Category: Home & Garden

In the houseplant growing game, it’s important to shake things up from time to time.

So if you’ve ever looked at your houseplants and thought enough with this leafy emphasis, time to show off a pretty stem for once, then might I suggest a tortoise plant?

Not that the leaves and flowers aren’t pretty – they absolutely are.

But the first thing about D. elephantipes that catches your eye is its massive, rounded, and plated stem, which definitely resembles a tortoise’s shell. Minus the vining shoots growing out the top, of course.

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And just like with actual tortoises, proper care and nurturing is essential for tortoise plants to thrive.

As you can imagine, these guys are quite tough, but thriving – instead of merely surviving – is what’ll really make them beautiful.

So that’s why we whipped up this guide for you. By the end of it, you’ll have learned the wonderful secrets of tortoise plants, and you’ll be well-prepared to parent one in your home.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What Are Tortoise Plants?

Native to the Cape Province of South Africa, Dioscorea elephantipes belongs to the largest genus of the Dioscoreaceae family.

Containing over 600 species, the vast Dioscorea genus of flowering tuberous plants is distributed worldwide, with edible yams such as D. trifida and D. alata being its most famous and commercially valuable members.

Hardy in USDA Zones 9b or warmer, the tortoise plant – aka elephant’s foot – has an enlarged, bulbous, aboveground stem known as a caudex, which provides support and stores water and nutrients.

I think this knobby, plated caudex predominantly looks like a tortoise shell, but its shape and gray color does resemble that of an elephant’s foot, I suppose.

From the top of the caudex grows climbing deciduous vines with green, heart-shaped leaves.

Caudex and leaves included, D. elephantipes reaches a mature height and spread of nine feet and seven feet, respectively.

But that’s in its native outdoor habitat – when grown indoors, it’s typically much smaller.

Another unique feature of the tortoise plant: its summer dormancy. Since conditions can be so hot and dry in its native habitat, it has evolved to drop its leaves and undergo a dormancy period during the heat and drought of summertime.

So physiologically, it behaves in fall and winter like most other plants would during spring and summer! Although the exact dormancy period can vary a bit when grown indoors in the Northern Hemisphere.

After a minimum of ten years or so, the tortoise plant blooms in fall to winter with small racemes of white and/or yellow to green flowers.

As dioecious plants, both a male and a female are necessary to yield small seeds in spring, which are brown with a membranous, crinkled, and whitish “wing” on one end.

In the past, the caudex of D. elephantipes were processed and baked by the Khoisan peoples of South Africa to yield a bread-like food source.

But I wouldn’t go whipping up some tortoise plant bread or anything like that – tortoise plants contain high amounts of toxic saponins, which are chemical compounds often used for synthesizing corticosteroids and birth control. Not exactly stuff you should make toast with.

In ornamental gardening, the tortoise plant is used to add visual flair, both indoors as a houseplant and out in the landscape. It certainly does a swell job – it was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s prestigious Award of Garden Merit in 2002!

Propagation

If you want to propagate a tortoise plant of your own, you’ll need to either grow it from seed or transplant an established specimen.

Sowing Seeds

First things first: you need seeds. Order seeds online, acquire seeds from a friend, pick dried seed capsules from accessible tortoise plants.

The ideal sowing time is fall, so plan your seed acquisition accordingly.

When you have your seeds, first remove the “wings.” Add a moisture-retaining yet well-draining growing media to a seed tray, then bury your seeds a third of an inch deep, spaced at least an inch apart.

After a year of growth, the seedlings should be ready to move into their own individual three- to four-inch containers, each filled with a media that leans more towards “well-draining” than “moisture-retentive.”

A tropical potting mix or soil suitable for cacti and succulents will be ideal.

If you can, opt for terra cotta containers over plastic ones – they provide the aeration necessary for preventing excess moisture in the soil.

At this point, you’re free to treat the seedlings like you would an established specimen, albeit carefully.

Transplanting

Want to transplant a seedling or a new specimen into one of your swanky houseplant pots? Here’s how!

While your transplant still has its leaves and is actively growing, select your pot. The container should have drainage holes and be an inch or two wider than the diameter of the caudex.

Fill it up to a bit below the brim with a potting medium fit for cacti, or perhaps a homemade mixture that’s comprised of one third sand, one third perlite, and one third peat moss or coconut coir.

Dig a hole in the media that’s large enough for the root system, add the transplant, backfill the soil up to the bottom of the caudex, and water in well.

How to Grow

Tortoise plants are durable enough to do alright without much coddling. But a bit of attention at the right time definitely helps them look their best.

Climate and Exposure Needs

D. elephantipes prefers heat, and can handle temperatures as high as 104°F and as low as 25°F. But don’t think you need to make your home’s climate like that of South Africa or anything.

The typical “room temperature” of most homes should do just fine.

Its light requirements are pretty interesting: the vining stem, leaves, and flowers all prefer bright, direct sun, while the actual caudex prefers more indirect light, or even straight-up shade.

In nature, the shoots can grow tall and dense enough to block the sun from hitting much of the caudex, while indoor tortoise plant shoots don’t usually grow large enough for that.

The ideal indoor location would meet these requirements simultaneously, but sticking to this perfectly isn’t a must – just do the best you can.

Many indoor windows don’t go all the way down to the floor, so setting the tortoise plant flush against the wall beneath the window can illuminate the vines, yet block light from hitting the caudex.

In the case of an established tortoise plant, instead of keeping the media consistently moist, you’ll want to let it dry out completely before you irrigate again.

When the leaves have dropped during dormancy, the soil will take longer to dry out than it would during the growing season.

Once-a-month fertilizations diluted down to quarter-strength will help provide the necessary nutrition. No need to fertilize during spring and summer dormancy, though.

Bonide Fertilizer

Need some fertilizer? Check out Bonide’s liquid 10-10-10 fertilizer, available in eight-ounce volumes at Walmart.

Growing Tips

• The vegetative shoots like full sun, while the corky caudex appreciates partial to full shade.
• A growing media with ample drainage is essential.
• Allow the media to dry out completely in between waterings.

Pruning and Maintenance

Dead, damaged, or sickly vines should be pruned away as you notice them, along with spent flowers. You should also cut down the vines during the tortoise plant’s dormancy period.

Speaking of the vines, they’ll eventually need something to cling to as they climb.

A thin wooden stake or a spiral houseplant trellis provides that structure without disrupting the aesthetic too much.

Be sure to repot the tortoise plant whenever it outgrows that inch or two of elbow room between the sides of the caudex and the container’s edges.

Where to Buy

A tortoise plant isn’t the most common of specimens, but you can definitely find one if you know where to look.

Good starting points for your search include niche plant nurseries, specialty shops, and horticultural trade shows.

Check your network of fellow green thumbs to see if any of them have spare tortoise plant to give, whether in seed or transplant form.

Managing Pests and Disease

Thankfully, indoor gardeners don’t have to deal with as many pest and disease problems as their outdoor counterparts. But there are a few worth looking out for.

Insects

Since insects can vector diseases as they feed, managing them usually results in free disease prevention, on-the-house. Talk about a plus!

Aphids

These translucent, pear-shaped, and soft-bodied insects are small in stature, but large in nuisance-ness. They’re usually one of the first pests that gardeners learn about, and one of the first that they hate.

Using their piercing-sucking mouthparts, aphids will extract the vital fluids from leaves and herbaceous stems, which can cause leaf distortion, chlorosis, and stunted growth overall.

Adding insult to injury, they excrete honeydew as they feed, which can cause black sooty mold to form.

Strong sprays of water can blast pests off the plant, while applications of horticultural oil or insecticidal soap will actually kill them.

Either way, you will want to bring your tortoise plant outside first, lest you soak your floor with water or insect-controlling chemicals.

Monterey Horticultural Oil

For some OMRI-listed horticultural oil in ready-to-spray or concentrated form, check out what Monterey has to offer at Arbico Organics.

Learn more about aphids and how to deal with them in our guide.

Mealybugs

Appearing as white cottony clumps on leaves, stems, and roots, mealybugs will suck plant sap out of a plant’s phloem, stunting growth and potentially killing any infested tissue. Plus, they secrete honeydew.

Mealybugs on the vines can be sprayed with insecticidal soap.

Bonide Insecticidal Soap

You can try this one from Bonide, available in various volumes in spray bottle or concentrate form from Arbico Organics.

Our guide to controlling mealybugs has more information.

Scale

Scale are small, rounded, and flattened insects that come in either armored or soft-bodied forms.

Typically congregating in conspicuous masses on shoots, they continue the theme of sap suction and honeydew secretion, with all the associated symptoms of stunted growth, weakening, and necrosis.

Insecticidal soap can control scale on the shoots, but you can also physically pick them off of plant surfaces with a skinny toothpick or something similar.

Learn more about dealing with scale in our guide.

Root Rot

There aren’t too many diseases that an indoor tortoise plant has to deal with, especially if you keep your home and gardening practices sanitary. But believe it or not, it can actually be easier for a D. elephantipes to develop root rot indoors than growing outdoors in the landscape.

If you grow a tortoise plant outdoors in the right environment, then the high heat will evaporate soil moisture quicker than the typical temperatures of your house.

Houseplant containers are also pretty easy to overwater, especially if you irrigate them with the frequency of a waiter refilling your water glass.

When a tortoise plant’s growing media isn’t allowed to dry between waterings, then the roots probably won’t receive enough oxygen. As a result, the root system becomes necrotic and dies, which spells disaster for the aboveground caudex and vines.

You can prevent this by not overwatering and ensuring the potting medium has sufficient drainage, and you fix it by starting those issues as quickly as possible, along with pruning away any rotted roots.

There’s no definitive line for when a plant is officially toast, but its odds of survival are grim when the majority of its root system is rotted away.

Best Uses

D. elephantipes is versatile enough to be both a central specimen or a supporting accent in a houseplant arrangement. But if you ask me, the strength of a tortoise plant lies in its unique appearance.

So if it’s placed in a spot where your houseguests can readily look at it, do a double-take, and go “whoa,” then you’ve chosen your placement wisely.

Quick Reference Growing Guide

Plant Type:	Deciduous flowering perennial vine	Flower/Foliage Color:	White, yellow to green; green
Native to:	South Africa	Water Needs:	Low
Hardiness (USDA Zone):	9b-12	Maintenance:	Moderate
Bloom Time/Season:	Fall to winter	Tolerance:	Drought, heat
Exposure:	Bright, indirect light	Soil Type:	Cactus and succulent growing medium, fertile sandy loam
Time to Maturity:	10 years	Soil pH:	5.5-6.5
Spacing:	1 inch away from container edges	Soil Drainage:	Well-draining
Planting Depth:	1/3 inch (seeds), depth of root system (transplants)	Uses:	Accent, houseplant, specimen
Height:	Up to 9 feet	Order:	Dioscoreales
Spread:	Up to 7 feet (smaller indoors)	Family:	Dioscoreaceae
Growth Rate:	Slow	Genus:	Dioscorea
Common Pests and Diseases:	Aphids, mealybugs, scale; root rot	Species:	Elephantipes

You Gotta Flex the Caudex

What’s the point of having a swollen aboveground stem if you can’t show it off?

With the proper cultivation practices that you’ve learned in this guide, you’ll have a wonderful tortoise plant that’s fit for flaunting.

Did I miss something that you wanted to know? Do you have experiences of your own to share? Let us know in the comments section below!

Need more animal-themed houseplants? Turn your home into a veritable zoo with these bad boys:

YES, IT’S TIME or almost time to do some raking, and to dig the dahlias to stash: time to perform the rounds of the fall cleanup, and put the garden to bed. But Ken Druse and I want to advocate for a sort of “cleanup-plus”—for tending not just to the obvious chores, but also doing some reflection, and making time for often-overlooked late-season tasks like seed-saving.

Or for finally transplanting one of those two overcrowded shrubs that have been screaming for more elbow room, and you keep swearing to rescue them, but never quite get to it.

Sound familiar?

You all know Ken Druse, author of 20 spectacular garden books, an old friend and my colleague the last few years in our Virtual Garden Club online courses, which resume in January. (That’s the view of his fall garden, above.) We’ve been talking this week together on the phone about how we’re winding down our respective garden seasons, and we wanted to let you in on some of the details that we hope will help you in your own cleanup-plus.

Read along as you listen to the Nov. 6, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

fall ‘cleanup-plus,’ with ken druse

Margaret Roach: Are you ready for some “plus,” Ken? [Laughter.] How’s it going?

Ken Druse: Doesn’t it seem familiar? Like every year, and also every spring and every fall? It’s fall, but it doesn’t feel like… Well, the weather’s been very warm. But when we started thinking about talking about these things, it reminded me that that’s what we do in the spring too, is look.

Margaret: Yeah. And really most of all, to advocate for sort of not being on autopilot, not just robotically doing the literal things that need to be done. Like you were saying the other day, oh, the hoses have to be taken in, the water has to be turned off before big freezes and stuff. Yeah, of course, that’s right; that’s on our list, but it’s sort of consciously looking around, carefully looking around for other things. So first, before we do that, maybe we should sort of take stock a little bit out loud, kind of the highs and lows [laughter] of the season that’s winding down. Got any highs or lows?

Ken: Yeah. Well, I’ve got quite a few highs and not that many lows. When we talk about things like this, I always start with flood [laughter] because there’s been so many floods here that we built up the wall; we talked about that last year. So this is the second year of the full year of the built-up wall. And there was one big storm and some water came through the wall because it’s not a perfect wall, but it’s just made puddles and no debris, no pieces of wood. And I probably told you this, we always get old shoes [laughter], beer cans and shoes.

Margaret: Right. So for people who don’t know, you’re kind of on an island, in a river or stream. And so, one area would overwhelm, overflow its banks, and would bring all this. Not just water, but the stuff, including shoes into your garden and make a big mess. Well, that’s good that the wall repair from last year made an improvement for you. That’s great. That’s great. So what else, plus or minus?

Ken: Plus or minus, trees didn’t get eaten. I haven’t had, I shouldn’t say this while I knock on wood. We don’t have lanternflies and we don’t have gypsy moths. These are cons. I mean, pros, I mean cons that are pros.

Margaret: Right. So you feel fortunate for those factors this season?

Ken: Absolutely. And there’s some things I know I have to do to avoid some of these problems. And there’s all sorts of things like cleaning up. We can talk about some of the things that one should do to prepare for the good things that are still going to come.

Margaret: Yeah. Well, first I need to complain, though. Is the Complaint Department open? [Laughter.]

Ken: Of course. “Hello? Complaint Department, may I help you?”

Margaret: Perfect. O.K., great. You have about 10 hours? Well, so it was very… In the Northeast and in many areas, obviously the weather was aberrant as it is these days in general. But we had very, very wet, unusually wet weather, and rain came in multiple inches at a time many weeks. And so that promoted a lot of fungal things and issues.

And so I lost for the first time in 35 or 40 years, I lost all my garlic, for example, to a white mold, which I didn’t send it out to a pathology lab, and I don’t know which one it was. But whether it was infected seed garlic that came to me that way, or who knows what. So obviously I have to move the garlic to a place far away from where I had been growing it, if I’m going to try it again and get new stock, my new bulbs, which I did. But-

Ken: Did this show up on the leaves? Is that how you knew it was happening?

Margaret: No, at harvest time, the actual bulbs.

Ken: The bulbs?

Margaret: Yeah. So I mean, they started to look bad mid- to late season. But anyway, so there’s the whole “what’s going on with the weather?” and does that correlate to diseases we’re seeing in plants? I mean, a lot of people had their lilacs defoliate by August or something and then bloom.

Ken: Yes. And then ours bloomed.

Margaret: And then bloom in October. I mean nutsy stuff. So there was a lot of that. I was besieged by spongy moths. You were saying you were lucky not to have them. I had the spongy moths this year, my first big experience with them. But one of the things I’m doing is I am trying to focus, to follow your advice. What do you always tell me if I’m overwhelmed, what to do?

Ken: Do one thing. That really happens in the spring especially, how you walk out the door and you see the whole garden and there’s a thousand things that have to be done and you want to just run back inside. But don’t do that. Just pick—even if you repot one plant—just pick one thing and then one thing leads to another. It’s just a way to help with the spring and fall overwhelm.

Margaret: Yeah, so for me, I decided that in the face of these torrential, persistent rain events and the spongy moth damage—and we had a late freeze in late May that damaged a lot of things and on and on and on. I have the invasive jumping worms and all kinds of stuff. I was feeling kind of beat up. But I just decided with the helper that comes once a week for part of a day, I said, “You know what? We’re not going to ‘fix everything’ right now, right?” Because it’s been a tough season; stuff’s looking beat up. “But you know what let’s do? Let’s focus on something that would feel really good to accomplish.”

And we identified one sort of invasive thing that was making itself present in the upper meadow in a lot of these sort of outer areas, which is brambles, Rubus, some kind of blackberry or raspberry wild thing. And we decided that that was what we would tackle. And it feels so good. It’s not gussying up the garden, it’s not fine-tuning, it’s not horticulture exactly, right?

But it feels really good, the idea that I’m going to start next spring without that, with those areas that were like: ooh, you had to cover your eyes. You didn’t want to look over there because you knew the Rubus was taking over. So just one thing, and over and over and over. So that’s been kind of what I’ve been trying to do to offset my disappointment in some of the losses in this very strange year.

Ken: I think about maybe seven or eight years ago when I was going to give up gardening because of Japanese stiltgrass in August, I went, that’s what I chose. I’m going to just pull because it comes right out and mow, if it’s in the lawn. I’m going to pull the Japanese stiltgrass and it knocked it back I’d say 80 percent. [Tackling Japanese stiltgrass.]

Margaret: Right. So sometimes just that focusing feels really good. Now I’m interested because this was a very wet, and as I said, like fungusy-

Ken: Except for one month of no rain in May.

Margaret: In the beginning, right.

Ken: Has that ever happened before?

Margaret: Yeah, I think it has. But you had good tomatoes; usually those will just go down the tubes. Didn’t you have good tomatoes?

Ken: You were saying pro and I couldn’t think of a thing.

Margaret: Well, I remember you telling me on the phone the other day that you had good tomatoes.

Ken: I know. Never have been able to grow tomatoes well, or even hardly at all. And I did grow some on the driveway, on the sunniest spot in pots, but I’d get two or three fruits. Well, this year I paid attention to you, too, and I got a couple of varieties that you said were so great, especially ‘Juliet’ [above]. And I got two of those corrugated metal raised beds and put one in the sunniest place, which is practically on the mailbox, right next to the mailbox.

I probably have all this awful stuff from cars going by because it’s right on the road. But I filled it and I planted ‘Juliet.’ And I started them too early, which turned out to be O.K., and gave a lot away because I had too many plants, but I planted them. And just this week I still got a few tomatoes. So I’ve been, I don’t know, hundreds of ‘Juliet’ tomatoes. And you’re right, they’re delicious.

Margaret: It’s a great one. Yeah, Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog sells it.

I also managed to do something that neither one of us ever does, which is to give up on certain plants, especially houseplants this fall. Instead of bringing them all in, including a few that were kind of way past prime, I tossed a few, I finally composted a couple of them. I know. And I thought, oh, I could just take that tiny little piece and I could put it in another pot. But you know what? I could start over, too. And I got some new houseplants, a couple of new houseplants, and it just feels good sometimes to lighten the load. You can really spend a lot of time being bogged down by some of the hard things.

Ken: You probably forget, too. You know, you think you’re going to miss this thing and then you get distracted by something else.

Margaret: Yeah. I have some thoughts about seeds and I bet you do, too, because you’re always like Mr. Propagation over there. Any sort of seeds stuff at this time of year for you?

Ken: Well, I always look because as you said, I want more, for some reason. I think I just like the process. So I’ll go get the nicotiana [above] and some other things that are normally making seed that are easy to get this time of year. Some things that self-sow, like hellebores, I might plan to move them. Japanese painted fern from spores self “spored” [laughter] and I’ll move some of those.

Margaret: Self-spored [laughter].

Ken: Yeah, I have to make notes about that. But something that I really haven’t looked at very much, you know how those awful lilies make a little tiny beads along the stems? They’re bulbils, and I don’t want those because that’s kind of a weedy plant, but I know-

Margaret: Which lilies are we talking about that are awful? I’m sorry.

Ken: It’s Lilium bulbiferum.

Margaret: Bulbiferum? Oh, I don’t think I have that, O.K. All right.

Ken: Good. And if you see something that has a name like bulbiferus or bulbiferum, it’s because it makes some other kind of vegetative reproductive organism along the stems and they’re called bulbils. And I noticed this year, well, you’ve seen it on the Allium. You know how sometimes the Allium, it looks like a flower, but at the top it’s got all these little onions in a cluster?

Margaret: Right, so these bulbils, right? O.K.

Ken: Right. And those will… They’re genetically clones. They’re identical to the parent plant. So you could actually get those and grow them on. But the thing that really turned me on, I have a couple of hardy begonias, and I think that Issima has been playing around with them because we have one that has white flower. I love the ones with white flower. White flowers, silver splashes on the leaves. And there’s a pink one with silver splashes on the leaves, too. But I noticed in the axles where the leaf meets the stem, there’s these little, they’re really tiny, almost like seeds, but they’re actually little plants, or they could be.

Margaret: So you said Issima, and so you mean the sort of rare-plant nursery in Rhode Island, Issima?

Ken: Ed Bowen’s.

Margaret: Yeah. So you got these hardy begonias; it’s a perennial begonia even for you in zone, what are you 6?

Ken: 6A.

Margaret: Yeah, begonia, what’s the species? I don’t know which one it is. We’ll have to look it up. [Update: It’s Begonia grandis, above.] So you have this perennial showing a couple of varieties, and it’s making these little bulbils also, huh?

Ken: Yeah. So now I will grow them on, probably they would fall when the plant falls to the ground. They probably, some will root in, but I’m going to help them along.

Margaret: Now I have noticed I have some voodoo lilies. I have both Sauromatum and Amorphophallus. And a couple of the Amorphophallus, and those are the ones that sometimes the botanical gardens have the really, really big one, the Titan Arum, as they call it, where it’s going to flower and it’s going to be really stinky like dead rotten meat scent or something, they’ll have a special event because it’s so dramatic-looking and smelly. But anyway, these are smaller than that. But I have one that’s Amorphophallus bulbifer, the species bulbifer.

Ken: Bulbifer?

Margaret: Right. So like what you just said, and don’t you know I’ve had a number of years, and so now some of my plants, they go dormant in the winter and I store them in the cellar, the bulbs, have bulbils on top of the leaves. So there’s bulbils in various little sort of joints in these very complex-looking leaves. And it’s hilarious. It looks like some little round pebbles got glued onto the leaves or something [laughter]. It’s really funny. So that you’re making me think that I should go grab those.

Ken: And go into business, finally make some money, right?

Margaret: Yeah, that’s a good idea. So are you also, you were saying other certain seed. So you’re collecting some of your favorite nicotianas? Is that what you do, the ones that you liked what they looked like, or…?

Ken: Right. Let’s say I want fragrance, of course. And so I’ll make note in my head of the ones that are extra-fragrant in the evening or earlier, because some of them are fragrant around four o’clock. So I’ll say, “Oh, I’d like that.” And the better colors, maybe a dark purple one. Well, not maybe; I’ve done that, a dark purple one. And the seed pods on nicotiana, while the plant’s flowering, those little pods are ripening. So it’s so easy. So now I have like 10,000 of those.

Margaret: Yeah, I’ve had nicotiana in a few areas, sort of self-sown populations for the later part of the season for many, many, many years. And so the species that I started with, very distinctive-looking particular ones like mutabilis, Nicotiana mutabilis, which is very tall and so forth. I don’t know what happens, if they just kind of don’t come true. Well, I know they don’t come true; there is variation within each population.

But after this many years, probably 20 years, I was feeling like I didn’t have as much oomph as I wanted, in terms of like you’re saying, some of the darker-flowered ones or some of the particularly statuesque ones. So I actually just ordered some seed, and I also did this with Verbena bonariensis, the tall verbena that the butterflies love so much and so forth, because I had a great population of it in one area, a self-sown population, which was very dramatic, but it’s kind of, as self-sowns do, it decided where it wanted to sow, over there and over there and over there, but not in the concentrated way that I like [laughter]. So to get sort of the other colors of the nicotiana back in my populations, and to heavy up on the Verbena bonariensis, I actually ordered some packets of seeds.

And every fall I forget to do this because these are like these self-sown things. Every fall I forget to do this. And so I either don’t spread it around now, or I don’t have it early enough to do that in very late winter, which I think is an ideal time for sowing it as well. I’ll just forget, I get caught up with ordering tomatoes and stuff like that.

Ken: But now you’ll remember, because it’s done.

Margaret: Well, I have it. There it is. I’ve got it right in front of me. And so I’m going to kind of, like I said, heavy up and redirect those clusters of verbena and nicotiana where I want them a little more.

Ken: Yeah, I was going to say some of these things that you know self-sow, it might be an idea to clear a little space and make it kind of prepared. Especially since you’re thinking about you want them and you’re going to move some, that just make it 1 foot by 1 foot or 2 foot by 2 foot cleared space with ground ready to accept the seeds that fall.

Margaret: Right, like a landing pad, so to speak. Yeah, because otherwise, if there’s thick leaf litter or whatever from the fall and winter—I mean, you’re right, there’s not that open ground that is welcoming to a good self-sowing, or for me sowing either. Yeah. So I think that’s true: to make some room under some of our favorite biennials and self-sowing annuals and so forth.

Have you had any pests that you’re going to… The pest thing is enough to drive a person crazy sometimes.

Ken: Well, this year it’s voles again.

Margaret: Oh, the year of the vole.

Ken: And first I started seeing the trails across the paths, where you can see the trail. And well, we’ve been trapping some. We hate talking about it.

Margaret: Right, so you see the surface tunnels, yeah. And those are trapped, like mice are trapped. Yeah, no, and sometimes you don’t know you have voles, you don’t see the surface tunnels cut into the lawn or whatever, but you go and you try to harvest your sweet potatoes and they’ve all been chewed up underground. You know what I mean?

Ken: Or you’re wondering what happened to the Siberian iris. Because they’re just gone.

Margaret: At half-mast, right, right, right. Going underground.

Ken: And the voles love it because the foliage falls over and it’s a place for them to hide and then they eat the rhizomes. But years ago—and maybe I should do this again—when I first had voles, this will sound so weird, I spread used cat litter, the clay kind, over the Siberian iris because that was the thing they loved. And it repelled them.

Margaret: I bet it did. It would repel me, too [laughter].

Ken: Well, the clay, it doesn’t matter. It goes away.

Margaret: But so pest stuff, I mean, fall is an important time, and a lot of times we forget to do this because again, we don’t have a crop in the ground that we’re hoping to get a harvest from, because that’s done already. So we kind of forget to do the pest control.

And it’s a really critical time when we’re pulling apart our vegetable gardens. I mean with, again, tomatoes, which are so prone to various diseases, especially fungal ones. And with brassicas with the cabbage and cauliflower and broccoli and kale and so forth, relatives and the squashes, the cucurbits that get squash bugs and so forth. A lot of those pests of those groups of plants or those diseases of the tomatoes, the fungal things, they like nothing better than to overwinter where you’ve left behind the root system and the faded foliage of their favorite yummy crop, right [laughter]? So good hygiene, good fall hygiene in the vegetable garden.

Ken: And you’re making me think of one of our latest pests, the jumping worms. I think the adults don’t make it through the winter in our cold gardens.

Margaret: Correct. They’re annuals, correct.

Ken: But the-

Margaret: …Cocoons do.

Ken: Yeah. Little cocoons.

Margaret: Full of eggs.

Ken: Are you trying something? Full of eggs. Are you trying something for that?

Margaret: It’s a pretty losing battle so far. I mean, the scientists don’t know what to tell us to do really to counteract it. But what I’m doing, just in self-defense a little bit, where the worms are the worst in certain areas where they started out in my garden, I am each fall topping up, I’m adding bagged topsoil or bulk topsoil. Just in certain areas where certain plants look like the soil’s been degraded too much, and the plants aren’t going to be happy, I’m just kind of topdressing and so forth with soil.

Now that’s essentially feeding the worms, because the next year’s generation is going to process that soil. But it’s either that, or the plants are going to fall out of the ground in certain spots. So that’s what I’m doing.

I am going to, there’s a couple of products that, there’s a tea seed meal natural fertilizer that is back on the market again. And then there’s another product that may help to bring the worms to the surface during their active season, so that you can get rid of them—you can destroy them, drown them, whatever—or that may actually kill them. [More on those products and tactics.]

Again, it’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it may help you reduce the population so that the number of cocoons that are left behind at the end of the year are not as many. But if you have a couple acres, forget it; it’s not going to be the answer. But I may do a couple of small experiments next spring and summer during active season.

But before we run out of time, I just want to ask you: Are you going to find time to move any woody plants or anything? Because I know I have a couple of things crammed in I need to deal with.

Ken: I’ve been doing it, because you know it’s shady here. And that’s one way you can tell you’re in trouble with a woody plant is it doesn’t look good and things are happening. So we moved a Cornus kousa ‘Elizabeth Lustgarten’ weeping kousa dogwood. I thought that will never make it. It made it. Moved it to more sun. One of those twig dogwoods, we moved that to more sun, and we’re going to move some Salix that have colorful stems in the winter there, too.

Margaret: Oh, some willows, huh? Twig willows.

Ken: Yeah. In the shade they don’t look like anything, and they don’t push that new growth. So I’ve already moved some of those, but when you move… We don’t have sun, but we’re shoehorning them in and some things that, well, there’s some things like hellebores that can go to the shade, and some ferns too, so.

Margaret: But with woody plants, deciduous woody things, even into the late fall is still time to do that. And next spring it’s going to be too busy, right, so…

Ken: Right. So that’s happening.

Margaret: All right. Well keep making the list. I’ll call you later [laughter]. We’ll talk about, we’ll commiserate more, but yeah, so cleanup plus with some conscious effort, some looking around more closely. So thanks for making time. I’ll talk to you soon, O.K.?

prefer the podcast version of the show?

MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 14th year in March 2023. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Nov. 6, 2023 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

We are reducing our stock and doing a big plant sale tomorrow!

We have lots of cool plants to sell, including:

Eleagnus pungens (edible fruit/nitrogen-fixer)
Potato Mint
Mexican Tree Spinach
Lemongrass
Cat Whiskers
Mahonia (edible fruit)
Goji berry
Mulberries (various)
Vetiver grass (great multi-use grass)

True yams
Cassava cuttings (various types)
Sugarcane
Tithonia diversifolia

…and a ton more

Come see at the Atmore Flea Market from 8AM to 1PM on Saturday November 4th.

Atmore Flea Market/Poppy’s Antiques
1815 AL-21,
Atmore, AL
36502

Remember, we also take pots of one-gallon size and larger as trade-ins for $0.50 store credit each!

This is your chance to get some of the rare stuff we usually don’t have in stock.

And, as always, I will happily answer gardening questions, no purchase required.

Have a great weekend – hope to see you there.

-DTG

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While searching through our archive of episodes we discovered something: There are a few specific plants we just can’t stop talking about. As the years have progressed here at Let’s Argue About Plants, we find ourselves experimenting with more and more varieties, so we have something new to report back to you on. But frankly, there are a core of plants that we could talk about every episode because they are just that good. We try to mix it up, but these stars have made it into more than a couple recordings—and rightly so. With that, we decided not to fight nature and give these stars their spotlight. In today’s compilation episode you’ll hear about Carol and Danielle’s top four plants…again…but for good reason. They are selections that no garden should be without, in our humble opinions.

Danielle’s Plants

Perry’s Gold’ Norway spruce (Picea abies ‘Perry’s Gold’, Zones 3–9)

‘Crested Surf’ painted fern (Athyrium niponicum ‘Crested Surf’, Zones 3-8)

‘Snow Fairy’ blue mist shrub (Caryopteris divaricata ‘Snow Fairy’, Zones 6-9)

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, Zones 4-9)

Carol’s Plants

Maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum, Zones 3-8)

New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus, Zones 4–8)

Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa, Zones 3-9)

Pink Icing® blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum ‘ZF06-079’, Zones 5–10)

Hi GPODers. This is Joseph, your GPOD editor. I recently took a trip to Stillwater, Oklahoma, and thought I’d share some of the beautiful garden scenes I got to enjoy while there.

My first stop in town was the botanic garden at Oklahoma State University. It was full of a lot of gorgeous things, but I maybe loved this planting the best. In a hot, sunny spot, it was planted up with cacti and other drought-adapted plants.

Rising up out the bed are these incredible planters made from metal pipe and old plow discs, each one home to a beautiful cactus specimen.

These cacti are tender and have to spend the winter in the greenhouse. They are a perfect choice for these planters, as they are fine with a small amount of soil that will dry out easily.

There are many different areas within the botanic garden. This is a scene from the Japanese garden, which was cool and restful. A resident cat was clearly a big fan of it as well.

There are also hardy cacti growing in ground. This is a species of hedgehog cactus (genus Echinocereus) I think, thriving in a dry rock garden area.

My next stop was the great nursery Bustani Plant Farm, which grows all sorts of beautiful and unusual plants and, even better, has a great display garden so that you can see the plants growing. It is such a great way to introduce local gardener to new plants. This section includes many water-wise selections, including this gorgeous Artemisia ‘Silver Bullet’.

The plant in the foreground of this image from the rock garden at Bustani is Zinnia angustifolia, an annual species that is very drought tolerant and looks beautiful all summer long.

The rock garden is loaded down with flowers. The yellow flower is a native annual helenium (Helenium amarum) that blooms all summer and, when it is happy (as it is here), self-sows.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

Have a mobile phone? Tag your photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with #FineGardening!

Do you receive the GPOD by email yet? Sign up here.

WHY WAIT till year-end holiday shopping to offer a deal on books? In support of my supportive local bookstore, Oblong Books and Music in Millerton and Rhinebeck, N.Y., I fund a coupon every year for $10 off signed copies of my book “A Way to Garden,” which I totally redid in 2019 for an all-new 21st anniversary edition. Limited number; get them while they last! Use the coupon code: HOLIDAY23 at this link.

First Fall Frost of 2023: November 2nd

The first frost came through last night, somewhere on the edge of All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

The compost pile pumpkin is signing off after a ridiculously productive summer and fall:

It was STILL making new pumpkins!

I think it would have continued for many more months if we’d been in a tropical climate.

And speaking of tropicals, the yam vines were hit as well:

They’ll live until a harder frost, and I hope they’ll put more growth into their roots before the very end, though I don’t know how much they really do when it’s cool and dry. I wish we could see the root development over time.

The brassicas are covered in frost, but should bounce back.

Though this will be the end of the Everglades Tomatoes.

Those tomatoes kept running right through the brutal heat and drought of summer and have been highly productive until last night – and that’s it. It’s really hard to beat Everglades Tomatoes. As a bonus, my daughter sells the seeds from our garden, and everyone loves them! They are basically a beloved weed in our Grocery Rows, and they’ll reseed in the spring.

It’s been a good year. We harvested the sugarcane from our yard over the last few days and probably got 150-200lbs. It wasn’t a great yield due to the drought, but the cane is certainly sweet.

The yield board is almost at 2,000lbs and I haven’t counted the sugarcane yet, or harvested yams. Thank you for your blessings, Lord!

Today we hope to finish a video on our greenhouse. Stay tuned.

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Inspired by Cherry Ong’s post yesterday, this is Joseph, your GPOD editor, sharing some moments from the past summer in my northern Indiana garden. I hope you’ll send in some shots from your gardens this summer too! It’s always fun to see what went well for everyone.

I planted this climbing rose ‘Dortmund’ next to the fence last summer, and this year it grew enough that I could start training it along. That process is a bit tedious, as ‘Dortmund’ is quite thorny, but I really love the effect. I can’t wait for next year when it will cover even more of the fence with flowers. (Please ignore the chaos in the background. This garden had been completely abandoned before we moved in, so it is taking lots of work to get everything looking good again.)

I got this little Dianthus at a local nursery. It was missing a tag, so I don’t know what it is, but I like it so much that I’ve been taking cuttings and spreading it around the garden.

I grew this beautiful and fragrant rose from seed. It doesn’t have a name, both the bumblebees and I like it a lot.

I put a little herb garden in a planter box I made, and it turned into a great habitat. This caterpillar grew up to be a swallowtail butterfly, fueled by the parsley that I had originally planned to eat but was happy to sacrifice to the caterpillars.

Oregano has the best flavor if harvested before it flowers—or so I’ve been told. How could I not let it bloom when the bees love it SO MUCH! It was hard to get pictures of them all, but I counted at least five different kinds of bees on the flowers in just one evening.

Here’s another rose seedling that doesn’t have a name. It’s not fragrant, but it’s very pretty. The only downside is that the petals don’t drop off cleanly, so if you don’t deadhead, they hang on looking brown and ugly.

I love hollyhocks (Alcea hybrids, Zones 3–8)! They looked great during the start of the summer.

I love growing things from seed and am particularly proud of this pot of black lace cactus (Echinocereus reichenbachii, Zones 5–9). They start out small but quickly bulk up. This species is native to many quite cold parts of western North America and in theory should be hardy outside for me here, but I fear that our wet autumns and springs will be too much and make them rot. I’m trying to decide if I want to risk planting them out in the garden or just keep them in the container and move them into the garage to stay dry for the cold part of the year.

Chrysanthemum ‘Yellow Quill’ has been a star as summer has changed into fall. This is my first year with it and I’m quite in love. And it’s hardy to Zone 3!

The open form of the ‘Yellow Quill’ flowers means they have pollen to offer the bees.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

Have a mobile phone? Tag your photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with #FineGardening!

Do you receive the GPOD by email yet? Sign up here.

This is the first year we get to celebrate the holiday of All Saints Day, and we are wonderfully grateful for the opportunity. We’re heading to Latin Mass this evening to rejoice in the lives and honor those who went before us. We are blessed.

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