157 Composting Tips. The Cyclamen

A listener in St. Louis wrote in to ask, “Is it OK to put the stems and leaves of what’s left of the summer vegetable garden in a compost pile?” Retired college horticulture professor Debbie Flower answers: it depends! We take a deep dive into composting basics today.

The UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden’s Superintendent Emeritus, Warren Roberts, tells us about the Plant of the Week. For some, it’s an outdoor, winter blooming, bedding plant. For others, it’s a houseplant. For all, it puts a colorful show this time of year: the cyclamen, which just might be the best, last minute holiday garden gift to give or receive.

Podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s episode 157 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. 

And we will do it all in just 30 minutes. Let’s go! 

November through January, the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast slows its production schedule. Look for new episodes each Friday. In February, we will return to twice a week podcasts, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Pictured:
The Three-Bin Composter

Links:
Subscribe to the free,  Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Newsletter
Smart Pots
Dave Wilson Nursery
The Rapid Composting Method
Make Your Own 3-Bin Composter
Compost Thermometers
Composting Tumblers
Compost Bins Indoor and Outdoor
Cyclamen Plants and Seeds

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Chapters

• 1:32 Composting Garden Scraps
• 13:56 Smart Pots!
• 15:03 Composting, cont.
• 19:46 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 20:37 Subscribe to Garden Basics Newsletter
• 21:34 Cyclamen - The Plant of the Week

Transcript

GB 157 Composting Tips. The Plant of the Week - Cyclamen

31:48

SPEAKERS

Debbie Flower, Warren Roberts, Farmer Fred

Farmer Fred  00:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot. 

Farmer Fred  00:29

A listener in St. Louis wrote in to ask, “Is it OK to put the stems and leaves of what’s left of the summer vegetable garden in a compost pile?” Retired college horticulture professor Debbie Flower answers: it depends! We take a deep dive into composting basics today.  The UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden’s Superintendent Emeritus, Warren Roberts, tells us about the Plant of the Week. For some, it’s an outdoor, winter blooming, bedding plant. For others, it’s a houseplant. For all, it puts a colorful show this time of year: the cyclamen, which just might be the best, last minute holiday garden gift to give or receive.  Podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s episode 157 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery.   And we will do it all in 30 minutes. Let’s go!

Farmer Fred  01:36

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. Debbie Flower is with us, our favorite retired college horticultural professor. And, we got an email that Raoul of St. Louis sent us. Our email address: Fred@farmerfred.com to get your questions in. And Raoul, who lives in St. Louis, says: "We are in USDA zone six. I listened to your show regularly." Well, thank you Raoul. He goes on to say, "My question is a follow-up to the composting issue you had previously discussed. It was mentioned to leave the roots in the ground. But I was wondering if it's okay to chop up the vegetable matter above ground and leave it right there on the top of the garden? Or is it better to compost it? We have tomatoes, basil, eggplant, some pepper plants, and okra." I believe the episode that Raoul was referring to is when we were talking about how you can improve the soil by leaving the roots of your existing summer vegetable garden in there to kind of create air pockets and feed the soil.

Debbie Flower  02:33

However, when it comes to cover crops and you want to increase the nitrogen in the soil, you have to basically kill that plant off before it has developed flowers, right or seed? 

Debbie Flower  02:33

Yes, and I think we were particularly referring to the legumes, like beans, which are legumes or crops that fix nitrogen. Fixing nitrogen just means it reacts. The nitrogen molecule with hydrogen or oxygen with something else that makes it heavier and keeps it down in the ground. Most of the air around us is nitrogen, that's the largest source of nitrogen, but plants don't get a lot of it from there, they get most of it through the soil. And so, if you have a leguminous crop of peas or beans, a bacteria has a symbiotic relationship with the roots of those plants, if need be. If the plant needs nitrogen, and the bacteria gets the sugars out of the plant sap to feed itself in exchange, basically, the nitrogen reacts with either oxygen or hydrogen to make a molecule that will stay in the soil and these bacteria and that fixed nitrogen become nodules or round circles attached to the roots. And you want those in your soil. You don't want to get rid of those if you've got them.

Debbie Flower  03:51

Yes. 

Farmer Fred  03:51

So in that case, then what a lot of cover crop experts recommend is, chop it all up, chop it as fine as you can. And then you can leave it on the surface. But then, cover that with mulch. Because, as you've told us very often, nitrogen is a gas that can easily escape.

Debbie Flower  04:08

Yes, it does escape. So when you're doing that with your cover crop you don't have any seeds, you probably have no pests, the plant hasn't grown for a very long time. It's just leafy material that you're putting on there which has nitrogen in it. It's green. Any plant part that's green has nitrogen in it. And the roots have the nodules and the nitrogen on them. If you've grown the plant and harvested the beans and the peas, then likely there is not much, if any, nitrogen in the root crop. So what we're leaving mostly is just organic matter.

Farmer Fred  04:41

However, by the time that plant has produced flowers and fruit and whatever, you've probably attracted a few insects along the way, or diseases, right?

Debbie Flower  04:50

Insects or diseases. Although they don't get woody, beans are not a woody plant, tomatoes are not a woody plant, they don't technically form wood. They do form some cells that are more difficult to break down. And so they can take longer to become organic matter. The short answer to this question is: I would put them in the compost pile and use another mulch or finished compost. A hot compost pile will kill any diseases or insects or eggs or undesirable things that are on the plants. And so when we get the finished compost out, we have lots of great organic matter.

Farmer Fred  05:27

So basically, you don't want to leave any problem children there on the surface of the soil, right? Because you don't know if there's insect eggs on there, for instance, or disease spores. 

Debbie Flower  05:37

Yes. 

Farmer Fred  05:37

And so you do want to compost it. But you could mulch your garden after you've cut those tops off and transferred those cut tops to your compost pile. Cover your garden with some shredded leaves. That's what I do. I'm very popular in the neighborhood, 

Farmer Fred  05:52

because I'm always asking the neighbors, "Hey, can I have your leaves, your oak leaves?

Debbie Flower  05:57

When I lived in Nevada, we would come over here to visit relatives, and I would drive around, Land Park was a favorite, because people would put their leaves at the curb and often in in plastic bags. I'm in a minivan, so I'd pull it over. My husband was mortified. But we would pull over and I jump out and grab those bags at least and throw them in the back of my van and take them to Nevada and put them on my garden there.

Farmer Fred  06:19

So basically, the answer is take those trimmings from the tops of your summer vegetable garden that you've been eating for a few months, or your cool season vegetable garden, and move it off to a hot compost pile and then mulch the garden with something else, like chopped up fallen leaves or, or even a fine compost. 

Debbie Flower  06:37

Mm hmm. Yes, tha would be fine. 

Farmer Fred  06:39

Well, that brings us to a scenic bypass that I wanted to get into with you. They cut down three eucalyptus trees in a neighbor's yard.  And of course, I'm out there asking the neighbor, what are you gonna do with all those wood chips? You don't want to ship all that wood chips away to the landfill. Why doesn't the arborist just dump some of it in my driveway?  And he says, "okay". And it turns out he had a really big chipper shredder and truck. And the pile is now in my driveway, that I still have to finish moving. It's like 10 yards. 

Debbie Flower  07:08

Wow. And that's a lot of stuff. 

Farmer Fred  07:09

It is a lot of stuff. So I'm wondering. How hot does it get in a compost pile? So I took a picture, and I'll have this picture posted in the Garden Basics newsletter, of that pile of chipped eucalyptus mulch,  and it's really pretty, and it smells great too. I stuck my compost thermometer, which is a thermometer gauge with a 30 inch probe on it. You stick that in the compost pile, and it was a 50 degree day.  The temperature reading in that mulch pile might have gone up if I left it in there longer. I only left it in there about 20 minutes, but the temperature got up to 100 degrees.

Debbie Flower  07:40

And how long had that pile been there? 

Farmer Fred  07:42

Two days. 

Debbie Flower  07:42

Two days. Okay. Yeah. So it was starting to compost. You were starting a hot compost pile.

Farmer Fred  07:48

Why does that happen? Why is there a 50 degree difference between the air temperature and what's going on in the middle of a compost pile? Are there kids in there playing with matches?

Debbie Flower  07:57

Kind of. There's life in there. There are micro organisms. So micro means things we have to see with a microscope, we have to see under magnification: micro organisms, algae, fungi, bacteria that are living off of the chipped wood, and they are biological organisms, and they create heat just like a human body does. As they're active, they give off heat and that helps them live and it helps other things move in and it helps their presence. And their heat helps to kill the bad things in a compost pile.

Farmer Fred  08:28

Okay, so it isn't a chemical. It isn't like nitrogen breaking down or something.

Debbie Flower  08:32

Well, it is in the sense that the microorganisms are chewing on the wood, which, although it's very high in carbon, it does contain nitrogen. They need both carbon and nitrogen to survive. And so it is nitrogen breaking down and it's carbon breaking down, but it's through the process of these live organisms.

Farmer Fred  08:33

And you make a very good point to about the carbon-nitrogen ratio, and how important that is to a hot compost pile. If you see instructions for building a compost pile, they'll always tell you to alternate a layer of brown with a layer of green. The brown being carbon, green being any sort of green matter, that's your nitrogen. So yes, in this particular pile,  the section I stuck the compost thermometer in was mostly the chips from the trunk of the tree. If I had stuck it in the other side of the pile, where it was mostly the leaves, it probably would have been hotter.

Debbie Flower  09:31

Yes. If you get arborist chips from a tree that has had leaves on it at the time it was removed, or tree portions that had leaves on it at the time that was removed. You've typically got a really good carbon to nitrogen ratio. It's supposed to be something like 30 carbon to one nitrogen to have a hot compost pile.

Farmer Fred  09:50

And a hot compost pile could be 140 degrees.

Debbie Flower  09:51

140 degrees. 140 is ideal. That kills everything. My dad used to mow the lawn, and collect the clippings. This is way back when, folk,s before we knew about mulching mowers. And he put them in the garbage can. And he had a compost thermometer.  He stuck it in the garbage can, and sit there and watch. It is  almost tota nitrogen. It's not total nitrogen. But it's a very high nitrogen ratio compared to the carbon and it is not great for composting but it quickly becomes hot and then it becomes slime.

Farmer Fred  10:27

Which reminds me, that probably in the show notes and in the Garden Basics newsletter that will accompany this episode, I'll have a link to a formula for creating a hot compost pile in as little as three weeks. Dr. Bob Raabe of UC came up with this formula. By gauging the size of the pile and turning it frequently, you can have ready to use compost in as little as three weeks. 

Debbie Flower  10:52

Well, I beat him. I had a crew, I had students. We did it in two weeks.  I worked for the Sacramento city school district at a vocational high school for adults. And we maintained the landscape as part of the horticulture training. And we had a little chipper. People had to work long and hard to get the stuff broken down. But we didn't pay attention to the ratio of carbon and nitrogen. We just took whatever we had and chipped it and threw it in the pile. We had a concrete pad up against a brick building. So we threw it in a pile up against this building every day. Every day, five days a week. The students took the pile and moved it from one place to another. The next day, the same thing, they turned it back. The next day turned it back again. We had compost in two weeks. The number one limiting factor in a compost pile is oxygen, to keep those micro organisms alive. People think it's water. Yes, it has to be moist, but moist, not wet. You might think it might need nitrogen. You need nitrogen, but not a lot of it. The number one thing and there was a organization in Tucson, Arizona that was studying composting, and they came up with the same answer. That's the number one.  Tucson Arizona is a very hot, very dry place. And they watered the compost pile and they added the right or the wrong carbon to nitrogen ratio. But the number one limiting factor in the compost pile was oxygen.

Farmer Fred  12:17

And you see, sometimes, when you're looking at instructions for creating a compost pile, you might see a suggestion to add nitrogen fertilizer or sprinkle it with water every day, right? But it's more important just to turn it to increase the oxygen.

Debbie Flower  12:31

Yes. And then you if you look around, you'll find devices with PVC pipes that go under the compost pile with holes in them that blow air. But really, that would help. But as the components of the compost pile break down, they get smaller and smaller and smaller. So the spaces between particles get smaller and smaller and smaller as they nestle closer and closer together. And by turning it, you open up those spaces and you allow more oxygen into the pile, which allows the micro organisms to work faster and allows that carbon and nitrogen to break down faster.

Farmer Fred  13:02

Were these in constructed bins? I mention that because Dr. Raabe's formula was a three foot by three foot by three foot bin that was open and you would turn that pile into another bin of the same size.

Debbie Flower  13:17

The ones in  Tucson were in bins like that. Yeah, and that is the minimum size: three foot by three foot by three foot. That's a cubic yard. You need a certain amount of insulation, the stuff on the outside it's not going to break down because it's not insulated well enough. And so you need a certain amount of insulation on the outside to allow the center to warm up. The pile in the skill center where I taught was bigger than that, but we just shoveled it. We used shovels to move it from one one corner to another corner.

Farmer Fred  13:49

Okay, and you had plenty of help. 

Debbie Flower  13:52

Yeah, that was a good part.

Farmer Fred  13:59

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Farmer Fred  15:03

Can we take another scenic bypass? 

Debbie Flower  15:05

Certainly. 

Farmer Fred  15:05

I'm curious about your father. He was a fisherman.

Debbie Flower  15:09

My father was a shellfish farmer. Yes.

Farmer Fred  15:12

And then he was a professor at an Ivy League college.

Debbie Flower  15:16

Oh, well, no. Rutgers is not Ivy League. It's the State University of New Jersey. So my father had a bachelor's degree in engineering and he got a master's degree...

Farmer Fred  15:27

We'll wait for dogs to stop barking. By the way, welcome to Barking Dogs Studio.

Debbie Flower  15:30

He got a master's degree back in 1954, I believe, in environmental sciences, believe it or not. I found his papers after he died, as I was cleaning out the hous . And then he went back to work for the family business that my great grandfather started Frank M. Flower and Sons, shellfish farmers, in 1887 in Oyster Bay, New York. And when I was little, we lived two blocks from the water, and you could see the Oyster House from my bedroom. And I would play on on the Ida Mae, which was a boat my great great grandfather built. Ida Mae was his wife's name. He farmed oysters. And at that time, they just harvested existing oysters. There were so many, there's a book called "Oyster". It's about the oyster beds in New York and the history of the oysters. They talk about how oysters were so prevalent around Manhattan, that they weren't eaten, they were just used for flavoring. But oysters are fantastic water cleaners. There's a huge resurgence in planting oysters around New York City and other places to clean up the water. But anyway, by 1963, the native oysters were not producing babies or their babies were not surviving. The business was going bankrupt. And my father had a wife and four daughters. So he went back to his alma mater, Rutgers, to get career counseling, to find out what is he going to do. And they said, Well, we're starting a cooperative extension position for pollution. And he became the first professor of pollution in, in Cooperative Extension in the country, as far as I know. There were other classroom professors, but he was the first extension professor, he did air pollution, water pollution, solid waste management. We would drive around and he'd hand you his camera and say, "Take a picture of that smokestack." "Take a picture of that dirty water". "Take a picture of that garbage dump." So I became very sensitized to pollution at a very young age. He settled in solid waste management and garbage dumps. He had an EPA grant on revegetating landfills, closed landfills. At that time, they hadn't figured out how to harvest the methane. That was right around when they started to do that. And the methane was displacing the oxygen; roots need oxygen. And so, the plants weren't doing very well. So, that was all part of it. Suck the methane out, which is a gas created by garbage decomposing, and then the plants will do all right.

Farmer Fred  17:50

How does a compost pile not produce methane? 

Debbie Flower  17:52

Methane is produced in an anaerobic situation, when garbage is, ...this is probably more than you want to know about your garbage dump ... garbage is taken to the dump, it's put into cells. And those cells are lined with compacted clay. At least, that was the technique back in the late 70s. Garbage landfills were just becoming a thing back then, it used to be just a garbage dump. So, if you have a compost pile that smells bad, it's methane, and other gases that are produced with methane. And it's because your pile has gone anaerobic, it has no oxygen, you have too much water, you haven't turned it enough to open up those air spaces. That's why a compost pile doesn't smell bad because you do open it up and allow the air in there. Methane is produced by decomposing things  without oxygen.

Farmer Fred  18:43

You turn that around nicely. So basically, if you if your compost pile smells bad, turn it Yes. 

Debbie Flower  18:48

Yeah, absolutely. Get some oxygen and absolutely don't use it. Because the acids that are created in a "funky", I'll call it a "smelly" compost pile, can actually harm plants. So don't use it right then.  Work it, turn it, and leave it. And turn it and leave it. Until the smell goes away.

Farmer Fred  19:09

Would you, when you turn it, make it a smaller pile in order to dissipate it quicker?

Debbie Flower  19:15

It'll be a stinky job for sure. But you need the minimum of the cubic yard. Yeah, it will get smaller and smaller over time. But if you want it to continue breaking down, you need the minimum of the cubic yard.

Farmer Fred  19:27

Well, Raoul, how's that for an answer? But basically, compost those garden scraps because you don't know what sort of vermin is there. 

Debbie Flower  19:38

Right

Farmer Fred  19:38

 All right, Debbie Flower. we learned a lot today.

Farmer Fred  19:46

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Farmer Fred  20:37

Have you taken a look at the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter? There’s one that accompanies each episode of the Garden Basics podcast. It’s a deeper dive into what was discussed on the podcast, along with more great gardening information. In the latest newsletter, we’ll have instructions and pictures on how to set up a rapid composting system in your yard. And we will nudge you with a New Year’s garden resolution: how to make your garden soil more healthy. You can find a link to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter in the podcast show notes; or, at Farmer Fred dot com; or, by going to substack dot com slash garden basics.  Think of it as your garden resource that goes beyond the basics. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And it’s free. Please subscribe and share it with your gardening friends and family. The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And thank you for listening.

Farmer Fred  21:35

Every week we like to talk with Warren Roberts. He's the superintendent emeritus of the University of California Davis Arboretum and Public Garden. He has a plant of the week for us and now that we are in holiday time, Warren, how about a holiday plant for us.

Warren Roberts  21:51

I think that I'll choose as a holiday plant the cyclamen. Cyclamens are easily available, now in bloom or starting to bloom. And they give a rich, decorative note to either indoors or outdoors, in areas where there's a heavy frost and snow, grow them indoors. But in many areas, they're an outdoor plant. The main species of that has been hybridized and bred and crossed with itself and with other species is called Cyclamen persicum. It's usually known as the florists cyclamen.  The cyclamen genus, there are about 17 species I've read, and they go all the way from Europe, through the Mediterranean, all the way into Iran. They tend to like dry, shady conditions or rather dry, shady conditions. So they're an understory plant, as you would say, in horticulture. The flowers are interesting, and they seem to be kind of inside-out the way the flower looks. And in much of the United States, there's a genus called Dodecatheon, which is related. And that's often called Wild cyclamen, also called "shooting star" because the flower looks like it is going so fast. The petals are trailing in the wind behind it. Many of them bloom in the fall and are through blooming now. But Cyclamen persicum and Cyclamen coum, are blooming in the winter time. There is also a hybrid between those two called Cyclamen atkinsii and the cyclamens are being bred and crossed back and forth to create a number of different colors all the way from pure white, to very dark red, and pinks and purples in between. And also combination colors with picotee, kind of dotting on the edges of some of the petals. The wild cyclamen, persicum, is fragrant, but as is often the case with the breeding, as they are looking for form and color, that fragrance has been lost. You rarely find a florist cyclamen, which is fragrant The other thing is, of course, the leaves. The leaves are typically and naturally varigated, which is to say that the color of the leaves go from all the way from almost white to very dark green, and anything in between.

Farmer Fred  24:28

As far as outdoor growing, though, I would think the florists cyclamen, the Cyclamen persicum, is more limited than the other two. You mentioned the coum and the atkinsii, which I think have a bit of a wider range, because from what I understand, the florist cyclamen really does best outdoors if you live next door to Oprah Winfrey in Santa Barbara.

Warren Roberts  24:50

Well, they do fine for me here in the Central Valley of California too. But basically best with some afternoon shade. Not full shade, they like a lot of light. But in full sun, it tends to singe the foliage early, that makes them less useful outdoors. And then, they're dormant. Many of these are dormant in the summer, and some of them like Cyclamen coum, and the flowers start to show up at the same time the leaves do. Cyclamen coum is one of my favorite wild cyclamens. But it is particularly pretty. Now the true Cyclamen persicum, that's the nameof  that species that has been bred for so many different forms, is a native to southeastern Europe, across the Mediterranean and to Tunisia, and then over to the Aegean sea, but not Iran, even though the name "Cyclamen persicum" would indicate that it is from Persia. Well, a lot of things are that way. For example, people thought turkeys were from Turkey. Turns out, they were bred for food in Mexico and they are a native to North America. So there are a lot of things like the common name, or even the scientific names that are not terribly accurate regarding where the plant is from. Not to worry, they are easily found in the in the trade,  in nurseries.

Farmer Fred  26:25

One reason why the cyclamen is a popular holiday plant: if you're about to go to a holiday party, and all of a sudden you remembered, "oh, I didn't get our hosts a gift". You stop at the grocery store, and you buy a cyclamen. Because grocery stores have lots of cyclamens this time of year. What sort of care tips would you offer for people who, all of a sudden, are now owners of cyclamen and have no idea what to do with it?

Farmer Fred  26:52

I would think possibly putting it in a saucer and then putting maybe some gravel, pea gravel, in that saucer and then resting the pot on top of that pea gravel would not only improve the drainage as long as that saucer isn't full of water and the pot is perched above the water level, and it would raise the humidity level, too.

Warren Roberts  26:52

Well, mainly, don't water them until they start to wilt a little bit. Most cyclamens that are given as gifts die of, of drowning and rotting. It's kind of like, too much love can often spoil things. And that's the case for cyclamen. So if you put them in a pot, make sure  the pot has a good drainage hole in the bottom, but don't set them in the saucer itself. Perch them up above, so that every bit of water that goes out of the drainage hole in the pot never has a chance to get back in, by capillary action. That is to say, being absorbed. And that is, of course, a really good rule for all houseplants. If you have houseplants that have crusty white deposits on the edge of the pot, that's an indication that the water is recirculating back and forth. And although water doesn't seem to have salt in it, there are tiny amounts of dissolved salts. And over time, those accumulate and then cause trouble for the plant. So eventually, with that piece of advice, you can save millions of dollars (Thinking about how popular houseplants are). And then, once the cyclamen flowers go, and then the leaves start to go. But at that point, if you have an area  where the ground doesn't freeze, in the winter, it would be to plant it someplace in the garden that you're going to enjoy it, as part of a low border or near the front of the garden. And one of the nice things is that when the plant does go dormant, there's not much mess. So it goes dormant, kind of goes quietly into the night, as it were. That would be the best advice, I think. If it's wrapped, if the pot is wrapped in paper, poke holes in that and then set it in an upside down container inside a larger container. So that when you do water it, the water that comes out of the pot never has a chance to get back in.

Warren Roberts  29:24

Yeah, that could be the easiest way to do it. I try to find an upside down small saucer that fits inside the larger saucer. But the gravel idea is good too. Regarding care and feeding: don't feed it.  It's not going to need extra food, not really significantly. And most of the time when people feed plants, if they're not really careful what they're doing, it will actually poison the plant. It's nice to have a little bit of wine; but too much is not a good idea.

Farmer Fred  29:58

That's the other thing, too. If you're at a holiday party, don't dump your leftover beer, Scotch and wine into the potted plants at your host's house. Nobody likes a drunk cyclamen.

Warren Roberts  30:13

That would be a case of sabotage.

Farmer Fred  30:15

Yes, right. It's the cyclamen. It's the plant of the week, a perfect plant for this holiday time in December, courtesy of the Superintendent Emeritus of the University of California, Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, Warren Roberts. The Arboretum is open every day of the year. It's free. If you're traveling to Northern California, it's about halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco, a little closer to Sacramento, but still, if you're on Interstate 80, you're going to see the Arboretum at UC Davis. So stop by and pay it a visit, any day of the year, if you want. Warren Roberts, thanks for the info on the Plant of the Week, the cyclamen.

Warren Roberts  30:56

for thank you for the opportunity, my pleasure.

Farmer Fred  31:09

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