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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up on the show tomorrow, musician Silvana Estrada, who was just nominated for a Latin Grammy Award, will perform live in WNYC Studio 5 and will preview an event taking place in the green space this weekend about the history of movie music. Plus, tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the day that the Rocky Horror Picture show premiered in the United States. We'll talk about it with the director of a new documentary that's in the future. Now let's get this hour started with the plant doctor. Summer has turned to fall and that means it's time to start prepping bulbs and bringing the houseplants inside. Chris Satch is a New York place, a New York based plant doctor and founder of NYC Plant Help. Chris awesome comes up with some Excuse me, I'm starting this again. Chris often comes up on the show to give advice with your plants and hear your concerns and questions. Here now to give us some pointers about how to best take care of your plants is Chris Satch. Hey, Chris.
- [01:20]
B
Hey, how you doing?
- [01:21]
A
I'm doing okay. Thinking about this time of year, late September heading into early October. Big picture. What should we be thinking about?
- [01:29]
B
Well, depending on whether you're indoors or outdoors, if you're outdoors, you know, now's the time to start the harvest. If you already haven't started your harvest, I hope you have a harvest. You know, things like, you know, cleaning the garden, mulching will come up, you know, as we prepare for the colder seasons, you know, now is the time to start actually really planting bulbs. Before you do any of the mulching or cleaning, you want to make sure that anything that you want to come up in spring, like garlic bulbs or tulip bulbs, you know, crocuses, you know, all kinds of other things. You want to start planting around this time of year. So really it's bulb planting season and then we go into sort of garden cleanup season after bulb planting season.
- [02:12]
A
Listeners, do you have a question for the plant doctor? Maybe you have a houseplant that needs a little help and you're not sure what to do. I know I do. I've got questions. You can take your houseplant questions now. 2124-3396-9221-2433-933, wnyc or you want to know how to best care for your plants as we head further into fall? Or if you want to shout out the plants and flowers you're planting now for springtime, we'd love to hear that as well. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. I want to get into mums because mums are everywhere. First of all, why is this a good plant for fall?
- [02:53]
B
Well, mums are great because one, they flower at this time of year, which a lot of flowers don't flower this time of year. They're frost tolerant. They're pretty. You know, they've been breeding mums for or by the way, mums or chrysanthemums. It's, you know, two names for the same plant. You know, they've been breeding them for years and years and years. And so the varieties that you have on the market and the color selection that you have, you can make that work with most anything. They've got your purples for your Halloweens with orange. You could do a yellow for, you know, like hay bales and yellow, maybe some white in there. They've got everything now. So they're really great plants to plant this time of year and they don't need that much care or maintenance just to be planted. Really.
- [03:35]
A
What advice would you give when you're choosing mums? Because you can go to the farmer's market and you can see a lot of them. And I'm not sure, like, do I get them fully bloomed? Do I get them with buds? Which one do I get?
- [03:47]
B
No, that's a really great question. And it is difficult for people with instant gratification needs. I mean, we all want to buy the one that's fully in bloom. It looks good right now. You know what you're getting. But unfortunately, you really should be buying the ones that are in bud because the ones that are in flower, they've already lived about a week or two into their flower cycle. You've just cheated yourself out of two weeks of extra bloom. So if you do have the patience and the diligence and temperance, get the ones in bud. That way you get the full flower life cycle of when it does bloom and you'll get an entire display. And it'll also give the plant a little time to get settled into your conditions outside.
- [04:28]
A
How long will they last?
- [04:30]
B
They'll last until the really, really, really hard frost takes them or first snowstorm. They keep going. You can deadhead them. You should deadhead them, you know, as soon as the flower starts becoming spent, you should pull it off. Some of the varieties do come back, others don't. But really not too much you have to do to them other than just keep water them when they're dry. And you know, as the weather gets cooler, make sure that you're watering a little less because cold and wet is not good for any plant. And when you are buying them at the supermarket or when you're buying them at wherever, you want to make sure that you select a healthy plant. And what that means is you inspect the plant. I know we all just like to grab and go, but you want to inspect the plant. You want to make sure there's no bugs hopping a ride. You know, you don't have those mites or scale bugs or all kinds of other things making their way from the market into your garden. I know that that's happened to me once or twice and I learned my lesson the hard way. So make sure there aren't any bug. Make sure that the plant is growing in a way that you want it to grow. It's better to have a fuller, bushier plant and to trim it back than to have something that's like a little like, oh, I want to save this. It's on the clearance aisle. I know a lot of people may disagree with me, but I'm not a fan of rescuing plants from the clearance aisle. I'm so sorry.
- [05:48]
A
And it's my last question on mums and then we'll go to calls. Do you keep them in their pots or do you put them in the ground or does it not matter?
- [05:56]
B
It kind of doesn't matter since the way most people grow mums is not a perennial plant anyway. You just kind of grow them for the season and then you chuck them and then you put in that pot. Most people have them right in front of their stoop or whatever. They just put it in. It dies at the end of the season. Then you put something, you know, one of the spring plants in for spring. So because most people don't grow them in sort of a long term way, it sort of doesn't really matter whether or not you take them out of the pot or not. But they will last a little longer if you do fully pot them either into the ground or into a larger pot than what they're sold in mums.
- [06:30]
A
We have finished. Let's get to calls. Let's talk to Francesca. Hi, Francesca, thanks for calling, all of it. You are on the air.
- [06:39]
C
Hi there. For the first time ever, I've been able to grow dill weed and keep it going all summer. And right now it's getting pretty dry and the stalks look like chopsticks almost. Can I carry it over for next year?
- [06:59]
B
Well, you would collect the seeds if you've let the dill go to flower. And those are the little tiny yellow things. And the flowers have turned to seeds. You'll know. You kind of just break them apart. They've already turned brown by now. Assuming the plant hasn't been taken sooner by. Oops, I forgot to water it. Right. You've been watering it, it's been alive and it just kind of, you know, naturally became spent at the end of the season. Collect the seeds and then they can self seed. I have seen in my own gard garden, just dill just randomly popping up because the seeds flew here, there and everywhere. But I would just take the seeds in and overwinter them in like a nice one of those manila envelopes you can use. A lot of people use those. A lot of people use wax envelopes, the kind of like wax paper that they give you cheeseburgers in. But I would not recycle a cheeseburger wax paper. And you would take the seeds and you just plant them as a normal annual. A lot of plants that can be perennials in our zone, allegedly, we're zone 7B, we're really turning into zone 8A can be, you know, we plant perennials. Tropical perennials are more. Not saying dill is tropical, but we plant a lot of perennials as annuals here.
- [08:09]
A
Thank you so much for calling. Let's talk to sue, who is calling us from the Upper west side. Hey, sue, thanks for making the time to call all of it. You are on the air with Chris Sachet.
- [08:22]
C
Thank you very much for having me. We have acquired a giant aloe plant and it's about a foot tall. And I've always had. I love aloe plants and I've always had trouble knowing how much it has a lot of soil, how much to water it, and whether it needs support.
- [08:42]
B
So that's a really great question. I want to make one quick clarification on the dill. Again, dill is not a perennial. I spoke out of turn. I was sort of mixing two concepts up. But with the aloe plant, you know, if you have a really big plant, you have a couple of options. One option is you can keep repotting it into a slightly larger pot and larger pot and larger pot, or you can cut it back. Now, depending on the aloe that you have, whether it's aloe vera or one of the other more decorative aloes, some of them do kind of grow in sort of what we call an ascending way, where they're sort of like stocky but twisting and going this way and that way you can chop them back and they'll pup or make babies at the side. You can try to stake them up. I kind of don't like staking my aloes up. I like actually just breaking them up because that makes them a little bushier, because the next growths will be branches and they'll kind of fill in on the side. So depending on how you. At this point, you've grown the plant so well, it's really up to you how you want to do it. This is more of an aesthetics choice. So do you want it to grow up or do you want it to, you know, cut it back and force it to pop from the side?
- [09:49]
A
Let's talk to Jill from Manhattan. Hi, Jill, thanks for calling, all of it.
- [09:55]
C
Hi, thanks for taking my call. Actually, I have a follow up on the aloe question I get. I've tried to grow aloe in my apartment. Maybe it's too hot and they always get these little white bugs. That's one question. And the one I called about is that I. In a couple of cases I've had, I have plants that are doing well, and all of a sudden they just seem to get tired and die back. But I'm hopeful and I keep it. I keep the. And I'm hoping that something's happening with the roots, and so I water it and I take care of it, and then it'll start growing again. But it's really struggling. Am I trying to force something that maybe it's just done?
- [10:44]
B
So when you say die back, I mean, I need a little more information with that. How long has it been since you've repotted those plants or fertilized those plants? Yeah, there you go.
- [10:58]
C
Well, I have thought about the repotting because now they're in these large pots. I'm afraid of shocking it.
- [11:06]
B
No, no, no, no, no, no.
- [11:07]
C
Killing what's come back. But. But water food would be. Is a very good idea, of course.
- [11:14]
B
Right? So. So. So the. The lesson here for everyone actually is, is that, you know, over time, you know, think about plants in nature, right? Whenever they run out of nutrients in a spot, they just grow their roots larger and larger and further and further away, and they collect more nutrients from further away. But when you're growing a plant in the pot, that pot is that plant's universe. And so because that universe is finite, there is a certain amount of space there. It will exhaust all the nut time. And so the reason why I knew it was that I had to ask that is because I'm like, oh, it sounds like you just ran out of nutrients and that's why they sort of just became spent. So you either can repot. If it's been more than three years, I would say obligate repot. Just no questions asked, repot it. Otherwise, if it's been like only one year or two years, you can get away with just fertilizing it and get them on a regular fertilizer schedule. It's a multivitamin that will help them out.
- [12:09]
A
I have been speaking with the plant doctor, Chris Satch, founder of NYC Plant Help. He's giving us some advice on caring for our plants this fall. Do you have a question for the plant doctor? Maybe you have a house plant that needs a little bit of help and you're not sure what to do. Our phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. Before we were talking taking questions, you talked about bulbs a little bit.
- [12:34]
B
Right?
- [12:34]
A
And I want to go into that a little more deeply. When should bulb planting occur? Why does it need to be cold for them to grow? And what are some things we should be doing when we're planting our bulbs?
- [12:47]
B
All really great questions and all of them have long ish answers, but I'll try to be as brief as I can. So why you want to plant bulbs in the fall or sort of what are they doing in the fall? Time is you plant them in the fall while the soil is still soft and workable, ideally after you've harvested everything else, especially if you're trying to share a space like you grow annuals and then you grow bulbs or whatever. So you put you plant them in the fall so they could establish a little bit of a root system and maybe they even poke up a little bit before the winter takes them and then they'll overwinter. The reason why they need to overwinter is because the way they evolved and the way that these plants are programmed is they have to have a cold rest. They have to have a period where it's cold. Freezing cold for most of them, ground freezes over, although they like to be a little under. When I say under, I mean above freezing. Sorry, a little warmer than freezing. And so they need to be that way for a couple of months because there are hormones inside of the bulb that actually are how the way the plant keeps track of time.
- [13:46]
A
Oh wow.
- [13:48]
B
Plants know where they are within time and space. It's pretty cool. So they use these various hormones and chemicals. And what happens is the hormones and chemicals have a known breakdown rate, and they break down over time. And so once that breakdown has gone far enough, the hormone can't suppress the growth anymore, and then the plant starts to grow. So ideally, that's, you know, in springtime. So the whole point of planting in fall is to give it a little bit of a head start in spring. But that's not to say that you can't also plant bulbs in spring. You just have to make sure that the bulbs that you are planting in spring have had that cold treatment. We call it vernalization. So if they've been vernalized, you can plant them in the springtime. If you don't know if they've been vernalized, just plant everything in the fall.
- [14:32]
A
This text says, my grandmother swore by the fertilization of her plants with coffee grinds and eggshells. Her plants were numerous and happy. So was she on the money with the coffee grinds and eggshells?
- [14:47]
B
So I want to make a really big distinction here. This is an outdoor garden she's probably talking about, not indoors. I've seen a lot of people, I've had a lot of clients that I go to, they write and they say, oh, well, I've used eggshells and coffee grinds on my indoor house plants. And I say, don't do that. Because the reason why it works outside and not inside is because outside, there's these things called worms and bugs and all kinds of other critters that help break down and release the nutrients of the eggshells and the coffee grinds and all that. So indoors, it doesn't really work. You're just kind of like putting wasted food on your plants. It might get a little smelly. Don't do that. But in the garden, it actually works really well. And bonus points if you can compost them first, because that way you really unlock all of the nutrient potential. But if you're just kind of top dressing every once in a while and working it into the soil, the eggshells and the coffee grinds, that can be a really great way to get the. The most out of both of those things.
- [15:42]
A
This text says, can a succulent revive if all its leaves have fallen off and it's basically only a stem now? That's from Jenny.
- [15:52]
B
If the stem is still plump, yes. If it's all crispy, no.
- [15:57]
A
Okay, Jenny, check your stems. This says, allison, please ask why the annuals at commercial places and gardens get so big this time of year, and mine don't get very big, even though I usually. I Usually water them twice a week. Should I be drowning in my garden and Miracle Gro, I feel so inadequate. Thanks.
- [16:16]
B
Oh, well, don't feel inadequate. I have a saying, you know, don't plant what won't grow and really plant for what you have, not for what you want. I know it sounds very anti climactic. You know, I want to plant all these things too, but based on my space, I just. I just can't. So it sounds like you have probably a light problem. It sounds like you don't have enough direct sun because if plants are kind of getting scratched and they're sort of collapsing under their own weight, that's always a light problem. So from what you're saying, if you know the nursery annuals which get blasted all day, they're really big and yours aren't, then it's probably that. If it's not that, then it's either some kind of soil quality issue because if you're truly watering well, like this way, you're watering, then they should be fine. Otherwise.
- [17:03]
A
We're talking to the plant Dr. Chris Satch, founder of NYC Plant Help. He's giving us some advice on caring for our plants this fall. If you have a question, you can call, call us or text us at 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC.
- [17:20]
C
We'll be right back.
- [17:30]
A
You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with the plant doctor Chris Satch. He's founder of NYC Plant Help, and he is giving us some advice on caring for our plants. And this fall. Let's talk to Melissa in Rockland County. Hi, Melissa. Thank you so much for calling all of it. You are on the air with Chris Setch.
- [17:52]
C
Hi there. Thanks so much for taking my call. I have a tremendous love for all of my plants. And at the moment, I am inundated with fungus gnats. And this is the second season. The first season, I put out all those little yellow traps and it caught not, not a ton of them, but it caught them. And then eventually I had none. And I thought I got rid of the problem. And if you know much better than me, I did not. And I did a little reading online and it said to use mosquito dunks in the water that I'm watering with. So I did that for, I think, four waterings in a row, and I'm still catching hundreds of them. And I, I don't know what to do.
- [18:37]
B
All right, so I'm gonna give You a business secret.
- [18:42]
A
Look left, look right. Okay, go.
- [18:45]
B
So the business secret is this. The sticky yellow traps, they don't actually kill the fungus gnats. I mean, yeah, they stick to them and they die. But by the time the fungus gnat takes flight, it has already laid eggs. So you're just capturing the adults after they've laid their eggs. So the point of the yellow traps is really just to monitor the population of, of the gnats. So that's part one. Part two is the gnats can only live and breed where it is perpetually moist. And so whenever one has a gnat problem, which everyone who's ever gardened in the history of ever has had gnats at one point. So what you need to do is you need to make sure that your plant is drying out fast enough between waterings and that it is getting completely dry. There is a totally organic, no chemical, no treatment way to get rid of gnats, but you have to really play with the soil moisture. You have to let the soil get all the way dry. And as soon as the plant starts taking a hit from not having enough water, then you give the plant just enough water to carry on. But the easier thing to do is to give your plant more light, more heat, bring it into a warmer room or location, turn off the climate control in whatever room that it's in, or raise the temperature a couple of degrees if you don't want to do that. Anything to give it more heat and more light so it can properly dry faster between waterings. And that will get rid of the gnats. And by the way, the mosquito dunks, they do work. They have like this bacillus bacteria which activates. The thing is, is you don't just immediately put them into the water and water with it. You have to let the water sit with it, with it for about like an hour. So that way the bacteria can activate and actually start to populate. Otherwise you just have like dunks floating around. So really do make sure that you're soaking them, be in the water before you water and it you. Most of them are usually laced with like a little bit of pesticide, but. But you're not eating the plant, so. And hopefully you or a pet is not eating the soil either.
- [20:41]
A
We've gotten a lot of people texting and calling and they want to know when is the best time to repot plants and can they do it now.
- [20:50]
B
So the other business secret that I have is you can repot at any time of the year, so long as the plant needs it. And that means that if a plant is overgrown, like you've grown it really well all summer. If the plant, you know, has some kind of infection and you need to like chop and prop or do something like that, absolutely you can. As long as the heat and the light and everything else are right, you can repot any time of the year. And my business does repotting for you. So if you don't want to repot yourself or you're still scared to repot for yourself, you can go to nycplantdoctor.com, send me an email and I'll get back to you.
- [21:28]
A
In the next few months, people are gonna have yards full of leaves. But you really want to talk about the Leave the Leaves campaign?
- [21:35]
B
Yes.
- [21:35]
A
What's the message behind Leave the Leaves?
- [21:37]
B
It's exactly, it's Leave the leaves. So we've done a weird thing the past couple hundred years, or really the past 200 years, in planting grass everywhere. Its lack of biodiversity. It really breeds all the bugs that we don't like. Like large grass lawns breed bugs that humans don't like. And we haven't really gotten the message. So, like ticks and mosquitoes and other things like that. They all love grassy plains. But when you start to plant like a native garden, and I'm getting a little off topic, native garden, you get less of that. But Leave the Leaves plays into that because you're covering the grass and you're providing a place where beneficial insects can overwinter. They make their nests in those leaves. And if you don't want to give up your whole lawn and do that, that's fine. You can make a leaf pile somewhere in your lawn, backyard, front yard, or even an ugly patch that never grows grass. We all have an ugly brown patch that never grows grass. Toss your leaves there. It's totally fin. Fine. Make sure you leave them undisturbed until about the last frost in spring. Actually, maybe a few weeks after the last frost in spring. Really when you start planting is when you can clear it. So literally, leave the leaves. It provides nutrients. It provides a home for beneficial insects, by the way, the insects that eat all the ones that we don't like. So bug on bug violence. Oh, my goodness. But you know, for our benefit, it. And. And that's how you want to do it. It's very simple. And you. If you hate raking, you'll love Leave the leaves because there's no raking involved.
- [23:13]
A
There you go. Let's talk to Daniel, who is calling in from Long Island. Hi, Daniel, thank you so much for calling all of it.
- [23:22]
C
Hi, good afternoon. It's been really great listening to this conversation. Thank you. I have a question about amaryllis plants. I have a handful outside right now. They're growing really large and lovely and I know to take them in soon, but I've never had luck at re having them re bloom.
- [23:40]
B
Yeah.
- [23:41]
C
And I'm wondering if there's any check to get them to bloom again in the winter. Thank you.
- [23:46]
B
Yeah, no, that's a really good question and that's a bulby question. But an amaryllis isn't really the kind of bulb that you throw outside. It's, it's sort of this weird, like semi highland tropical, ish, weird category kind of bulb. And so what you have to do is you have to dry them out. So unfortunately, all that wonderful growth that you just had, you have to force dormancy on the bulb. You have to vernalize the bulb because they only bloom when they, quote, unquote, wake up in the springtime or whenever you force them. Really, amaryllis you could force any time. So make sure you dry them out. Give them less and less and less watering until all the leaves start drying out. Reduce the light a little bit, if that helps. Or some people just cut the leaves off and, you know, just let them dry out that way. And there's a lot of methods for amaryllis. There's just so many. I personally don't grow them because even for me they're kind of a pain to trick into reblooming. I know some people have no problem with them, but.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, a lot of people are asking the same related questions. So I'll try to sum it up. They're asking, should they bring their houseplants inside? They put them outside for the summer.
- [24:57]
B
Well, if you don't want your houseplants to freeze to death, I would say.
- [25:00]
A
Yes, always bring them in.
- [25:02]
B
Bring them in. Especially if they're not frost tolerant. I mean, unless you don't want the plant anymore, in which case then you can, you know, just leave it out there, I guess. But if you do want to keep your houseplants all the time, bring them in. There are a couple of rules for bringing plants in. Obviously you've put them outside, they have bugs. You want to make sure you quarantine them from anything else that you have kept indoors all year. So indoors all year. Generally, you know, bugs, free, pure, all this and that. Put them in your bathtub for like a day or two. Or like, I Mean obviously move them when you have to take a shower, like you know, put them in your bathtub for a day or two. It's okay if they don't get light for a day or two and then just spray them down with whatever insecticide, pesticide of your choice, whether it's an organic or an inorganic or whatever you want to spray. Go for that. Make sure you drench and drown the plant in that. And I mean spray upwards, spray downwards, spray side to side, get every single nook and cranny where you those bugs could hide. One of the solutions that I've actually really taken a liking to in the past couple of years is actually releasing predatory and beneficial insects inside the home to and they search and destroy. So think of the home as sort of a box and they're sort of trapped in this box and so their only choice is to eat the nasties. So they go and they eat the nasties and then they crawl.
- [26:20]
A
That sounds like our next, our next segment with Alien.
- [26:25]
C
Hahaha.
- [26:27]
A
Let's try to get to one or two more calls. Let's talk to Tonya. Hey Tonya.
- [26:32]
C
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I am calling because I got my mom a couple of trees for her birthday three years ago. A pear tree, apple and nectarine tree. And they grow so beautifully. But as soon as the fruit comes out we get like this syrupy like thing on them and then they all die down. Ants start coming up on the trees and we just don't know how to.
- [26:56]
B
Are they brown too? Is it like jelly like. And then the fruit just turns brown and falls off? Okay, that is classic brown rot. It is a very annoying fungus to get rid of and it actually infects the tree in the springtime. It actually infects the flower buds. So you really should be spraying your trees with. I forget what you're supposed to spray them with, but you're supposed to be spraying your trees in the springtime around bloom time to make sure that the flowers don't get infected with this fungus. And of course, good pruning practices. You want to make sure there's plenty of airflow through the tree. You want to make sure that it's not too crowded. I know some people feel some kind of way they don't want to cut it or they, they think they'll get more fruit if they leave all the branches on. But really the plant reinvests its energy into the fewer fruits that it has. So you have less or fewer fruits, but they are larger size make sure there's airflow, spray them down, and other general good practices like cleaning. In that case, you do want to clean up the leaves in the fall because they do overwinter in your yard. They do overwinter from the fallen fruit. So that is one case where you should not leave the leaves and you should clean it up.
- [28:07]
A
We've got time for about one more call. Bob in Brooklyn real quick, what's your problem?
- [28:12]
C
Hi. A neighbor or something? I've had bamboo that has completely invaded the yard and it can grow 10ft in a single season. And it's grown, it's jumped underneath the walkways and it's coming up the other side and you can't hardly even see the sky. I heard the best way to take care of that is to tack them down to ground level and then pour some Roundup or something like that down the exposed throat.
- [28:42]
A
Is that true?
- [28:43]
B
You can do that. But really, unfortunately, I don't know if it was you or if it was someone else that released, that unleashed the horror that is bamboo onto the world. They really do take over and they're just a giant grass. And so what I would do is it's the annoying job. It's just like getting rid of English ivy. You just have to keep pulling it up and keep digging it up. If you, Roundup will work, but they're one of those things that's just so resistant to everything. You just want to. You're just going to have to dig it up.
- [29:16]
A
My guest has been Chris Satch. He's the plant doctor. He's the founder of NYC Plant Help. As always, you've been a treat to have.
- [29:24]
B
Thank you so much for having me. NYC now delivers breaking news, top headlines and in depth coverage from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening. By sponsoring our programming, you'll reach a community of passionate listeners in an uncluttered audio experience. Visit sponsorship.wnyc.org to learn more.