Welcome to the Spring gardening episode! This week on HGTV Obsessed, we’re giving the “G” in HGTV some much needed love and attention. Host Marianne Canada chats with HGTV lifestyle expert Kelly Edwards to talk about Gardencast’s Spring gardening trends this season and the latest hydroponic gardening trend. Then HGTV expert Kelly Smith Trimble joins the podcast to share her advice for a fail-proof veggie garden and (plus, the new plants and varieties she’s experimenting with this year). Then, Stephen and Matthew from the Plant Daddy Podcast join Marianne to give some tips for caring for indoor plants and how to smoothly transition them into Spring.
Welcome to the Spring gardening episode! This week on HGTV Obsessed, we’re giving the “G” in HGTV some much needed love and attention. Host Marianne Canada chats with HGTV lifestyle expert Kelly Edwards to talk about Gardencast’s Spring gardening trends this season and the latest hydroponic gardening trend. Then HGTV expert Kelly Smith Trimble joins the podcast to share her advice for a fail-proof veggie garden and (plus, the new plants and varieties she’s experimenting with this year). Then, Stephen and Matthew from the Plant Daddy Podcast join Marianne to give some tips for caring for indoor plants and how to smoothly transition them into Spring.
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See Gardencast’s 2021 Gardening Trends: https://www.burpee.com/gardencast
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Learn More About The Plant Daddy Podcast: https://www.plantdaddypodcast.com/
Follow The Plant Daddy Podcast on Instagram: @PlantDaddyPodcast
Learn More About Kelly Smith Trimble: https://www.hgtv.com/profiles/editorial/kelly-smith-trimble
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Find episode transcript here: https://hgtv-obsessed.simplecast.com/episodes/spring-gardening-advice-from-hgtv-houseplant-care-with-the-plant-daddies
MARIANNE CANADA: Hi, everyone and welcome to HGTV Obsessed, the weekly podcast about all things HGTV. I'm Marianne Canada, executive producer and HGTV.com lifestyle expert. And when I'm not binge-watching my favorite network, you can find me making crafty videos for HGTV handmade, gardening, cooking, or, these days, weeding. I mean, it's just so much weeding, which is appropriate because, today, on the podcast, we are finally giving the G in HGTV some much needed love and attention. That's right. It's our spring gardening episode. Maybe you're like me and already elbow deep in the dirt, or perhaps you're a wannabe gardener who doesn't know where to start. We've got experts all throughout this episode to help guide you to your best garden life.
BRAD: Marianne, have you always been like this? Who weeds for fun? Who hurt you in life?
MARIANNE CANADA: OK, I never said it was fun, just for the record. I never said weeding was fun. It is very satisfying, though, to see a bed full of weeds, and then it's just beautiful, clean, fresh dirt. And to my defense, people pay actual money to flip tires over in CrossFit. So I feel like fun is very relative.
BRAD: I mean, but don't you just get overwhelmed with the amount of work that it takes to get rid of weeds, or is that just me?
MARIANNE CANADA: I think you just have to break it down into manageable areas and just zone out. And you know what? There's something I have learned. If you ever want alone time to just listen to a podcast or something, go and weed your garden, because no one will come within like 50 feet of you.
BRAD: Really sage advice. I like that. I'm going to go weeding, honey.
MARIANNE CANADA: Exactly. Anyway, I come from a long line of gardeners. And it really made me resist it. That was my version of teenage rebellion, not caring about gardening. But I got into what I call my gateway gardening drug, which was house plants. And then, a couple of years ago, we bought my grandmother's house. And she was this amazing master gardener. So it's really-- a switch was flipped. And I wanted to bring her property back to its glory. And here I am. I willingly spend my weekends pruning roses, and weeding, and planning my garden. No one ever told me that being an adult would be so thrilling.
Anyway, it goes without saying that I am a little bit excited about today's episode. First up, we have designer and lifestyle expert, Kelly Edwards. You may remember her from HGTV's Design on a Dime. And now, Kelly is a part of GardenCast, which is Burpees' first ever gardening trend forecast. We're talking to her all about the gardening trends to look for in 2021 and what to start planting right now for your zone. Then, we're talking to one of my favorite humans, Kelly Smith Trimble all about vegetable gardening planning and what she's excited to put in the ground this year. And then we're going to wrap up with a very special HGTV to the rescue with the Plant Daddies to talk about how to prep your indoor plants for spring. I mean, I'm ready. Let's go get our hands dirty y'all.
Kelly, welcome to HGTV Obsessed. We're so happy to have you here.
KELLY EDWARDS: I am so excited. This is kind of like my original stomping grounds.
Well, that's what's so funny. So you're here to talk about some gardening trends, and I cannot wait to get into that. But I would really be remiss if I did not acknowledge-- you are no stranger to HGTV. You were part of Design on a Dime, which is now all 30-something seasons are on Discovery Plus. And this is one of the number one shows that our hardcore HGTV fans bring up. I mean, people just never get sick of budget-friendly options. I want to know, have you gone back and watched any episodes from the archives?
KELLY EDWARDS: You know, I have, if only to laugh about my outfits. And just be like, why would I ever think of wearing pigtails in my hair. Well, using a chop saw, just so random. But I like to go back once in a while and take a look at them. I mean, it's funny because when Design on a Dime started all those years ago-- this is like before Pinterest. This was before-- really, honestly, this was like the era of Myspace when people weren't-- there wasn't bloggers and there weren't all these people that were doing all this. And so, honestly, it was a time where we had to come up with projects on our own, and try and figure it out, and like walk the halls of Home Depot in hopes that we could come up with something. And we really did do our own work at the time because there was no little people on the sidelines doing it for us. So it's kind of fun now to go back and see, but sometimes I look at the projects I made and I'm just like, ugh. Why did I do-- my outfits, or whatever. But it was great to be a part of it. I mean, that's kind of how everything started, so it was awesome.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, there's nothing like having that time capsule out for the world to see of all of your fashion transgressions. But at the time, you had your finger on the pulse. What is your number one tip for designing on a budget?
KELLY EDWARDS: Well, a few things. I always say your space only looks as good as your lighting. So if you don't really light your space properly, so, I would say, designing on a budget really means making your space look great. You could even have an ugly sofa, but if your lighting looks great, your space could look great. So I always tell people to invest in their lighting, but the other thing is, I'm a really classical-designed-type person, meaning, I like really classic pieces that you can have for 10 years. So I always say to everyone who's looking to design on a budget, invest your money in your classic pieces like your sofas and things like that. And then everything else is just gravy, right? So you could just add the expensive lamp or the inexpensive lamp with the expensive sofa and it'll work. So those are the two things I always say, always go with lighting and always go with classic, and you can never go wrong.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, and then, you have time. You have time to layer in and collect. I think people have this misconception that you need to have your room looking magazine ready all at once. And it takes time.
KELLY EDWARDS: It does. I think the best rooms are kind of, like you said, are layered. It takes time to invest in those pieces that look good on top of the other pieces and things like that. But, you know, I'm kind of guilty of that though. I'm kind of guilty of the, "I want everything done right now and I want it to look perfect". You know, it's a work in progress. Everybody's space is a work in progress.
MARIANNE CANADA: Everyone. Sometimes it's nice to hear that even a designer and lifestyle expert feels the same as the rest of us. Speaking of you being a designer and lifestyle expert, you know, what does a day in the life look like for you? I think people are always curious when they're on the outside looking in. What is it like to have this be the way you make a living?
KELLY EDWARDS: I wouldn't have it any other way, honestly. And every day is different. I do renovations in my everyday life. In my real life, I actually really do home renovations. I also build shipping container houses, shipping container bars. I built a shipping container gym for an NFL player. I do the news. I do talk shows. I have written a book. So every day is different. Just this week alone, it's meetings with clients, like yesterday, I spent like three hours picking out kitchen faucets and that. You know what I mean? And every day is so different that I wouldn't have it any other way. I would just be bored if every day was the same pretty much.
MARIANNE CANADA: Oh, definitely. I am the exact same. And lately, I'm sure, it's also been looking pretty green because you were recently on a panel with Burpee's GardenCast. And what you're doing is forecasting this year's gardening trends. I am an avid gardener, so I'm very excited to talk about this. What exactly does the process look like for predicting what's next in gardening?
KELLY EDWARDS: It's interesting because I feel like the pandemic brought this world of everybody being home. So it was kind of more of an easy-- for me, anyway, when I signed on with Burpee to work with them on the GardenCast as a designer, which is interesting, because you wouldn't normally think-- I'm not a landscape designer. I'm an interior designer. And what that looks like inside your house-- and with COVID, it was everybody was stuck inside. And so you had to bring the outside into your home to feel better. Even for me, I mean, I live six blocks from the beach. I live in Santa Monica. And I don't even have a yard. Honestly, I garden at a friend's house. But she has a big yard. And we kind of have a shared space there, and we garden there. But I have all these pots on my balcony. And it was interesting because I wanted to bring all that inside my house. So I started designing with the plants in my house like putting them in cute pots on my countertop.
And my husband and I are-- he's a great cook. My husband's a great cook. I'm trying to be a great cook, but we are also avid travelers. So I found that, during COVID, we started cooking more and everybody started cooking more. That's what everybody did. And so it was kind of predictable I felt like, for me, of what gardening looks like. It's that, I'm not going to a restaurant five days a week like I used to. I'm making my own food. And I need to be a little bit more creative than I used to be. So it was more predictable for me and I think that's what everybody is kind of doing now.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, you touched on this a little bit. I mean, I read that an estimated 18 million new gardeners entered into the gardening space this past year. Do you think that that surge was a result of everyone quarantining, like you said, wanting to be self-sufficient, or was it just boredom and wanting to do something new?
KELLY EDWARDS: I think at the beginning of the pandemic, I think everybody was struggling with what does this look like and what does this mean, right? Because everybody is like, oh my gosh. We're stuck inside. I have to tell you, I've done like 10 interviews. I kind of loved it. What's weird is that I thought I was an extrovert. I'm kind of an introvert. I kind of figured this out about myself. Seriously, during COVID, I learned how to play the guitar terribly, but I did. I put together 10 puzzles and I realized I loved them. I started gardening. I started cooking. I started gardening more, actually. I started cooking more. And I noticed that so did my friends. They have more gardens, and they started doing more of this thing too. But also, being out here in California, we work out a lot, right? And we can't do that at gyms anymore.
So now we're using our spaces that we live in to work out. And so people started creating these like zen sanctuaries in their backyards for yoga or meditation. Just this weekend, I went to a social distancing yoga class in someone's backyard that he had redone specifically for that, adding in the grasses and all that stuff. So I felt like it was full circle with creating these amazing outdoor spaces with the pandemic. But I feel like it also eased everybody's mind of a little bit of pressure to have to be somewhere, or they found comfort in their own space, which is super important.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, I agree. I'm with you. What I really learned is that I love being home. I love my house. There were a lot of things about this past year that were really hard, but what I really learned is that I am perfectly happy being at home, which I consider myself really, really fortunate. So I'd like to talk a little bit more about the actual predictions this year that the GardenCast released. I want to know about a few that I know you had a hand on as a designer. And I do think it's so interesting to-- it's so forward thinking for Burpee to have an interior designer come in and lend their expertise, because we're really seeing that blend of indoors and out. So, first, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the quiet garden trend. My first thought immediately was lavender, which I love to grow, lavender. But what are some other calming plants that promote that sense of peace?
KELLY EDWARDS: I love things that are light, things that are airy, right, things that are, like you said, just very calm. I'm a hydrangeas person. I love hydrangeas. When I walk in-- it almost feels like English garden. You know what I mean? I have a friend who has hydrangeas all over her backyard, and it's just fantastic. So you can say lavender. You can say hydrangeas are beautiful. Blue petunias are beautiful. Grasses, to me, because the way they flow in the wind and the texture in your yard. Carex is great in terms of grasses because it's a really hardy plant. And even if you don't live in warm weather, like I do, in cold weather to have grasses during the summer are beautiful. But in the winter, it kind of gives a little bit of texture and depth to your yard when all the snow falls on them and things like that.
So I think when creating kind of that zen garden, whether you just want to walk, it's important to quiet your mind. I am a yoga person. I try to meditate. I'm a terrible meditator. I got to be honest. My mind goes to many directions. But if I'm sitting in a field of beautiful grasses, or hydrangeas, or just beautiful colors, or honestly flowers that smell fantastic-- My girlfriend puts sweet peas on her dining table. I don't know if you've ever smelled sweet peas. They're lovely and beautiful, but they smell amazing. I feel like when things smell great, and just look great, and just look more light, more airy, that's when you get that quiet garden.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes. All those old-fashioned flowers, like sweet peas, they smell so incredible. They make you smile, which really brings me to another trend from GardenCast, the Garden of Joy. I loved this one. So studies have shown that flowers can produce a real smile, that eye-crinkling genuine smile, not to be confused with our more polite social smile. So what flowers do you think are best for that effect for bringing that genuine joy out of people?
KELLY EDWARDS: With joy? I don't know if you've ever really looked at pansies or violas. I mean, those flowers look like they have faces. Truthfully, they look like they have faces, like cute little eyes and a cute little mouth. And when I see those, those make me happy. So when this GardenCast came about, it was like that was a really obvious choice for a Garden of Joy, where there are little flowers that look like they're smiling back at you, right? And I know we just talked about scents, and violas just smell absolutely fantastic. So two definite flowers that I think really provoke that feeling of happiness and just kind of spark overall joy, honestly.
MARIANNE CANADA: Pansies always remind me of Alice in Wonderland, that scene with the flowers that all have faces. Those are very happy flowers. I think my personal happy flower, and it's another old-fashioned flower that has an amazing scent, is peonies. Those are very special to me. I bought my grandmother's house when she passed away. And so, I have her 40-year-old peony plants outside. And they're all starting to come up. It's my favorite time of year.
KELLY EDWARDS: Oh, I think it's everybody's favorite time. Peony season, it literally should have its own holiday. I wait for peony season.
MARIANNE CANADA: I agree. I mean, we should just put that on the calendar. One more thing I want to talk about, and you talked some about how you're cooking more, that's your home, the trend of the world herb garden. What are some herbs we should be planting to really level up and expand our herb selection beyond the basics? Because I have a huge herb garden. I love to cook with fresh herbs, so I'm always looking for what I should add to the mix.
KELLY EDWARDS: There's always the basics. People will plant the thyme, and they plant the basil, and they plant the cilantro, right? My new favorites, which I have to be honest, I'm completely obsessed with, I'm on a dill kick like nobody's business. For some reason, I just absolutely love dill. But, fennel, I'm huge into fennel right now. Right now, I feel like I wanted to step outside the box. Cooking at home for a year, I can't just do basil. I can't just do cilantro anymore. I had to step out of the box. So it was-- right now, for me, it's lemongrass because we love Thai food in our house. We love dill. I'm really obsessed with dill. I love fennel and lavender.
I don't know if you've ever made a shrub in the summertime. If you've had the shrub, it's kind of like a mocktail. Lavender and blueberry shrubs for the summertime are absolutely amazing. So I recently got a lavender plant. So I've been cooking with that too. So I feel like it's fun to step outside the box, especially if you're a traveler like my husband and I, because we used to travel so much. I mean, we would travel internationally at least three or four times a year. And to now be able to go, but now have all these herbs right here, and be able to cook with them, and kind of do those Thai dishes, or those Vietnamese dishes, or those African dishes, or whatever it is. I mean, that's kind of where our joy comes in right now is cooking with those unexpected herbs that I would not have cooked with a year ago.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes, bringing in all of those flavors that you're missing out by not traveling. That's such a unique way of thinking of it. I know that mint has a bad rep for taking over the garden, but that is what I'm obsessed with right now. I just am putting fresh mint in, like adding it to salad greens or marinades. It's so fresh. And I love it, even though I keep having to rip it out of my garden.
KELLY EDWARDS: Have you ever tried pineapple mint?
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes. So we have pineapple mint and we also planted chocolate mint and lemon balm, which is in the mint family. So I have a mint problem, but I can't help it. They're all so delicious.
KELLY EDWARDS: Do you have a favorite recipe? Do you have one favorite thing you like to make with it?
MARIANNE CANADA: I really love. I really do love to put mint and mix it well, and a lot of herbs, and mix it in with salad greens. It adds such a different flavor to your basic grocery store spring mix. So that's one of my favorites. Also, I'm from the South. I love a classic mint ice tea. I mean, you just can't beat it. But I also like-- I've put pineapple mint and kind of made a twist on a margarita. And the pineapple, and the mint, and you can muddle some jalapeño in there. And it's just so fresh, so delicious.
KELLY EDWARDS: Yeah, I love that too.
MARIANNE CANADA: So, all trends aside, I know everyone is dying to start planting and welcoming spring. And in California, you've got the fortunate climate to be able to grow pretty much year-round, but what should we be planting right now in late April? I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee, so we're zone 7b. So what should we be looking to put in our gardens right now?
KELLY EDWARDS: So, what I found interesting, and I just learned this, honestly, when I was working with Burpee, is that-- well, clearly, I knew that there was different zones. Obviously, what you're planting there in Knoxville and what I'm planting here in Santa Monica are really two different things because our climates are different. But, what they have, which is super cool on their website, is they have a growing calendar. So if you did go to Burpee.com, you could click on their growing calendar. You're in 7b, you said, right? I'm in 10. I'm in 10b. So it's quite different. And when I went on it to figure out-- one, they kind of teach you when to grow outside, but also when to transplant. So when to start inside to transfer outside. So it's really quite interesting.
So depending on wherever you live in the United States, you could simply click on their website. You can go to the growing calendar. And just click on-- what you do is, you put in your zip code. When you get your zip code, it'll pull up a table of contents, so to speak. And it'll show you what to plant and when to start it inside, when to transfer it outside. So it kind of gives you kind of that roadmap and teaches you how to grow, honestly, and when the right time is to grow, and how to get the most out of your experience with growing. Herbs, flowers, whatever it is.
MARIANNE CANADA: That's so great, especially for beginning gardeners. And I also want to note, if you don't know what we're talking about. If you don't know what zone you're in, you can also go to HGTV.com/plantzone. And you can find your zone out that way as well. All right, Kelly, I feel like I could talk to you all day about gardening, and design, and DIY. But before we let you go, we're going to have you give us your thoughts on a current trend with one of our favorite segments, Defend the Trend.
So hydroponic indoor gardens have become wildly popular over the past year, whether it's for people who have little to no outdoor space, like you mentioned, or just want a way to have fresh produce within reach. Literally, you could have it on your desk next to you year-round. So do you think this trend is here to stay, or should we stick to growing things outside?
KELLY EDWARDS: Tough call. Well, OK. I will have to say this. Right before the pandemic hit, I was at a trade show, KBIS, The Kitchen and Bath Show in Las Vegas. And I was there working. And I was interviewing a lot of the brands that were there. And one of the brands that was there was a hydroponic company that created this refrigerator that you could take your seedlings and start inside. And you could grow inside. Or then you could essentially transfer outside. And I will say this, I love the concept. I think it's absolutely fantastic. If you have the money for the refrigerator, that's great.
But I'm classic, and I'm old-school. And I will always be classic and old-school in my design. And who I am. I love getting my hands dirty and being outside. You know what I mean? I live in California because I love to be outside 24 hours a day, seven days a week because it's beautiful. So I'm not going to negate the trend. I love the trend, and I think science is fantastic. Because, honestly, it's like a science experiment that's healthy, essentially. But I'm an old-school girl. I got to go with the standard, get your hands dirty, get in the garden, and just plant away.
MARIANNE CANADA: I am 100% with you. I think they are so interesting, and I think it's obviously such incredible technology. And it's so great for people who don't have access to the outdoors. But I'm with you. I'm a classic. I don't want this big machine in my kitchen with all these things growing out of it, even though I do think it's such an amazing advancement in technology. I'm with you. Nothing is ever going to replace physically getting out in the dirt.
Well, Kelly, I just want to thank you, again, so much for joining us today. Can you tell everyone where we can find you on social media, and where we can read more about GardenCast trends for the year?
KELLY EDWARDS: Absolutely. You can see me on kellyedwardsinc. That's my Instagram. Actually, I post planting tips sometimes, and tricks, and things like that. But, mostly, it's design and all that, and ways that you can design your space with plants and things like that. So you can find me there, kellyedwardsinc, on Instagram. Or, of course, you can go to Burpee.com/GardenCast. And you can see all the five trends there. And you can get a feel for all their flowers. And, of course, you can also check out the growing calendar if you need some help on planting your own garden. So something for everybody, actually.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes, and, if you want to enjoy a throwback Thursday, you can go check out Design on a Dime on Discovery+. There's, literally, I think, more than 30 seasons.
KELLY EDWARDS: Yeah, you'll see all my outfits. You'll see all the bad-- you'll see the pigtails with the job saw. And all those projects. Oh, good gravy.
MARIANNE CANADA: There are still some real winners in there.
KELLY EDWARDS: There are some classics.
MARIANNE CANADA: I hope you can come back and talk to us again sometime. This was so great.
KELLY EDWARDS: I'd love to. Thanks for having me.
MARIANNE CANADA: Thank you. All right, pod team, I want to talk about hydroponic gardens. Do any of you guys do this?
MADELEINE: I aspire to do it.
BRAD: I don't even know what it is. And I don't want to be like--
MADELEINE: OK, think about it. Think about the Latin, hydro, water--
BRAD: Yeah, OK it's a water.
MADELEINE: Ponic.
MARIANNE CANADA: What is ponic, Madeleine?
MADELEINE: Hydroponic is probably plants, right? Hold on. Let's look up this root word.
MARIANNE CANADA: My seventh grade Latin is really failing me. I don't know. I think it's really cool. And I have friends, Kelly Smith Trimble being one of them, who have these incredible hydroponic setups so that they can grow like year-round. They've got grow lights. And they don't require soil, but I don't know. Madeleine has discovered the root word of ponic.
MADELEINE: Yes, so hydro, obviously water. And then it seems like the ponics part of the word comes from the Greek root word ponein or ponine, which is to labor or toil. So water work is what this means.
MARIANNE CANADA: You heard it here last, folks. I don't know if that's right. Come at us, Latin scholars.
BRAD: I mean, these are beautiful. I'm looking at them right now in real time.
MARIANNE CANADA: Brad's going to totally buy a hydroponic garden. I'm just going to stick to the dirt. I'm going to stick to the dirt.
BRAD: No weeding required?
MARIANNE CANADA: It always comes back to weeds with you.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: I think one of the overall questions that I get a lot are when to plant something and when to harvest something. People just don't know when to start and when to harvest. A lot of those answers really just depends on where you live. And I really try to use those questions as an opportunity to get people to think more about paying attention to their climate and their weather, and also paying attention to their plants, more than paying attention to a date on the calendar.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, someone who has a lot of experience in the dirt is HGTV's very own Kelly Smith Trimble. Kelly is a senior editorial director and host of the digital series, Dig It! We had her on the pod to talk all about veggie gardening. And the most asked questions she gets as a master gardener.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: One thing I think about is garlic. I know you're growing garlic for the first time this year. And that was a question that we got a lot for people who are growing garlic is when to harvest it. And really in that with that plant, it kind of tells you when it's ready to be harvested. So the garlic grows up until early to midsummer. And it'll be ready when it starts to turn brown on the top. It starts to kind of flop over. And so that's kind of the plant signaling to you that it's ready. So you really just have to pay attention to your plants a lot of times to know when to harvest things.
So more specific questions that we get a lot of, people are always kind of flummoxed by blossom-end rot on their tomatoes. If you've ever experienced that, that is where you get this brown sunken bruise on the end of your tomato. And it's very common. It happens to everybody. But people are always wondering what they can do about that. And that one is a little bit hard because it is about weather conditions. It's about water. So, a lot of times, I just tell people to go ahead and harvest the tomatoes they have cut off that end. And then the best thing that they can do is to make sure that their tomato plants are just getting regular water. They're not getting large fluctuations in the water.
The other thing that we get a lot of questions about is cilantro. People are trying to grow cilantro in the summer. And it seems like cilantro would be a summer plant because we're so used to it being in tomatoes or with tomatoes and peppers and salsa. But it's actually a cool season plant. So cilantro likes to grow best in cooler weather, spring and fall. And it will bolt. It will go to flower if it's too hot. So people are always saying they can't grow cilantro, but I think it's because they're trying to grow it in the wrong season.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, I think everybody thinks cilantro, salsa, guacamole, Mexico. Mexico is hot. Cilantro must be a summer herb. So yeah, I do think that's something that surprises people. Well, and I was texting you yesterday, because I went out. I went and bought some new herbs. And I went out to my herb garden, which I'm going to weed and get ready for the spring this weekend. And my cilantro and my parsley came back, which I was shocked about.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Yes, so cilantro and parsley are both biennials. So a lot of people know about annuals and perennials and the difference between them. But there's one other type of plant called a biennial. And they grow the first year. And then they come back the second year. And that's when they actually go to seed. And they go to flower. So their lifecycle is two years long. And cilantro is one of those. Parsley. A lot of the crops that we actually grow for the root, like carrots and beets, those are-- I think beets. I know carrots are biennials. So if you left that in the ground, it would come back. And that's when it would actually go to flower.
So, yeah. That's a really interesting one. And you can do this with parsley or cilantro, but particularly with cilantro, the seed of the cilantro plant is coriander, the spice. So I always let my cilantro come back and go to seed. And then let that seed dry on the plant. And I harvest that. And that's my coriander that I keep in my spice cabinet.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, that's what I'm going to do now too. So a couple of weeks ago, you gave us some great tips on HGTV to the rescue all about intro to vegetable gardening. Veggie gardening 101. And we really wanted to bring you back to dive a little deeper into vegetable gardening, veggie gardening 201. I'm ready to level up. So we're here, right on the tail end of April. What should we be planning in our gardens right now?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: So it really differs depending on where you live. So the first thing I would say is to know your zone. So it differs depending on where you live. But you and I both live in East Tennessee, which is in zone 7. And some of the things that we can be planting now, or that we may already have planted, are some of the root crops like beets, and carrots, and radishes. Those are some of my favorite things to grow. And they're great for this like mid-spring time period. Also, broccoli and cabbage, those are good things to get in the ground right now. Those are considered spring crops.
In our climate, it gets hot pretty fast. And so I find that it's best to plant those things, maybe early April, even though a lot of the recommendations are late April. But I get those things in a little bit earlier because it tends to just turn to summer really fast where we live. But I have those things in the ground. And then I also go ahead and start planting my tomatoes and peppers around the beginning of May. Some recommendations are to consider Mother's Day like your time period to get those things in. I do that, although sometimes I kind of cheat it and I get them in a little bit earlier. And then I'm willing to cover them if we're going to have a super cold night. So those are the things that I have in now. Also onions, definitely. Onions are a great thing to plant this time of year.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes, I will admit, I broke down and bought tomato plants yesterday. And I know. I know I'm pushing it. But, like you, I'm willing to cover six tomato plants.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: I mean, sometimes it's worth it for your own emotional value.
MARIANNE CANADA: So this is a wild card question, but I just have to ask, how many tomato plants are you putting in the ground this year? Because I have a very small veggie patch. I don't try to grow as much food as you do. I'm just in awe. How many different tomato varieties are you putting in this year?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Well, you know, I don't have that fully determined. I think I started maybe six varieties. And so I have probably six plants of each of those varieties, but I'm going to have to give some of those away to friends. So if you would like some, because I just don't have that much space to grow 36 tomato plants. But I probably will grow 15 or 20, which is exciting and crazy at the same time.
MARIANNE CANADA: I mean, so exciting and so crazy.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Right. I've done seed starting before, but I haven't had as much success with it as I have this year because I've been at home, working from home, and I've been here and able to take care of them a lot better than I have in past times. And so I planted all this seed not truly expecting all of it to do as well as it has. So now I have all of these 30 plus tomato plants. So, we'll see.
MARIANNE CANADA: It's an embarrassment of riches, right?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: It is. It's true.
MARIANNE CANADA: So we've heard a little bit about your tomato plants, but what does your garden look like this year? Are you trying anything new?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Yeah, I always try a few new plants every year. I don't have a massive garden, like I said. And so I try to just sprinkle on some new plants every year just so I have experience growing them. And then I also try new varieties every year. I definitely have varieties of tomatoes and peppers that I love to grow, but I like to try new things. So, for tomatoes this year, one that I'm really excited about is called indigo Apple. And it's an heirloom tomato variety. It's small-fruited like in between a cherry tomato and a larger tomato, but it has this really pretty purple and green coloring. So that's what I'm excited about.
I'm also growing Turkish orange eggplant. And that's a little tiny orange eggplant, very different from any other eggplant I've seen. So I'm excited to grow that. It almost looks like a little mini pumpkin rather than an eggplant. And then, let's see, Mexican sour gherkin is a cucumber that I'm trying. That's a little bitty tiny-- They actually have a flavor a little bit more like watermelon.
MARIANNE CANADA: Oh, are those the ones-- they almost look like tiny watermelons?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Yes, they look like tiny watermelons. And the vine is really rampant, like it gets really-- it goes all over the place. But it's actually really fine. It's a small fruit. And the vine itself is really fine textured. So I'm kind of excited to grow that this year. I've never grown that before, but I've always seen it.
MARIANNE CANADA: I actually have seeds for those. And I completely forgot. So maybe I should consider that. I don't know. I had some cucumbers really lose the plot last year, and take-off. I'm just trying to do things. I'm trying to be very mindful of this space I have and not plant things that just go so crazy.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: I think that's a good call. And cucumbers and squash are definitely the ones that can get really crazy. One thing that I have never grown before, and I've actually never heard before until I got a seed catalog that had it in it, is something called garden huckleberry. And it is a plant related to tomatoes and peppers, but it has this little tiny fruit that if you let it go, and then you cook with it, it's almost like you can use it like a blueberry. So I'm really excited to grow that. I mean, I've been trying to find information on it. And there's not a ton of info on it, so it'll be kind of an experiment. I like doing things like that and trying to figure it out.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, that's one of my favorite things about you, is that you will just try things. I know last year you grew hops just to see what that was like.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Yeah, I have hops, and they have done so well, surprisingly well. I've been giving them away because they really do-- or giving like the actual plants away because you have to divide it every year. But I had a really good hops harvest last year. I don't brew beer, but I gave it to someone. And he brew beer with it, which is really cool. And I've grown things before like quinoa, and amaranth, and grains like that. It's really just kind of fun to know how it grows. I mean, I didn't harvest a whole lot of quinoa. It wasn't even enough to make a salad. But now I know how quinoa grows. For me, that's what's so fun about gardening, it's just kind of understanding where our food comes from, even to that level.
MARIANNE CANADA: That's so fun. We'll make sure to put some pictures of Kelly's garden in the show notes because it's just-- I love the way you lay it out. It's so beautiful.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Thank you.
MARIANNE CANADA: So I know we're talking about leveling up your vegetable garden, but I don't want to leave out our gardening newbies. So, Kelly, if someone wanted to have a fail-proof garden, I know there's no such thing, of just a few resilient herbs and veggies, what would those be?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: So, yeah, like you said, failure will always happen. But some things that are really easy, I do think garlic is one. It's such a staple in our kitchens, but we don't really think about growing it that much. But it is so easy to grow. So, for most people, you plant it in the fall. It overwinters. And then you harvest it in the summer. And, in between those times, you basically need to do nothing to it. So as long as you have a little bit of space you can devote to it and just leave it alone, garlic is a super easy thing to grow. And then it literally just multiplies because you can save your garlic cloves and replant them the following fall so you never really have to buy garlic again.
Thyme and rosemary. So some of the perennial herbs, like thyme, rosemary, oregano, those are so easy to grow. And they're so useful in the kitchen. So, definitely, I would recommend those. And then I think everyone wants to grow tomatoes. And I think everyone should grow tomatoes. If you want a little bit of an easier time of it, I think cherry tomatoes are super easy to grow. It takes less time and less effort on the plant's part to produce a small fruit than it does the huge fruit. And so, cherry tomatoes are really easy and really fun. And then I have to throw in there, also, to grow flowers alongside those plants. So marigolds are just a go-to. They have a lot of benefits for the vegetables in the garden. So if you had garlic, thyme, rosemary, cherry tomatoes, and some marigolds, you would have an excellent and very easy vegetable garden.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, I'm feeling very proud of myself because that is literally what I'm doing.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Good! Yay!
MARIANNE CANADA: I bought six sungold tomato plants because they just did so well last year. The kids love them. They love to pick them. I mean, we had tomatoes until November.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Yeah. I love sungold. I mean, they call it nature's candy, and it really is true. I usually just eat them straight in the garden, because they're so delicious.
MARIANNE CANADA: There's nothing like a warm tomato.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: So nice.
MARIANNE CANADA: So good. All right, so since we have a gardening expert on with us, Madeleine, who's one of our podcast producers, had a personal Dig It! question for you. So she had a huge problem with squash borers last year. And she loves squash. She really wants to grow it, but she just wasn't confident on how to both prevent them and also how to treat them. And I was like, I personally know that Kelly has done battle with squash borers. So any advice for some natural pest remedies that are food safe?
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: I do have advice. So squash vine borers are really common in the Southeast. And so, I have battled them myself for many, many years. Unfortunately, there's really no way to get rid of them. I do have organic pest control recommendations for other things, neem oil is a great one. Bt is a great one for caterpillar pests. But squash vine borers are just particularly bad and difficult to get rid of. Squash vine borers are-- they overwinter in the soil. And they, just to give you a little lifecycle info, the adult comes back as this wasp-like moth and it lays eggs on your plants. So it lays them at the base of the plants. And then this really gross caterpillar bores out the stem of your squash plants. So you'll start seeing-- the damage starts at the stem at the base level. And, anyway, it looks gross and your plants start to die.
The best thing I have found is to use row cover cloth over your squash early on so that it limits the ability for that moth to lay those eggs on the base of your plant. So row cover cloth is just this really thin, lightweight cloth that sunlight and water can get through, but that prevents pests from actually landing on your plants. So I covered my zucchini last year with row cover cloth up until the plant started flowering. When the plant started flowering, I had to start uncovering it so that pollinators could actually pollinate the plant to get some fruit in there. But I would go through the process of uncovering it during the day and then covering at night, just to give the plant a little bit more opportunity to get pollinated and start producing fruit before the squash vine borers did their damage. And I got a ton of zucchini out of those plants for several weeks, maybe even a couple of months. They did eventually get squash vine borers, but it took awhile.
So I would recommend using that row cover cloth early on in the season with your plants to prevent those pests from laying the eggs and getting to your squash and your zucchini. And then after that, the other thing is to succession plant. So don't just try to do one crop of squash, plan on doing one early in the season. And then expect that they may get taken down by squash vine borers, but then plant more and do it again. But that is the best recommendation I can give Madeleine, because those are some serious pests and there really is nothing. There's no remedy for them other than like trying to work them with row cover cloth.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, and I think that's really good advice too to just to not think of gardening as something you do all at once. I think that people think, oh, I put all my plants in late spring, early summer, and that's it. So the advice to just plant some later in the season is really good, especially here where our growing season is pretty long.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: It is pretty long. Yeah, I mean we really can't start planting summer things. Now, at the end of April, beginning of May. And we can continue planting them up through July so that we're harvesting in September.
MARIANNE CANADA: Well, Kelly, thank you so much for joining us and for all of your expertise. I think we definitely are going to have to have you on the podcast again to talk more veggie gardening very soon. And if you guys want to see more of Kelly and see her answer just every vegetable gardening question you can think of, you can go to HGTV.com/DigIt.
KELLY SMITH TRIMBLE: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
MARIANNE CANADA: Thank you.
All right, so I know today's episode has been very outdoor gardening specific, but we don't want to leave our house plant loving audience out. So for a very special HGTV to the Rescue, we have Stephen and Matthew from the Plant Daddy Podcast. Welcome to HGTV Obsessed.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Thank you. Hello.
MARIANNE CANADA: So for those of us who haven't listened to your podcast yet, which, you guys get on board, they are so entertaining. It's the perfect blend of information and entertaining, but tell us a little bit about the Plant Daddy Podcast.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Oh, well thank you. That's really nice to hear. Stephen and I have been friends for over a decade by this point. And even though I have been growing plants basically since my childhood, like as soon as I got my first African violet cuttings, Stephen is fairly new to the hobby. And I like to think that I helped him get started and excited about plants.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, you do like to say that, Matthew. You have some credit in there, I'll say. Yeah, so I've been into it for about five years I would say now. Matthew for longer. We were friends for about a decade. And we found ourselves talking about plants more and more intensely in mixed company, but really loving these conversations and wondering who else we might be able to connect with. So we started to put some of these conversations online. And at first we were thinking, yeah, let's just go deep on a plant, explain how we care for it. We still do that. But more and more, it's connecting to this great plant community, learning so much from them, telling others about the great resources that helped us, people in our community giving us plants, giving us advice. And, yeah, just interacting with this great ecosystem, trying to give back, trying to connect people and learn ourselves, really.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah, and I'm sure that our friends are happy that we're no longer making game night or movie night all about what plants are blooming right now or something.
MARIANNE CANADA: They're like you guys need an outlet for this that is not us.
MATTHEW JACKSON: There was like an hour period in the beginning of a lot of these gatherings, right? We would just slowly turn around the room, looking at new growth.
STEPHEN EHLERS: People would just joke like, oh, yeah, Stephen and Matthew are doing their thing. Let's not disturb them right now. It's been pretty funny though because we've really grown as plant parents since we started the show ourselves. And we're both growing so many different things that are outside of our own natural interests. And the podcast has helped really increase the exposure that we have to plants that we never really would have gravitated towards otherwise. So I kind of have the reputation, and it's probably a bit true, that I'm the flowering and tropical foliage plants enthusiast. I do some rare stuff, but it's all like arrowheads and orchids. And Stephen still loves his carnivorous plants, succulents, a lot of really cool rare oddities. But it's been really fun to branch out more into each other's worlds and experience more of what the houseplant world has to offer just in general.
MARIANNE CANADA: That's so fun. You're really able to fuel your obsession even more.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Oh, it's almost problems.
MARIANNE CANADA: I think I definitely fall in like the tropicals side of things. Just looking behind you, I've got orchids. I've got the elephant ear, monstera, you know? I tend to love succulents too much and overwater them.
STEPHEN EHLERS: They're so collectible, right? I mean, you can fit so many on a table.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah. I just water them too much, every time. I have no chill.
MATTHEW JACKSON: They also need so much light.
MARIANNE CANADA: So much light. So as you guys know, this is our spring gardening episode. And we've talked about flowers and herbs. We've talked about starting a vegetable garden, but for a lot of people, especially, I mean, you all living in a big city, house plants are the only gardens they have. So what kind of spring cleaning do you guys do for your house plants?
STEPHEN EHLERS: So the first thing I adjust is just how much I water, right? So it's going to become brighter in your space, probably warmer. Your plants are going to wake up, get into active growth. They're going to start consuming more water. So I just monitor that. Make sure they're not drying out too quickly. Make sure they have what they need. It's also important to pay attention to the light in your space. So a lot of us got into plants over quarantine, right? We're in our houses more we're kind of decorating our spaces that we're spending so much time in. And you might find that the light is really different in this season. Maybe it's not blocked by a building anymore, when the sun was in a different position in the sky. Maybe afternoon light is now too intense for certain plants or things like that. So just pay attention throughout the day. Maybe move some things around.
Also, I fertilize. Active growth will make your plants more hungry. Yeah, make sure you fertilize many of them. You don't have to overthink this, really. I think there's a lot of great fertilizers that you can get put in there. So, unless it's a super specialty plant, you can just get something like slow-release like osmocote pellets, things like that.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah, and I actually just went through my plant spring-cleaning process myself. Usually at the start of every season, or just around then, I have a few routines that I go through to maintain my plants. And I have so many of them that this is like a very methodical necessary process. But it might be overkill for many home houseplant enthusiasts.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, but there are hopefully some tidbits in here, right? So do 10% of this.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah. Take this with a grain of salt. In spring though, my routine usually just kind of consists of going through all of my plants in the various growing spaces that they're in. And then I'll just assess their health and condition, basically. I'll clean up dead leaves. I'll see what might need other attention. And I love this time of year because you really start to see some of those dormant plants beginning to wake up. And there's always a lot of new growth either just beginning or on the horizon. And that's the most fun thing about this time of year. Yeah. So this is also a really good time, though, to see if anything didn't really make it through the winter. Maybe it's not going to pull through. And, in that case, you can just compost those plants to make room for new ones. But, for all of the healthy existing plants that I am keeping into the next growing season, I will rotate them through the shower or sink. And I'll do this in large batches that I can just spray them down thoroughly with clean water to remove any dust from the foliage.
And I take this opportunity to inspect really closely for pests. Sometimes you can find some pest problems occurred in the dry conditions of winter. Yeah. Like this is one of those things. I do this seasonally and then spot check throughout the year. But spring is a really good time to physically remove any that you might find. I like to either spray them, like just spray them off with water. And, for this, I actually have a shower head with a wand attachment on my hose that's really useful. And then, I'll also wipe them off with a soft cloth, paint brush, or even just my fingers, depending on what the plant and what the pests are. Any plants that do have pests, they're going to get treated with an insecticidal soap, neem oil, maybe a pesticide if it's a bad enough infestation. But I always make sure that it's one that's safe for indoor use, so it's not going to harm my pets or me or my fiance. And I'm going to quarantine any plants that have been treated so that they're not going to spread pests to other plants that are still healthy. Now, this whole process allows me to also make sure that every plant is healthy and thoroughly watered so that as they start their active growing season, after a few months of low watering frequency, they're going to be off to a good start, and I can just keep up with that watering routine like Stephen said. I'm also going to closely inspect them to see what kinds of pruning might be useful for the coming growing season. And I'll usually end up with tons of cuttings. And I'll either propagate these or share them with friends.
And then, lastly, I use this as a really good time to repot things that are overgrown. They might be root-bound, need some fresh substrate, or I might just want them in a different pot. For instance, terracotta. It's really porous and it promotes rapid drying. But I might switch a plant that was drying too rapidly for me keep up on the watering into a more moisture-retaining glazed clay or even sometimes a plastic pot that will just sit in a decorative cachepot. So I've also found that if anything stayed to wet the last growing season, it's helpful to maybe shift them over to that breathable terracotta so that I don't have to worry about over-watering in the coming growing season. Repotting is a really good thing to do now because you're setting yourself up for a successful growing season in the coming warm months because you're not disturbing the act of growth in the middle of the season if they suddenly need a repot three months on.
MARIANNE CANADA: Do you have any tips on how to repot your houseplants assuming you're not Martha Stewart. You don't have this lavish potting shed where you can spread out and not bring that dirt into your house. Any tips on doing that and containing the mess if you're having to do it in an apartment, for example.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Good question I think you can do this in your sink. If you can catch things from going into the drain, right? There's a lot of elements in soil that shouldn't go into the drain. I have kind of a metal mesh that I could put over my drain for that. I've also used cardboard boxes, right? If you can do it in kind of a shallow box that's like a carrying crate, that's one trick. And then you can, you know?
MATTHEW JACKSON: I love using the nursery flats for quick repots.
MARIANNE CANADA: That's such a good idea.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah. And then part of that too, if you repot just over one of these things and kind of do it carefully, you can take a butter knife, sort of separate the roots from the side of the pot if they've started to adhere at all. And then if you just like-- you can grab the plant by its stem, turn it over, and then kind of pat it and shake it out. Sometimes it's a little bit less dramatic than if you're fully like dumping, and you kind of do it in a more controlled motion that way. It's often easier on the plant itself too. Once you've done that, you can unravel the roots a little bit. I don't do this a ton unless they're truly overgrown. I don't take any roots off often. You can put that plant into a larger pot, not something super large, just so it can still consume all the water that you have in there and not be too wet. But, yeah, hopefully that's not too messy. This is definitely something I deal with. And, you know, I just have a lot of dust pans as well.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah. And I find that, if I use a large steel mixing bowl, I can also help to contain that. And I'll repot things kind of close to where they are. Or larger plants, I'll bring them to my garage so that I can repot something, water it somewhere, and then put it back in its position once it's drained.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, that's great. It's all about containment.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Exactly.
MARIANNE CANADA: So, obviously, houseplants. They're called houseplants, but a lot of them like to move outside when it's warm enough. Should we be moving our plants outside? And do you have any tips on making that transition less traumatic for the plants?
STEPHEN EHLERS: So I would say that really, really depends on your climate, right? So up here in Seattle, we can do that with a lot of common houseplants. I think if you're in Phoenix, or someplace really hot and dry with intense sun, you have to be a lot more careful. As far as that transition goes, gosh, I only put kind of my most rugged, I would say, houseplants, like ones that won't snap in a strong wind. Or ones that can take the sun where I am. If you're trying to transition, I would start kind of a few hours a day. I wouldn't put it out the full day in full sun. And then see how it reacts. I mean, there will be a little bit of discoloration maybe on leaves. You might lose a couple of leaves. A lot of plants do adjust. So if there is a period where it looks like it's a little bit rough, that might be OK. But for many of mine, I don't really do this. I just keep them indoors. And I find that that is kind of just as good. Like the light is more intense indoors as well during summer. So I tend to like that control a little bit better. Matthew is different in this department. He has a lot of ornamental like fruiting things and flowering things that do really benefit from that. Yeah, what is your routine, Matthew?
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah, for a lot of these plants, I really love rotating some of my houseplants outdoors for the summer. And many of the flowering tropical and subtropical plants like hibiscus or plumeria that I grow, I just treat them as outdoor plants that come inside for the winter. Now that transition back to the summer, when we finally have the nice enough weather and warm nighttime temperatures that won't harm the plant, I'll put them in a completely shaded spot for about a week. And then I'll move them under like something that gets some morning or late afternoon sun for another week or so. And just gradually increase the light exposure so that I don't suddenly have all the leaves burned up and crispy. That's a really common problem. But just like Stephen said, plants usually bounce back from this pretty quickly. So if it does happen, don't stress it too much.
Now, most of my succulents actually live outdoors over the summer because these are plants that are going to just thrive in full sun and hot climates. We don't have anything that's going to harm them in the Seattle area. So if you do live in a hot zone, you might have a little bit different of experience. But these always do best for me when I put them outdoors rather than struggling to provide adequate light for them to produce their best growth and flowering indoors. So I don't put a lot of my tropical foliage plants outside, but if you have a really nice space that you want to see some of that kind of seasonal vibe, you need to make sure it's not going to be too hot or too sunny for them first of all. But it's really fun to do this. And a covered balcony or porch is perfect for many of these plants. And a lot of them even do really, really well having that swing between warm days and cooler nights. You often see really, really nice growth.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, they can prompt flowering, things like that.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah. I also really enjoy though, that by moving plants outside, I get to benefit from those beneficial predatory insects that often are going to prey on any pests that might be on an indoor plant.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Pests are a bit of a theme for Matthew lately, so--
MATTHEW JACKSON: Well, when you have 400 plants, it's very important just to keep on top of it.
MARIANNE CANADA: 400!
MATTHEW JACKSON: Rough number. I've lost count. But when you have your plants outside, you are also potentially introducing them to new pests that you don't have indoors. For me, I usually find that that's like slugs, snails. I don't get aphids indoors, but I do outside and caterpillars. So keep up with your pest monitoring when your plants are outside, especially to avoid bringing anything back indoors in the fall.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah. See, to me, there's really pros and cons to moving them outdoors and then back.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes, for sure.
MATTHEW JACKSON: But there's no better way to grow some of those exotic plants like bird of paradise, or hibiscus, or plumeria than me able to offer them like a really good full sun summer to get the best blooms and flowers that you want to see.
MARIANNE CANADA: It's true. It's like hot plant summer.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah.
MARIANNE CANADA: So, I have to ask now. I mean, Matthew, you just said you have 400 plants. So maybe you don't have anything on your wish list, but--
MATTHEW JACKSON: That's how I have 400 plants. There's always a wish list.
STEPHEN EHLERS: He shouldn't. Voice of reason here.
MARIANNE CANADA: After we finish recording, we're going to have a brief intervention for Matthew's plant addiction. No, I support you. I just want to see all of them. But do you guys have anything on your plant shopping list this Spring? Any new plant babies headed into your homes?
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, you know, I think the virtue in the issue with houseplants is that it's kind of, any season's OK. We have temperature controls, right? A lot of us use grow lights. I would say, lately, for me though, very into hoyas. I think so many of us are always looking for interesting hoyas. Also, carnivorous plants. It's kind of a passion of mine. Just always an interesting species to look for and grow from seed, and things like that that can do indoors. The only thing I would say there that is something to think about for houseplants is that when you are ordering something in winter, you might worry about something being shipped in the cold, right? So now that it's warming up, I'm less worried about that. I am more willing to buy something that might be shipped from Florida, right? Like across the US. And maybe going through the cold Rockies or something through shipping that might damage it. So that's opened up a little bit. But otherwise, it's a same old law of a lot of things, you can always buy. And that's the problem.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah. For me, now that we're finally in warm enough temperatures that I'm not worried about anything being damaged in shipping, the top of my list this spring are some really beautiful dwarf tropical water lilies that I want to be growing in like little water garden bowls. I've wanted to do this for years. So this is the year for it.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Matthew, I actually have experience with that. I don't think we've ever talked about this.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Oh my gosh.
STEPHEN EHLERS: We could-- OK.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Tune into our show later because apparently we're going to talk about this.
STEPHEN EHLERS: This is how the show goes. Yeah, all right. Yeah.
MARIANNE CANADA: I was about to say, it sounds like a future Plant Daddy episode, all about growing aquatic plants indoors.
MATTHEW JACKSON: You heard it here first.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
MARIANNE CANADA: I like it.
MATTHEW JACKSON: I'm also on a huge hoya kick, so I'm sure to be adding some new ones to my collection soon. And I moved at the end of last summer. And I have such better light in this new space that I am going to really indulge a little more into some of these succulents, and cacti, and really high light level plants that I previously held off on because I just didn't have the conditions before that would keep them happy.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah. It sounds like you guys just have an ever-evolving list going. I will admit, I have 12 house plants, which feels very restrained at this point.
STEPHEN EHLERS: That's manageable. That's healthy. Yeah.
MATTHEW JACKSON: The right number. Yeah.
MARIANNE CANADA: But I live on four acres. I am an outdoor gardener big time. We have a really long growing season here in Tennessee. So I'm always so interested to hear about people's houseplant passions. Well, I can tell that we could literally talk for hours about this. I really want to thank Stephen and Matthew from the Plant Daddy Podcast for joining us today. Do not forget to follow the Plant Daddy Podcast. For more great houseplant tips and tricks, including their upcoming aquatic plant episode.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Oh gosh. OK.
MARIANNE CANADA: Where can everybody find you guys on social media?
MATTHEW JACKSON: Well, the social that we are most active on is Instagram because plants are so beautiful. And we love being able to showcase them in such a visual format because podcasts don't really offer that.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yes. So is that plantdaddypodcast on Instagram?
MATTHEW JACKSON: Just @plantdaddypodcast. And then, our episodes come out every Monday. And it's just available anywhere that podcasts are enjoyed pretty much.
STEPHEN EHLERS: Yeah, your favorite podcast app. Also plantdaddypodcast.com. We have some show notes there and answer some questions sometimes there too.
MARIANNE CANADA: I love it. Well, I hope you guys will come back for a longer chat. Maybe sometime this summer we can check in and see.
MATTHEW JACKSON: We'd love that.
MARIANNE CANADA: Yeah, I would love that too. Thanks so much.
MATTHEW JACKSON: Yeah, of course. Thank you.
MARIANNE CANADA: Oh my goodness. I hope you guys enjoyed this jam-packed episode today, and feel ready to take on this Spring season. My to-do list is, as usual, a mile long. I want to give a huge thank you to Kelly Edwards, Kelly Smith Trimble, and The Plant Daddies for their insightful tips and tricks. If you want to ask HGTV stars and experts your own question, hit us up on the HGTV Instagram account. Just look for our post on Thursdays. And, as usual, if you love today's episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to rate and review HGTV Obsessed. I need five stars, guys. I need five stars. I need positive words of affirmation. That's my love language. Don't forget to follow HGTV Obsessed wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode. And head over to HGTV.com/podcast for the show notes on today's episode. We'll see you next Thursday.