(gentle music) (audience claps) Welcome to Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer.

I'm your host, Kim Todd, and typically on Digging Deeper, we take one subject, we dig deep.

The fun part about being out here at Nebraska State Fair is we are digging deeper with our audience.

So questions from our audience.

You will be live on television a week from now on Facebook.

And we do have sort of a sequence here, and let's get started with our very first question.

Hi, I have a praying mantis in my flower garden.

And some people have told me it's a Chinese mantis and I want to know whether it's good or bad to have it there.

[Kim Todd] And you have to tell us where you're from.

Lynn Brummels from Winside, Nebraska.

[Kim Todd] All right.

Yeah So I have gotten a lot of questions about the Chinese Mantis, too.

So it's an introduced species It's not originally from here.

That being said, it's been in Nebraska for a very long time and it's part of the ecosystem now.

And there are benefits to having them.

They're predators, they don't hurt the garden.

I would just let them be.

Thank you.

[Kim Todd] Excellent.

All right.

That was easy, quick, lightning round.

Next up?

Uh oh, a bag.

And I hope it doesn't smell bad.

-Hi.

No, no.

-(laughs) Hi, it's nice to be here and nice to have you here.

And I'm from the Fairmont area and we have this weed I'd like you to take a look at.

It's spreading everywhere.

It's spreading everywhere, there are seed balls on there.

They will turn yellow when they are ripe.

They'll stay about the same size.

We've used different chemicals.

It's very hard to do anything with, and it seems to be connected under the ground and then spread that way, also.

[Kim Todd] Can you pull it out of the bag, Roch?

Is that possible?

It's stickery candy.

The roots are good.

Here, want me to take the bag?

[Kim Todd] Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, these berries are going to turn red.

It's ground cherry.

Yellow.

They'll turn yellow.

Elizabeth says no.

Well, good.

How you going to control it?

I'm the hort chair.

(group laughing) But it's not ground cherry.

Ground cherry's not going to have the stickers on it.

It's a horse nettle.

[Roch] Oh, is it a nettle?

We have another nettle sample later.

But it's not a nettle nettle.

It's still in the Solanaceae family.

[Roch] So it's in the nightshade family.

Nightshades are difficult to control, very invasive, as you're already accustomed to.

And I may not know what exactly what it is but I know that if you were - where is it located in your garden?

It's everywhere.

It's in the pasture bad, where we don't till that.

It seems the birds spread it, so it's under cedar trees and things and it has gotten in the garden.

It's just popping up everywhere.

So your pasture, you can use a product called Graze On, but you can't use that.

We have used that.

If you get it pretty strong, it is hard on the grass and this stuff.

Maybe it'll knock it back, but it seems to come back.

Even after you've sprayed it with Graze On?

Yes, yes.

I've put Tordon right on the leaves and it (laughs) Okay, so now I'm batting zero.

Right now, I'm batting zero.

I couldn't ID it, I've recommended.

We know that if you mixed something like 2,4-D and Roundup together, you enhance the activity of both.

Or something like Triclopyr, which is a broad leaf.

And here we have [Kim Todd] Elizabeth, on the Google machine.

Frequent mowing is about the only method for an organic control of horse nettle.

In your opinion, it is horse nettle then, you think?

Yeah, it's horse nettle.

I mean, after she corrected me.

Or there could be a property for sale.

(audience laughs) We don't want to give up.

Can I have Kate's question?

Because I could have answered that one.

[Kim Todd] All right, next up.

Even with the Tordon.

Even cutting and then putting the Tordon -directly on the cut -On the cut stem.

might work a little bit better.

Okay We'll try that.

Just because then it's going right down into that root.

Okay.

Thank you.

[Kim Todd] All right.

Next up.

This is why we get along so well.

When one of us doesn't know the answer, somebody else might or else we make it up.

(audience laughs) Hi, I'm Linda from Doniphan, Nebraska.

And I have a question on blossom end rot.

I know you guys have been talking a ton about it because I've been listening.

And they're talking about a calcium uptake from the water and we have enough calcium in the soil in Nebraska.

It should be okay.

But I container garden and when you buy potting soil, does that have the calcium in it?

Ooh, I don't know that answer there.

So also we talk about the ebb and flow of the moisture, too.

Right Because it's a calcium deficiency in the fruit.

And because it's stealing that calcium from the fruit and putting it into the plant, if you can try to maintain consistent moisture [Linda] I'm retired now.

I can do that.

I know you are.

(laughter) At least trying to, but that potting mix doesn't have a lot of those nutrients in it.

Do I need to amend it maybe for next year?

And put some calcium into it?

That would be your best bet because Terry's behind you telling me yes.

(laughter) But yes, you want to amend that soil because there's not a lot of those micronutrients in that potting mix.

That's what I needed to know.

Thank you.

[Kim Todd] All right.

Next up.

This is a lot of fun, isn't it?

I'm Kathy from Shelton.

And I have pictures here of the flowers that are on the north side of our house by our deck.

And they've been there for 40 years and the last four or five years, they look fine and they green and pretty.

In the spring, they have little tiny flowers on them.

And then, as the summer progresses, they just turn browner and browner and they just look dead.

So I asked this question earlier.

This is on the north side of the house, right?

[Kathy] Yes, yes.

So to me, I'll let Elizabeth take a look at them, too.

To me it looks like it's burn.

So you're getting too much radiation heat off the siding and that's causing a little bit of a burn on that foliage [Kathy] Okay.

And it's been, the last couple summers, it's been a little brutal.

Really bright sun, that'd be my guess.

Unless you have something else.

Well I'm thinking they're Lily of the Valley, right?

Because they're going to be blooming white?

[Kathy] I think so.

And Lily of the Valley is super aggressive.

Right, Kim?

[Kim Todd] Yeah.

Yep and so my guess is if it's been in the same spot for the past 40 years, think about how that root mass is going to be matted together would be my thought.

I don't know if you want to worry about thinning this out.

Because think about how much work that's going to be to try to fix the problem.

So that's going to be the hard part, is there's really not a good way to.

We thought maybe we should just tear it all out of there.

[Kim Todd] You can't tear it all out of there ever.

(audience laughs) You can try, you can try.

But it'll come back.

So if you try to get it thin in that spot, that might help so it's not competing.

Because it's competing against itself for all that water and growing space.

Okay.

Thank you.

[Kim Todd] Just ignore it.

Look at the other side of the house.

(audience laughs) All right.

Next up.

Hi, I'm Nancy and I'm from Hastings.

I have a two part question.

First, what's your best solution for getting rid of slugs in rhubarb?

So slugs generally using baits are going to be your best option.

You can do, they make baits that you can buy but we all like to talk about the beer trap bait.

So still beer, put it in a pan, make it level with the ground.

They'll be attracted to that and they'll drown.

Otherwise, you can also put down boards, or newspaper in the garden, and they'll go under that at night for shelter.

And so in the morning, just open that up and start picking them off.

Okay and is there any way to prevent them from even starting there?

Because I have it nowhere except for on my rhubarb.

Yeah.

So you might consider possibly using diatomaceous earth around the stems, but that's something, when it gets wet, it loses its efficiency, efficacy.

So you could try that and see if that works for you.

Thank you.

Do the beer one because the slugs appreciate it right before they die.

(audience laughs) [Kathy] They die happy.

Hi, I'm Beth from Aurora and I want to put in some choke berries this fall.

And I'm wanting to know how many I need to put in to actually get to be able to do something with them.

All in due time.

I know that won't be next year, but all in due time.

And is there a variety I should be looking for?

Do a soil sample first.

[Beth] Okay.

Figure out what your pH is.

I have known some commercial growers that have had some issues in the area because our PHs of our soils are not kind to chokeberry.

And they were clorotic and it did not go well.

[Beth] Okay.

But there are some that come to mind.

They're more the landscape ones, instead of the berry production ones.

So like Viking is one of the ones that comes to mind.

Iroquois Beauty's the pretty one.

But you want to make sure that you pick one for berry production, if that's your end goal.

Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds I'm not picking them, Beth.

-I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

-You're on your own.

Yeah.

Okay the other question I have is, I'd like to get some hydrangea's going.

I need an easy peasy, survival of the fittest kind of hydrangea.

Is there one?

There's a few.

So the old fashioned Annabelles, the ones that are snowball that you whack back to the ground every year.

Those are handy because they bloom on new wood, so you don't have to worry about, "Did it over winter, did it not over winter?"

Those kinds of thing.

The other ones are the paniculata ones with the pyramid shaped ones.

Those guys are pretty tough and they all do fairly well.

And they're just going to town and blooming all right now.

So those would be some to take a look at.

[Beth] Alrighty.

Is an Oak leaf type?

Not where you are.

[Beth] Not where I am, wonderful.

You could try Okay, all right.

Thank you.

[Kim Todd] Next up.

Hi, my problem relates to the mugo pine as plantings around my house.

It seems as I like to keep them shaped and when they get to be maybe 20 years old or so, all of a sudden I'll see them turning brown and have to replace them.

Where are you located at in the state?

Pardon?

Where are you at in the state?

Where am I located?

[Elizabeth] Yes Norfolk area, Tilden is my address.

But I'm southwest of Norfolk.

So with you being in that Northeast area, I know exactly where you're at.

It's winter.

To me, mugo pines in that part of the area.

It's a little far north, in my opinion.

To me, it ends up being desiccation over time and our hard winters and the amounts of wind that we get.

They can get a canker in there, too, is the other big thing.

But that typically has to deal with the winter winds and the injury to the mugo pine over time.

There isn't a lot you can do for it.

If it is some winter kill, making sure you're watering it all winter.

Especially if we're above freezing temperatures.

Last winter was really hard on all of our pines because we didn't freeze.

And so they were transpiring the entire time.

And then the other thing, if you're constantly shaping, making sure your shears are nice and sharp because we can introduce pathogens that way, if our shears are dull.

I see.

Well, thank you very much.

We're on a roll here.

I'm from Central City, Nebraska.

We grew some beautiful red potatoes this year and they died back well and we were about to dig them.

And we found that something beat us to them.

Some critter just went right down the row and dug all our potatoes up.

We've seen wood chucks, we've seen skunks, we've seen deer, and we've seen rabbits.

So I'm assuming it isn't deer and it's not rabbits.

But do skunks dig up potatoes?

I would lean more toward the wood chuck.

And you can trap them if you can catch them.

They're a little challenging, but many have been relocated from our property already.

A hundred yards is.

Yes.

A hundred yards is all I can recommend, however.

Thank you.

We do have a good recipe for woods chuck stew.

(audience laughs) Hi, I'm Doris from Wayne.

My seven year old grandson, Carter, he's an avid viewer, sent me a question.

He caught a snail and he was going to turn it back, take it back to Grandpa's creek, but it laid this white goo and what they don't know, if it's eggs or what?

They fed it grapes and it ate them.

And then it laid this goo.

And so can he winter it over inside or should he take it back to the creek?

And is the goo eggs?

I have no idea, I'm sorry.

(laughter) I don't think any of us do.

I texted him and it took him no time to come up with the questions.

I'm so used to things with six or more legs, please.

I'd have to look into that for you.

I'm not sure.

I'm sorry.

And Carter and his brother Wyatt both say hi.

Carter is seven by the way, audience.

It's probably a slime trail with stuff in it, maybe.

It could be.

Next up.

Hi, I'm Dave Wacker from Hastings and thank you for making yourself available.

Coming out to the state fair.

My wife is in the audience and she never misses your program on TV.

We love to hear that.

Thank you.

So what's your problem?

(Laughter) One of the things that's been plaguing us and our neighbors is this plant.

And we think it's a spurge.

So I was kind of elected as a block to bring this over here today and have you experts look at it and tell us how to manage it or try to get rid of it.

[Kim Todd] Do not throw it.

I cannot catch it.

It is spurge.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was just informed it's spurge.

(laughter) Really, really common.

His eyes are bad.

Really common weed.

Got a milky sap in it.

Spreads by seed, very prolific.

And so you can actually control this with a crab grass preventer that you would normally put down.

Or in the garden, something like a Treflan based product or Preen.

But it germinates later, so you want to put that herbicide down later than you normally would.

So normally we recommend the first week in May.

To control spurge, It needs to be a little bit later in the season.

And in the garden or in the lawn, it's relatively easy to control.

We really don't recommend trying to spray it out, because it doesn't respond that well.

Because it's really got that really thick skin on it.

So I would try pre-emergent control in the spring.

In the spring?

Okay.

We pulled a lot of it and to try to control that way.

And one of the professional lawn care groups did spray about a month ago because I think drier weather.

It looks like some of it's tried to come out.

But I guess that was a question of what time of the year is the best to try to control it?

You can spray it later in the season.

Especially this year, we see it.

It's more prevalent.

It's just because the lawns have gone toast brown, right?

Because they're not getting the water they need, even with an irrigation system.

The bigger issue is if you wait till later to spray them, you actually irritate them to the point that they make more seed.

And then they giggle at you, which is not what, you don't want to do.

So I really like the pre-emergent.

Or if you catch it when it's really young, you can hit it with anything that's got 2,4-D in it.

It'll pretty well take it out.

But when you wait until later, you tend to really promote more seed production and then you're going to have the problem again next year.

Well, thanks for your time.

Would you like this back?

I don't need it, but I. Oh no, we can take care of it then.

(laughter) You can take it back to the UNL laboratory and Unleash it on campus.

And thank you for bringing me an easy one I could ID.

Hi, there.

I'm Rose from Golden, Colorado.

And I have a question about a tomato.

The top looks nice and red and ready to pick, but the bottom has, the skin had turned brown.

So what am I doing wrong?

So it kind of sounds like blossom end rot.

So the end, the bottom end, and it's because of that movement of lack of calcium in the fruit itself.

So Elizabeth talked a little bit about it earlier, about that fluctuation of water, is one of the big components.

The other big component that we're seeing this year is because it's so hot.

And I'm assuming it's been hot in Colorado all summer, too.

[Rose] You got that right.

So you're watering the plants, but the plants are so thirsty, as that water's getting moved, the calcium's being moved to the leaves instead of to the fruit because it wants to keep itself alive.

So that made the brown spot on the bottom of the tomato?

Yeah so [Rose] I thought maybe I was watering it too much or too less.

It's infrequent watering.

So if you're going up and down like this, it will aggravate that to occur.

So trying to make sure we keep that water level about the same every day and even adding some supplemental calcium, like Elizabeth was talking about earlier would also be helpful.

You can still eat them.

They are still edible.

It's usually an early season thing.

And then it'll kind of go away as a season progresses.

So keep after it and they should be better with some of the later tomatoes.

Okay, all right.

But my son put potting soil in a pot bigger than that one.

So I thought maybe he screwed it up.

(group laughing) I'll tell him then because I've been chewing on him.

(audience laughing) And she wins a prize because Golden, Colorado is way further away than Hastings.

So Terry's got a gift for you right behind you.

Yes, behind you.

I thought you were just joking.

[Kim Todd] I'm not joking.

-A rain gauge.

-Thank you.

If we ever get any rain.

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you, ladies and gentleman.

Thank you.

You're not a gentleman.

-I'm the token.

-(laughter) No, next up.

Hello.

My name is Linda and we live in Howard county.

And my husband is an avid gardener and he really does a lot in the spring.

So I hesitate to ask this because it's a lot of work.

What are some things you plant in the fall?

I don't know anything about a fall garden.

So when we take a look at the fall garden, we're going to look at the back of the seed packet.

And we're going to look at our average frost date, which is going to be October 13th.

We're going to give ourselves a two week buffer.

And then we're going to look at that days till harvest.

So you could do green beans, you could do beets, you could do broccoli, you could do kohl, any of the kohl crops, cabbage, things like that, that can handle that light frost.

And then those other things that are kind of tender you've got to play with that days till harvest and give yourself that two week buffer.

But there's a lot of things you could be planting in July and August for harvest later on.

Well, we already did.

We did do the beets so, but thank you so much.

And lettuce and greens, too.

You can do those again, too.

Okay.

Thank you.

And unfortunately, we have time for one more question.

(laughter) That's what happens when you're shy.

Remember that next year.

Hi, my name is Jerry and I live in Northeast of Norfolk.

And we were in a really dry area there this year and I had a good crop of blackberries going.

The grasshoppers have just cleaned them off.

I don't know if there's any way to protect blackberries from grasshoppers.

You guys can correct me if I'm wrong with this.

But usually one product that is really widely used for grasshoppers is Sevin.

So you might want to try that.

Just be sure to read the label.

Sevin is the name of the product.

Yeah, unfortunately, grasshoppers get really bad in your area.

But that's one that homeowners commonly use.

So maybe try that and see if it gives you any relief.

All right.

And then you can also do like cultural practices where you make sure that you don't have tall grass around your blackberries.

Because that's what the grasshoppers are going from.

They're going from that tall grass over to your blackberries.

So if you mow that buffer strip, it helps to keep those grasshoppers at bay.

And if you're going to try to treat them, you've got to do them when they're small.

It's not going to do you any good to hit them now, when they're big.

It's going to make you feel good, but it's not going to kill them.

So you want to hit them when they're small.

All right.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Well, and thank you all for joining us for Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer.

You'll be able to watch the show about a week from now on YouTube and Facebook.

And of course, all winter long, go to our website, Nebraska Public Media, enjoy everything we have to say.

(audience claps) (calming music)