 And so Tom told me not to tell a joke. So the first thing I got to do is tell a joke. And so I was at gardening Saturday on Saturday and walking down the hallway and one of my gardener friends comes up to me and says, Steve, I got a question for you. And I said, what's your question? She said, what did the rosemary say to the sage? And I said, I don't have any idea. What did the rosemary say to the sage? And she said, it's about time. So gardeners, it's about time that we learned a little bit about raised bed gardens. So that's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about building raised bed gardens more than we're gonna actually talk about growing things in raised beds. So we'll go ahead and get started right now. And you can see on the slides there that there's a lot that you can do with raised beds. Raised bed gardens are just as diverse as we as people are they can come in all kinds of shapes, size, forms and all kinds of different flavors. And so you can have them multi levels. You can build them out of landscape timbers. You can build them out of railroad ties although I don't recommend that. You can build them out of concrete blocks. You can raise them totally up off the ground as you can see in the picture in the lower right hand corner there. I did have a picture of some stacked up tires for our raised bed garden, but I thought that was less than aesthetically pleasing to the eye, so I didn't even include that. But yeah, anything that will hold soil can become theoretically a raised bed garden. So it basically just depends on what your imagination wants to conjure up. We use raised bed gardens quite a bit with our junior master gardeners because they're nice, they're concise, they're confined and they do a nice job of helping things stay within bounds. This is a raised bed garden that's made out of concrete patio pavers and it's about 18 inches high in the picture on the left and then it slopes down to the grass line. So it's got a slant to it, it gets natural drainage but it does a really nice job of getting the plants up out of the ground quickly. And these are some of our master gardeners and you'll probably recognize our 4-H youth agent, Terry Knudson in that left, that right-hand picture. But you can also get raised bed garden kits if you want to. We use them quite a bit for school gardens and we've got a lot of raised bed kits for our school gardens and this is a group of highly motivated extension agents and you give them a couple of drills and a screwdriver and look at them go to work and you get some good teamwork and voila, there's your raised beds all ready for soil. This worked out really fine. Personally, I prefer to build mine out of locally available materials rather than purchase the kits but when you're in a hurry and you have to get the job done, this is a nice way to go. We use raised bed gardens as I just mentioned for our school gardens and what's really nice about that is it helps the children, whether it's regular gardening or gardening and raised beds, gives them an opportunity to learn the difference between weeds and vegetable plants. It gives them something to shoot for when they're looking for the vegetables. Throughout the gardening season they can sample some of the fruits and vegetables of their labor and then at the end of the gardening season a lot of times the leftover produce, we take that into the cooks in the school lunch program, they love it. Granted, there's not a lot of vegetables left over that can serve hundreds of students but just the fact that those vegetables were raised on their school grounds in their raised vegetable gardens and that those kids out of hand and it gives them bragging rights and it's just a nice, fun thing to do and it builds that enthusiasm and that incentive to go home and get started with growing their own vegetables. And that's what it's all about is eating right and growing your own vegetables. These are two raised bed gardens that I built in my own yard a few years ago and we're gonna get into the nitty gritty on how you can build raised bed gardens simply and as easily as I built these. And I didn't necessarily have a set of plans drawn out on paper, but I did have a set of plans that I conjured up in my mind. And so essentially what you're gonna need is a few tools, not many, I like to protect my knees. So I think you should, if you have any interest in protecting your knees when you're dealing on a hard concrete surface like you're gonna see in a few minutes, get a hold of some good knee pads and you'll need a circular saw of some sort or some sort of a cutting tool but a circular saw works really nice. Tape measure is absolutely essential and if you can bake, borrow, or steal an electric cordless drill and a cordless driver, it'll help you tremendously as far as getting your project done. You gotta have a good hammer and a carpenter square and then not one, but two pencils because you will break at least one of them in the process. So this is the materials list for one, four foot by 10 foot, 12 inch high raised bed garden. You're gonna need at least, well, you'll need two, two by 12s, 10 foot long. You'll need two, two by, or one, two by 12, eight foot long. Then you'll need two, two by fours, 10 foot long and one, two by four, eight foot long. You'll also need some scrap, two by fours so that you can use those for corner posts. They don't have to be anything fancy but they should be made out of a treated type of material like the material that you're building your raised beds out of. You should have some three and a half inch deck screws and you also should have some three inch screws even though that's not listed on this bill of materials. You should have some three inch deck screws as well. Now the material I use for my raised bed gardens is not arsenic treated green lumber. It's treated green lumber and it's fully safe for using for raised beds but the arsenic treated lumber has not been sold regionally for a long time so you don't have to worry about using it for that type of a purpose. The first thing that you should do is square the ends of your boards and you will typically get a 10 foot board that's about 120 and one half inches or a little bit more, a little bit less long so that gives you some room to cut off the ends to square them up. So take that nice carpenter square of yours and square up that end draw a straight line and then move that straight edge or that carpenter square over enough that you can use it as a straight edge when you're actually making that cut if you are like me and you're directionally challenged and you're trying to cut a straight line freehand you might not have done any good trying to square up the end of that board. So that's where again I suggest using that carpenter square as a straight edge so that you can cut that line that you just finished drawing and keep it nice and straight. Do that on every one of your boards on one end and then when you cut them to length you should not have any problem having the other end just a square so measure off and cut that 10 foot board down to exactly, exactly 120 inches and measure and cut your eight foot two by 12s to exactly 48 inches. You have to be perfect with these cuts otherwise your raised bed garden will not be square. Now if that doesn't bother you to not have a square one I guess that's okay but for me I have to have mine square and once you've gotten everything cut then you should start to assemble them and this is where it helps to have a nice smooth flat surface that's big enough to move around on. What I do if it's a nice smooth surface like my driveway slab I just set them up and join them together as best I can and then when I've got the shape that I want I like to clamp things together with a couple of pipe clamps. That acts as that extra pair of hands for you and keeps things standing upright. There's nothing more frustrating when you're working by yourself and you have boards falling down that you've just ended up squaring up. Now when you put these pipe clamps on and if you don't have pipe clamps that's not the worst thing you don't have to have them but if you can borrow some even if you don't own your own it really does a nice job of helping keeping things together but you do want to just keep them loose enough loose enough to keep from falling off and hitting the ground but tight enough so they won't fall and hit the ground but loose enough so that you can move the boards around because you've got a job now where you have to measure diagonally from one corner to the opposite corner on the other end to square your raised bed. This is really important. Now if you look here in the upper right hand corner and the lower left in the lower right hand corner you'll see that when I've measured diagonally from one corner to the other twice both measurements show 130 inches and 7.16. They're both exactly 130 inches and 7.16. And when I get those measurements to be exactly the same I know that's assuming that I've cut my boards exactly the same way. I know my raised bed is square. And that's important because you'll need to have it square down the road when we start leveling it up and putting it in its position. After you've gotten a square then fasten some diagonal temporary braces on the bed and that will serve two purposes. We'll hold it in place while it's being while you're putting your fasteners in the ends but you also need to leave those on for when you pick it up and move it to its location, its permanent location. So put those temporary diagonal braces on. There's no rocket science with how you do that. They just have to be fastened down at an angle and you need to use at least two of them. Now, when you prepare to drill when you prepare to drive your screws in it's really important, especially when you're working about three quarters of an inch from the edge of a board to pre-drill those holes. If you don't pre-drill those holes you're going to split the edge of the board and once you've split the edge of the board it doesn't have the holding power to keep that raised bed tight. The screws won't have the holding power to keep everything tightened up and intact the way they should be. So pre-drill all of those holes and then go ahead and run your screws in and you should be in pretty good shape. I usually put about five screws in per corner. You can use six if you'd like but no less than five. You need to have enough screws to have good holding power. So remember those diagonal braces? They do a beautiful job of keeping everything squared up and intact when you and a friend or maybe two friends pick up that raised bed and start to move it. These things most often are wet because the material hasn't fully cured and they're heavy. So don't try to move your raised bed by yourself for obvious reasons. First it could hurt you physically but you also could bang it up enough to knock it out of square and then you're really having to start all over again or you'd probably cause some damage to it. So it needs to be picked up and carried with two or three people. Hopefully a couple of people besides yourself. Then what I suggest doing is taking those scraps, those scrap two by fours that we talked about and using those as corner posts and now maybe leveling your raised bed isn't important to you but my soil slopes away a little bit in my yard where I have my raised beds and so I like to have the beds level and I'll use the corner posts one in each corner and I'll use wood clamps like you see here. I'm gonna back up once in one time here. If you look at the picture on the left and look closely on the lower right corner, the upper left corner and the lower left corner, you'll see where I've clamped those posts in place with wood clamps. That's really slick because you can elevate or lower that raised bed as much as you like or whatever it takes to get it level and then when you've got it perfect, well you like it. So it's nice and level, tighten those wood clamps and drive in your three inch screws from the outside into those posts. That'll hold everything in place, it'll keep it square and if you've measured the appropriate distance from your other raised beds, then everything will stay put nicely. Once you've gotten that done, then you can go ahead and remove those diagonal braces and that takes us to the next step where you need to cut those corner posts off. I use a reciprocating saw, you can use a hand saw just as nicely, saws that probably won't work would be a saver saw or a circular saw. You'd probably cause damage to the raised bed or yourself if you tried to do that. So if you don't have a reciprocating saw, just take a hand saw, it works very nicely for cutting those posts off and for leveling things up. What I like to do and this isn't required but I strongly suggest doing this, is using a top two by four around the perimeter of the raised bed. When you have a length of wood that's 10 feet long, there's a possibility that the pressure of the soil on the inside of the raised bed can push the board out and it won't necessarily cause damage but aesthetically it's not very pleasing to the eye. If you put this top cap on, I call it, then it provides a nice convenient seat when you're out sitting and when you're weeding your raised bed or picking some vegetables and you want to just sit down for a minute. It's a lot easier to sit on a three and a half inch wide board than it is a one and a half inch upright board. So it gives you a little bit of a seat but more importantly, it strengthens that length of board and keeps it from wanting to bow out and it's worked nicely for me for several years on my adjusting raised beds. I haven't had any bowing problem at all. So what I suggest doing, those have to be cut to exactly 120 inches as well and then drive two screws as you see in that lower right hand corner through the existing length of a two by 10 and then drive another one through the corner post and through the end piece. And by doing that, you're helping to tighten up the corner even more and making it stronger. So there it is with all four of the caps in place. It's a finished raised bed and now it's waiting for soil and we'll talk about soil a little bit next and what we can be putting in there. I wanna first mention though location is really important. Try your best to get your raised beds in a minimum of eight hours of good full sunlight per day. I think that's really important. If you don't have good sunlight you're just not going to have good adequate growth of your plants and everything will have been wasted. All of your time and hard labor and everything will have been wasted. You won't be satisfied with the results of your work. So full sun is really important. Obviously you can have probably sun from morning till dusk but do your best to get at least eight to 10 hours of sunlight, ideally 12 hours of sunlight a day. And then try to get it someplace where it's close to water because yes, you will have to water your raised beds. They'll take water just like a conventional garden would but in many cases they'll take even more water. We'll need more water. So someplace where you can reach it easily with the garden hose will be very important. And then if you have the option try to locate it close to your kitchen. Consider a mini kitchen garden. It's a whole lot easier to run out 15 or 20 feet from your kitchen door and snip off some spinach leaves or whip up a quick salad or grab a handful of string beans in the evening. When it's just a few steps away then it is to have to walk 150 feet out or to a backyard somewhere and find it. So the closer you can make it to the kitchen the more you'll find that you enjoy it. The more enjoyable it'll be it'll be to run out and grab something and just the more convenient it will be all the way around. So location really is important. So let's talk a little bit about soil. Soil can come in a lot of different types of a lot of varieties as well but ideally it needs to be loose and needs to be well-drained and it needs to have some available nutrients in it. The best soils are a balance between clay, sand and some organic matter and they all have their purposes. The sand will provide some drainage if your soil is a little bit dense. Our soil here in the Red River Valley is really dense in many cases. If you're gonna attempt to use that soil by itself in your raised bed you're gonna be in for a big disappointment. You wouldn't use just pure garden soil dug out of your garden in a raised bed any more than you would put it into a container and expect to have good results. You do need to add some amendments to your soil to make it what you'd like it to be. Sand of course I already mentioned but some peat moss like you see in the upper right hand corner some compost are well decomposed and the nerve will work really well. You don't have to use all of these but they all will give you improvements in your soil. A sandy loam soil in the lower left hand corner that's the soil that I'm holding in. I just dug scoop that out of my raised bed. One of my existing raised beds a few days ago and took that picture. It's just fun to play with it. It's just nice light fluffy soil. It's got a great smell as well. You might wanna add some vermiculite or some perlite probably not important but whether sawdust works really well. Let me just give you a little caveat on that. Don't go into a local sawmill or lumber yard and pick up a bunch of sawdust and bring it home and think you're gonna have good success by putting that in your raised bed. Pick it up, yes if it's free it's even better. Bring it home but put it in a pile where you can let that sit for a year. It needs a minimum of a year in the sun and rain falling down on it to wash all the impurities out of it and to wash the salt cell. And if it's looking pretty good after a year maybe you should let it sit for two years. It needs to be looking almost like soil before you mix it up into your raised bed but then it'll be a really nice additive and add some of that organic matter that your soil is going to really enjoy. Now as I mentioned drainage is important but I suggest using local sources. Mix your own soil and use those local sources but if you just aren't into that alternatively you can use purchased high quality bag to pre-mix bulk soil but what that's gonna do is it's gonna skyrocket the price of your raised bed. It's gonna take a lot longer for you to really enjoy the payback from that raised bed if you put a lot of money into ready mixed and potting the soil. But remember it's also important to remember that the crop that you have growing in that raised bed is going to use soil nutrients each year. What you put in this year is not gonna be the same soil that you're gonna have at the end of the season so you do need to add nutrients annually if you're gonna keep that productivity where you want it to be. I'm not suggesting that you take a soil test every year but I'm suggesting that you keep in mind that your plants are using nutrients so you have to add some nutrients back in. It's important whether you're conventionally gardening in a regular ground type of garden or in raised beds but it's probably even more important in raised beds. So I'm just about ready to wrap it up here Tom. I just wanna say this as kind of a closing that raised bed gardening is a lot of work to get started, I won't lie to you. You have to build these beds, you have to fill them with soil, you gotta make sure you got everything balanced, right? You gotta level them all up. So it's a lot of work to get started but then that's where it gets fun. Once it's established, it's easy gardening thereafter. You don't have that many inputs of labor and other materials to make it fun. And so let's just get started. Let's start doing some raised bed gardening. Okay, thank you, Steven. We encourage your questions now. Steve, we're gonna get right to them. What kind of clamps did you use? Were those pipe clamps? Those were pipe clamps, Tom. And the pipe was, it was three quarter inch pipe and the clamps were called pony clamps. You can pick them up at your local building supply store or hardware store. You will have to have the ends of the pipe threaded and your local hardware store can cut the pipe to any length you want it to and they can also thread it for you. It has to be threaded at the same diameter of course as the pipes, as the clamps are. So you can buy either half inch clamps or three quarter inch diameter clamps. And I use the three quarter inch ones and they're slick to use but you can use, they don't have to be pony clamps. They can be any brand of clamp but they just give you that extra set of hands and help keep things more intact. Good, how about, is there a concern with cinder blocks containing fly ash and leaching toxic compounds? Have you heard that before? I've heard that just as individuals say they have problems with planting annuals and perennials next to the newly poured concrete foundation. And there may be some truth to that. I personally haven't experienced that but I don't have any new cinder blocks to work with. The cinder blocks that I do use for some of my smaller raised beds, which are very many are well weathered. Some of them are quite a few years old. So if there wasn't any leaching that was going on it was probably long since leached out. But that's certainly something to be concerned about and maybe something we need to look into a little further. Okay, you can always talk to the manufacturer, get some information from them. There may be a good source of information. How about composite decking material? Can we use that to construct a raised bed? Are you worried again about chemicals, harmful chemicals leaching into the soil? I haven't used composite decking material before but I do believe that the material we purchased the raised bed kits for our school gardens was made out of similar, if not the same material. And they were designed for raised beds. There shouldn't have been or there aren't any problems that we use or discovered so far with that. But again, that might be something to check with the manufacturer about. My larger concern would be that the composite deckboards are not very thick. And consequently, I think unless you reinforce them quite stoutly, you're going to have some bowing taking place, that would be a bigger concern of mine. But regarding whether there would be leaching taking place of some toxic materials, something, that would be another question that you could follow up with manufacturer on. Steve, have you ever used PVC pieces that you add to the corners and then you make a little hoop house and need to cover with polyester maybe to protect from frost? I have not, I have not done that, but I know that there are a lot of individuals that have made many hoop houses or many tunnels that work really nicely for that. I haven't found a reason to have to worry about that, but it's certainly a way to begin your garden earlier in the spring and to keep it growing longer in the fall. So it's not difficult to try that and you can find multiple videos of many hoop houses like that on any one of the YouTube channels. Right. How about, do you put fabric at the bottom before you put the soil in the box? I do not, I like to have, I like to visualize my raised bed as just being an extension of the existing soil. So if the roots of my carrots want to decide to grow really long or if the root systems need to get down there as deep as they wanna get for whatever plants I'm growing, they've got that option to do that. Whereas if there are our landscape fabric types of barriers in the bottom, then I think that that could potentially cause some problems. And the other reason that I don't do this because I'm working with a raised bed that's 12 inches high. So I'm not concerned about quack grass or any other bad type of weed having enough tenacity to come up through that much soil and I haven't had that problem develop yet. And I'll be honest with you, my lawn is not free of quack grass. There's quack grass growing right around my raised beds that you saw in the photos there. And I have not had any quack grass strong enough to push us way up through that. Do you have a minimal height for your bed? You have 12 inches. Can we get away with eight inches, six inches? Have you ever tried a lower height? I have never tried lower heights other than our school gardens. Those are eight inch high raised beds and we do not have landscape fabric or anything in the bottom of those and we have not had problems with weed infiltration either. But the more shallow the raised bed becomes the less of an advantage you have by having a raised bed. And at some point there's really the lower you go. Let's say you made it out of a two by four. Yeah, I will be a raised bed, but let's face it folks. The whole idea behind a raised bed is to get it up out of the ground for multiple reasons. One for convenience of not having to get down so low. You have better control of what's taking place because you don't have weed infiltration. If it's 12 inches high, the local cotton tails can't even jump into it, which I've discovered is quite nice. So there's a lot of advantages to be in a little bit higher. But if you can't afford two by 12s, two by 10s or two by eights will work just fine. But as you get smaller, you lose some of those advantages. So Steve, are you telling me that the cotton tail rabbits and Grand Forks can only have 12 inches? They can't even make it 12 inches? What is wrong with those guys? They need a snow bank to stand on. You need a three foot fence to control cotton tails except for Grand Forks. No, you must identify your cotton tails. You're talking about jack rabbits, not a Ford feet with a jack rabbit. You got unhealthy cotton tails there. Also, I like to, I never use landscape fabric underneath there. I see no reason for it. I scraped native soil because I don't want to have a layering, any type of layering in that in case. Can you bring up a good point when you say that, Tom? If you want the ultimate advantage before you put your soil in and I do this as well, fill up that soil, loosen it up that existing soil that you're going to put your new soil on top of. So you don't have those layers of division developing there. So that you don't have any barriers keeping your root systems from going down if they want to. How about, have you heard anything about what direction they should face? North, south, east? Should they go north to south or east to west or? It's only important when you're going east to west if you're going to be growing tall plants. And if you remember, and those some of those original photos or the earlier photos I showed, you could see some tall poles coming out of a couple of my raised beds. I had tomatoes on those. And I'll tell you right now if you try to put tomatoes on the south and carrots on the north, you won't have anything growing except for your tomatoes. So it's ideally if you're going to go east and west, you have to keep that in mind, put the tall things on the north. And mine are east and west. Now I grow a lot of grapes and my grapes all go north and south. So I get equal amounts of sunlight in the morning and afternoon. And so if you have the option, I would say go north and south. But if you don't, I chose to go east and west and they do just nicely far. Right, just make sure it's sunny. How about any other wisdom you can share about using cement blocks? Well, like I said, I don't use them very much. The few times I have used them, they're old and I'm not concerned about anything leaching out of them, other than the fact that you might want to find out what they're made out of. I don't think I can really offer too much more insight on what may or may not be a problem with them. How long do you expect your beds to last? The lumber is guaranteed to last 20 years and if they last that long, I probably won't be too worried about it after that anyway. That's right. Or I'll be building new ones, we'll be talking about this all over the garden. I'll want them a little higher if I'm not reaching for my chair. That's right. What kind of wood do you suggest if you want to build your raised bed all the way to waist high? I would use the same materials, but that does not mean you have to add waist heights of soil. You can put a false bottom in them if you want to. You want to make certain that you included some drainage in that false bottom, but I still would try to have a minimum of 12 inches of soil. Okay. You know, when you put the boards together, do you use any glue? No, I see no advantage to using glue. Although if you're a wood maker, a woodworker and you do want to use glue, make sure you're using some sort of a waterproof spar type of glue, an outdoor boat making type of glue because it'll definitely get wet. Indoor Elmer's glue types of glues will not last. But if you fasten them good with three and a half inch minimum screws on the corners, but better, you can even go with four inch screws. Just make sure they're deck treated screws that are treated with the material that they won't deteriorate. That's the important thing. And at least three and a half inches long. I don't see a reason for using glue. How about, have you ever used pallets? Are they safe to use for gardening? Pallets generally are not made out of treated lumber to the extent that, yes, they would be. As far as unless a toxic chemical had been spilled on them, perhaps they'd been used to hold barrels of waste oil or something. There might be an instance there where they wouldn't be good to use for raised beds. The only concern about using pallet wood is that, yes, it's probably free, but it's not going to last very long because since it's not been treated with preservative, it's going to deteriorate and within four or five years it'll probably be rebuilding it again. It's pretty thin. Pretty thin and it won't take. That's pretty sturdy. And you don't have that option to go long. You'd probably be restricted to the length of whatever the pallets are. You'll put a lot more lumber, a lot more time into it if you're gonna use those types of material. But I'm not against that. Pallets make a lot of nice projects. Okay, how about have you tried putting a panel over the edges of two raised beds for vines? Put a panel over the edges of two raised beds. Two raised beds, like you have a panel over them to allow for vines to climb over. I can say that I haven't with my vining types of plants, whether they're cucumbers or tomatoes, I have not done this with cantaloupes, but my cucumbers and tomatoes, I tie them to poles and grow them up that way and can't conjure up in my mind but an image of using a panel across the top of them. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I just can't figure out how I would go about doing that. Just anything that provides support to the vine will get the job done. How about you asked about sawdust again. If adding sawdust to a rugged garden, should it be aged at least a year? You talked about that. It should be aged a minimum of a year. If you look at it and you pull the pile apart and it still looks like fresh sawdust inside there after a year, let it sit for another year. And after a couple of years, it should be starting to turn kind of black, starting to look a little bit like compost, throwing a little bit of dirt and get it to start deteriorating, treat it a little bit like compost. And after two years, it should be ready, but the higher the pile of sawdust is the longer it's going to take for it to cure for a lack of a better term. And it's going to have that temporary nitrogen deficiency right, you have to worry about. Our panel question clarified that you would, you take a two raised bed and then you would bend and curve the panel to unite the two individual raised beds. They put a bridge over them. I'll get the job done. They would definitely get the job done, yes. How about what type of fertilizer would you suggest for raised beds that are three years old? I like to use slow release fertilizers. My favorite brand is Osmocote. And I don't know the specific analysis, but I'm thinking something like a 10, 10, 10 works really nicely. And I'm kind of lazy when it comes to fertilizing. So I'll dole pretty good with Osmocote in the spring and more or less forget about it. But I've also added some organic matter from compost. Usually, I usually just work with my own compost that I've made, but that and some slow release fertilizer seems to get me through the years through the entire growing season just fine. How about, do you know where someone can get plans for a portable lightweight raised bed that's accessible to someone in a wheelchair so they can pull it up like a table? I'm sure there's lots of them online. Wheelchair gardening designs. There are, there are. At our most recent gardening Saturday program on Saturday, we had a presenter address that very topic about working with individuals with disabilities and those individuals that want to continue to garden everything from adaptive tools to chair height gardens. And so I'd be happy to share some of that information from her presentation with you if you'd like, just contact me. How about, do you ever use drainage rock in the bottom of the garden? This type of rock is sometimes used in a retaining wall? No, I don't, but if you remember the photo that showed the finished raised bed, there was a gap, an air gap or a space on one end where the soil could spill out where it was sitting flat on the ground on the other end. I do put some larger stones in the bottom just to hold the soil in around that perimeter, but it's not for drainage, it's just to help hold the soil in. That's a good idea. How about, how about wheat hulls as a soil additive? It's organic. I can't see why they would be detrimental. I can think they could only help as long as again, they didn't draw the nitrogen away in the process of decomposing and make it unavailable for the plants themselves. I think if I was Dave Frans and I would say, I think sphagnum peat moss, can't go wrong with that. All these other exotic things are, I think, just. You know, you can work with the available materials and don't go out of your way to buy exotic materials from foreign lands because it might give you a minute advantage. Your best bet is working what's easily available and who knows, this may not be your first raised bed. You may be like me. I have materials. What you saw was the first of two that I'm building and I'm planning to build a third one on top of that, so I'll have a total of five raised beds in that particular location. So don't make it more difficult than it needs to be. It's not rocket science, but you do need to do it correctly. Also, do you rotate your crops from the gardens? I absolutely do. How do you do that? I make sure I'm not planting tomatoes, potatoes, or peppers in the same location from one year to the next. And that's one of the reasons that you'll see probably by the end of this spring, I'll have five raised beds there just to give me more options for rotation as well. Because rotating once every three years or four years is going to be a lot better than just back and forth. Okay. You know, how about, is there a special width of the raised beds that, like, why don't you go wider? That's an excellent question, Tom. I don't know if you thought it up yourself or somebody actually asked that, but the reason we don't go any wider than four feet is because it's really hard to reach beyond two feet. When you're sitting there picking weeds, maybe we're kind of lazy, maybe we just don't have that long of a reach. But four feet wide seems to be about the proven best width for most raised beds. I suppose you could go a little bit wider, maybe six inches, but if you're starting to reach in beyond two feet, you're going to find it's uncomfortable and it just won't be as enjoyable to use. So if you keep it a minimum, I mean, if you keep it no wider than four feet, and I should have mentioned that when I was showing you my diagrams that the end pieces need to be inside of the side pieces so that you keep that true four feet of width there. Okay. And just want to emphasize a couple of points. One is that you use pressure-treated lumber. You don't have to buy that very expensive cedar lumber, right? If it was successful last 20 years, guaranteed. And also, Steve, I think it's worth noticing that you had the same soil mix that Dave Franzen recommended for containers and that about one third of organic matter like peat moss, one third of sand, and then one third of topsoil, something like that. So you guys are on the same wavelength as far as that goes. You don't have to use like Mel's special mix or anything really too pricey. Are there any other questions out there before we move on? Last chance for a question. Or any famous last words, Steve? Happy gardening, happy spring. Get out there and drill those. Yeah, get out there. Get out there. Okay, Steve, thanks. We appreciate it. Excellent job. Yeah, folks. Okay. And we're going to take a five minute break right now and then we're going to talk about some shady gardening practices. Yeah, sure. Just like a machine, Bob. You're just like a machine. Ready? So sweet. Yeah, let's rock and roll. Welcome everybody back to the Spring Fever Garden Forums and now we're going to talk about gardening and shade. And most of us do have shady areas in our landscape. Maybe it's near a building or under a tree. And landscaping and shade does require extra planning but with the right touch, you can add some fascinating foliage and some wonderful shades of color. Got a microphone problem. Okay, I can't hear you. I'm in technology, technological problems, Bob. Yeah, I know that. Must be speaker. Must be that Marshall Tucker reference cause of trouble already. Good to go. Try it now. Okay. Testing one, two, three. Time is frozen. Wow. We're having some connectivity issues. I asked her here about, James, you were so good this year. I've got the wrong script, office. There are a few other issues. That's my way, Lord. Moving that office right away. Makes sense. Computer, I hope. Yes. It's just 1956. I had this projector when that was a mistake. I was giving this talk all about the color wheel and color combinations. Took his projector, was using it, it was in Grand Forks four years ago and it started dying. So that grayer and grayer with each slide it took was just totally gray. Color wheel. Projector once that was turning everything green and it had to do with the cord was bent. Yeah, it was weird. So I had a assistant just holding the cord perfectly still. Otherwise the presentation would go green. That was crazy. She was like kneeling right in front of the podium holding the cord. Okay, Tom, I think we're on the test. Testing one, two, three. I think we're ready to go, huh? Can you hear us? Ready to go. Can anybody hear us out there? Please let us know if you can hear us. Everyone, beautiful, great. We can hear you, great. Okay, let's get started. Thank you for your patience here. We had a few technological problems here. Let's get going and talk about landscaping in shady areas. And most of us do have shady areas in our home landscape. Maybe it's near building or underneath the tree. These areas do require special planning, but with the right touch, we can add some fascinating foliage and also some wonderful shades of color, excused upon with the shade. And here to talk to us and share with us her tips on landscaping in shady areas is Esther McGinnis. She is an extension horticulturist for NDSU. Esther, welcome to the forums. Thank you very much. So thank you, Tom. And I have to admit, this is a little bit of a personal journey for me. Now I've spent the last three and a half, actually four years here in North Dakota getting settled into my job. So it's finally time for me to devote a little bit of time to my own garden. So some of this is a personal journey. So I have the north side of my house to landscape. So we're getting quite a bit of shade, actually deep shade to light shade. So here are some of the design tips that I'm thinking. Oops, here we go. Okay, but the first thing to keep in mind is that gardening in full sun is a different beast than gardening in the shade. I would argue that gardening in full sun is a little bit easier. You could just select perennials that provide this riot of color and you don't have to think as much about the details. But the same is not true for a shade garden. So shade gardening is more sophisticated because you have to think about the nuances. How do you add interest in the shade? You do it by looking at contrast. So we're gonna talk about three kinds of contrast, color contrast, texture and form. So first it's color. So making the shade just light up. You can do that with foliage plants like the coleus and that Persian shield that is just peeking out from under that hosta. But you can also do so with flowering plants too. Texture, I would argue that texture is the most important of the three. Now you're looking at this picture and you'll notice not a whole lot of color, just kind of some blues and greens here, but it's still very much alive. It's very vibrant scene and that's because of the texture. We have a contrast between fine and coarse. The fine texture is represented by the fern on the left-hand side and that nicely contrasts with the coarse texture of the hosta. You'll see the hosta has that really large leaf. And then if you look up in the background, we've got a Boston ivy with those three lobes on the leaves, but it gives it a wavy effect. So even without much color, we have a lot of interest in this photo thanks to texture. And then form. Form is how your eye is drawn through this picture. So creeping ground covers would draw your eye horizontally. Hostas and other mounting plants give it kind of a rounded pleasing form. And then there are other plants that will draw the eye upward. So more of a vertical emphasis like the ligularia in this picture. First, let's talk about color. But I'm gonna talk about a color that is not on the color wheel. And that is white. So white is a color without hue. And I would argue that green and white contrast are some of the most beautiful contrasts that you'll see in the shade garden. So this happens to be a photo from Clemens and Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud, Minnesota. So if you're on your way to the Twin Cities and have a couple hours, I would advise to stop and see these beautiful public gardens, take your lunch and wander through them. But this is the all-white garden. And take a look at this picture. Now what draws your eye in this picture? Now, arguably it's the Annabelle hydrangea. So Annabelle hydrangeas are the star of white gardens. They're suitably hardy for North Dakota being zoned through hardy. Great in part sun to part shade. So very adaptable. But there's one flaw about the Annabelle hydrangea that I would argue. So I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with Annabelle hydrangea. Love the big balls of flowers. But I hate the fact that it lodges. It falls over. Those stems just cannot support those big balls of flower. So thankfully there's a new cultivar on the market. I think it's been on the market probably about five years or so called Incredible. And fortunately this is better than the species. It's been bred to have a bigger ball of flowers but at the same time it has a really stiff sturdy stem so it's less likely to flop. So that's the first thing that I'm gonna put into my new garden. Now other plants that give you that beautiful green and white color combination would be variegated Solomon seal. So this was the 2013 perennial plant of the year. Now hopefully you've heard of the perennial plant association. They name one plant every year. And it has to be a plant that's not a pre-Madonna. It has to be a plant that survives through most of the country. It's low maintenance and is usually resistant to different pests and diseases. So variegated Solomon seal fits the bill and was chosen in 2013. I'll take a look at this close up. I mean it almost looked like an artist took a paintbrush and just outlined the margins of the leaves. There are no two leaves that are the same. And I took this picture right after a May rainstorm so you could see the raindrops just hanging off of those white flowers. They're bell shaped. And eventually they'll ripen into berries that are blue. Now if you have kids, you may wanna cut off the berries because the berries can be a little toxic. But if you're not worried because you don't have kids at home, then allow the berries to ripen because that does add a little bit of color. So variegated Solomon seal. It does spread a little bit by rhizomes but it's not bad at all, easily maintained. Brunera macrophila sea heart. So this is a newer cultivar of Brunera that's been on the market for a little bit of time. And this just glows in the shade. It lights up the shade with silvery leaves. So this is really good in part shade. Now you don't wanna have too much sun exposure on this because it will burn the leaves but it's great in part shade. Now I have zone four with the question mark and the question mark indicates that we're not quite sure how far north we can go in North Dakota. I've seen it growing successfully in Bismarck and in Fargo but we don't know how far we can push it. Now, if you're living north of I-94 you may wanna consider mulching it until you start to figure out how hardy is this plant for you. What I love about it are the flowers. So this happens to be a seedling but it would have the same flowers. They're just sky blue, just a wonderful welcome to spring and it blooms in May. Now you don't have to just plant perennials. There are annuals that can certainly supplement the perennials in your garden. So this is polka dot plant. This is a plant that's been around for a while and it does come in other colors but this one has that nice white appearance to it. So very economical to plant. You can buy a four pack and purchase quite a few of them and they'll form a nice kind of ground cover for you. So on with the green and white theme, of course, hostas. So I'm not gonna talk about all the different hosta cultivars. I would bet that there are people in this audience that have way more expertise than I do about hosta cultivars. I'm sure there are lots of you that collect them. What I'm gonna talk about is variegation. So you have all different kinds of variegation of hostas. Got Vulcan on the left, which has that beautiful splotch right in the center of the leaf. And then on the right hand side, you have El Nino, which has a bluer leaf with white variegation on the edge. You know, there are all sorts of hostas with different kinds of variegation. But I would tell you to use variegation sparingly. Now if you look at this photo, you have more of the plain green and blue hostas, and then you have the variegated in the middle, and that just provides interest. Now don't overuse variegation. I used to drive by this driveway that had variegated hostas lining both sides, and it was too much. It was just too busy. So use variegation sparingly to inject energy into it. And I would argue this is too much variegation. To me, this is just too busy. For me, when I plan a shade garden, I think it has to have a little bit of a serene nature to it. I think shade gardens are pretty much a sanctuary for us. So using too much variegation, it detracts from that. Now going on to some serious color. So here we have some colias and some orange inpatients. Now these are colors that I was told as a child, never to use together. Never use orange. Never use pink together. But I tell ya, all the landskeepers are using this in a color combination now because it is so vibrant, so much energy. Now we'll first talk about foliage plants that inject color into your landscape, and then we'll switch to the flowers. So caladiums are hot. They're really hot. There's been a lot of breeding lately. Some people call these elephant ears, but there's so many different colors that you can buy. So this will take part sun to part shade, so quite adaptable as far as sun requirements. Part sun being like six hours, part shade being about four hours of sun. But the important thing to remember with caladiums is that it's very much a warm season annual for us. It doesn't like temperatures below 60 degrees. So wait till June to put it out. Bring it into the garage or into the house if you have it in a pot, and then plant it in June. And then it's really gonna thrive during the heat of the summer. And remember, it also grows from a tuber. Those tubers will rot if you put it in standing water or saturated soils, so plant it in a well-drained area. And of course, if we're talking foliage plants, we have to talk about coleus. Coleus has changed, so don't just assume that you can willy-nilly buy coleus and put it in your shade garden. There are sun-tolerant coleus cultivars, and then there are also shade tolerant. So read the label. Very important to see just where does it fit within your landscape, and then select accordingly. But you're gonna see that there are some really strange coleus out there. Horticulture is leading the way with a series called coleus under the sea. And everything in the coleus under the sea resembles some sea creature. So I swear, these are all mutant coleus. This one is supposed to look like seaweed. There's another one out there called lime shrimp. So Google it, it's just kind of fun. So you're gonna start to see more of these mutant-type coleus. So you may be asking, why do I want this in my garden? It's for those gardeners that always have to have something new and novel. You want your neighbors to come over and ask, what is that? Well, this certainly fits the bill. More traditional coleus would be like hurricane jenny here. And the contrast just within this one plant are just amazing to have the chartreuse in the interior and then burgundy and then lined again with a little bit of chartreuse. Just stunningly beautiful. And then my old favorite is fishnet stockings. You gotta like the name, but this is truly just a beautiful coleus. You have a green leaf and then each vein is outlined in burgundy. It's just very uniform and very beautiful. Now this one can take a little bit more sun, but this has been around for quite a few years, but it's still one of my favorites. And then here we have coleus paired with a dragon winged begonia. So everybody thinks that, okay, if I have a dragon winged begonia, I have to put it in a hanging basket. Well, it does look beautiful in a hanging basket, but you could certainly also plant it in the landscape. So here you can see how beautiful it is. And it would definitely look better more towards the front of that landscape. Whoops. Here we go. Okay, hukera. All right, so we can't talk foliage plants without talking about hukera. So hukera is kind of borderline hardy for us, and that's where we come in. So I'm trying to kill plants so you don't have to waste your money. So we are researching hukera hardiness and fargo in Absaraka and Williston. The problem with hukera is frost heaving. So we're trying to see which one survived. Now, unfortunately, I don't have shade environments in which to test them. So they really get to work out there in full sun. Now we'll be collecting our second year's worth of data here this spring, but I can tell you off the bat, the one that I like so far is Midnight Rose has a burgundy leaf with splotches of pink on it. And unfortunately, this photo just doesn't do it justice. But this one has done well, did well for us during the first year of the trial. All right, switching over to flowers from foliage plants for wallia or amethyst flower. So this can inject some purple into your landscape. Amethyst flower is underutilized. I see it sold, but I see so few people planting it. This will take part shade to really even deep shade. So something fun to plant along with your hostas and other perennials. Terania or wishbone flower. Now this is one of my favorites. I just usually buy the ground cover kinds. Now there are others that are more of a vining that you would use in a hanging basket, but I just buy the ones that come in the four or the six pack and they do really nicely. And I use them like other people would use standard impatience. I plant a ton of them so they look like a colorful ground cover. So this will take part shade to pretty deep shade, but it needs to have evenly moist soil. So you do have to irrigate this one. So here we've got standard impatience. Used to be the number two bedding plant in the country, but we're seeing that its popularity is diminished because of disease issues. Some of you may have encountered impatience down in Mildew and your extension agents most likely have a publication in their offices on it. So standard impatience and balsam impatience subject to impatience down in Mildew. So we're seeing more people switching to resistant species like New Guinea impatience or planting the sunpatience series, which is a hybrid or bounce or big bounce impatience. Now they are resistant to impatience down in Mildew. So here we have nice color contrasts going on with the reds, the reds and then with our white elissums, begonia, and then of course the spike. And then don't forget salveas. So most people think, oh, salveas have to be full sun. And that's true for most of the salveas. The exception would be salveas splendens. Here you see it's thriving in an environment with the ferns growing in part shade to full sun. And then we have begonia bolivianzas, my favorite hanging basket type of plant. Begonia bolivianzas has more of these draft like flowers and foliage. All right, so I better get on to texture here. So it's contrasting course and fine textures to provide that interest. Japanese painted fern. So the ferns can really provide that fine texture when it's contrasted with something with a thicker leaf. So Japanese painted fern also has colors. So it has silvers and blues in it. And then the veins are usually a little bit on the red side. This will take part to full shade in zone four. It does like rich humus-y soils. Onocleus and sybilis are sensitive fern. Consider planting natives. This is a native fern, native to North Dakota. Now we frequently find these in marshes, but I'm seeing landscape designers putting these into regular garden landscapes as long as they're irrigated and in deep shade they do quite nicely. But this has a completely different texture, the texture being coarser than the Japanese painted fern. And Virginia, Virginia has a coarse texture more like what you would find with a hosta. This has kind of a funny name. It's called Pipsqueak. Makes a sound when you rub your hand on the foliage. But this is pretty much a three season plant for us. You get your pink flowers in the spring. You get the beautiful foliage through summer. And then in the fall, you'll see red coloration. So an actual perennial that'll color up in the fall. My favorite of the coarse textured plants would be Ritmary Crawford, which is a ligularia. It has those beautiful purple leaves along with wine red stems. Just adds a really deep element to the garden. For a finer texture, we have Master Ward here related to carrots, actually. It's in the APACA family. But here you see the finely dissected foliage with the dainty flowers. And then don't forget grasses. So I tell people ornamental grasses are for full sun, but this is the exception. Tufted hairgrass you can take into part shade and it will do quite nicely. It's a cool season grass, so it'll start blooming in June. So you'll have seed heads quite early in the season. All right, I better zoom into form. So with form, we're talking about how the eye is drawn through the garden. Now I've shown you a lot of plants that are mounding or ground cover-like. So we're gonna focus on adding verticality in the garden, like with the rocket. So the rocket has those beautiful yellow spires of flowers, so they draw the eye upward. A nice compliment to all the other more mounding types of plants. So the rocket, this is a little bit of a trickier plant. I'm not gonna lie to you about it. You need to have part to full shade because this plant will wilt if it's getting too much sun. It does need evenly moist soils. I mean, the joke about this plant is it'll wilt even if it's growing in a bog. So a little bit more care is required to keep this looking healthy. But it does wilt a little bit, just physiologically speaking, but it does perk up at night. Now, if that wilting turns you off, there are newer cultivars, Bottle Rocket and Little Rocket. They're a little less maintenance and then of course they're more compact as our yards are shrinking. Couple more plants to draw the eye upward. We have Thalictrum. So this is an unusual one. This is gonna add a lot of height to your shade garden. So with Thalictrum, it's gonna be four or five feet tall and it's gonna have dainty foliage because it's related to Columbine. So take a look at that foliage and then it's gonna have these spring pink types of flowers, but it's blooming in midsummer. So something very different that can tower above your hostas and add that verticality. And then don't forget Estilbees. There are more and more Estilbees on the market, all sorts of cultivars. Just remember these really do need a fair amount of shade and moist soils and they'll reward you with beautiful blooms, with these beautiful spires on them. And you see how this contrasts very nicely with the round shape of the Annabelle hydrangea in the back. So remember, as you're planting your garden, think about contrasting colors and textures in form to add interest in the shade. And one last tip, think about planting in mass. Not one plant here and another species there. Think in threes, think in multiples. So three is a minimum and that will just bring a sense of cohesiveness to the garden, adding some rhythm to it. So I hope that this has helped you as you plan your shade garden, happy gardening. Okay, great. Thank you, Estilbees. Oh, they're beautiful shady areas, my goodness. Okay, I have a few questions here and we invite more questions from the audience. How about you showed Solomon seal. Is that the same as Lily of the Valley? No, it is not. Solomon seal is polygonautum and it's gonna be a different genus than Lily of the Valley. Lily of the Valley is invasive. It will just spread and take over. Solomon seal is completely different. It will spread just a little bit but you can keep it in check. It doesn't have the aggressive tendencies of Lily of the Valley. And it's going to be a little bit taller, more like 18 to 24 inches. Okay, how about when you landscape under trees, do you have to worry about keeping the soil too wet? No, to maintain your shady perennials, for example. Yes, yes, I do worry about that. First of all, it's a tough environment for the perennials because they're competing with the roots of the trees. So then people overcompensate by overwatering which then starts to suffocate the tree roots. So I tell people to tread lightly when they are around the tree roots. I don't like to see too many plants too close to the tree roots. Do you have any tips on how do you go about planting under a tree? Well, the first thing is don't add extra soil because we don't want you to smother those tree roots. But the further out you can go, the better it is. And the more likely that you will have better luck. So not right up against the trunk either. I mean, so come out a little ways and then dig around a little bit, see where the roots are. You don't want to be disturbing that and you don't want to be adding soil because when you add soil, you're smothering the tree roots. So I really don't like to see too many flowers around the base of the tree, just come out of ways. Okay, good. Do you have any opinions on goat's beard? Goat's beard, Aruncus, I think. So goat's beard, you know, that's another nice one and it has kind of a similar appearance to a Stilby. So that's another good one to add. I only had 20 minutes, I couldn't. That's my fault, sorry. So you can blame Tom for only giving me 20 minutes. I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you. Sorry. How about, is there an ivy that will grow in shade in North Dakota? Well, there was that Boston ivy, so parthenicis is that tricuspidata will grow in shade. Now be a little careful because it will cement itself to brick surfaces and once it does, so you're not gonna be able to get it off. So that's definitely one that you can grow a little bit in shade. Okay, here's a plant for you never heard of. I've never heard of, so please, I hope you have. How about Simicafuga, C-I-M-I-C, got it? Yes, yes, black cohosh, Simicafuga. Black cohosh. That's a great one for verticality. So that has those white spires, four to five feet tall with maroon foliage. I think that's gonna be more of a zone four, but that is another one that adds that sense of height. So I like that one too. I had that one when I was living in Minnesota. Yes, well, okay, so sorry again, it was my fault. I limited all the slides here tonight, so we can have a landscaping session later. We're gonna talk more about this. How about a salmon seal? Do those berries make a mess in the yard? I don't think the berries make a mess in the yard, but if you're worried, after it blooms, you can cut them off. But I never had a problem, they just kind of stayed there. But when my daughter was younger and I was worried about her wandering in the garden and putting something in her mouth, I did clip off the berries because they're a little on the toxic side. I don't know how toxic, but I didn't wanna take the chance. How about anemone? Do you know what growing zones recommended for that? They're different kinds of anemone. My favorite one, anemone, hybrid up, robustosema is my favorite cultivar. That is a zone four, although I've heard people push it into zone three. It's a fall blooming anemone that has pink flowers and the leaves are kind of look like a grape leaf with the silvery underside. Love it, I just planted that one last fall. Great. Okay, another one you said you like is incredible hydrangea. Now, are those blooms as white as those of Annabelle hydrangea? You know, I guess I haven't looked that closely to see if they're more beige as opposed to white. You know, I really don't know for sure. Okay. How about in catalogs, you see sun messy parts shade, fall shade, part sun, like can you define how many hours of sun and shade are we talking about or morning versus afternoon? Great question. So let's start off with, which is kind of full shade would be two hours of sunlight. Part shade would be about four hours. Part sun would be six hours of light and then full sun would be eight or more hours of light. Okay. How about that anemone you said, really interested that somebody, what was that favorite cultivar again you mentioned? Robustosema, R-O-B-U-S-T-I-S-S-I-M-A. Okay. There are newer ones on the market. I think. Is that the species name? That is the cultivar. That's the cultivar. I think it might be anemone X hybrid. So it might be an inter specific hybrid. Wow. I'm sure if you just Google Robustosema anemone that they'll get you in the right direction. Any other questions out there? There's a general question about gardening under a tree. Any special considerations? That's a hard question. It's a hard one. So I'll tell you what I have planted under trees that has been okay. No, this is not going to be a, this is not about the flowers. There are some people that want to have a ground cover that will work under the shade of trees. So I'd recommend something called Pennsylvania sedge or Carrick's Pencilvanica as a ground cover. Now this is going to look more like a grass. And that I have grown successfully under tall pine trees. It's done well in that dry shady area. But then of course these are areas where the grass won't grow because it's too shady. But this happens to be a forest sedge. So it's used to taking kind of that shady environment. So I've planted that under maple trees. I've planted it under pine trees and it's done really well in that dry shady area. Okay, good. We have a few questions on hostas. There's a comment that they think hostas like an acidic soil. Is that true? Well, now hostas are originally native to Japanese forest. So maybe they come from an acidic soil but they are very much very well adapted to North Dakota. Cause I mean, we grow them everywhere. We grow them in soils that are eight and above and they do just fine. So I've never seen a nutrient deficiency in a hosta. Yeah, they're very almost indestructible. Except for sometimes somebody says somebody's eating their hosta. You know what that could be? Not somebody, I should say. Probably tax. Hungry neighbor, no. No slugs, you're talking slugs. Okay, what can we do about those slugs? Well, they're different measures that you can take. The first thing is first cleaning up the debris under the hostas or other shade plants. So good hygiene goes a long way. So you're removing the dead foliage. The next line of defense. You can certainly sprinkle some diatomaceous earth. So these are little marine diatoms. It's their skeletons full of silicon and it will actually tear the bodies of those slugs as they crawl across the diatomaceous earth. But it only works as long as that diatomaceous earth remains dry. So if you're getting a lot of rain, what do you do? There's some people that are talking about using copper, copper strips around their plants. Now, I've never tried that but it's something I've started reading about. And the other thing would be go chemical. There's an iron phosphate product, actually a couple of them called escargot and sluggo that tend to be a little less toxic than our older pesticide, which was made from Matteldehyde. So how did you know that answer when you haven't had a slug question for six months? Well, you're already in your summer form already, Esther. Can't believe it. You're naming the products just like that. Just grossest thawing. You're ready for those garden questions, aren't you? How about, how about it? Where do you get all these wonderful plants from, my goodness sakes? What's your, no, like, do you have any, how would you go about it? Is there a certain nursery around the state that would have them or go online or do you have any advice for that? I have to admit, I have a good job because I get to travel around the state and I get to visit nurseries too. So I pick up nurseries all around the state but I'm not shy about ordering online. I'll order plants online too. But I do like to try and visit my local garden centers, particularly the independent garden centers. I do like to give them my business because I want them to be around when I need them. Okay. How about, do you have a favorite type of mulch? Well, you're going to laugh at me, Tom. Well, it won't be the first time. My old favorite, I'll tell you my old favorite mulch, which I could get away with in the Twin Cities was the Coco Bean Mulch. We did not have the wind that we have here in North Dakota. So it didn't blow away. It just helped enrich the soil. It'd break down every year. And I tell you, it would attract kids like you wouldn't believe. You'd start spreading this around. It smells like chocolate and all the neighborhood kids would show up. But that doesn't work as well unless you're in a shaded, I mean, unless you're in a sheltered area. So I'm back to using wood mulch now so it won't blow away. So why do I have kids? Did they help you pull weeds or something? Or are you tracking kids for? I tried, I really tried. I'll go very fair again. How about, do these type of gardens work when they're planted into spruce tree needles under a spruce tree? So I would say no. I wouldn't do it right under a spruce tree. You wanna go out beyond the drip line because it's just gonna be too shady and you're not gonna be able to see it. Now of course, there's some of you that have limbed up your spruce trees. I mean, that's a little bit different, but keep in mind, that's a really tough, competitive environment under those spruce trees. They're really sucking up a lot of water. So the further you can come out, the better. I mean, you can still have the shade from the spruce trees, but I wouldn't plant too close to the base of it. Okay, that's excellent. Any last questions out there in the colonies? Okay. Seeing none, Esther, thank you for that. Wonderful talk. It's so beautiful. Even in the shady area, there's so much hope for shaded areas now. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you very much. Okay. We're gonna take a five minute break and then we're gonna start learning about attracting butterflies, everybody. So take a quick break. Are we ready? Just let me know when you want me to get rocking. Hold on. Hold on a second. Do this again, because it did this wrong. Bob, I don't know what we're doing without you, man. Okay, Mike, start a laugh. You ready? I'm ready, man. Let's go. All right. Okay, welcome back to the Spring Fever Garden Forums and we saved the best for last. How about that, champ? No. But before we close it up for this spring, we got a few thank yous we need to say. First of all, thanks to the county agents out there. This broadcast is being being the 30 county offices. So thank you to the county agents and the master gardeners who are hosting this. I hope all you gardeners out there appreciate the hard work and dedication of your county agent. They open up their county office four nights for these programs and we just, just thank you to the county agents. So wonderful. Also got to give my thanks to Bob Birch with Ad Communications. You know, you just saw Bob at his finest. A few moments ago, the system crashed and then Bob just did a few clicks and just a few moments the system was going statewide again. So Bob, you know, just I really, you are making such a huge difference yet through this program. We could not do this program without you and you've been with us from the very beginning and just a great partner and thank you for what you do. Also, I wanna just give you a heads up that we need to evaluate our program. We strive to get you the best quality program we can. So the county agents, they did get an evaluation sheet. So we would, we really would appreciate if we get your comments, tell us what we're doing right. Tell us what we can improve. Again, we wanna do whatever we can to make the spring favorite garden forms. We just wanna keep growing and it's growing strong now. Let's keep it going. So if you can complete this and get with your county agent tonight, that's great. If you're too busy, you could scan an email list to me if you want or you can mail it to my office. The address is at the bottom of the second page. Or you know, if you have registered or if you're online and not in a county office, any registered, I will be sending an online evaluation form. You don't need to do both, please, just one or the other, but we really would appreciate your comments for our program. So with that out of the way, let's get going to our last talk and we're talking about butterflies. Butterflies, that's a fun critter. Everybody loves butterflies. And there's a lot of folklore surrounding butterflies. I know that in many cultures, a butterfly symbolizes hope and good fortune in the future because when you just think about it, like what was a butterfly? Just a creepy, ugly caterpillar. And then before you know it, it can transform itself into a majestic, winged, beautiful creature. So there's always hope. And I remember once when I was taking a walk in a garden and worth another gardener, and this butterfly was circling all over me and then landed on my shoulder and she told me that was an angel overlooking and watching me. So I thought that was interesting. Another one, it's kind of crazy, I didn't hear this one, how about this one in Taiwan? I lived in Taiwan for seven years and the word for butterfly is very similar to the word for long life. And so, I don't know, heck, I don't know if any of this folklore is true with butterflies but everybody loves butterflies. They're beautiful colors and delicate movements are just absolutely wonderful and enchanting. And it's here to tell us how to attract more butterflies to our landscape is Jan Kanotl. She's an extension entomologist for NDSU. So Jan, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. So we'll go ahead and get started with the PowerPoint and I hope that also that you have the butterfly gardening in North Dakota fact sheet that was sent out. And co-authors with that was Esther McGinnis and Gerald Fauske. So just a little bit of history. Like Tom said, there is a lot of folklore that goes along with butterflies and you might wonder where the name butterflies came from. Well, originated in Britain, they had these beautiful yellow brimstone butterflies flying around early in the spring in the woodlands. So people referred to them as butterfly and that's actually how the name butterfly came about. Well, it isn't in the insect group and they do have the typical three body parts, head, thorax and abdomen, a pair of antennae, two pairs of wings and a hardened exoskeleton. So in butterflies in specific belong to the order Lepidoptera and they're characterized by their scaly wings. And that's what we get from seeing those beautiful colors on the wings for butterflies. And some of the scales on the wings are tremendous number, about 125,000 per square inch. So that's quite a bit and you can get a lot of different colors. And some of the colors are related to the light and being reflected as well. And sometimes you can even tell the age of a butterfly by looking at the scales on the wing. As you know, the scales, when you pick up a butterfly by the wings, the scales will rub off easily. Well, we can kinda tell from how many scales are on the wing by how old the butterfly is. When it first emerged from the chrysalis, the scales are very pristine. And as it starts to age, the scales get rubbed off and dollar in color. So butterflies are typically active during the day as well. In the order Lepidoptera, we also have moths but they're active in the evening. Just a little bit about the life cycle of a butterfly. It really varies species to species. Some butterflies only have one generation a year and other species will have multiple generations like the monarch butterfly. And here we have the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. They have a complete metamorphosis or life cycle. So they have four different stages. The egg, larvae or caterpillar, pupae or chrysalis, and the adult. And the amount of time can vary too depending on the insect. But the pupae or the chrysalis I should also mention is more of a resting stage. So it's the non-feeding stage. So then you get the adult butterfly emerging from that. And the caterpillars are the ones that do most of the feeding on different plants. We'll talk a little bit about the host plants. So there's a lot of different species of butterflies. In the world, there's about 16,000 species. And of course, as you move down towards the tropics, the rainforest, there's many more species. In North America, there's about 7,500 species. And North Dakota, we're called here, we have about only 161 species. But the main thing about a butterfly gardening is very similar to like planting a pollinator garden. The location, location, location, very important. They love the hot, sheltered locations to plant your flowers in. And also, if you don't have a sheltered spot, you can use fences, trellises, or brushes, or other trees to provide some protection. And also the adult butterfly feeds on nectar sources from the flowers, but they also need water. So you can provide feeders for them like the one on the right. That one provides both nectar and then you can also put pieces of fruit on top of it. And then also you can plant the different plants to attract butterflies. They feed on the nectar on flowers or you can attract, use different plants for the caterpillars or larvae. And then we'll discuss those. But again, we don't recommend insecticide use. You may get some pests that come in on your flowers or plants for the caterpillars. But in general, we don't recommend using insecticides if you're trying to attract butterflies because most of the insecticides today are fairly specific to all insects and they will kill the butterflies. So when you're planting your flowers, you wanna have a continuous blooming of different flowers to provide nectar. And these are just some of the examples for early summer flowering perennials that are good nectar sources for butterflies. L.A.M. Chies, Golden, Alexandria, and Peaks. And unfortunately I don't have time to show pictures of all of the beautiful flowers. And then here's some of the mid-summer flowers. So my favorite is Black Eyed Susan and Catnip and Flock's. Russian Sage and Sunflowers, another one of my favorite. Actually, they all are. But again, planting a diversity cause different butterflies like different flowers. And then fall flowering perennials. This is probably a place where a lot of people forget about the fall, but it's very important. For the monarch, for example, it's gonna be doing its reverse migration south to Mexico, the overwintering grounds, and for other butterflies they need to fatten up as well for the overwintering. Some of them do overwinter as adults in North Dakota. So the Goldenrods, Aster, Sedum, and Sneezeweed are very important. And here's some annuals you can plant to fill in between those perennials. The butterflies and the pollinators too really love these annuals here. And these are all listed in the fact sheet. And we can't forget about the male fleets. They're very important for the larval caterpillar of the monarch butterfly. And there's several different species that can grow here in North Dakota. So if you have the heavier or drier soils, you can select the one that is most adapted to your area. And I'd like to thank Aster for putting this table together. And then there's a lot of different nectar sources, very depending on the butterfly, as I mentioned. And then this is just part of table four. The whole table is available in the fact sheet. But you can see which plants are attractive to different butterflies. So if you wanted to attract the black swallowtail, you'd plant flocks, bee balm, sunflower, et cetera. So this can provide you with some guidelines if you have a favorite butterfly. And again, some of the flowers have been genetically modified through breeding and so forth to produce more petals. And this replaces some of the reproductive parts. So then that particular flower on the right doesn't have any nectar. So make sure you're buying flowers that do produce nectar for the butterflies. I mean, it's okay to plant a few plants with no nectar, but to a butterfly, you can never have enough flowers. And then there's always the caterpillars. That's a completely different looking from the butterflies. A lot of people don't recognize the larvae or the caterpillars, but they also have different food sources. So you may wanna also plant some of the food sources of the caterpillar as well as the nectar sources for the butterfly. And there's lots of different ways to identify butterflies. You will need a good pair of binoculars so you can see the butterflies. And basically, we can use these butterflies through binoculars. The east and west are one of my favorites. They have beautiful color pictures. And a real inexpensive book is one of the golden guides. And there's a lot of other field guides out there through Audubon, Kaufman, and so forth. But there is a Butterflies of North Dakota book, so you may wanna get ahold of that. It's from a professor retired now, Dr. Royer from Minot State University. And he's put together a beautiful book on the butterflies of North Dakota with several color pictures as well. And then you'll need a different set of books for identifying the caterpillars. So they do look completely different from the butterflies, of course. So let's go through just some of the groups of the butterflies. These are the skippers, Hesper, A today. And they kinda look like the evening setting sun. Hesper means evening sun. And the orange is referred to the setting of the sun. So they're a fairly small butterfly. And there's about 42 species in North Dakota. And skipper refers to their erratic flight. And we do have the endangered species that's under the threatened status, the Dakota skipper, in North Dakota. It's mainly out in the North Central region. And I helped out with some trapping for it when I was back in Minot near Garrison and we did find it out there. But these are just some examples over on the lower right of some of the skippers we have in North Dakota. And for identification, besides the color and small size, you can look at the tenot clump. If you're up close enough, they're either hooked or it's twice as long as wide. And they in general hold their antenna quite wide. If you look at the top picture on the right, you can see the base is fairly wide. In other butterflies, it's more narrow and V-shaped. Then the larvae are pretty distinguished looking. They have a neck behind the head and they generally spin silken tubes with leaves or grasses. Like the Dakota skipper, that one uses some little blue stem. Swallowtails. This is probably one of the favorite of a lot of people, the Canadian tiger swallowtail in the black. But they're quite large butterflies, very distinguished looking with their little tails on the hind wings. And there's about nine species in North Dakota. And for the larvae, they have an interesting feature where they can avert an organ on the head. It's called the Osmaterian. And it's used as a defensive mechanism against predators that might be preying on it and it also emits a fall order. And you can see the chrysalis too on the leaves, they're resting with their head up. Then we have the solfers and whites of the purity. They can range in color and they have different spots on the wings. And of course, this is the one I mentioned earlier for the yellow color that created the word butterfly. There's about 14 different species in North Dakota. And this one you might be familiar with if you've gardened because there's the imported cabbage worm and that's the critter there on the caterpillar on the left that likes to get into your cabbage and chew holes. But they have kind of a minute hares next to the body. And this one too, the pupae or chrysalis rests with the head up. And then it has like a little silken string that supports it about the middle. Then there's the gloss of our wing butterflies. And these are one of my favorites, the blues. And they're very beautiful or brightly colored the wings. And on the hind wing, they do have the tails as well. And another characteristics, which you probably won't see unless you get pretty close is the eye actually touches the base of the antenna there. There's about 29 different species in North Dakota. And here's the same group, the coppers and the hair streaks. And the summers are, and they're kind of an interesting group for the larvae or caterpillars because they're kind of slug like. So it's more difficult to see a head area. And then you'll see ants feeding along with them. And that's because the larvae excretes a honeydew and the ants feed on the honeydew. And then in turn, the ants provide protection for the larvae against predators. So it's a symbiotic relationship. And then we have the brush-footed butterflies, Nymphalidae, which is our monarch is in this group. But one of the main characteristics is you'll only see four legs when they're walking around on the flowers. That's because the front pair of legs is actually reduced and it's used for tasting. And there's about 54 species in North Dakota. It will break this large group down into seven subgroups. And the larvae are very diverse, but often a lot of them have spines on them. And the chrysalis or the pupae hangs downward from a cremaster, which is the point where it's attached. And the first group is the frutillaries. They're medium and they're pretty much black and orange. On the under surface of the hind wing, you'll see silver spots. And you'll see with the two on the left, you'll see the right part of the wing is detached from the body. And that's the underside of the wing. So on the left is the top surface and on the right is the under surface. And you can see the beautiful silver spots. There's about 11 different species in North Dakota. Then we have the crescents or checker spots. As well, they're black and orange, but they have a more solid black margin on the wing and then tennis spoon shaped. There's about eight different species. And then we have the angle wings or tortoise shell butterflies. And the morning cloak is in this group. They're medium to large size. You can see the edge of the wing is kind of scallop shaped and rough. And if you look at the top surface, it could be very colorful, but the underwing is kind of mimics tree bark and leaves. And these are one of the only group of butterflies that aren't really attracted to flowers for nectar, but they feed on tree sap, flows, infirmity and fruit. And there's about 10 species. You will see them feeding on nectar, but they prefer the fruit and the sap. Here's some of the others. Again, you can see the scalloping and the wing edge. And then the underside and the lower right, that kind of looks like the bark of a tree or a leaf. And then we have the thistle butterflies. This is the painted lady, which migrates up in the red admiral and they're medium with bright colors. And they typically have eye spots on the ventral side of the hind wings. And there's four species. And then we have the admiral, the viceroy and the light admiral. And they're pretty large with very colorful patterns and they have a weak and tenor club. And they like to fly. They're kind of circle with very flat wing glide. And there's only about three or four species in North Dakota. And then we got the milkweed butterflies are large again. And they have the typical orange wings with the black veins. Everybody knows the monarch, I think. And they like to flap and then they follow that with a long glide. And then we do have mimicry with the viceroy and the monarch. The viceroy in the lower right is mimicking the monarch. And the reason why is it because it has defensive chemicals the monarch from feeding on the milkweed. So it makes it toxic to predators. So the viceroy is trying to mimic that so it's protected as well. And then we got the brush-footed butterflies. They're medium size and most of them are kind of dull colored more like what you would expect with a moth but they often have eye spots as well on the wings. And one of my favorites is the common woodnip. You can see that if you actually collect some you'll see that the vein is very swollen at the base of the four wings. Here's about 11 different species. And in the fact sheet you'll see a calendar that shows you when the different butterflies come in or occur in North Dakota. And some of them have more than one generation a year here so they may come in June and then again in August. But most of them are most common is probably July is probably the month where you're most likely to see the majority of the butterflies. And that's all I have. There's a picture of the fact sheet. If there's any questions. Great, any questions out there for Jan? How about Jan, can you talk about where would be a good place in a landscape for a butterfly garden? A sun or shade, does that make a difference or should it be sheltered or not? Yeah, they like the sun primarily in sheltered locations but if you're just putting in a garden like I'm just putting in one on the south side and I'm out in the open. So I planted some shrubs but it's gonna be a while before they're large enough. But yeah, it's hot and sunny because the butterflies need fairly warm temperatures to fly. They need like 80 degrees. So you'll often see them sunning themselves on plants and trees and that's because they're trying to warm up their body temperature high enough so they can fly. So do you ever put out like some dark rocks for them to bathe on? Yeah, they do like, that's another thing that was mentioned in the fact sheet is they do like the sun. So you can put out objects for them to land on and sun. Do you ever give them like a muddy water for salt? Yeah, they do like mud because they do need minerals. So you can put out like a salt block that you typically use for livestock or just have an area that provides mud for them but it's sometimes difficult to keep it wet. Yeah. How about, what does the woolly bear caterpillar produce? Oh, that's a moth. It's a, our tea and moth it's called the Isabella tiger moth. So it's a beautiful moth actually. Do you believe that it can tell them the winter, predict winters? Yeah, no, that's kind of a folk lore but it's an interesting one. I think the width of the band indicates the severity of the winter. They're brown and then they have the black band so the lighter the band, the worse, the more severe and colder our winter. Yeah, every winter is severe here. Yeah. It doesn't make a difference. Yeah. How about the issue about, you know, monarchs, they have to have milkweed but milkweeds are noxious weed in some places. You can grow the one that is cultivated, the milkweed that was in the table. Showy one. Yeah, the showy one and it's the orange flower and that's a cultivated species that's not invasive. Right. And I can't remember the sancti... Oh, yeah. Yeah, tuberosa, it does, you know, good and medium to dry soil. So I have it in my garden and it's doing pretty good but they're very slow to come up in the spring. So that's an ornamental milkweed. Yes. The showy milkweed is a purple flower, just like the common... Yeah, this is an orange flower. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so you can use the orange flowering milkweed. Yeah. That's not noxious, that's an ornamental. It's beautiful and will help them on a... Yeah, the common milkweed is the one that's most invasive. The other ones like the swamp milkweed, that requires a wet area and it's not invasive at all if it's not, you know, a wet place. How about, do any other butterflies have strategies to protect themselves with toxins besides the monarch? Well, they use that defense of the caterpillar has that defensive mechanism where it averts the structure. It kind of looks like a snake's tongue. And that's supposed to scare predators from eating the caterpillar. So, I'm being interstated, I haven't seen it myself, so. Yeah, some of the caterpillars are a bit scary looking. Yeah, some of them have eye spots as well. Oh, another defensive mechanism on the wings is the eye spots. They're supposed to look like the eyes of a larger predator. Yeah, there's a question about some good sheltered shrubs. Maybe we can just talk about which ones are you planting? Well, they like the ones with flowers like lilac, the lilac tree, trying to think, we didn't have too much on the trees, I don't think in the publication. But any of the flowering trees would work, nine bark. How about, why do those white moths always find a cabbage? Why do they cabbage? What's a good about cabbage anyhow? Many of the, if you look at the list for the caterpillars, you'll find they're fairly whole specific. And that's as their food source. So, they'll go to all the brachici plants in the garden like your broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. They have amazing abilities to sense the cabbage. They do, yeah. They can pick up that. And they have, they can smell, they have through their antenna, or there's pads on the feet that they can sense. So, I didn't know monarchs eat with their feet. Yeah. Their front feet. I didn't know that one. And they use it for cleaning their eyes and antenna. Crazy. How about, do you have some tips on like annuals that produce the most nectar or? It's really good. I have to have an open flower. Yeah, open. I like verbenia. Oh, what's that other one? I really enjoyed. I grew it last. Lantana. Oh, they love Lantana. Cosmoles are good. Some of them. Blanket flower. Yeah. It's really good. You know, I see Jan here. She's got lots of butterfly attracted for flowers in that university publication. So, you know, shrubs, she had lilacs, spireas, choke, cherry, dogwoods, cranios, or flocks, or cone flower. And this is in her slides too. She had a lot of this too. The butterfly weed we talked about, that's really an important one. Yeah, and that one's not invasive at all. That's the one that's not invasive. Fermenting fruit. Is that attract butterflies, fermenting fruit? Well, just the group with the, like the morning cloak butterfly, just that one group. So, you could put it out to a mid-summer, but in the spring, they're more attractive to the sap that's flowing from some of the trees. Oh, we don't recommend wounding our trees. No. My God. No. No matter how much you love butterflies, you don't wanna throw a tree over it. And one of the other things you can do is provide a box for butterflies to go in for shelter. They make these boxes with narrow holes in them. I have one, but I haven't seen any butterflies using it yet. So, I'm kinda waiting to see if it's something that's very useful for a garden. How about, do you ever see those butterfly feeders that you can buy along with the bird feeders? Mm-hmm. Do they work, those butterfly feeders, or are they useful? You're still better having lots and lots of flowers with nectar. Go natural, huh? Yeah. Make sure they do. If you enjoy, like I really enjoy feeding the birds and I do tend to put out feeders for other animals to like butterflies. McLean County says they've had butterflies use the boxes. Okay. It's worked in bad weather and wind. Mm-hmm. Okay. Any other questions about butterflies? So, when you were a little girl, did you have a butterfly collection? Yes. Did you really? Yes. Is that right? Not an ants, I like. Oh, really? You're chasing after butterflies and that's pinning them up? Oh. Nowadays, you never know some of the species that are endangered, so. Can't do that. Yeah, you're better off using your camera. Yeah, that's right. Taking pictures. It's more correct these days. Okay, there's no more questions. Let's thank you, Chan, for that really colorful and wonderful way to end the Spring Fever forums. Just, I noticed there's a question about the variety trial program. Yes, it's ongoing this year. You can go to the North Dakota Home Garden variety trials and it's there. And just, we just want to thank everybody for the forums and this is not the end. You know, North Dakota State University, our extension service is there for you. We're there all summer. If you have any questions, you know, feel free to contact your local county agent and they are your best line of defense. They have the science-based answers that can help you. So we hope to keep this partnership going all year round. With that, you know, again, we encourage you to complete your evaluation forums and we wish you all a wonderful summer, everybody. Thank you.