audience also really enjoyed, our sit down interview with doctor Andy Davis with University of Georgia who discussed some of that monarch butterfly monarch butterfly science. So some of the research that he has done to show that the monarch butterfly is actually doing pretty good, at least during the growing season or the summer months in, kinda the the US and Canada. Their population levels can can seemingly rebound from what happens in during that that fall and winter migration, down to Mexico. So, yeah, I I learned a lot about that podcast, and and I think the main takeaway from that is just ask questions.

You know? When you read something and it really seems to line up with your way of thinking, like, oh, yeah. I want more native plants and I because I wanna save the monarch. And this article says the monarch is endangered. Read.

Try to find other viewpoints. Try to find that research based data. We're seeing, you know, a lot of organizations kind of, like, easing off on some of that save the monarch. Tony, even Xerxes is kinda like, oh, maybe we need to be careful on rearing monarchs indoors because we might be introducing genetics that shouldn't be in the gene pool. Because as Andy said in that episode, caterpillars, Fitch monarchs are part of that that group, are food for other animals.

And so the, you know, survival of the fittest, you know, they they it is a struggle for them for a reason to become an adult.

Yeah. You may have to have them back on depending on the endangered species listing, wanting them to be listed as threatened, and get some views on that. So the what is the fish and wildlife? So they so they proposed listing them as threatened. So it's going through the public comment period right now, so it's not official.

Mhmm. But listing them as as threatened, when was this? This was in December.

December 13th, I believe, is when they made the announcement.

And then listing parts of California's critical habitat. Because it was the stat they gave. So today, eastern migratory population is estimated to have declined by approximately 80%. The western migratory population has declined by more than 95% since the 19 eighties. Putting the western population at a greater than 99% chance of being of extinction by 2080.

For the eastern population, 56 to 74% chance of being extinct by 2080 according to their, status assessment. So that's what's kinda prompting that that friend listening. Endangered would be a whole another can of worms where it's illegal to to kill them or or touch them and all that stuff. So threatened is a little less it's got a little more wiggle room on how they kinda regulate that. That's that's in combat.

That's not official yet.

And I was I was speaking with a US Fish and Wildlife, person, and they, were at this event to specifically address questions that people might have about this. And they really shed quite a bit of light on this. You know? So this is more complicated than what you would typically find with most endangered species declarations because and with most endangered species, you have a plant, you have an animal, you have a fungus, you have something, and they're in this one localized area. And you are trying to protect that particular spot.

But monarch butterflies, they're everywhere. They're across all of North America. And, you know, they just described it as very complicated. And so I think one of the steps that they're taking this year is is they're trying to gather more data with that comma period. I think there's some citizen science opportunities that might come along with this as they try to collect additional data across North America.

So we probably need EPSO to need to figure out what the US Fish and Wildlife are planning to do for this coming year? Because because, yeah, there's I I there's there's a lot to know. And as as doctor Davis said, just check and verify sources. And yeah. And he was even said, yeah.

Check check my data. And and he said, if you watch that episode, we had a few people reach out to us and, like, ask, you know, questions. And, just reach out to doctor Davis. He will send you all of his data and sources. So, just encourage that.

Yes.

Alright. And then our our top audio episode from last year was growing perennial vegetables, asparagus, rhubarb, and more. So I'll say for our garden, we did plant asparagus last year. So didn't have any any to harvest this this year. Maybe a little bit next year, but in 2 years or year after next.

No. Next year. Yeah. Next year. It's 2025 now.

So last year, we didn't harvest any. This year, we'll harvest a little bit maybe. And then next year, the zone will kinda get rocking and rolling with asparagus.

Well, that that's exciting. I guess asparagus is a is a fun, spring vegetable, good perennial. Do you know what type that you put in the ground?

It was purple. One of the purple ones.

Okay. Yeah. Say no more. Purple asparagus. I do recall having a just a wonderful time at a farmer's place.

So he grazed his sheep in this field where he also grew asparagus. And he rotated the sheep off while the asparagus spears came up, but he would rotate sheep back in. It was a very interesting system, and he had purple asparagus. And, this is many years ago. And he said, you know what?

This is the best asparagus you'll ever taste. Pick a piece just pick a spear and eat it. I'm, like, you can eat asparagus without steaming it or baking it or boiling it? He's, like, yeah. You can eat it raw.

So I ate it. It was delicious. I love asparagus raw now. So it's one of my favorite things is while you're out there working, just pick an asparagus spirit. Now I'm now I wanna come over to your house, Ken, and have some purple asparagus this year.

Yeah. I'll let you know when it's ready.

Okay. I'll be there. I'll I'll bring I'll I'll weed your garden. I'll water whatever you need me to do. I mean, so that's what people really enjoyed listening and watching, but what episodes did we enjoy making?

I I will say they they were all fun. I I did especially like complaining about plants, you know, again restating that. But probably one thing that I really liked, my favorite episode was the old timey garden remedy episode that we did, particularly because I had a tab open on my Internet browser. And if if you see my Internet browser, there's currently, like, 20 tabs. Ken's is worse.

Believe me, folks.

That's amateur.

I know. Ken's is way worse. He's got yeah. He's got they're, like, stacked up for him. I don't know how you do it, but I had this tab open for this old article, the from Landscape Architecture Magazine about using dynamite in the landscape.

And I was just like, oh, I can't wait to throw this in the podcast somewhere. And I finally got the opportunity to do that in that episode. So and then I closed the tab about a week later. I waited a week because it's been there for so long. You know?

So I had to keep it up for a little bit. But I finally got to close that tab, and share over that that idea of using dynamite in the landscape, which was more common than one would think before there was modern machinery.

Yes. I I did enjoy the the dynamite. Just, you know, even, like, the experiments I did with the varying amounts and and what it'll do. And a small part of me wants to replicate that to see if they it's true or not.

We need to have some kind of police person with us when we do that. Like, when they yeah. When they did that in, like, Mythbusters, they always had someone from their the police department had to show up to when they're worried with explosives. So, I don't I guess I'll I'll try to ask some cop friends. I don't know.

I don't really know any, but I can make cop friends. It's always good to have one. Yeah. Let's see if we can get someone to help us with some ex dynamite.

Let's do it. Get the get the nitrogen from it too.

There you go. Yeah. That was a great side benefit of dynamite is all that nitrogen, it just into the ground.

Alright. So I think I think my favorite was cicadas, the the cooking and stuff. So Mhmm. It's been on it's been on the bucket list for a while and get to check that one off. So didn't didn't lose any browser tabs over it, but I did.

Good to good to get to cross

off the bucket list. Browser tabs.

This is true. We got to use some some cookbooks I've accumulated over the years finally and stuff. So Mhmm. It was it was good.

Yeah. I think you started talking about 20 24 cicadas in, like, 2020, maybe even 2019. I there there was an episode we had about them, oh, many years ago and oh, many, you know, a handful. But, and you showed me those cookbooks. And so, yeah, I'm glad we finally put those cookbooks to use.

That was a great episode where we had, Kristen Bogdanis come down. She's our nutrition wellness educator. She had put together some, like, good recipes. Some, some good that that incorporated using cicadas or insects. And, you know, she had really had stated from the get go, like, hey.

You know, people use insects or eat insects all over the planet. You know, it it's it might be weird for us here in the US, but it's not weird for a lot of other people in other countries around the world. I don't want this to be a fear factor thing. I want this to be, like, real life, you know, because this is real life for a lot of people. So that was a good episode.

And we had doctor Casey Athey come in to talk about insects. It was it was a lot of fun. So if folks wanna see us preparing, making, creating, and then eating, different cicada themed dishes. Check it out.

Still have a gallon bag in my freezer of cicadas.

It's just I'm telling you, Ken. State Fair, Illinois, we will make a killing. It'll be the snack of the year. Well, I would say probably a a very memorable part of 2024 is our effort we did with with Emily as well, our grow along. And the grow along really got, at least I'll speak from my behalf, really got me motivated to do a little bit better gardening at my own house.

I had had a spot set aside for a while. It was lawn turf grass, and I'm like, how does this be a good spot for a vegetable garden? And we killed it all off last year. This is where we planted our grow along. And so, yeah, if you're just becoming aware of what the grow along is, we had a little effort where if you signed up, we sent you seeds.

We grew the same seeds at our own house, different plants, crops, cucumbers, okra. Let's see. We had acorn squash, and, old man. What else we have? We had the black eyed runner bean.

Runner

bee. Southern bee.

Mhmm. And, yeah, we just we grew we grew these right along, and we we we gathered data, you know, people's impressions of them, how it how it grew in their own yard and garden. And so the grow along, I really gardened last year. Like I tried to do as good a job as I could. And so I and we had a lot of harvest.

Like we ate from our garden quite a bit last year. Whether it's from the Grow Along, or some of the other things that we grew. Grow Along really got me motivated. And it was really fun to see what other people did in their own yard and their other creative ways of how they grew their particular crops.

Yes. Did you mention lemon and cucumber? That's another one we hear.

No. We didn't. I still have there's lemon and cucumber. I see it all over the place. It's in the woods.

It's everywhere, wherever my kids threw it. And it'll we'll see if it grows next year.

Yeah. Yep. That one was fun. Yeah. Some some different things maybe out of the ordinary for a lot of people.

Stuff's in. We are planning on doing it this year. So

That's right.

We need to meet Stay tuned. And get that figured out.

Yeah. Yeah. We got a we have a list that we need to whittle down to be more manageable probably, but it will include vegetables and flowers in 2025.

What's another one? Poinsettia. The trial was fun going in and seeing all the all of that. So that was the last one we did in December. Yeah.

So going to Columbia, Illinois to the the NG Hymos greenhouse, their poinsettia trials. So 200 some varieties of poinsettias. I think I saw a video. They said they had, what, 17,000 plants there. Every color you can imagine for poinsettias.

And then some you probably never would have thought of. Mhmm. From your traditional reds to pinks to marbled, yellow, white, green, orange, peach. You name it. It was there.

It it was incredible. There you will never see so many poinsettias in your life, and by the end of it, you're like, man, I think I could go without a poinsettia for a little bit. But then, Ken, like, it was, like, stuck in our brains, these poinsettias. You would text me, like, check this out. You know?

You sent me that text message from your dentist office. He's like, it's a marbled one. Like, yes. And so you're just like now we're just like spotting them all over the place. These, like, different types of poinsettias out there.

You know, everyone's like, you got red ones. No. There's way more than that.

And even cut flowers. Use them for cut flowers and stuff. So it's not just for your tabletop or whatever decorations. It's cut flowers and and other things too.

Yep. They're they're talking about breeding them for using other seasons from the fall poinsettia, the spring poinsettia. The the seems like poinsettia is going to have a a revolution here. It's not going to just be in December anymore. Because as we described in that show, this is one of the top selling annual plants in the world, and you only sell it one practically 1 month out of the year.

You know, mid November to mid December, maybe up to Christmas, but, you know, that's that's the window, and it makes 1,000,000,000 of dollars every year. So they wanna extend that window, of course. Oh, well, so there was also the book episode. And I guess I like that one because we were able to include a lot of of our fellow educators with that one, which was inspired by a listener. So if you wanna see a particular episode in 2025, feel free.

Send that suggestion to us. But it it got us really to get involved with some of our other educators, and we interviewed them on the spot. Some of them literally were not prepared for us to walk up and can put a microphone in their face and say, what's your favorite gardening book? But that was a fun one. I really enjoyed that one.

And we talked for, like, an hour and a half. More than that, I think. It was it was a long episode. So, apparently, we like books.

Yes. I've got a new all kinds of new books to read now. Munch's done reading another book, so we'll have to talk about that again next Oh. For this December.

Yep. I'll

do that part 2.

Might just be our annual book book, you know, podcast where we we go through some of the books that we we read in that year. That would be a fun one. I'm barely moving through my mosquito book.

It's

I it is it's very dense. It's very, very dense. So I gotta I gotta go backwards a few pages before I go forward 1 page. And, boy, it's really interesting. I keep I keep using that information that I'm learning about mosquitoes and malaria throughout my other work that I'm doing because that topic has touched so much in the history of the human species.

So it's it's very fascinating. I highly recommend it even though I'm only on page, like, 80 out of 400 some. So I'll get there.

You guys till December.

I know. I don't know. I might need longer.

I think the last one we had on our list, right, yes, was the toothache plant.

So I

think I think we knew what we were getting into. Emily? Yes. Maybe maybe not

somebody's gonna do that. She did not know. No. I I have had tried toothache plant many times, but Ken, you supplied us with these. These were grown in in your own yard.

Correct?

Yes. Still have the plant. It's probably not gonna make it much longer, but we tried to overwinter it, but I don't think it's gonna make it.

Did you start that from seed?

Yes.

Okay. I remember those seeds being teeny tiny. Like, they're like the size of a flea. Like, they're they're they're tiny.

Not terribly large.

Were they difficult? Did you just, like, pour them into, like, a tray and just say grow? Or did you even try to separate them a little?

Trying to think what we did.

Go back in that that way back machine of your mind.

I would say we just got sprinkled some, and I don't think we had terribly good germination. But obviously, we had enough to we had couple pots with it in there. So

Mhmm. Well, it it is a fun episode. If you wanna see us eat toothache, plant just the the flower heads, which give you this tingling, numbing sensation. It wasn't as bad. I've had I probably had a one worse from when I tried it from the the WIU, research fields they had.

They just had it growing for fun. The students planted. That one almost hurt. It you're you're tingled so hard, and then you're, like, literally, you just started drooling all over yourself. But, hey, if you wanna see us, have a good time.

And then, yeah, Emily realized what was in store for her. That was it was a good fun episode.

See, we did warn her ahead of time, but being warned and experiencing it are 2 different things.

Yeah. It makes me I wanna grow the plant. I wanna grow it. I wanna do it again. I yeah.

It it it's just kinda fun, little experience.

If you're gonna grow it, make sure you water it well. That was Mhmm. That was my mistake. To not to not water it nearly as well as it it should have been.

Well, it worked. So whatever you did, it was still worked. Well, Ken, I guess as we bring everything to a close, you know, we're we're gonna close the book on 2024, even as we boldly trudge into 2025. Do you kinda have any lessons that you learned from the garden last year? Like, you know, how how did things go?

What was your experience, that you could share and maybe impart on your future self going into 2025?

If you're a toothache plant, water it well.

Okay. Good lesson. Writing that one down.

Let's see here. For for a vegetable garden, we tried we got a soil blocker, so we're trying a soil blocking this year, or I guess last year now. And we did artichoke and cardoon, which are similar. There's artichokes you're getting in the flowers, cardoons, you're harvesting them for their for that midrib. You blanch them and stuff first.

I I intend to do the cardoon just as an ornamental. But with the soil block, you can't really put the label into it. So we just bought them water and those labels got mixed up. So the artichoke that was supposed to go in the garden, which stays much smaller than the cardoon, ended up in the front yard in the cardoon, ended up in the vegetable garden, and got rather large, ate, a good chunk of the garden. So to figure out a way to label that stuff better.

But it's it's so fun. We had nice artichoke flowers in the front yard. Those didn't really develop until shortly before frost. I think again, water. Well, last year last summer being so dry at times, didn't do the best job of keeping up with watering.

But in the front yard, we're kind of a survival of the fittest. We don't water the the flower beds and stuff out there as much, as we do vegetable garden.

So I will be over also as I sample your asparagus, setting up an automatic irrigation system.

So we gotta we gotta get the the hose off the spigot and fuse down there, and I couldn't get it off.

I we have an episode about that, Ken. I don't know. I think I wrote an article about that.

I did. I referenced it, and then it got really cold, and I didn't get it off. He had a pipe wrench trying to get it off in the hole. Oh, don't do that. We're not gonna do this anymore.

This is gonna stay till spring, and I'll just cut it off.

Yep. Yep. I have used a pipe wrench and instead of turning the the hose, it turned the copper pipe on the interior wall and split that open. That was a mess. So just don't do that.

Just don't don't put too much to work on it.

Yeah. One of those speakers started moving. I'm like, alright. We're done. Yeah.

Let's go downstairs and make sure that basement's not flooded. So it's still sitting out there buried under snow now. But

Well

come soon

as always come off. Always next year, Ken. And right now it is next year. So oh. Well, I I would say lessons learned from my garden in 2024 are, you can never come up with enough recipes for cucumbers.

Those lemon cukes were prolific, and we did everything. Everything you could think of with cucumbers. And then finally, I just said, kids, these things are about baseball size, Go to town. You know, they would throw them in the air and hit them with a bat. I had a good time with a couple of them.

We're just we ran out, and take them to a food pantry. You know, find neighbors with open windows you can throw them in. And so share it. Hit them with a baseball bat. Do what you can.

Lemon cucumber, quite prolific. You only need to grow 1.

So there's a national leave zucchini at your neighbor's day. Maybe we need to make one for cucumbers too. I think so.

I think so. At least lemon cucumber. It deserves its own holiday. Yeah. And it was a dry summer.

We'll see how things stack up. We need to have Trent Ford on here sometime in 2025 to give us the lowdown of what to expect, for this coming growing season once they get that data from, was it NOAA? I think he uses the NOAA National Weather Service data. Kinda gives a little bit of a climate prediction of, the growing season. Oh, let's see.

Other than that, watch out for that herbicide drift. I would say my garden in 2024 got hit really hard by drifting herbicide. Our our neighbor was growing soybeans this year. Hopefully next year it'll be corn, so it won't be as bad. But we we lost our pumpkins, all of our beans and everything, our potatoes and tomatoes and peppers, they all got hit pretty hard.

And even my silphiums, a lot of my ornamental plants also got hit pretty hard by that drifting herbicide. So, something I'm gonna be more mindful of, this coming year because I just don't wanna deal with it again. So, have a conversation with the neighbor and make sure we can avoid that if possible.

Yeah. I don't think it was this year last year we had issues with cotton. Like, somebody in the neighborhood was spraying some broadleaf herbicide on a very hot day, and our cotton just got torn up.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. So just gotta keep an eye on that kind of stuff. So maybe we'll have our own episode about that later.

So, there's so many things to talk about in 2025. So I'm excited to get this year going. Yeah. We have a whole we got a whole slate of things that that we've already, kind of brainstormed and and and wanna have coming up. So, yeah, looking forward to it.

Yes. Should be fun.

Yes. Should be. Will be. Yes. You gotta you gotta be very demanding in your fun.

That's how it goes. That's how fun works. But, well, the Good Growing Podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Inroth. Hey, Ken. Thanks for setting the alarm this morning, coming in the work.

You know, I had to not wear sweatpants. I had to put on real pants today. So, it was a big shift for me as well. So but but thank you for being here with me today to talk about and reminisce.

Yes. Yes. Thank you for for making it into the office today, and let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're gonna have Emily's Weihardt back and we are going to be discussing dogwood. I love dogwood. It's one of the first, small trees, woody plants I ever learned. So I'm excited to talk about dogwood, and and all of its different species and and forms out there.

Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing. I need to read a book about Dogwoods. Me too. This podcast keeps us young.

You know? Fresh.

I almost wait here.

That's right. Now the the camera doesn't pick it up as well. So that's okay.