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An unserious podcast for unserious people, living on a warming planet (which is very serious).
Gardening for hot people. Climate change is real.
Cheryl:Save the bees.
Katie:Plant native plants. They're hot.
Cheryl:We're all hot. Some of us are very, very cold.
Katie:Hi. And welcome to Gardening for Hot People, planting in a climate apocalypse, an unserious podcast for unserious people living on a warming planet. Which is very serious.
Cheryl:We're your hosts, Cheryl.
Katie:And Katie. Just so you know, on a warming planet, we're all hot.
Cheryl:Hi, guys. This is Cheryl. I just gotta tell you this is the first time we're recording without our lovely partners at BevCam. And I'm just gonna say the audio is is okay, but just okay. So bear with us.
Cheryl:Next episode, the audio will be a lot cleaner while we work out the kinks. Thanks for your patience.
Katie:Hi.
Cheryl:It's been a little while.
Katie:Yeah. It has been a little while. How long has it been even?
Cheryl:I literally couldn't even tell you.
Katie:No. No. Me either.
Cheryl:This season was exhausting for me, the gardening season.
Katie:Yeah. I remember.
Cheryl:Yeah. You were kind of there. But you all weren't. So I'll give you like a little rundown. We as a team at Plant Magic Gardens have planted hundreds and probably thousands of plants this season.
Cheryl:Wow. I I could not we we do our end of year counts sometime in like December, January, so I'll actually have those. Wow. But I did have to compile how many gardens total over the course of our, like my business I've planted, and it's over a 100. We planted over a 100 gardens over the past
Katie:five years. Oh, that's so cool.
Cheryl:And we've got like a 100 active clients.
Katie:Yeah. That's cool.
Cheryl:Honestly, fucking wild.
Katie:A lot of your job is maintaining gardens too.
Cheryl:Yes. Yeah. So we did a lot of garden maintenance. We do a lot of, small, invasive plant removal. Like, we don't we don't take out, like, nori maples or anything huge like that.
Cheryl:We don't do Japanese knotweed because it's, you have to be really aggressive with herbicide. We don't really use a lot of herbicide. But, like, we removed probably like an acre of creeping bellflower in total, like when I add up all the clients that had creeping bellflower.
Katie:Ugh. I have so much of that
Cheryl:in my yard. It's beautiful. It's the
Katie:worst. Well, what's really bad about it is that it looks identical to a lot of the what's that other one? Asters. And so I have to take out the little camera each time. I'm like, is this an aster or what?
Katie:And I end up pulling a bunch of asters.
Cheryl:Well, if you feel the leaves
Katie:So you told me about this. It's not 100% based on what I have Oh, no. Discovered in Yeah. My I pulled a bunch of asters thinking that they were
Cheryl:Why did you send me a picture? Picture?
Katie:Well because you're a busy lady. Yeah, like you're like one
Cheryl:of my best friends, you can definitely just send me a picture.
Katie:Okay. Yeah, about that.
Cheryl:But yeah, so that's mainly what like we've just been like now at this point of the season, we do what I continue to call our version of fall cleanup, which is not really fall cleanup at all.
Katie:Fall leave up. Leave up.
Cheryl:Genuinely. So we don't cut back, like, anything except for, like, non native stuff that gets really gross, like, get, like
Katie:Yeah. They do.
Cheryl:So we always cut those back. But, like, all of our native gardens, our native plants, they all stay, you know, really mostly totally up because the leaves, we don't take them out of the gardens. The seed heads, we leave up for the birds. And then if we do end up cutting anything back, we leave them 10 to 12 inches high so that in the late winter, early spring, the bees that have laid their eggs in those stems can, you know, emerge or new bees can lay eggs in them. And, honestly, this is where it's like being, like, a lazy gardener is actually really awesome.
Cheryl:And you can just kind of, like, do whatever. Mhmm. And it's better than going out there with leaf blower, clearing everything to the ground. Like, perennials should stay up, in my opinion, until late winter when they get cut 10 to 12 inches. That is what conservationists recommend.
Cheryl:So that's what we've been doing lately. It's just like, you know, anytime something does have to get cut back, it's just like 10 to 12 inches off the ground still.
Katie:Cool. But
Cheryl:I mean, ultimately leaving the seed heads up is nice because the snow looks so nice on the little seed heads.
Katie:Yeah. It's cute. And then you won't see how disheveled the yard is once it starts snowing anyways. Disheveled is the new fancy, okay?
Cheryl:Yeah. I mean, I think it puts you in a place where you're much more likely to be okay with like a little bit of it's I don't even consider it messy. You just have to like reorganize how you think about the garden in the winter.
Katie:Your perspective of it can change, and then you'll be fine. And don't worry about what your neighbors think, even though I constantly worry about what my neighbors think. Definitely I'm like, they probably hate me. They hate us that our leaves are blowing into their yard. That's why they don't talk to us.
Katie:Anyway. Because of the leaves.
Cheryl:I mean, I do think that ultimately taking taking stock of what your my neighbors neighbors will be okay with is, like, part of the decision making process for a lot of people because, like, as much as you want to do exactly what's right for nature and for the bugs and everything, you also don't want like weird neighbor retaliation which definitely weirdly happens.
Katie:Yeah.
Cheryl:But, yeah, we can get into that more as we as we go on. We're definitely gonna be talking about all kinds of leaving the leaves type stuff today.
Katie:Yeah.
Cheryl:But
Katie:What else has been going on? I don't know.
Cheryl:Mean, your new studio is you got you got events, you've had vegan markets.
Katie:Yeah. All kinds of things going on. Yeah. Just regular business stuff. I got surgery since the last time we recorded, which was fun.
Katie:I got engaged. I decorated for Christmas.
Cheryl:Just gonna glaze over.
Katie:Was like, I
Cheryl:got engaged, whatever. It happened like literally, like, less than a week ago.
Katie:Yeah. It did. But I did vacation. Thanks. I did decorate for Christmas, though, just so everybody knows.
Katie:Because, you know, Christmas is important to me, and it's not too early. It goes Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, you know? What am I gonna put a bunch of turkeys on my door? I don't think so.
Cheryl:I mean, you're not
Katie:gonna do that for sure, miss miss
Cheryl:Vigan. But yeah, no, I mean, I don't decorate for Thanksgiving. I just leave my pumpkins and my corn up until the end of Thanksgiving, and then I decorate for the holidays. And really that only like, the past couple years, Sam and I have been so busy, we haven't gotten a Christmas tree. I just have these two I call them my Christmas cats, and they're two white ceramic Christmas cats that I like just take we've just been like we've been moving.
Cheryl:We've been doing all kinds of the past couple of years where it's just like I don't wanna try that hard. I'll just put those out somewhere and that's it.
Katie:Do they are they wearing like Santa hats?
Cheryl:Yeah. No. Have little holly like little collards. That's funny. Like little ribbons with holly on them.
Cheryl:They're adorable. Very classy cats.
Katie:That's very low lift to decorate It's very easy.
Cheryl:I mean, listen, not everybody
Katie:I don't have the time.
Cheryl:The time.
Katie:That's another reason I do it so early is because I'm in retail. Like, I'm not gonna have time to even bathe in the next two Gross. Yeah. No, I will. I do.
Katie:I assure you once a day I bathe.
Cheryl:Oh. Well, that's more than me I do every other
Katie:day. Whatever.
Cheryl:No one notices. I wear deodorant.
Katie:Yeah. That's weird because you work in a garden.
Cheryl:No. This is for like wintertime, Cheryl.
Katie:Yeah.
Cheryl:Where like, you know, what am I doing? I'm going on like one, maybe one walk
Katie:Yeah.
Cheryl:Every other day and that's the day I shower. And I think that's enough.
Katie:Yeah. Okay.
Cheryl:Now everyone knows.
Katie:Ew. It's not gross. Shower too much.
Cheryl:Dries out
Katie:your skin. That's true.
Cheryl:That's true. But yeah. No. I think the holidays are, I mean, I feel like this the decoration that I think of when I think about Thanksgiving is the, like, harvest and the leaves and everything. I actually had a client, he was having people over for Halloween and he wanted me to take he was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get rid of all these leaves on the lawn.
Cheryl:And I was like, isn't that like free fall decoration? Because it wasn't like it was like full of leaves. It was like there was a couple and I
Katie:was like, oh, that looks kind of Fall. Yeah.
Cheryl:October 31 to me. Right. But I think that's where like I have like fully switched over my brain to being like leaves are cool and pretty Yeah. Instead of being like leaves are litter which is what a lot of people think.
Katie:Right. I just don't get the concept of taking the oh my god. People are outside for hours, raking them up, chunking them into fucking bags, and then the bags go, what, into a landfill most of the time? Right?
Cheryl:Yeah.
Katie:And I mean, at least, you know, hopefully these people are using paper, but not everybody's doing that.
Cheryl:No. I do think that the level to which people go to get rid of leaves is
Katie:Such a waste of time.
Cheryl:What else do we have on our on our little listy list? Oh, yeah. We're also I mean, we might as well just kind of like
Katie:Get into the topic?
Cheryl:Get into the topic.
Katie:Which is leave the leaves or leaves.
Cheryl:It is. It is leave the leaves or leave
Katie:the leaves. Since we've talking about leaves for the last ten minutes.
Cheryl:We were
Katie:gonna define some stuff. I'll find a spot to put in the in
Cheryl:the gardens, I think. I know. I I love that little thing, but I don't know if there's a spot to put it because we just jumped around a whole bunch for the intro.
Katie:Yeah, we did. We did. Well, we can just put it after I said we're gonna talk about leave the leaves today.
Cheryl:That's true.
Katie:I know. The intro, I thought we were just gonna talk about personal
Cheryl:stuff I know. And I just Sorry. I'm just really excited. I'm gonna leave all this in. Maybe we'll just like It's fine.
Cheryl:Garden's like right here. In the gardens.
Katie:Yeah. Whatever.
Cheryl:And just pretend it was earlier.
Katie:Do you wanna talk about you already talked about prepping beds for the next season?
Cheryl:Oh, yeah. And then so for next season, I mean, I think that people sort of have misconception that like, oh, like the trees are losing their leaves. I'm done gardening now. Mhmm. And like that might be the case for a lot of people when it comes to like veggie gardens and annual gardens and people who just don't wanna be cold.
Cheryl:Mhmm. That's so fair. But now is actually a really good time to be prepping for the spring. I mean, you can put tarps down in an area that you maybe wanna turn into bed, into garden bed Because over the course of the winter, if you put, like, clear or what they call sillage tarps, which is what farmers use, which is just like a thick plastic tarp that has like white on one side and black on the other side. Or you can just use like a tarp from like the hardware store, but just like tarping an area and having that be smothered over the course of the winter will allow you to plant in that area in the spring without much effort.
Cheryl:As long as you don't have like really stubborn weeds and aggressive invasive plants underneath it.
Katie:Like lily of the valley.
Cheryl:Like lily of the valley. What a nightmare plant. But yeah, no, I think that ultimately like now is the perfect time to do, like, low effort prep. Mhmm.
Katie:Like, you don't have to get
Cheryl:a sod cutter out. You don't have to, like, manually dig up stuff. You can just, like, tarp off a spot. You know, like, when you leave, like, one of those, like, big tarp with the handles, people like put a bunch of junk in them and they leave them on their Mhmm. Lawn.
Cheryl:And then like they come to pick it up and you're like, oh crap, we left that on the lawn too long. Now the lawn's down for me. Yeah. That's essentially what you're doing but on purpose
Katie:Yeah.
Cheryl:And deciding that that area is going to be garden. And then, you know, there's also spots where, like, if you have bare dirt right now, perfect time to be laying out, like, native seeds in that spot. Winter sowing is, like, very a low effort way to get a lot of plants with not a lot of money. Mhmm.
Katie:And this is what you guys are doing right now in the gardens for Yes. Your
Cheryl:We're collecting seeds. We do it's really funny because I've heard people have trouble with this method, but like usually what we do in our gardens is at this time of year when the seeds are naturally dropping anyway, we'll see a plant, you know, say it's like a Hellenium autumnale which is a Helen's flower, they have tons of seeds right now and a lot of them are all dried out. And say there's like an area in the garden that's kinda blank, I'll just like pop off all the seeds with my thumb off of a seed head and then go to that spot and just kinda like rub them into the ground a little bit. And then usually like, yeah, the birds are gonna get some of them, the bugs are gonna get some of them, but like we actually have a decent amount of success with that method of just kinda like rubbing some seeds into the ground in a garden and having that spot have a few more plants come up. Especially for spots where you have perennials that are actually technically annuals like Rudbeckia hirta is the black eyed Susan that a lot of people plant and they'll be like, oh yeah, lasted like a year and then it didn't come back.
Cheryl:I mean that probably is because somebody went out there and like leaf blued the whole thing and cut everything down to the ground and didn't leave any seeds because you actually need those seeds for that plant to continue. So when we say we're prepping beds like we're not just prepping, like, new beds, we're also encouraging new growth from seed in spots in existing beds as well right now.
Katie:Question about this. Yeah. So collecting seeds, what if you saved them until the first snow, put them down before the snow fell, would that protect them from Yes. Birds and it's okay to plant to put them in the ground just before snow?
Cheryl:Yes. So that's actually a really common way of doing winter sowing because the snow will actually push those seeds into the ground the exact right amount. Amazing. Because they do need some sun. So we'll kind of fake this by, like, maybe spreading some compost, spreading seeds, and then stepping on them.
Cheryl:Okay. If you're doing a very large area, they have these, like, like big drums that you can use that people will fill with water and then like roll over like a very large area. People do it with like grass seed and stuff like that all the time, but just stepping on stuff is a totally valid way Cool. To handle things. I actually think I have some videos we can post on
Katie:Nice.
Cheryl:Instagram of me just like stomping around a garden that we
Katie:did. Cute.
Cheryl:That method. But yeah. So the snow does effectively that and it keeps them cold and moist which is the stratification that a lot of these native seeds require in order to germinate in the spring. So
Katie:So if I were to go out there today and collect some seeds, I should put them in a baggie and then put them in my fridge?
Cheryl:I mean, if you are going to artificially stratify them, yes. But I would also put in a damp paper towel because most of them need cold moist stratification.
Katie:I mean, I'm gonna go out, collect them, and then put them out in January when it starts snowing, so that's just like two months of
Cheryl:really need to do Yeah. The fake stratification for most plants. If you do need to look up, like, the exact amount of time something needs cold moist stratification, the Prairie Moon website actually has a lot of information on that Yeah. On each of the Yeah. Like, product pages that they have.
Katie:I just realized we never did a follow-up from my my my spring stratification. Yeah. Have a backpack. Most of the ones that I stratified worked. Yeah.
Katie:I didn't plant them all yet, but they're all sitting in pots like little sprouts. I I planted some of them, but not all of them. Yeah.
Cheryl:Oh my god.
Katie:Yeah. It was great success. Oh my gosh. What a
Cheryl:inappropriate throwback.
Katie:Alright. Now we should define some terms.
Cheryl:Alright. Now we will. Now we will.
Katie:What the fuck is that? Fall cleanup. What the heck is fall cleanup?
Cheryl:So traditional landscaping fall cleanup is like the bread and butter of the Mo Blow and Go guy. The quote landscaper, especially in the Northeast, who effectively is just like a guy with a big a big truck with a big box on the back that he's filling to the brim with as many leaves as possible. That particular method of landscaping truly relies on the idea that nature is messy, That we need to control it and we need to get rid of it. And I mean I actually talk about this a lot in my talks, my ecological gardening basics talk where I straight up just tell people, I'm like I think this part of landscaping is a scam. I truly think it is because these leaves are free nutrients for soil and they take all of them and then they go, would you like some mulch?
Cheryl:Would you like us to fertilize your lawn?
Katie:And I'm just like, is that not what leaves Exactly. Are
Cheryl:And you know, and I hear people, you know, say like, well, but like if you leave too many leaves on the lawn then the lawn dies. And it's like, well, I don't necessarily have a problem with a lawn mower chopping up the leaves and fertilizing your lawn that way. Does that potentially kill some bugs? Yes. It does.
Cheryl:But also it's still better than just getting rid of all of them and then depleting your soil.
Katie:Right. Right. I mean You can still use them. They're still useful.
Cheryl:They're still very useful. But I do like to remind people that when you do chop them up you are potentially killing bug oats.
Katie:Yes. Yeah.
Cheryl:And I do think that ultimately I would rather people chopped up the leaves into their lawn than take all of them away. Yeah. Because then they're also feeding trees
Katie:Yep.
Cheryl:Which dropped them on purpose Mhmm. To use. So, like, unless you're, you know, you have, like, plastic freaking turf, which I hope you don't, all of your soil needs nutrients. Mhmm. So the traditional way of of cleaning up is you take all these away and then you have this pristine, and I I don't know if I would call it pristine even, because, like, that implies that it's beautiful.
Cheryl:Mhmm.
Katie:It's more bare yeah.
Cheryl:Yeah. It's more like you have, like, a sterile landscape with no leaves in sight. Very traditional gardening also will say, oh you have to pick, I worked for a company where we had to pick every single leaf out of garden beds.
Katie:Oh my. And make
Cheryl:it just like perfect looking. And I was like, to me this is not perfect. This is like insanity. Not only because I think it takes a really long time for like a gardener to pick all of those leaves out and I'm like why are you paying so much do this? It feels kind of like a waste of money when like the leaves are still falling and you're gonna end up with more leaves
Katie:Right. To the bird. It feels like a crazy vicious cycle. Like you can't control them falling from the trees. Once you pick them up more are gonna fall anyway.
Katie:So what are you doing?
Cheryl:I mean and I tell my clients, I'm like if you want it to look perfect, we can do that. But it costs a lot to like keep something that perfect.
Katie:Mhmm. And it's
Cheryl:just most people are like, I don't know that I need that. And over the course of the winter, most leaves disintegrate. So ultimately, it's not like a panic. And I I do think that we have this idea that, like, we have to clean all of it up immediately. But if you were to just leave them, there will be some spots where leaves gather and they don't go away and maybe you need to, like, spread those out at some point, you know, so that your garden doesn't get totally smothered by, like, a foot layer of leaves.
Katie:Right.
Cheryl:But, like, if there is a spot that you can leave some leaves untouched, you're more likely to see bugs like luna moths, fireflies. You'll have more of the good bugs in your garden like spiders. Literally when we do like our version of fall cleanup and sometimes we do have to like move some leaves around, we see bugs that will be, you know, like you'll lift up a pile of leaves and you'll see bugs on the undersides of those And what they do is they they find like a little pile of leaves, they crawl under a leaf and then a lot of bugs will just overwinter there and the leaves will kind of pile up on top of them so that they stay just warm enough to survive the winter. Mhmm. And then when there is some warmth in the winter because you get those like weird warm days, they'll come out, they'll like, you know, pollinate like witch hazel, do some like oddball kind of plants.
Cheryl:Halamalus virginiana, witch hazel blooms in like October, November, December, and sometimes even into January. And moths actually pollinate that plant.
Katie:That's cool.
Cheryl:So it's
Katie:The more you know.
Cheryl:Well it's just like
Katie:We should start a podcast. Well it's just
Cheryl:like people don't realize that there are bugs that are awake in the winter and there are plants that are awake during the winter and if you're not around in the woods or really like keeping your eyes open, you're gonna think, oh, winter is kind of a dead time. And it's just not. Mhmm. And by leaving leaves you're actually allowing it to be more alive even though I think from our very traditional landscape perspective in some ways people are like those leaves are dead. It's like those leaves are very much keeping a lot of
Katie:things warm.
Cheryl:I think that's part of the switch that people need to make.
Katie:Exactly. So then lots of questions here. Where do I begin? So how many leaves is too many leaves to actually leave, first of all? So let's take my yard, for example.
Katie:Last year, we moved huge piles into two specific areas because I was, like, wanting to sort of smother those areas. It didn't work, but either way, I needed somewhere to put them. And those leaves from last year are still there because it was pot you know, piles. I can tell it's decreased for sure by maybe, like it's decreased by maybe, like, 75%. So there's still, like, 25%, and now we're back into leaf season.
Katie:So I'm gonna be putting more into those So how big should the piles be? And then at what point do you start trying to manipulate the decomposition process?
Cheryl:So if you've got a goal, like if you're like, I'm putting these here because I would like to start a garden bed. Ultimately, leaves alone may not kill all of the grass underneath. It'll kill, like, some of it, but, you know, your leaf pile is gonna move around with the wind, so there might be patches. And if that's what you're experiencing, adding in something like arborist wood chips or compost
Katie:On top of the leaves.
Cheryl:Of the leaves. A, it'll help keep the leaves from blowing around Mhmm. So that your neighbors won't be like, these people leaving the leaves and getting them all over the neighborhood. You know, you don't have that problem.
Katie:Mhmm.
Cheryl:And it also just helps the decomposition when you use something like compost because you're adding in something that's already in the process of decomp. Sure. So we do that a lot actually. Excuse me. And one of my favorite examples is one in what town was that?
Cheryl:I don't remember. But we ended up having to, like, dig out a bunch of, like you know, these guys put in these beautiful patios, but they don't they're thinking about the patio. They're not thinking about the garden bed. And, like, we ended up layering it so that we had we dug out the crappy soil, put in some topsoil, and then we did a layering of the leaves that had fallen, compost, and then mulch on top. And by spring when we were planting, gorgeous.
Cheryl:Like, gorgeous soil. It was awesome. Most of the leaves had disintegrated. They were maple, sugar maple leaves, and those disintegrate really easily.
Katie:So How much time was that in between when you did it and then when the soil was ready?
Cheryl:This was probably, like, October, November, and then we planted in May.
Katie:That's a quick turnaround.
Cheryl:It is. Yeah. It is. Winter is really good for that sort of thing.
Katie:Yeah. And then so how do you recommend that you move the leaves? With your hands, with a rake, gentle raking?
Cheryl:I mean, a rake or, like, your hands is fine. I just don't normally recommend leaf blowers because you're not only gonna be moving leaves, you're gonna be moving just, like, everything. Yeah. Dust, fungi spores, bug eggs, like anything you can think of. It just kinda like blows everything around.
Cheryl:So not only is it not great for like, you know, the the soil itself because you're kinda just blowing everything up into the air, But it's also really bad for like if you have like a kid with asthma or you have asthma yourself. Like it's it's really air pollutant Mhmm. Beyond the gas gas ones that are definitely air pollutants. But they do have electric ones and I mean I do understand that some people have like, you know, mobility issues and like you can't rake like a whole area. Mhmm.
Cheryl:And if you do have to use a leaf blower, which I still don't recommend, An electric one is generally what I will prefer, like a battery powered or one that needs an extension cord.
Katie:Or, like, hire your neighborhood teenage boys, give them some gloves and a wheelbarrow, have them pay them $20. They'll load the leaves into the wheelbarrow and move it to a different side of your yard. Totally. Easy peasy. Done.
Cheryl:I mean, it's or just leave them.
Katie:Or just yeah. Or just don't move So are there leaves that don't disintegrate as fast? Yes.
Cheryl:Oak leaves take a little bit longer. So a lot of times when people have a lot of oak leaves in smaller yards, we will actually remove, like, some of them in order to not ruin their lawns. Mhmm. We really try to make, like, a I don't know. We we we kinda negotiate with the project Mhmm.
Cheryl:Itself, and try to, like, leave what we can. Like, we're we're switching this one client over to having a much more eco conscious yard than they used to. And they're not gonna have their traditional landscaper do spring and fall cleanup anymore.