♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >>> Welcome to "Gardening with Steil."

Today we're bringing the outdoors in.

90% of people worldwide are spending nearly 22 hours a day indoors, according to the Indoor Generation report without enough daylight or fresh air.

Bringing mother nature indoors reduces stress and adds light, life and happiness into your home.

Today, our focus will be on succulents and air plants, how to incorporate them into an indoor planting and how to care and propagate these tiny, trendy plants.

Cindy Haynes caught up with Josh Spieth an industry expert on succulent and air PLANS in Independence, Iowa, where Josh lives and owns a greenhouse.

>> Thank you so much as well for letting us look at all the air plants and succulents that you have in the greenhouse.

You have quite a selection.

>> So much fun.

The mangavies are popular, something new, a hybrid between agave and a manfreda, and they're easy to grow, and they get quite large and have lots of really interesting colors.

>> They're easy to grow because if it's agave, that's a really nice succulent that is incredibly drought tolerant.

>> It is.

They're very resilient.

They can go a long time without water really.

>> And beautiful colors and shapes and sizes.

>> They do, yes.

>> That's great.

What else do we have up here?

>> Another one that works really well for indoors is the santavaria are mother-in-law's tongue is the common name for them.

>> Or snake plant.

>> Or snake plant.

>> I love this, this is easy to grow.

>> Very easy.

Almost as foolproof as a plant can be >> As a house plant, something compact.

>> Dorm room.

>> You can't get better than this.

Do you know why it's called mother-in-law's tongue?

>> I do not.

>> Because it's long and sharp.

Apparently a lot like a mother-in-law's tongue.

>> Got you.

That's a great plant for anybody who is just getting started in succulents.

>> I agree.

I agree.

And beautiful colors here, too.

We have some more stuff up here.

Look at these air plants >> These are air plants.

Not really succulents.

They grow in the rain forest actually.

>> Okay.

>> Up in the trees.

They don't grow in soil.

>> Hence the name air plant.

>> Hence the name air plant, yep.

But that can cause some problems for some people.

They think air plants don't need anything to survive.

>> Oh.

>> But since they come from the rain forest, they do need water, that's the most important thing.

>> How often do you water them?

>> We try to water them about two to three times a week.

We mist them or you can circle them in a bowl of water.

>> So quick dip and you're done.

>> Right, and let them dry off, and you can really do pretty much anything with them, since they don't need soil.

>> I like it.

I like easy to care for.

>> That's right, always good.

>> Excellent.

We have something else up here.

You've got so many cool plants.

Tell me about this one.

I don't know anything about it.

>> This is the plant the whole internet has been after.

This is called the string of dolphins.

>> It does look like a little dolphin.

>> You look at it, the leaves look like little green dolphins.

It's a trailing plant so it works well to cascade over the edge of your container garden.

>> Pretty.

>> Or in a hanging basket is good, too.

>> So you can have just a whole hanging basket of nothing but -- >> Dolphin, yes.

Like any succulent, bright light, let it dry out in between waterings.

>> Okay, direct light, maybe an eastern or western window?

>> Yep, east or west window works well.

>> Perfect.

A little bit harder to find this one.

>> It is a little bit harder to find but it's worth looking for.

>> Excellent, very good.

We also have some succulents here that are kind of cool that are blooming.

>> That are blooming, yes.

Usually you don't think of growing succulents with flowers but some of them have very interesting blooms.

>> I recognize this one.

>> That is the life saver plant.

>> It looks just like a life saver.

>> It does.

>> Kind of cool.

>> The other one is called baby toes.

>> And it does look like little toes.

>> They do.

Beautiful flower.

>> Looks like a giant dandelion.

>> It will not recede everywhere.

It is a nice tanned lion.

Once again a succulent, easy to care for?

>> Very easy to care for.

Give them as much sun and make sure they dry out in between watering.

>> Fastest way to kill a succulent is to water it too much.

That's for sure.

Awesome.

So what else do we have?

>> I have some other cute plants I'd like to show you.

>> Nice.

>> I hope you're not scared of mice, though.

>> I'm not sure I want to do this one.

Cool.

Let's go.

>> Cindy this my collection of mice.

>> I like this collection of mice.

>> These are a newest trend in hostas, they originated from blue mouse ears and now we have this series of varigates forms, mighty mouse and church mouse and sun mouse.

>> Oh, they're so cute.

They're so adorable.

How do you plant them or how do you use these in the garden?

>> They're fun to grow in container gardens and you can grow them in the open garden like any other Hospice.

Fun to do them in their miniature area.

>> To make them the focus like a fairy garden or something?

>> That's right.

Fairy gardens are popular and they fit in that trend very well.

>> Any issues less hearty?

>> They are every bit as hearty as any other hosta.

>> Perfect so easy to grow and make a nice feature.

>> Very easy.

>> Thank you, Josh, for showing us your mice collection and the air plants and the succulents.

We've had so much fun touring the gardens today with you.

>> Thanks for coming.

>> Which one should I take home?

>> One of each.

>> I like it.

♪♪ >> JORN and Suzy spent time looking at a variety of succeed lets and air plants.

We have a group of hand selected plants from Josh's greenhouse.

We'll use the plants for a couple of projects I'd like to show you.

Here I have a nice assortment of air plants.

Because the plants don't have soil or roots we deploy them in a different ways.

You can mount them using wire or glue.

When you do that, glue them with a wine cork or mount them to a board you'll run into some challenges sometimes taking care of them.

Using a nice tray like this or this sea hell can use a device for air plants like a hand globe that you can set the air plant inside you can also this is a hold I made out of the aluminum wire, wrapping it around I can hang this anywhere.

I'd like to show you more specifically how we can create a terrestrial with any closed or semiclosed glass container.

This is just a glass canister that I found in the store.

I've already put some colorful marbles in the bottom of this.

This will help add to the terrarium.

We're really setting these plants inside.

I can take fun things like this one in the seashell here and mix up my sizes and my shapes.

This one is kind of fun, as air plants grow they create offsets and the offsets create this big clump.

Really interesting ones here to look at.

Care of this is a little different than your typical house plant as well.

When we water sometimes when we're misting it can be difficult depending where we have them displayed.

I like to take them out of their container and submerge them in water.

The key is after they've been sitting in that water for a couple of minutes, every fourth or fifth time you put fertilizer.

When you take them out set them upside down for at least a couple of hours.

That will allow excess water to drain out.

Any water allowed to collect will cause the plant to potentially rot.

To be that can go a long way to keep the plants healthy.

Place them in a bright spot.

You're good to go.

We were fortunate to get a nice collection of fun succulents from Josh's greenhouse.

Succulents like drier conditions, well-drained conditions and that's what unites all the plants together.

Interestingly all cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti.

None of these are in the cacti.

I have acchivaria, portulaca, agave, seedums and lots of other fun succulent plants.

We can combine them into a grouping.

Today I'm going to be creating this nice dish garden using this rustic tray I found here.

You can use any container.

Thor it rah cotta pot made for succulents and that drainage hole is really important.

We'll make sure any container we use has that.

To get started on our transfer, it will look great on a kitchen table, we can propagate the seedum taking cuttings or plant them outright.

If we decided to propogate we could take a snip, snip it off and let the pieces sit for 24 hours.

We can use leaf pieces and cuttings.

It allows the cut end to callous over and it will prevent the cuttings from rotting in the soil while they're hopefully trying to root.

My plans look so nice I don't need to take cuttings.

I'll have a finished product right away.

Cuttings takes four weeks sometimes longer to take root.

This will be ready to go almost instantly.

Combine the plants into the container.

Pull them out, shake off soil and pile them up.

My foal to mix different forms, colors, textures, sizes and shapes.

That adds interest to the planting and work to get my tall stuff in the center and shorter stuffen on the end and try to mix up trailing with things upright.

All of this variation is what adds a lot of interest to this planting opinion sometimes it falls apart as you work on it.

Be as gentle as possible, nice as you can.

The plants will reestablish pretty nicely over time.

Now the potting soil I used for the container can be one of many different things.

You can buy ready made cactus or succulent potting soil or potting soil with ferlite.

I'll find a bright location after I water this in for the first time and let them grow on their way it.

If the plants are getting lanky it means they're not getting enough light.

You want to find a brighter location for them.

I have I have this assembled here, we can enjoy the beauty the plants can bring into our home.

While the hostas Josh showed us are not suited for an indoor environment like succulents and air plants they are adorable and up and coming trend in gardening.

These will look great on a shady patio or deck to add garden goodness to your home.

We thought we'd show you one idea we had using the miniature hostas Josh introduced us to to make a mixed container planting.

Often we think of annuals being the thing we use in mixed containers.

Perennials can work.

We'll select good plants.

We have wonderful miniature hostas Josh introduced us to and we'll mix with other colors, shapes and forms and in particular things like texture are good, too.

I have a nice shallow container here.

The bigger the better that will overwinter better and something that is frost proof is important as well.

This is not likely to crack in the freeze frost cycle like terra cotta with.

I filled this with potting soil and put a broken chip of terra cotta to let the water run out and I need to assemble my container.

I'll use a variety of colors and shapes and sizes and textures are important, too.

I'll set these in here.

Tall stuff in the middle or the back, and I have this fun bugle weed.

It's important any complimenting plant you put with your HOSTas or anything in the mixed container has the same growing requirements.

In particular the same soil, water and sun requirements.

These ajugas like the same shady conditions and moisture, well-drained soil that our HOSTas do.

I found this nice brass button, and it has this nice fine texture which is a nice offset to the more bold or course texture of the hostas.

I can fill in with any additional soil and it will be really important to water this in, get that soil settled around the root balls and get those plants off to a good start.

Winter care for your container with perennials we need to protect that root zone from the cold.

When they're in the ground, mother nature does that for us but often in this container they're much more exposed.

We need to figure out some way to protect this root system.

One way to do that is to bring it into an unheated garage or porch that doesn't get too cold but still gets below about 40 degrees.

Another thing is bury the container over winter.

We do this around the end of November and simply sink it into the ground, maybe put a little bit of straw over the top of it, overwinter that way, pull it out Mid-march and get it growing again.

I hope you'll try one of the fun projects.

I'm Aaron Steil.

Thanks for joining me on "Gardening with Steil."

Coming up on the all new Gardening with Steil Special.

Today, we're talking totally tomatoes.

A lot of these wonderful heirloom tomatoes have amazing stories surrounding them.

It's called Willie's Garden Tomato.

It's a fairly unique because it's a yellow pace tomato.

Every year since I've been married, planting in the garden and my wife says they're good.

So here we are.

So what do you think makes a tasty tomato?

Something that's good on a sandwich?

We've made this beautiful piece of land that's abundant with food, and we want to embrace that and host people here at the farm.

The diversity of perennials that can be grown in Iowa is huge.

I decided to try to plant my garden for fall color.

Oh, look at all the bees.

It's only his second year, but what a butterfly magnet.

I work on the perennial bed, and we try to feature perennials that bloom throughout the years.

Great things come in little packages.

And tiny house plants are great additions to the home.

My plant passion came from working in the garden with my mom when I was little.

People have felt compelled to incorporate more natural elements into their living spaces.

Terrariums are a great way to grow houseplants.

A layer about an inch thick on the bottom of the jars, there's lots of cool, colorful things in it, and I like using this stuff because it's so fun and color.

Don't miss the all new Gardening With Steil Special premiering Saturday, February 19th.

Only on Iowa PBS.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >>> Welcome to "Gardening with Steil."

Helping pollinators prosper is an important and timely topic.

Almost TLOO quarters of all plants rely on animal pollinators and 35% of the world's food crops depend on the work of pollinators like bees, butterflies, birds, bats, beetles and other small mammals and insects.

Creating a pollinator friendly habitat is one of the best ways to help pollinators prosper.

Much research is done on honeybees and monarch butterflies but these are two of the hundreds of insect species and other animals that help pollinate plants.

Understanding more about the native species in a given area is something many scientists and other researchers are interested in knowing more about.

I got a chance to speak to Nathan Brockman from Ryman Gardens how we as concerned citizens can help.

What can people goto promote insect pollinators in their own yard?

>> One thing is really watch they reduce pesticide usage.

Any insecticide will affect all.

Plant a variety of flowers of different shapes, whether they're fluted or they're flat like dinner plates or something more rounded like this year and you can see a bunch of pollinators here, wasps, bees, flies, we have beetles, we got a little bit of everything all right there in that one thing.

Different colors is important, different colors that can affect what species you'll get in your garden, and then if you want more butterflies in your garden, planting larger clusters of the same type of plant, because they have to kind of relearn each time they try switch a flower so they do so much better with a lot of the same plant.

>> Ryman Gardens is working on promoting pollinators through the program.

>> We have the Iowa Butterfly Survey Network IBSN and train citizen scien TIPSs to go out in the field and survey butterfly populations over the course of the year so we can see how trends change from year to year.

>> So what do these volunteer citizen scientists actually do?

>> So I've set up so you can go out to Aid Hayden and meet with Stephanie Fox who is one of our volunteers and you can see.

>> Stephanie, what got you so interested in volunteering for the Iowa Butterfly Survey network?

>> I've been a volunteer at Ryman gardens company for a number of years particularly in the butterfly wing.

I got to learn about butterflies and became interested.

This became a good fit and opportunity I wanted to pursue.

>> Yes, so what do you do when you do these walks?

>> It's a standard route that I take, the same route every time and it's broken down into sections based on is it wooded, is it meadows and then I look fairly March narrow, it's a short span, look, see a butterfly and make a note on my clipboard here.

>> We're seeing some interesting ones over here.

>> We have a monarch, a number of different skippers out there.

That's really popular, that purple bush is very popular.

>> So how did you learn how to identify all these butterflies?

>> Ryman Gardens gave us great training.

There's not a lot of diversity with butterflies over the lake.

I've seen a few over 30 different species.

You get a lot of confidence you're identifying them correctly, unlike birds there might be 200 or 300 different ones out here.

>> Yes, and what do you enjoy most about being a citizen scientist volunteer with this program?

>> I had a desk job my whole career.

I always wanted to do something with nature and I find this very fulfilling and my favorite thing is when I see a butterfly that maybe I only see once a year, those are the exciting ones, the ones maybe you got to do research on what is it I just saw.

>> Thank you for all the work you do to help support and promote pollinators here in Iowa.

>> We're glad to have the opportunities.

>> Learning more about the important native pollinators in Iowa is a great way to understanding more about what we can do to save them and the habitats they live in.

There are many things you can do in your own garden to attract and promote welcome insects and many ways to get involved in your community to do the same.

After all, when you know more about the pollinator, you can do more to protect it.

As we leave you, here are some beautiful images of hundreds of native and exotic butterflies you can see pollinating plants at Ryman Gardens.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm Aaron Steil.

Thanks for joining me on Gardening with Steil.

♪♪