The best cultivars for your garden

0:00Support for IPR comes from the State Historical Society of Iowa, where visitors can explore, learn, and celebrate Iowa's history, discover exhibits, programs, and genealogy resources, or host a private event. Find something for everyone at history.ioa.gov. It's talk of Iowa from IPR News. Today is Horticulture Day. I'm Charity Nebby. Spring is the perfect time to plant fruit trees, bushes, vines, and brambles. It will be a while before you can pick your homegrown harvest, but we can offer some guidance when it comes to picking the best cultivars. Randall Voss, Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialist, is here to do just that. Hello, Randall. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here. And Randall, of course, this time of year, I've got a big stack of catalogs full of tempting things that I would like to buy if I go to the lawn and garden centers. Same thing happens. So how reliable when I look at all of those pictures, when I read all of those descriptions, how reliable are the hardiness zone ratings? Can I

1:05believe what I see? You know, some people are kind of glass half full people and glass half empty. And I'd say most of the catalogs are glass half full kind of situations where they're looking at a very favorable situation. But you know, when I generally look at some of these catalogs, I sometimes just automatically take a hardiness zone off of them just because, you know, there's two different factors we're thinking about here. Is the plant going to live and is the plant going to bear fruit? And they might live in slightly colder temperatures than they will bear fruit in, but the whole point is to end the bear fruit. So I always take them with a green assault, to be honest with you. Okay, that's good advice. What factors do you look at? I mean, I know that you have a depth of knowledge that we don't have. But when you're reading those descriptions, what are the factors that we really need to be paying attention to? Yeah, I like disease resistance. It's really tough to control diseases on a small scale.

2:09I mean, it's difficult on a large scale too, but you know, when you have just a few plants here there, you can't really give, you know, as easily crop specific, you know, pest management. And so the biggest thing I look for is disease resistant. If the varieties are not disease resistant, I'm not going to plant them in my home garden situation just because the chance of success lessens if they're more prone to diseases. So, you know, apples and pears would be something like fire blight is a big one and apple scab. So those are the big ones I start to look for is disease resistance is the first one. Okay. And you also want to pay close attention to the harvest window, right? Yeah, for something like strawberries, the windows pretty, you know, the strawberry varieties might pretty good for a week, maybe two. And, you know, you don't want to have to, you know, eat strawberries to an extreme level just for one or two weeks. You want to spread it out so that,

3:10you know, you can pick over the course of a few weeks, same thing with raspberries and so forth. So, to me, you know, it's better to get several cultivars rather than one. And I'd say in strawberries too, you know, we get these sometimes you get a week of really hot temperatures in June. And that can really set back that variety or the yield if you only have the one variety that ripens in that one week. So, yeah, definitely harvest window. We like to stagger it a little bit so you can get kind of maximum enjoyment. And, you know, we get burnt out sometimes with picking stuff. And so, you're less likely to get overwhelmed all at once to pick. Okay. Then, of course, you know, it's great if you know what kind of fruit you love, especially when you think about the, you know, the apple varieties and things like that. But often, you are looking at fruit and reading a description of what it tastes like. You're the person who convinced me to plant honeyberries Randall having never tasted them ever, for example. So, when you read about the taste,

4:14what do you look for? Yeah, I think there's almost like code words, almost, you know, they're calling it exceptional. Yeah, it's probably got really good, really excellent flavor. When I read the word good flavor, I, to me, that that's kind of like, you know, you go to coffee shop. There's some fancy names for the size of the coffees. There's not a small generally, right? But there is the smallest smallest coffee there. But we don't want to call it small because that implies not as good, probably. But so, when I just hear the, like, it's good fruit quality. That means you won't spit it out. Yeah, it's, it's okay. You know, you're going to eat it, but you're not going to be like, really pumped about, yes, I got this awesome home-grown fruit and it's delicious. It'll be fine, but I look for exceptional or very good or something like that. Okay. Any, any other thoughts on, on that with those descriptions? Because of course, it's going to taste good if it grows well in your

5:16environment, too. I mean, there are a lot of different factors that go into that flavor. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of varieties that are tough to grow, but have just outstanding flavor. And I always say, if they're tough to grow, but have outstanding flavor, you know, if you don't control the diseases and that kind of thing, they're not going to taste outstanding. And so, sometimes you're going to have to sacrifice, you know, the best flavor in the world, so to speak for disease resistance. And so, there's generally a happy medium there. But, you know, if you just pick it up the right time, that's half the battle. You know, a lot of the, you know, strawberries and raspberries and blackberries in the grocery store, they got to travel quite a ways if they're not locally grown. So they got to pick them a little under ripe just to get them to market and last. And so, just optimal harvest time is going to help you, even if a cultivar isn't listed as the most outstanding flavor in the world. If you're picking at the optimal time, it's probably going to taste pretty good. All right. So, of course, homegrown is always, always better. How about those catalogs?

6:21Back to the catalogs, you know, there are so many different options in a catalog. If I buy through a catalog or a mail order business, am I going to get a plant that's going to live, do I get high quality plants that way? Yeah, it's hit or miss. You know, there are some, some, you know, when I've bought from different companies, I've been very happy sometimes. And not always happy. So sometimes it's best to, you know, maybe if you're going to do a big order, maybe just trial them, you know, the year before and see how they are. I do kind of like buying bear root plants over like a potted tree just because you have a lot more options. So I'll just give an example of pairs. You're buying a pair at a, you know, a potted pair at a, you know, a box store or whatever, or your local garden center. You know, you'll see the pair of variety, but you want to just be able to tell the rootstock on it. And some pairs are sold with like a

7:21quince rootstock and quince rootstocks are probably only hard to zone five, you know, give or take. And if you're in Northern Iowa, that's a little iffy. And so you get more details generally if you're buying from a more specialized fruit nursery, so to speak. And you can do a little more research then in my personal opinion. But, you know, cheaper isn't always the better route, you know, sometimes, you know, I'm prone to buying things on sale too and a lower price. But, you know, this is a long-term investment. Getting the best quality plant is, even if it costs 30% more is probably in the long run actually a better deal. A lot of people want to grow fruit that does not grow reliably in Iowa. How many people do we hear from who love to grow peaches and rarely get a crop? So what fruits are worth taking risk on even if they're not 100% reliable here? Well, if you got limited space, that's probably the biggest question is I wouldn't, you know,

8:21if you got limited space, I wouldn't do anything. That's not reliable. But, you know, I look at something like blackberries. You can lay them down and provide some winter protection. And there's just the price of blackberries in the store and the relative ease of growing them in your home garden assuming you don't buy the thorn ones. No, that's when I take the risk on, but, you know, I would kind of protect them. So that'd be the one that kind of first comes to mind just because brambles are so perishable in the store that got to pick them early and you'll get that optimal flavors. That'd be the first one I would maybe encourage people to try. You know, peaches take up a lot of space in your yard. I cut open buds and I have about 30% live buds on my peach trees and that's not bad. You only need about 10% live buds to get a decent crop. So, but they take up a lot of space. And so, you know, if you want to start with something that's marginally hardy in all of Iowa, you know, for looking at the whole state, I'd maybe start with blackberries. I wouldn't do the

9:22fall blackberries because they need a little bit longer growing season than what we have in a lot of Iowa, but the summer-bearing blackberries was what I would, you know, roll the dice on first. All right. That's worth taking a chance on Randall Voss Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialist for more gardening information and tips. Please subscribe to our garden variety newsletter. Find out more at IowaPublicRadio.org slash garden. I'm Charity Nubby. Support for IPR comes from the State Historical Society of Iowa, where visitors can explore, learn, and celebrate Iowa's history, discover exhibits, programs, and genealogy resources, or host a private event. Find something for everyone at history.ioa.gov. On River to River, we talk to people impacted by change. Unless they hear our stories, it's not going to have the same effect. And how to accept change. A little bit of humility, and a little bit of genuine human interaction really matter. Understand our changing state.

10:26On River to River, and Iowa Public Radio Podcast, part of the NPR Network. It's talk of Iowa from IPR News. I'm Charity Nubby. It's Horticulture Day today. Randall Voss is here with me, Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialist, and also Aaron Style is here now. Also, Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialist. Hello, Aaron. Good morning. It's wonderful to have you both here. And of course, you can join the conversation as well with your questions. The number to call for that is 866-780-910-866-780-9100. You can also send email to talkavioa.ioa.gov. And today, when I was out for my morning walk in the rain, it was already 55 degrees. And Aaron, my crocuses are starting to peak up above the Earth, which is very exciting. You guys are always a little ahead of us in Central Iowa. See, you've already been seeing that a little bit. But today really did feel like spring to me.

11:29I had some, I just noticed some daffodil foliage poking through the mulch in a warm spot of my garden. And that was a very welcome sight for sure. Very, very nice. All right. Well, we are going to dive into some questions. And Randall, I think you also, you've got some more cultivar advice for us throughout the hour, right? And so we'll, we'll, we'll circle back around to that. You can tell us about some of your favorites. But we will start with Mike, who says, with this early spring, Ken, when can you take the mulch off of your strawberries, Randall? Yeah, it's, it's, uh, there's no set date, but you know, you just want to pull the mulch away. And if you start to see new growth, that's a sign that you pull it back. So I peaked at mine the other day I live in the Mahasca County. And I had didn't see any new growth popping out. And so there's no good set time to do it other than you don't want any of that new growth to be growing in the straw, because that's going to, uh, set those, those, uh, yeah, those back for, for the season.

12:32So, um, yeah, don't ideally don't take it off too early, because, you know, that prize that buffering temperature, which, uh, you know, we, we kind of let them stay dormant for a while. We don't want them to, you know, pop out of the ground like your daffodils right now. So, yeah. All right. So be patient. The hardest thing to do when it starts to warm up. All right. And then Mike has a second question. This one's for you, Aaron. We have an early blooming chlamadas at the corner of our front porch that's three years old. We've never cut it back and it has bloomed heavily every year. We're having some porch work done this year. Should we just pull it away from the porch and hope for the best or should we cut it back? So, um, chlamadas is sometimes a little tricky to prune because some of them, um, will bloom on last year's growth. Some of them will bloom on both last year's growth and this year's growth. Some of them will bloom on this year's growth. If it blooms early in the spring, it's probably one of those that blooms on last year's growth. And so, um, you can wait to pull it off until after it blooms. And then you could cut it back, um,

13:40or cut a lot of it out and let it regrow. And you probably wouldn't see a huge impact to the flowering. You would see a little bit, uh, just because the plant is smaller. Um, but even if you get this wrong, the worst that would happen is that you would lose one year of flowers, which stinks, but in the long term, um, isn't a huge deal. So if they can, you can get through it, right? If they can wait to do the porch work until after it blooms, then that makes this really easy. If not, that you might lose flowering this year because you end up, you know, pulling a lot of the plant out or off since it blooms earlier. Um, but again, you wouldn't, you know, you lose the flowers, that stinks. We do it every year with magnolia. So, um, we can, we can probably make it work for climates if we really need to. All right. Um, here's a question from Kirk. He says, I have flower gardens with mostly perennial plants and several weeds last year. When is the best time to apply green or other pre-emergent herbicide? I also have a mountain of wood chips from timber cutting

14:42last year. When should I apply mulch? So in terms of a pre-emergent herbicide like prene, um, there are some things that are probably, I have some things in my perennial border that are already green. Most of those are winter annuals. So those are the plants that are going to bloom or germinate in the late summer, um, grow over winter and then flower and spring some time and then die back and start the cycle over. So you're not going to be able to control those with a pre-emergent herbicide, um, but you can control a lot of the summer annuals, which kind of have a more classic looking, um, life cycle in terms of germinating in the spring and dying in the fall. And, uh, ideally, we would do this. It's hard to say for sure because every plant will germinate at a different temperature, like for crabgrass, we know this really well. It's when the soil temperatures get above 55 degrees. Some of these plants may germinate below that. And so it's going to be hard to get all of it. Um, typically around early April would be a great time to kind of generally look

15:49at it. The challenge is if you put it on too early, it may not be there when some of these seeds are ready to germinate and then you don't get the control, but if you put it on too late, these herbicides work by disrupting germination. And so if they've already germinated, then it doesn't work. So it is a little bit of a dance. Um, I usually look at, uh, the first part of April for this kind of thing, but it is going to depend on the weather. All right. Well, good luck with that Kirk. You can give us a call at 866 780 9100. You can send emails who talk of Iowa at Iowa Public Radio dot org. Let's go to the phones. Kate is on the line in Ames. Hi, Kate. Hi. Um, quick question for you. And this actually does sort of stem from pre-emergent. So it's quick taking notes. We recently moved to Ames and bought a house where we have lots of creeping Charlie in the yard. We tried to pull it up last season, but barely made a dent. Is there anything we can do to get ahead of creeping Charlie this year? I was wondering about a pre-emergent, but the second part to

16:52my question is that our yard has multiple established oak trees. So whatever we put down, we wanted to know if it also could jeopardize the help of the oak trees over time. Creeping Charlie is a tough one. We talk a lot about creeping Charlie on Horticulture Friday because it is so tough. Um, there isn't a lot. Uh, so the main way that this weed becomes such a burden is through spreading, um, by stowlands or rhizomes. And so a pre-emergent herbicide isn't going to help very much with the control. The, uh, hand pulling, which can be really satisfying sometimes. You pull up big mats or strings of it. That's, that can be really satisfying. Is the non-chemical way to approach this? And it just requires persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence. You can get it to a level where you're probably happier, um, but you'll, you'll have a hard time eradicating it with just hand pulling, especially if it's at the level that it sounds like it is in terms of established, uh, amount that is established. The best time to control it with a herbicide

17:56is in the fall. Actually, after the first light frost is the ideal time to put the pre-emergent, or not, not pre-emergent post-emergent, the herbicide down. And then usually about two to four weeks later, you put it down again. And that can, that can work. Uh, but again, you're using a herbicide, which may or may not be something you want to do. It shouldn't impact the trees in, in any way, those herbicides tend to work by, uh, coming in contact with green living tissue. And that wouldn't be the case here, uh, because all the leaves are up in the trees. So you wouldn't, you shouldn't see a huge part. But what the oak trees do tell me is that this is probably a space that isn't very conducive to growing turf grass. And that's why the creeping Charlie is so happy. It's the plant that tolerates the shade under these trees much better. And so even if you do manage to mostly eradicate this weed, it's a high probability that it'll come back because there's nothing there to keep it from coming back. So trying to establish something different under the

18:57trees to compete with and hopefully outcompete that creeping Charlie would be really a good idea. This could be a, um, this could be a ground cover, uh, but some of those you're not going to be able to walk on very well. One that is fairly tolerant of shade and, um, has a grass-like appearance, if that's what you're looking for, is Pennsylvania Sedge. Um, and that is probably one of the easier sedges to find seed for as well. And that could be a nice potential option. There are lots and lots of others. Um, so there's kind of two parts here. You can get rid of the creeping Charlie, but you are going to have to figure out what you can do in that area to keep it from coming back by planting something that outcompets it. And it's not going to be turf grass. Thank you so much. Good luck, Kate. Thanks a lot for the call. 8667809100. You can send email to talk of Iowa at iowapublicradio.org. Ace is on the line in Waterloo. Hi, Ace. Hey there. Happy Hort Day, everybody. Thanks. What's your question?

20:01It's about a flora for fauna. What kind of a trees or vines or shrubs would be good for fruit or nuts for my native habitat? Randall, you want to start that? Oh, well, it probably depends on what you want to attract. Um, you know, I would probably not plant. If it's just for wildlife, I probably would not focus on the traditional fruit crops just because they they've been selected for, you know, fruit quality, not necessarily survival of the fittest kind of situation. So, um, I've probably deferred to Aaron on this and that, you know, if you really want to feed wildlife, it's probably some wild species. You know, service bury is one that that you might consider. I eat service bury at my home, but for a little CD, so some people don't like it, but I guess Aaron might have a better handle on this. Aaron? Yeah, so I love service bury. That's a great idea. Uh, kind of in the same category of service

21:06bury that would be nice to consider that's also quite ornamental is chokeberry or eronia. That is quite a bit of fruit and the birds love it. Crab apples, viburnums, are great options too in terms of providing fruit for the for the birds to eat, and especially with viburnum, if you can do a good job of picking some lots of different species, the easiest one to plant and to find is typically arrowwood viburnum, lovely shrub actually, good native shrub. So, um, but if you can find some others, uh, you can spread out the fruit set. So that's not all at the same time. And then you have a more consistent source of food for the birds. Um, so any, you know, looking for any native vine. Vines are a little bit more difficult. Most of our native vines, um, don't have, I mean, poison ivy has fruit that the birds don't plant that. You're not going to want to plant that. No, thank you. Um, yes, exactly. Uh, and many of the other native vines don't have,

22:10you know, really fleshy fruit. Um, you know, I'm trying to think of some of them like, uh, trumpet creeper is a, is a, um, a dry fruit that floats in the wind. Um, so, uh, yeah, I don't have a lot of vine, not native vine options for you. Well, what about bittersweet air? Oh, yeah, bittersweet. Do you think that's a great idea. There's one caveat with bittersweet though. Bittersweet, um, there's an American bittersweet and there's an Asian, uh, bittersweet. The Asian one is quite, um, aggressive and, um, you want to avoid buying that one. And, um, the difference between the two is a little bit minor, but the fruit in the Asian species comes out where the leaves are in little clusters and the fruit on the American species has larger clusters of, uh, fruit. And it is otherwise very similar. And so sometimes it's misidentified. So you got to be a little careful with bittersweet

23:12that way, but that's a lovely, that's a lovely plant too. And, uh, we've got to move on to our next color, but Ace, I'm going to give you a book recommendation that is completely unsolicited, but, um, Douglas Talamy has a wonderful book called Bringing Nature Home with advice on exactly what you're asking about and you'll learn a whole lot. All right, um, Ann is on the line next. Hi, Ann. Hello there. Hi, what's your question? I live on a farmstead, so I have barns and sheds. And I, every summer struggle with, uh, herbicide around the edges of these buildings or rewacking them. And I recently had my water softener replaced. So I have a five gallon bucket full of softener salt that can't be reused in the new softener. Can I use a solution of that to pour around the foundation, um, to control

24:13weeds? And what's the long term issue with that? Ann? If you used, if you used a salt solution, it probably would kill the weeds. Um, it, it, uh, it has some kind of lasting effects in that, depending on how much you put down, it could be in the soil, but it also leaches out of the soil fairly readily. So it wouldn't be a very long term thing. It would kill what's there, but it probably wouldn't keep it clear for the whole growing season, um, is my guess. And, uh, so, yes, you could use an, and I do see folks who use salt as a contact herbicide, but it's a, it's a, a scary place to use in your garden because of what it can do to the soil and how it can impact other plants growing nearby. In your situation, you don't want other plants growing nearby. And so, it could be, it could be an approach you take. Uh, just know it's not going to be, it's going to

25:13last, but not last a, a, a huge long time. It'll leach out eventually. All right. And thank you so much for the call. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back in just a moment. It is Horticulture Day on Talk of Iowa with me, Aaron style and Randall Boss, Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialists. I'm charity Nebby. IPR brings you the most important things that shape your world every day. Stories from around the state, music made down the street, things you never knew about the place you call home, your news, your music, your Iowa. It's your IPR. It's Talk of Iowa from IPR News. I'm charity Nebby. It's Horticulture Day today with me, Randall Boss and Aaron style Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialists. And we would love to hear from you with your questions. The number for that is 866-780-910866-780-9100. You can also send email to Talk of Iowa at IowaPublicRadio.org. And before we dive right back into questions,

26:19Randall, do you have any other secret favorite fruit cultivars that you want to tell us about? We can also grow delicious fruit. Oh, I don't know about secrets, but just a couple favorites or ones that I, you know, there's a relatively new Asian pair out called Juicy Jewel that I think I just planted last year that I'm kind of excited about. In the world of blackberries, again, marginy hearty here, there's a new variety called Ponca that has just outstanding flavor. I planted some last year at our office here. So those are just a couple ones to think about. I mean, we can take the whole last 18 minutes to go over this, which I don't think you want to do, but I do have a recommendation though that when you plant right down, make a list of what you planted, because the tags will fall off and you won't forget what you planted. So that is something to consider when you're planting. Like keep records so you know later on. That is excellent advice. And I told

27:22you that you convinced me to plant honey berries having never eaten one. We should have our first crop this year, although like we had two honey berries last year and my son ate both of them. So, you know, we should actually have enough to share this year. I hope. And we're really excited. IPR is a your source for gardening information. You can give us a call at 866 780 9100. You can send email to talkavioa at iowapublicradio.org. Here's a question for you, Marlene and Des Moines says we are moving and we give up possession of our house late in March. I'm taking some of my hostas, peonies and coral bells. Can I move them this week during the warm spell? It's always good to move this kind of stuff when it's dormant. You know, unfortunately, I don't know what the weather is going to look like, but you would probably be okay. This wouldn't be my ideal time. I probably want to do it more closer to the beginning of April and of March

28:23beginning of April. But especially with the weather, the way it's been, you would probably be able to get away with this with with pretty good success. The thing that you'll want to make sure you do is watch the weather, of course. When these things are in containers, they're just more exposed. And so if things get really cold again, you might want to do something like pull it into an unheated garage for the night or something like that, just to help them. I mean, hostas in particular is a pretty hearty plant. Coral bells are a little bit more finicky when it comes to changes in temperature like that, especially when their roots are above the ground. So you just want to keep an eye on that, but you would probably have pretty good success doing it now, even if the end of the month would be better. Well, and so should she just wait until the end of the month and I mean, if you can wait, yeah, if you can wait, that'd be great. But I also know what it's like to move. Yeah, you may not want to do all this work at how many plants did you move when you moved,

29:24Aaron? Too many. Too many. And it was a lot of work. And I did do it several weeks before we left, but I wasn't moving this time. Right. Right. All right. You can give us a call 8667809100 email, talk of Iowa at Iowa Public Radio dot org. Alicia is on the line in Waterloo. Hi, Alicia. What's your question? My question is about grass backyard. It's a basic backyard grass, but in our yard, the folks who lived there before had a get and I guess tried to smother the grass. I would have something because there's a lot of plastic beneath the ground. It's plastic and little stone. And I'm wondering what grass could I plant. There's still bits of grass and weeds that come up. I'm wondering what basic grass could I plant that will survive this plastic and gravel.

30:27Well, I'm not sure you have a lot of options that would be happy with that situation. It sounds kind of like they had a landscape bed there. They had plastic and rock on top of it. And it's just got weedy to a point where you can't even recognize it as a landscape bed anymore. Apart from the crazy weeds that are growing on there, there is very little that's going to be very successful with that layer of plastic underneath there. So if for the best success, I'm sorry to say you will have to pull the plastic up. And with rock on top of it, I've done this before. It was it was work. Hopefully you don't have the amount of rock I had on top of mine. So it does make it a little bit harder. But once you get that pulled up, if it's a sunny area, a mix of Kentucky bluegrass, with Kentucky bluegrass as the main species would be great. If it's more shady, look for those mixes

31:27that have a lot of fine fescus, things like creeping red, chewing fescus, they have different names, but they just have a little bit better shade tolerance than the other ones that we might grow. So fine fescus kind of describes a group of grasses that have really thin leaves. And overall do better in part shade than some of these others. And they include things like chewing chewing red fescue. And there's some others too. So you might see that on the label when you look for it. But usually these things are labeled very clearly as shade mixes because it's a great selling point, even though they're really part shade mixes. Oh, Alicia, it sounds like you got your work cut out for you. But thank you. I've got some work ahead of me. Good luck. Thanks a lot for the call. Thank you so much guys. Thank you so much. 866 780 9100 is the number to call 866 780 9100.

32:33You can send email to talk of Iowa at iowapublicradio.org. Ryan is up next in Windsor Heights. Hi, Ryan. Hi. So we have a deck that we're going to whip up this summer under place. And as monolith it's out of the way. We wanted to get rid of all the vegetation, all the weeds that have been growing under there. What's a safe way? We don't want to use roundup or anything. What's a safe way to just carpet bomb the whole space under that? Stop stuff from growing. Yeah, don't bomb it. So I mean, the safest way but a lot of work is hand pulling. The safest way that takes more time but is less physical labor would be smothering. And you can smother in a couple of different ways. You can use a plastic sheet, preferably one that's not clear, actually really should not be clear. And put that down, weigh it down on the edges with blocks or bricks or even layering a little bit

33:37of soil along all the edges to keep it from blowing away. It'll be several weeks but that will smother out the plants. You can also do it with excessively thick mulch like 8 to 12 inches of mulch. And then once everything is dead, you can leave part of the mulch there and use the rest of it somewhere else in your yard. The advantage to the mulch thing is that it doesn't disrupt all the soil microorganisms and all these other things. When you put plastic down, you're excluding light and water and that can be really rough on the microbiome in the soil. But when you're using the smothering method, using something that's permeable like a really thick layer of mulch, it has a much it has much less impact on that. But you have to buy a whole bunch of mulch and you have to have a place to put two thirds of it when you're done. So they all have their positives and negatives. How do you feel about cardboard under mulch? There. Cardboard could be an option too and you want to make sure you remove the packing tape,

34:40those kinds of things. It has a similar effect as the plastic wood in terms of kind of preventing gas exchange in that soil, but it works. And so that would be kind of an in-between in terms of its impact on the soil. Wouldn't be as bad as a plastic sheet, but it's not as good as a super thick layer of mulch. Does that help you out, Ryan? Yeah, that's great. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks a lot for the call 866-780-9100. You can send email to talkavioa at iowapublicradio.org. Quick question from Chris in Waterloo. Is there enough time left to plant bear root fruit trees, Randall? You bet. Yeah, it's a great time to do it. You know, we want to plant before it gets too hot and too dry. So whenever you can get that whole dug and get access to them, you know, yeah, we don't want to do it too early. We're going to get some cold shots and sometimes

35:40when you buy these bear root trees, they've kind of broken butt already, depending on how they store them and so forth. But yeah, April is a great time. I'd maybe hold off for a little while just because sometimes when you get them, they're not fully dormant and are still prone to cold temperature damage. But great time to do it in the spring. All right, next up, John in Madrid. Hi, John. How are you? Good. What's your question? I have an area at our winery, what Randall knows about it. It has got a big turf area that gets a lot of abuse during the summer months. And I'm trying to beat it up. And I'd like to see if I could do a soil test, maybe, and see if there's something off in it. And I didn't know if I would stay to still accepting soil samples from people to test pH and all that kind of stuff. And second part of it is I was wondering if maybe some brygrass seeding down through there just to be things up a little

36:44bit at this time of the year. You know, I know that I'd die at the end of the year, but I just wonder if that would be some people. That's my question. All right. Thanks, John, Aaron. So you Iowa State does not have a soil testing lab anymore, but if you google soil testing, Iowa State University, there is a page on the garden side that gives you two handfuls of both other university labs and private labs that you can select, you know, based on your cost, kind of threshold and some other factors that you might want to consider. That's available there. So there are certainly places that will take your soil test. We have some recommendations online, but Iowa State doesn't have a soil testing lab anymore. In terms of the turf grass, one of the species I would look into other than rye would be tall

37:44fescue. And I'm not talking about the tall fescue that we think of in like forage or out in a pasture that has a big wide blade. There are many types of tall fescue that have a narrower blade that look much more like perennial rye or especially Kentucky bluegrass. And tall fescue as a rule is much more tolerant of foot traffic and just heavy use. And so overseeding with that, a turf type tall fescue would probably serve this area pretty well. All right, thanks a lot for the call John Pat in Kyoto. Quickly Pat, what's your question? The moles went hand on my yard this year. It's completely daunting and scary looking. What's the quickest easiest way to repair the turf? Probably the easiest way is going to be to push it back down. And you can see, I wouldn't see now mid-April just to try to get ahead of the weeds, but your your big project is going to be in the fall because that is a better time to so seed.

38:46And so getting in there end of August versus September, getting those areas filled in, it's going to be really beneficial. And you know, trying to get rid of the mole of course, that's difficult. You can set a trap, but that's the end of the mole when you set the trap. And some folks don't like that. Pat, good luck with your yard. Another quick question. This one's from Pete in Williams. He says, I have two black walnut trees that really affect the turf around the trees. Can I protect my grass from the black walnuts falling? Oh, we could get really into this. I will try not to. There, the likely issue here is actually root competition and sunlight and much less the jug loan that these walnuts produce. That that chemical does break down pretty quickly in soil. And it is present in the husks around the fruit and the leaves and the all those things. It is present there, but it probably gets blamed way more than it should for its impact on

39:52growing plants. It's actually probably the shade and the root competition from the tree that are impacting this turf more. So it is good to get the stuff off the grass, of course, because it is big and you know, you don't want to moat in those kinds of things. But I would look at a shade tolerant turf and try to get that established there. You probably have better look. And of course, removing the fruit is beneficial, but it's probably not doing as much damage as you think. All right, we are out of time. Aaron, style and Randall Voss, thank you both. You're welcome. Thank you. Aaron, style and Randall Voss, Iowa State University Extension Horticulture Specialists. We will be back again next Friday with Horticulture Day on Takavioa from IPR News. I'm Charity Nebby.