HTA-0603: Henry's Garden — Shade Garden in Spring

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Summary

Henry narrates the emergence of his shade garden in spring: bleeding hearts, helleborus, azalea buds.

Full Transcript

00:00
Behold the beauty of Henry's shade garden as it emerges in the spring.

00:04
The lovely tiny bleeding hearts, the helleborus with its beautiful purple shades,

00:12
the azalea buds leaping towards the sun.

00:15
Henry, don't forget the struggling rhododendron.

00:18
Oh yeah, thanks, Buzz. Thanks for mentioning that.

00:20
The ugly vine, the bird nests in the sky, and what about the weeds, Henry?

00:25
What about the weeds?

00:27
Well, gee, Buzz, you also didn't mention the fact that I've got this azalea looking awful.

00:32
You didn't mention that my roses look like hell.

00:35
Why didn't you just mention everything wrong?

00:37
I didn't want to sit there and bring you down.

00:39
We also don't have time in this segment.

00:40
No, no.

00:41
Okay.

00:41
But it is the time of the year to sit there and make things right.

00:44
That's right.

00:45
We are doing this segment in spring when you come out to your garden and you say,

00:49
oh, some stuff is still there and some stuff looks terrible.

00:52
And in my case, well, the latter outweighs the former.

00:55
Yeah.

00:56
So here we go.

00:57
We're going to talk about, first of all, cleaning this up, and mostly we're going to talk about mulch.

01:01
But first of all, before you do mulch, you want to weed.

01:05
Buzz, don't you want to weed first?

01:07
I am weeding, Henry. I'm kind of just working the soil up.

01:10
I can pull the weeds out very easy. I'm not going to hurt myself.

01:14
Okay, Buzz, show them what you've got there, and I've got something similar.

01:17
This is called a claw.

01:18
And this is called a yard builder, and you get the feeling that there's a patent suit going on somewhere.

01:22
Yeah, I think so. They look very similar, regardless of what it is.

01:25
This is just one of the many ways we can cultivate in a garden at this time of the year.

01:31
And this works kind of nice.

01:32
Okay, so what you want to do is you want to get all of the weeds out.

01:36
And frankly, you can pick them or you can do it this way.

01:39
Now, what you want to do is put mulch on top.

01:42
And the reason you want to put mulch on top, why do we want to put mulch on top?

01:45
Well, we've just cultivated this area.

01:47
We've taken the old mulch and worked it into the soil.

01:50
So now we have to put some fresh mulch on for the upcoming growing season.

01:53
Because that was no...

01:55
Excuse me, just hold, hold, hold, hold.

01:57
First rule of television, don't just answer by saying yes.

01:59
That was all you said was because we want to put mulch on.

02:02
What's the benefit?

02:03
Well, obviously, we have weed production.

02:06
We reduce the amount of weeds by the thickness of the mulch,

02:09
maybe an inch and a half, two inches thick.

02:11
We have water conservation.

02:13
When we get to the warm part of the year,

02:14
the mulch insulates the soil and keeps the moisture.

02:17
And because this is on a slope,

02:19
holding the moisture is really important.

02:20
Sounds good.

02:21
Kimmy's waving at us.

02:22
She's saying hello.

02:23
Oh, she's saying it's three minutes.

02:24
Okay.

02:24
So we have several different kinds of mulch, and we're going to show you real quickly what they are.

02:28
And it doesn't matter what type of mulch you use.

02:31
Yes, it does.

02:32
Lots of right answers when it comes to this.

02:33
It does.

02:34
This is probably the most common kind of mulch.

02:36
This is the mini mulch bark.

02:39
What type of product?

02:40
And this is the kind of mulch that you'll see.

02:42
And there are different sizes.

02:42
Henry, Henry.

02:43
What?

02:46
Show off.

02:47
There are different sizes of this.

02:49
Yeah.

02:49
And you prefer the smaller ones, the bigger ones?

02:51
I like the smaller ones.

02:52
I like the look of it.

02:53
It's nice and clean and airy and woodsy.

02:55
It'll also keep...

02:56
It's good against the plant material.

02:57
Looks, shows off really nice.

02:59
It'll also keep the moisture in.

03:00
There's also medium size.

03:01
There's also large jumbo bark.

03:03
It really doesn't matter what you use.

03:04
Okay, that's one kind.

03:05
Okay.

03:06
Now, another kind, which is often used, is something called gorilla hair or shredded bark.

03:13
Shredded bark.

03:14
And this stuff, some people love it, some hate it.

03:17
Yeah.

03:17
We put it down when we had little kids because, oh, Kimmy's shaking.

03:23
By the way, don't forget, you'll probably want to lay down a little bit of fertilizer before you do this.

03:28
New Austin Coat, six months with trace elements.

03:30
Really good stuff.

03:32
Only have to fertilize once in six months, but make sure you put it where the water is,

03:35
because it's time-release.

03:36
If you put it in a dry area, it doesn't do any good.

03:39
Okay, so you probably want to put it underneath the mulch.

03:40
Anyway, the trouble with this stuff, it's nice and soft, great for the kids,

03:43
but it gets very dusty when it gets dry, and your kids will walk in full of gorilla-hair dust,

03:49
which nobody wants.

03:50
We have a lot of colored mulches now available.

03:52
This happens to be black.

03:54
What is that made of, though?

03:55
Is that really mull?

03:55
It's a bark.

03:56
I would think sometimes wood product.

03:58
Wow.

03:58
Comes in different flavors.

04:00
I like the black.

04:01
I like the black.

04:02
It looks good.

04:02
Okay.

04:03
And then finally, there are folks who are trying to keep cats out of their yard.

04:07
Okay.

04:08
And this stuff will allegedly keep them out.

04:13
However, if you have dogs, there's some concern that this will harm your dogs.

04:17
It's a big controversy.

04:18
I don't want to, I cannot get into it.

04:20
It's called cocoa mulch.

04:22
- The thing with cocoa mulch is if it feels dry

04:24
and doesn't have a film to it, it's probably A-OK.

04:27
- Because it's got some,

04:29
it should have some chocolate material in it when it's new.

04:31
- And it's the bromide concern with animals.

04:33
- Presumably it's okay.

04:35
- Yeah, and the reason why cats don't like it

04:36
'cause they don't wanna walk on the sharp edges.

04:38
- Yeah, 'cause it's, okay, listen, I think, yeah, I know,

04:40
Kimmy's given us the big yell.

04:41
Okay, so we got lots of work to do, but mulch,

04:44
mulch is the answer, ladies and gentlemen,

04:46
be it black, be it brown, be it yellow, or green.

04:49
- Or buzz.