246 Gardening Trends 2023 Pt. 2

Show Transcript

GB 246 TRANSCRIPT GARDEN TRENDS 2023 PART 2

Farmer Fred  0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

We continue our chat from last episode about the future of gardening in 2023 with Andrew Bunting, vice president of Horticulture with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. And we’ll find out about the big Philadelphia Flower Show coming up in March.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

2023 Garden Trends Part 2 A

Farmer Fred

Last week, in Episode 245 of the Garden Basics podcast, we began our conversation with Andrew Bunting of the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society about gardening trends coming up in 2023. We talked about the growing number of gardens with ecological functions such as putting in native plants and pollinator plants to bring on the beneficial insects and birds; we talked about the trend nationwide towards water-wise gardens and gravel gardens, and how more and more people are using the autumn season to extend their time in the garden. This time, Andrew Bunting tells us about trends towards using more battery operated, instead of gas operated equipment, the growing popularity of cactus, succulents, Aroids, which are rhizomes or tuberous tropical looking plants. Plus, a trend that I’ve adopted wholeheartedly, using fallen leaves in the garden.

When it comes to feeding your plants, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has a great trend coming up for 2023. That makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. And it's something I've been practicing for a few years now: leaving the leaves.

Andrew Bunting  2:17

Yeah, so that's a relatively new trend. And I would say it's hopefully a trend that people are starting to consider in a lot of, I would say most municipalities probably across the country. One of the rituals of fall is rake up all your leaves, where I live, people rake them to the curb side, and then a big truck comes by and sucks them all up a couple times during the fall and maybe even early winter. But if you don't mind the aesthetic of leaving the leaves in your garden, they will naturally decompose.

Some people might not want a lot of coarse leaves  in their gardens. So kind of an intermediate approach would be maybe to rechop those leaves  once or twice with a lawn mower. And then at least rake the chopped up leaves back into the bed. If you don't want the fully natural look of the leaves left in the garden, maybe consider  that approach. If you just leave the leaves totally whole that provides habitat for all sorts of overwintering, pollinators, insects, worms, salamanders, etc, just provide some level of coverage. I actually had a company that is maintaining a corporate campus in Manhattan in New York City. And they were looking to kind of take this approach, but they were also having to convince Corporation owners that this was an acceptable aesthetic.

So with a lot of these changes, whether choosing kind of more natural, naturalistic or native plants and maybe a more naturalistic planting style, or leaving the leaves in your garden,  it's a shift, and how many people think it is the way to garden.  what we're finding is public gardens, for example, start to do this type of gardening or maybe just some influential home gardeners or it's written about or it's on podcast, and then people understand that this is an alternative.

One of the things that we see a lot is people have a house with shrubs in front of their house and then they shear them all. They do squares or meatballs or whatever. Perhaps you can just convince a handful of people to stop doing that and just let the plants grow into whatever they're intended to look like and maybe do some selective pruning, then they're kind of started the trend. What that does is it reduces the amount of fossil fuels being used, which is also trending, I think you're starting to see so many homeowners using battery operated machinery, whether it be a lawn mower, a weed trimmer, a blower, there's even good chainsaws. And then the industry has actually followed suit, where a lot of these companies are producing all of those same pieces of equipment that the industry can use. I know in California, you have an upcoming ban on many, if not all, two cycle engines. Is that right?

Farmer Fred  5:59

Yeah. But really, the complaints are about the noise of the leaf blowers. And unfortunately, there are battery operated leaf blowers, but it's the blower that makes all the noise, that gets neighbors all upset. So they're working on that, and they are making them a lot more quiet. And the loud ones you hear are probably old gas powered models, anyway.

Andrew Bunting  6:22

So with something like that, I think it's kind of twofold that the battery operated ones are quieter, and they don't use fossil fuels, obviously, because they're battery operated. So you know, I think you'll start to see more and more use of that type of equipment. But getting back to kind of ‘leaving the leaves’: if you don't leave the leaves in the garden, the other alternative that should also be considered as opposed to raking them to the curb, is to have a machine to hack them up, compost them on site. So you might leave some in your beds as kind of a natural mulch for the fall and winter. And then they'll kind of just decompose into the soil in the spring. Or if you just have too many, you can take the balance and just do your own composting. So composting can be fairly simple.  I actually have a couple bins where I put all my organic matter. But if you can't do that, just make a pile of organic matter. Even if it doesn't have sides, it will still naturally decompose into soil. And what you'll find is  the best soil is on the bottom. So if you need some soil, you can dig into the bottom of the pile. And then once you've dug that out and the stuff on top will collapse down and you'll add more stuff on there you just have this constant supply of compost which essentially it is, once it becomes fully decomposed. It turns into topsoil.

Farmer Fred  8:00

And right at this point, my listeners are waiting for me to start preaching about putting leaves on the garden again, so I won't disappoint them. Leaves are great on a bare garden bed, especially, like you said, chop them up maybe with a mulching mower. Or what I like to do, and my neighbors love me because I do rake up their leaves, especially the oak leaves. I put them in a 30 gallon metal trash can, stick my string trimmer down into it, and chop them up. Then I spread them on the bed. You talk about composting them and that's a great idea, too. Smart Pots now makes a compost sack that holds 100 gallons, and by interspersing layers of the chopped up leaves with maybe some chicken manure and just letting it sit there over the winter, you can have some great compost come spring.  And one more thing about leaves. I got to say this because the leaves are wonderful, because as they disintegrate and get absorbed into the soil, it increases the soil microbiology. It feeds the soil. It keeps weeds from germinating. Leaves act as a mulch, and mulch has a whole world of benefits, including all those that I just mentioned. Leaf mulch also disperses the effects of a heavy rain, keeping those high speed rain drops from compacting the soil, because it hits the leaves first, and then drips slowly into the soil below the leaves.

Andrew Bunting  9:16

Yeah. What people either don't realize or maybe don't fully understand is that there's as much of an ecosystem probably more of an ecosystem underground, between mycorhizzae other types of organisms that you know really keep the soil biology healthy, so that our plants are are healthy.

Farmer Fred  9:40

Bacteria and fungus in the soil make the world go round.

Andrew Bunting

Yes.

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Farmer Fred

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2023 Garden Trends Part 2 B

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation about 2023 Garden Trends with Andrew Bunting. One of the trends that you perceive for 2023 are Aeroids, and that includes a lot of popular plants . And one that we talked about recently when we were talking with Diane Blazek, the all America selections winners executive director, one of their winning plants for 2023 was the colocasia, also known as elephant's ear or taro, and that is an amazing Aeroid if there ever was one.

Andrew Bunting  13:38

The Pharaohs Mask variety is interesting in that it's an elephant ear, but it's almost like it's folded inside out. So with most elephant ears, you might have in the front of the elephant ear, which is a big kind of heart shaped leaf, and it might may have a variegation or whatever. And then on the backside are the veins. This almost looks like it's folded inside out, so that the veining aspect of it is as much more prevalent than it is on other types of aeroids so that is the elephant ears alone. And those usually are under the Genus Colocasia or Alocasia. In parts of California, a lot of them, especially colocasias, are hardy. For us on the East Coast. They become hardy  from North Carolina and south. In the Philadelphia area, they're not fully hardy. However, they do great for summer plantings and then you can just dig them up. I actually dug up some yesterday. You just dig up the tubers. Maybe put them in a nursery pot with a little bit of mulch or compost. And then I just put it in my basement which is kind of cellar-like conditions for the winter. That's how I overwinter it and then plant it back out in the middle of May.

Farmer Fred  15:09

Diane Blazek, executive director of the all America selections, was was telling us that what she does, she has a colocasia, the award winning ‘Royal Hawaiian’, on her front porch, in a container. And what she does is she just brings the container in and puts it in her basement, as well, for the winter. And then as January turns into February, she gives it some light and it springs back to life. And by spring, she can set it back outside.

Andrew Bunting  15:35

I love I use colocasias in my home garden. A lot of elephant ears for summer interest. They're tough. And from just a big tuber, they can get exponential growth in a growing season.

Farmer Fred  15:52

Another plant that's very popular, both indoors and outdoors, is coleus. And you see a trend with houseplants continuing, that just keeps growing.

Andrew Bunting  16:03

Right. That's true, there that. It has been popular both, like you said, indoors and outdoors.

Farmer Fred  16:12

And what are the popular houseplants back there?

Andrew Bunting  16:15

I would say that the popular houseplants are many of the aeroids: philodendrons and Anthuriums. Another one that has has seen an incredible Renaissance is what commonly is called - and it's a great name - mother in law's tongue,  the sansevierias. So the sansevierias, and if your listeners aren't aware of them, they're kind of these pointy, green leaves. They have been a popular houseplant  for decades. But now there's many new variations, some that are little or some that are tall, some that are cylindrical, yellow variegated, white variegated, almost all white ones. So those are popular. I would say anything that you can put in a hanging basket Remember Macrame hanging baskets that were popular in the 60s and 70s? Well, the macrame is back and the plants that go in them is back.

Yeah, there's been this amazing renaissance in general with houseplants that supposedly has been attributed to maybe a couple of things: COVID, and people being indoors far more often than they would normally be. But even before that, for a lot of young people, houseplants have been kind of their gateway or entry to horticulture.

Here in Philadelphia, we have different Facebook groups like the Philly Plant Exchange that has 19,000 members who just exchange mainly houseplants in the city. There's another one, the Philly Plant Purge, which has almost 10,000 members. That way a lot of our local societies that promote houseplants have become popular, especially with younger people.  The indoor plants society, the begonia society, the Gesneriad society. Now, the one that's really growing around here is our local chapter of the cactus and succulent society.

And I think a lot of that is also kind of catalyzed by the Flower Show. So part of the Philadelphia Flower Show is there's an area called the Floral Court. And if you want to bring and show your plants, it’s kind of like a dog show, or showing your vegetables at the county fair, if you want to exhibit your sansevierias, or one of your heir aeroids or coleus, or whatever the case might be, there will be a category that will fit your plant at Philadelphia Flower Show. You can bring it and you can have it judged against all your competitors. So just at the Flower Show, there's hundreds of classes, and we usually get over the course of the flower show about 5000 individual plants that are judged. And some of these are grown by people perhaps under grow lights in their row house in Philadelphia, or summer grown by multimillionaires who have estates out in the country. But it's kind of a level playing field. And it's a lot of fun because  we get kids who have never exhibited before who might win a blue ribbon against seasoned competitors. So those tests have even galvanized even more so this amazing trend of houseplants and I don't see it, maybe ever, ever waning.

What's interesting about some of these trends is once they start trending they, yes, some of them peak and then go downwards. But some of them like hydrangeas, is a great example where maybe 20 years ago or so, Martha Stewart and Martha Stewart Living had a hydrangea on the cover of her magazine. And from that day forward, hydrangeas have had an International Renaissance. They've gone from being kind of an old fashion shrub that maybe your grandmother had a plant in front of her house to probably one of the most in vogue shrubs if not plants, period, and gardens worldwide. So they continue to trend up same with hellebores, native plants and then house plants, because people are not only rediscovering some of the old, stalwarts such as spider plants, jade plant,s mother in law's tongue, all of these aeroids. But there's so many new houseplants coming out, too, that for years were an interesting plant in a botanical garden conservatory. And now people are starting to propagate them. And so the world of houseplants is never ending because there's so many choices out there.

Farmer Fred  21:32

Definitely. What goes around comes around. The wholesale growers of houseplants that I talked to are saying, it's amazing how the plants that were popular in the 50s and 60s are making a renaissance right now.

Andrew Bunting  21:43

Yeah. Another thing we do that's become really popular is at some of our different public garden venues, we'll do a swap. So we'll announce it. And to participate in the plant swap, all you have to do is either bring a little division of whatever you have, whether it's a garden plant, or houseplant, and may even just be some cuttings, some coleus,  shade plant cuttings, you have to just bring something to trade or swap. So if you bring five of whatever, then you get five of whatever and people bring bags of soil and they bring extra pots, like anything that you might use for gardening, which is surplus they bring to the swap. What the swaps have done is kind of multiple. it's a great kind of gateway activity for somebody that's perhaps new to gardening. And it's kind of not intimidating, which helps. It's a great social event. So it's a great place for other gardeners to meet new gardeners, seasoned gardeners, fellow gardeners, and it's free. We really promote sharing at the Pennsylvania horticultural society. So we like to think that somebody who has a vegetable garden that has extra produce will share it with their neighbors, share it with a food kitchen, share it with a food bank, we like the fact that sharing knowledge that is common amongst gardeners, and then these plant swaps is another great way for people to share what they might have extra. And then people benefit from the swaps and get perhaps some new things for their garden.

Farmer Fred  23:33

Yeah, if you want more information about this, go to their website, phsonline.org.

Well, you brought up the subject of food and that is also an ongoing gardening trend.  when COVID hit back in 2020, all of a sudden, everybody's gardening. And the seed companies at the time were telling me that they were swamped with orders. “We're out of seeds, what's going on here?” And it turns out people are growing their own food.

Andrew Bunting  24:00

Yeah, and that's another trend that I don't see waning. COVID did force a lot of people who really needed food to try to produce their own food. We like many cities in the United States, we have serious food insecurity issues, so COVID only compounded that problem. And also since people were spending more time at home, they really turned to the garden as both a hobby but also as a source for food. People didn't want to go out  to the grocery store.

There has been an amazing boom in the interest in growing your own food and sharing your own food again. We partner with over 150 community gardens throughout the city of Philadelphia , and part of that movement is to grow your own vegetables but if you have extras to share them, as well. And the great thing about food gardening is you can do it in a relatively small space. I know that there's new cultivars, tomatoes, for example that are so small that you can just grow them in a little pot on your windowsill. But if you just have, say a sunny back stoop, or a little patio, or just a tiny little garden, maybe you don't even have a backyard and you just have a front stoop and maybe a front sidewalk, but it's it's mostly sun, you get some whiskey barrels out there, any type of vessel that will hold soil that has drainage, and you can grow vegetables. So what's great about most vegetables is they're easy to grow from seed, you might start it from seed on your windowsill and grow some small tomato plants, pepper plants, egg plants, whatever the case might be to kind of get a head start. But once they're going, the bounty that you can get from some of these vegetables, especially cucumbers, squash, zucchini, and the cucurbits, if you have the space, you can grow a lot.

Another trend, I've seen people, especially online, is gardening in animal watering troughs, or find a horse trough and fill it. You don't have to fill the whole thing with soil, you can partially fill it with just whatever something that's going to decompose, like logs or branches. And then you might put some cardboard over that and put some leaves down, then another layer of cardboard so that only the top six to eight inches is soil, and then all that  other stuff underneath,  will actually decomposed over time and add to the soil mass of that container. So really, the only thing you need to grow vegetables, if you don't have any land yourself, is some sort of vessel. And it might have been something that was never intended to grow vegetables, so just some sort of container. And then it has to have drainage. So you have to maybe cut in or drill in some drainage holes in the bottom just so the water flows out.

There was already, I think, a great enthusiasm for vegetable gardening, but  it's been spread out. But it was something like 75% of new vegetable gardeners kind of evolved during COVID. I think a large percentage of those new gardeners are going to stay gardeners or at least that's what the data is showing. If you don't have space to garden, you should seek out a community garden. That's one of the areas that we really promote. Not everybody has a space to garden. But perhaps there's a community garden within your neighborhood that you can become a participant in. And maybe you have your own plot or maybe you share a plot with somebody else. Or maybe if the whole community garden is full, maybe you do some chores, and then you can also partake in the harvest.

Farmer Fred  28:18

Yeah, a couple of notes I would like to add about food gardening and you mentioned the bountiful harvest that a lot of these crops can make. What can you do with them? Well, right across the river from you , over in New Jersey, an organization was started called ampleharvest.org. And if you go to ample harvest.org, put in where you live, the town where you live, it will tell you where the nearest food closet or food pantry or food bank is nearest you, where you can drop off your fresh produce. So that's ample harvest.org. So when you find yourself with too many zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, or in our case last week, too many persimmons, that's a great place to go to for moving your excess harvest. And yes, container gardening, I think, is a trend that will keep going as well. And there's a lot of good reasons for container gardening, including getting the right soil mix for the plants you want to grow. And I'm thinking of blueberries. Blueberries need a very acidic soil. And here on the West Coast, the soil is primarily alkaline. So you can use an acid-based soil mix in something like a cattle watering trough and grow blueberries. It does wonders. You can paint it up in your favorite tractor color and it looks great.

Andrew Bunting  29:34

I completely agree. Yeah, and it also don't have to only be grown in a vegetable garden. They can be ornamentals in their in their own right, as well.

Farmer Fred  29:47

There are a lot of great looking vegetables out there. And in our conversation recently with Diane Blazek of the All American selections winners, they have an award winning cayenne pepper that is just absolutely gorgeous in the way it looks. The award winning pepper in the AAS trials this year is a Cayenne Pepper called Wild Cat, a plant that gets about 36 to 42 inches long. The fruit itself gets eight to 12 inches long and it has a mild pungency, maybe 500 to 1500 Scoville units. That's the cayenne pepper variety called Wildcat. Just some outstanding peppers with great color and great size that will certainly be a showstopper in your garden.

Andrew Bunting  30:34

Yeah, there's a lot of the companies that are doing breeding work, that are breeding for vegetables that are productive, but are also ornamental,  I think peppers is a good example; but there's also many ornamental egg plants now. And the list goes on and on. I know there's purple leaf mustard. A lot of people are using many vegetables for as ornamentals as well.

Farmer Fred  31:04

I noticed one thing with the Philadelphia Flower Show that's coming up March 4, through the 12th, you have an interesting wrinkle. I don't know if this is new, or you've been doing it, but you're going to be doing tours before the show opens, I guess as far as having docent led tours to go more in depth into the displays that are there. And you're going to have one for photographers as well.

Andrew Bunting  31:27

Yeah, we've been doing that for a while. And we call them the early morning tours. It's a great way for people to have kind of a behind the scenes tour of the Philadelphia Flower Show, as well as go there when maybe there aren't as many people as there would normally be during the middle of the day. So it's kind of a win-win opportunity for visitors to see the show at that time of the day.

Farmer Fred  31:57

Right. And for more information about the Philadelphia Flower Show that's coming up March 4 through 12that the Pennsylvania Convention Center, you can visit the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's website PHSonline.org.

Andrew Bunting is the vice president of horticulture for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Andrew Bunting also has a book out that was published in 2015, “The Plant Lovers Guide to Magnolias”, so I would imagine that you have a few magnolias you like.

Andrew Bunting  32:30

Yeah, so my yard isn't quite big enough for a lot of magnolias but on the East Coast, and then where you are in California, those are both exceptional climates for growing a myriad of magnolias. Some some of my favorites, which I know also do well in California, are  the southern magnolias, which is Magnolia grandiflora. It's a great evergreen magnolia. A lot of people this time of year, prune those branches and use them for wreaths and holiday swags and indoor arrangements. That's a great one. So many great flowering ones. And one of my favorites is called Wada’s Memory and that's an early spring flowering one that flowers at a young age covered in medium size white flowers fragrant. There's the yellow magnolias which were hybridized originally by the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, so ones like Elizabeth with soft yellow flowers, Butterflies is another one. Lois is another great yellow. We could do a whole episode on magnolias. So maybe that's something to consider in the future.

Farmer Fred  33:49

I think when the saucer and star Magnolias start to put on a bloom here. I think that would be a great thing to talk about.

Andrew Bunting

Yeah, I'd love to do that.

Farmer Fred

Andrew Bunting is with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. We've been learning about trends that are coming up in gardening in 2023. Thanks so much for your time, and have a wonderful experience at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Andrew Bunting  34:10

Thank you for having me.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred  34:19

In the latest edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, offers tips for controlling a pest that, really, can be a garden good guy. But when they are marching into your home on a cold or rainy day, ants are not your friend. We have ant control advice and also why ants are a big part of a successful garden. At least when they’re not kicking off the beneficial insects who are going after the aphids on your plants.

Yeah, ants are nature’s little cowboys and cowgirls, tending their herd of aphids on your roses and other plants to collect their sweet residue to take back to their nest to feed the queen.

But if ants are marching into your house, or taking up residence in your mulch pile it’s time to take action. check out the Friday December 30th edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast.

For current newsletter subscribers, look for the Ant Control newsletter and podcast, it’s waiting for you, in your email. Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free!  Find the link in today’s show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, garden basics dot net.

Farmer Fred  35:35

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.