Hey, sluts, I'm Jonathan.

I'm Jeanette.

We're two old high school friends, current.

Geriatric millennials who took different paths living in different gardening zones.

I'm 6A.

And I'm 42D. Sorry, I mean 8B.

But we eventually found ourselves in the same place.

On our knees in the dirt, obsessed.

With plants, ready to gush and bitch about gardens.

Think of us as your green besties.

We're here to talk about plants, but not in the usual pre t. Do this grow that way?

You may know as. As we do.

Or you may not know the difference between chokeberry and chokecherry.

Coming to you from Salem, Oregon, in.

The USA and a rooftop in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

We're Plant Sluts.

We're plant Sluts.

Hey, sluts, let's share our garden status updates. John, how's your garden doing?

My community garden is doing pretty well. I have, like, peppers growing, like, sweet peppers, capsicum peppers. Actually, only some of my sweet potatoes are doing really well. The. They're like the blue sweet potatoes. The other ones, I'm like, I don't understand what's going on. They really haven't, like, grown and, like, bushified. So I'm wondering whether or not I will actually get the yellow or the orange kind of sweet potatoes. I don't know what is like, you are. But there's been really almost no rain for the last couple weeks here, so it's been a lot of, like, hand watering.

Yeah, it doesn't really rain here much in the summer at all. I think we had a sprinkle yesterday, which was the first one in a couple weeks, so I'm always just hand watering everything.

How's your garden stuff going?

Well, speaking of watering, I just put my husband on the task of installing a solar drip irrigation system. Yeah. For the vegetable bed. I didn't realize that they go underground and drip like, close to the root. Yeah, the stakes go in the dirt rather than just dripping near the base of the plant.

But that must be, like, unique to that kit. Right?

I think this one does it that way. So that was exciting because now I think I can use a lot less water. But it is like a bucket of water and. And it's running with solar on a. On a timer. So I think I'm going to see if I can be the type of person that has a bucket in my shower and brings the bucket outside and fills the bucket.

Oh, I've seen. I've seen those visiting people's houses where they put buckets in the Shower. I have a. I have a solar irrigation system for my greenhouse. But the only thing is, I don't know if this is the same system that you have, but it has a pump, right? Like, it pumps the water.

Yeah, pumps it from the bucket.

It's really loud, and it's not. It doesn't really bother me, but I'm. It does go off, like, every three hours. And I do wonder if it bothers the other neighbors when they're trying to enjoy their balcony. And it's like.

Oh, interesting. I have a question about your beans.

Yes.

So a lot of the things I grow, I kind of think about what's kind of pricey at the grocery store, and then I'll grow it myself. Like, like, butter crunch, lettuce or tomatoes.

Yeah.

Or what's something I just want a lot of. But the dry beans for, like, stews, I don't get the. The. The time and the pain of, like, growing and then, like, shelling them when it's like, you know, a dollar for five pounds. Not really, but, like, they're so. That's, like, the most inexpensive food. So what makes those worth growing?

The reason why I'm growing a lot of beans this year is because I realized that a lot of the stuff I'm growing doesn't really have a high nutritional content in terms of, you know, it providing you with, like, the nutrients that you need, like carbs, protein, whatever. I mean, there's lots of fiber, Right. Because all the lettuce and kale has, like, tons of fiber. So I think part of me growing beans was to be able to grow a protein. Right. So potatoes. What are my starch that I've been growing? The sweet potatoes and the regular potatoes and the. Now it's the beans. I'm growing really beautiful beans, if I can say myself. So a friend of mine gave me their stash of heirloom beans. And they have so many different colors and designs, and it's like, they're so beautiful, actually. Okay. An anecdote is. Yesterday I had some people over for a happy hour on my roof.

Yeah.

And they were so excited when I pulled out, like, a bean pod. And I was like, look at these pretty beans. Like, they went ape, like. And I was like. And then I kind of wrote on their enthusiasm. I was like, what about this one? Look at this bean. You know, like, they were just so. And, like. So I'm growing these ones that are called calypso beans, also known as orca beans. They're white or cream white, probably more on the white side with little black kind of splotches on them. And one of them looked like it had a little face. It was so cute. It looks like they've been painted, you know, like, hand painted. And then I have, like, Barlochi beans, which are, like, an Italian heirloom variety, which have speckles. They're white with burgundy speckles on them.

Okay.

They're also really pretty. And then I have a whole bunch of others that haven't started to dry, so I haven't shelled those. But there's, like, purple ones. There's yellow and cream speckled ones there, so. So partly it's to provide myself with protein and just feel like I can actually grow my nutritional needs. And the other part is just, like, the aesthetic of it, of having, like, a jar of beautiful beans.

That makes sense. So you're just coming at it from a different perspective than my kind of, like, grocery store. And I think everyone probably gardens with their own perspective of why they're doing it. Like, feed their family or have all the nutrients that they grow themselves. Yeah, I know. I know. Nathan's brother brought us, like, Anasazi beans from Colorado. Or he brings them, like, every time he goes.

What are they called?

Anasazi.

Anasazi. Okay. What do they look like?

And so, like, cream with, like, reddish streaks.

Oh, cute spots.

I don't know.

I want.

Yeah. So I will send you one. No, I can't send you one. The mail won't let me send you anything. Not allowed to send tea and syrup to Canada.

I don't understand why that doesn't make sense. Yeah. But. Yeah, all right.

Maybe I'll. I'll. I'll just smuggle the bean, the single bean. But that makes more sense. Now I'm understanding beans a little bit more. And they're so kind of easy to grow, too. So it's like. It's like an easy success. You have a big basket filled with beans when you really didn't have to, like, fight bugs all summer. And.

Yeah, they're really good. They're. They're. They're not really affected by many pests.

Yeah.

And. And they. If you get pole beans, they kind of grow up. So they don't. They don't necessarily take too much space. And in my greenhouse, I'm using it to actually shade my greenhouse. So I'm having them grow up alongside the, you know, the. The panels. So they. It serves, like, several purposes in addition to providing me with my vegetarian protein needs.

Grapes. And grapes.

So my grape is about My garlic. I brought some to my grandmother, and I gave her the garlic, and she looked at it with, like, awe and excitement. And then she went over and was like, look at these ones. And one bulb was from my great aunt next door, and the other one was from my aunt, my mom's sister.

Yeah.

One was a lot smaller than mine, and the other one was, like, minuscule. It was comedic, and so she kind of, like, laughed at it. That's about the most validation you can get from an Italian grandmother. So that's. That's, like, ultimate, ultimate compliment, you know? So that's my grape. Well, we got an email. I think this is the second email. No, we've gotten more than that.

Well, summer spam, but, yeah, I was.

Counting that as, like, email.

Okay. Yes, we have many, many emails.

So we got an email from someone saying that they have a raspberry patch that's really grown big and it produces a lot of berries, but they all have worms or bugs in them. So that's, I guess, them complaining about that.

Yeah.

And they also would like some advice for some people who maybe are trying to get motivated to garden. So this person likes flowers and vegetables, but doesn't have the motivation to kind of do anything with it.

Yeah. Well, let's start with the berries. They all have worms or bugs in them. I think there's two things that I've heard with berries with worms and bugs.

Tell me.

One is trying to harvest them before it rains. Like here in Oregon with the blackberries. Once it rains, a lot more fly larvae start growing inside the blackberries.

So I have a lot of blackberries, and I have noticed that there's these kind of wormy bugs that come out of them. And partly I just put them in water and try and remove them, but the other part of my brain is just like, it's okay, it's okay. And then I'll just eat them anyways.

Yeah. Protein.

Put them in smoothies or bake with them. Because I'm like, okay, this is just normal. Like, lots of things have bugs in them. I eat bugs all the time.

Yeah.

So that's probably fly larva.

Yeah. And. But there is something you can do if you don't want to just, like, jump on the bug train, is soak them in vinegar with some water and base baking soda, and that should kill and release all the larvae and bugs and, you know, then rinse them off and you should be good. I think we have to be comfortable that there are bugs on vegetables, bugs on fruit. Right.

That's How God intended.

Yeah, that's how Jesus Christ himself intended.

Yeah, I have noticed that, like when I soak them, the larva kind of like crawl out. Probably they want air or something like that. And then I just rinse off the water with them floating in it.

Problem solved.

Awesome.

What about motivation?

I empathize with that because I think I deal with a lot of demotiv. Demotivation, you know, especially that part of my garden. The community garden is about a five minute walk. So I'm often not motivated to go to the garden, you know, for various reasons. But then I. I end up going this like, circle where it's like I feel very guilty and I haven't gone to the garden. I know I should go to the garden and I don't go. Then the next day I feel guilty that I haven't gone. And it's almost as if I want to avoid it altogether. To face.

Yeah.

To face the neglect that I've given to my garden. I don't really have a solution. I don't know. Jeanette, do you have any, like, advice for that?

Well, yeah, I think, like, you definitely don't want to be doing things out of guilt, especially gardening. So if it's building up of guilt and you feel guilty and guilty, that just puts you like, I know with like, creative things like, like drawing and stuff. Like, if I'm. I'm feeling guilty, I haven't drawn. That doesn't make me want to sit down and like draw all day. So one thing I would think for this person, because they said they have, they have a garden, they have like a place to plant things. Maybe don't think about that, that you need to fill it. Like if they have a garden bed or something like that. I also think perennials are great ones that are gonna just take care of themselves. And the more you leave them out there, then you come back in a couple weeks or a month or a year, and you're like, oh my God, this thing is huge. And it has a ton of fruit or.

Yeah. Actually, to add to that, some of these perennials, like the berry perennials are even better because if you leave them or if you kind of neglect them, then you're just giving food to the birds.

Yeah. And they eat the bugs.

Right.

Maybe they'll eat the bugs on your fruit. Another way to motivate you is like, what's your goal with your garden? Do you want food and protein? For me, I've been doing a lot to have like tea herbs and like, specifically relaxing tea herbs and so if you have something that you want or that you purchase for $18 at the Farmer's market and you think I could grow this, that might motivate you.

Are there any herbs that help with motivation?

I think those are like the Mint family.

Really?

I think so. They're more like invigorating. So if you have any garden grapes or grapes, send us an email at plant slutspod gmail.com sorry, plants what what the is plants? Plant slutspodmail.com 1 plant 2 sluts.

Time to grab a mug and pick some herbs and spill the tea. I heard Jeanette that you have garden tea this week.

Yeah, I have garden tea from Reddit. I have a story from username futuread4214 and I messaged them to ask if I could read it on the the podcast and they gave me a little update too. So my neighbor mowed down my entire garden. So I just want to vent about what happened today. I woke up today and looked out into my backyard to find the entire place was mowed down by my next door neighbor. Now for context, I own my own row home. We have gates between our yards and he has never come to me before with an issue about the way I keep my lawn. I've been keeping my backyard a mixture of native flowers and plants as well as herbs, vegetables and fruits I've been cultivating since the spring. I completely understand if he thought it looked overgrown, but it made me so happy to see all of the flowers and greenery every day. I had a huge tomato plant with a bunch of green cherry tomatoes growing and a lot of sprawling cantaloupes that had just started to fruit that he completely chopped down.

Are you serious?

Along with all of my potatoes and herbs, he left a small chunk of my vegetables that were in a container but cut around them still. So a lot of the plants lost their fruits and new growth. I've just been in shock all day. I don't want to start a fight at all. And he probably thought he was doing me a favor, but I spent so much money and time on seeds and growing the lawn to be how I want it. I'm just very upset to see everything dead today. Again, not looking for advice but would love to know what others would do in the same situation. And this is on the subreddit, Art gardening and every all the comments are just like crime, arrest him. Trespassing. Yeah, murder, police report, file charges.

Is this in the US I don't.

Know because they say they have a a row home. I Don't know what a row home is.

It's like a townhouse.

Maybe they call them row homes on the East Coast.

Maybe it's Canadian. That's what we would call them here. This would be, like, my nightmare. This would be. Yeah, this is the. This is the nightmare.

This is, like, talk about motivation to garden. I feel like I would never. I wouldn't be able to. Oh, my God. I wouldn't be able to go back out there.

This kind of reminds me a bit of my kiwi vine that my neighbor had cut down without my permission, and.

That was just one.

And it was crawling on their balcony. To be fair, this is complete. This is a complete violation.

I've seen this on Reddit a few times with people who have, like, native lawns, people just coming and mowing it, but this person's, like, saying they had, like, cantaloupes and tomatoes.

Yeah.

After I messaged them, they said, I'm not holding a grudge against my neighbor. He apologized, and I think it was a genuine mistake done by an old man. It was definitely frustrating, and I'm upset, but I really don't like being angry.

I. I do kind of feel when you bring, like, old man energy into it.

Yeah.

I don't know. It's still not forgivable.

I guess it's good he apologized, but I think, like, I would definitely have them pay.

Pay what, though? For what?

That person said they spent a lot of money with seeds and plants, and, I mean, the least someone can do is either pay or trespassing or just have the cops come talk to them and scare them a little.

Yeah, but do you really want to do that to your neighbor that then you have to look at and face?

I know. That's the problem.

I mean, if I was that old man, I would move away. I'd be so embarrassed if I. If I really did genuinely think it was I was helping out. And then I. Then it turns out I, like, killed all of this person's possessions.

Yeah. I feel like he apologized, but really was happy that he got rid of all what he considered a mess. Just having someone violate you like that, I would never emotionally heal from it. My motto is never forgive, never forget. So I'm just. I don't know. I'd make it even more vague, untamed, gaudy. Next year with a lot of no trespassing signs. Oh, maybe put a sign up this year that says, this was a beautiful native garden until the old man next door mowed it all down. All right, it's time For a plant. Mary, Kill. What, John, what three plants have you got for me?

Okay, I have Chinese lantern, bee balm.

Okay.

And sea holly.

Sea holly.

You know, sea holly, it's like that flower. It's kind of a globe. It's a bit bluish. Bluish purple. And it has these spikes that come out of, like, the head.

Yeah. I see it a lot at Trader Joe's, and I think about putting it in my bouquets for some fun interest. And then Chinese lantern are kind of like those delicate red flowers with a little, like, shield around them.

Yeah, they kind of hang like a lantern. I think it's. I don't actually know, but I assume it's kind of like a tomatillo.

That's what I was going to say.

Yeah. Yeah, a tomatillo, but, like, colored and more beautiful.

A decorative tomatillo. Unless you can eat them.

Yeah. I wonder.

Bee balm is like a flower monarda.

It's. It's also known as monarda. It's really good for bees.

Yeah, bees love it.

And it smells like oregano.

Oh.

When you remove. When you remove the flowers, they smell very strongly of oregano because I think it's in the oregano family. Okay, so which one would you. Which one would you marry and which one would you kill?

Okay. I think I would see Holly because. Because that seems like a crazy, fun time that you don't know what's about to happen now, like, B bomb would just be sitting there, like, you know, like, delicately rubbing your back. But see, Holly, they got all sorts of things happening up their sleeves. You don't even know what's about to. I don't even know. Yeah, they're. They seem.

They're like. They're, like, tattooed and pierced.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, totally.

What's gonna happen? Part of me wants to marry Chinese lantern just for the status. Just to, like, look good. Like, look who I'm married to. Like, this is so delicate and, like, formal and pretty and fancy. But then bee balm is, like, hearty, good stock. Like, gets the job done, is there for you.

Right.

And, you know, supplies the bees what they need. The bees being our children. So I guess I will marry bebalm and kill Chinese lantern.

Like, Chinese lantern is the one that you, like, see yourself being with, but you know, that bee bomb is the one that you really should be with.

Exactly. Yes.

Like, bee bomb is the one that your. Your parents would be really happy with if you brought them home.

No Chinese lantern. My parents would be like, oh, look at you. Well, I don't know about my parents, but people. All right, so for you, John.

Okay, my turn.

I have three trees. Oh, bamboo, peach trees, and oak trees.

Well, first clarification, bamboo is actually a grass.

You got me. Dang it. All right. I have one grass and two trees.

But maybe that plays into it. Okay. Like peach. You know, like what the peach emoji stands for, right?

No.

So you gotta fuck that.

Okay.

You gotta fuck the peach.

You have to fuck.

It's just like, sitting there, you know, looking at you, winkin.

Yeah.

I would kill the bamboo. Well, because it's deceiving for that same reason that you thought it was a tree. I'd be like, no, bamboo is not good for me. Like, I need someone who's honest, who's not hiding things from me.

Yeah. And who's not illegal in most states or countries.

Oh, yeah. That's regions also. Like, bamboo is just kind of empty, you know, like an airhead, you know, nothing inside. An oak, of course, I would marry because it's solid. Honestly, like, oaks are just so beautiful. I don't. I'm thinking, I guess, of a red, red oak. I'm not sure how other oaks, they're like the quintessential tree that you see on, like, sketches and imagery where it has this, like, this very wide crown, beautifully proportioned. They're so solid, you know, you can make furniture out of them.

Yeah.

So kill bamboo, fuck peach, but bring oak home to your parents.

Put a ring on oak because. Yeah, very staple. Very solid. All right, John, so what plant are we going to talk about this episode?

The mulberry.

Here we go round the mulberry bush.

So what do you know about mulberries, Jeanette?

I think I just said everything I know about mulberries.

Well, interestingly, they are not a bush, they are a tree. Oh, this is something that a lot of people mistake because of that song. And I think I'll go into a little bit more of that later.

I planted a mulberry, what I thought was bush. So now I'm thinking about where I put it in the front yard if it is planning to become a tree someday.

Yes. So I also have a mulberry tree in the backyard that is definitely on its way to becoming a tree, not pretending to be a bush like bamboo does. Mulberry is the Morris family M O R U S. And there's actually three common species that you would find in North America and Europe, which is Morus rubera, Morus alba, and Morus nigra. And that's Red, white mulberry and black mulberry.

The white lavender is also called alba.

Yeah, alba is I think Latin for white. So they're trees, they're quite. Usually they grow to be quite large, but they're short lived. I think commonly they live to about 60, 70, 80 years. But sometimes you find specimens that grow until like 250 years old. But it's. They're quite rare. The leaves, the leaves are really interesting because depending on, I believe, the age of the tree and the, and the age of the. And the time it is in the season, they look different. So most mulberry trees have extremely lobed leaves. Very dramatic, kind of squiggly lined leaves. But sometimes they're also like a spade.

I think mine is spade leaved and.

Sometimes you find in between. So you'll have like a spade with a little indent in it on one side or. Yeah, it's quite interesting. So my mulberry tree in the back has spade leaves usually. I've seen other mulberries around that have more lobed leaves.

Is that like an oak leaf, kind of a lobed leaf. Is that a similar shape that you're describing?

Yes, but imagine that. It's actually a lot more. The negative indents kind of go more towards the center. So they're like extremely.

Okay. It makes me think of the French lavender then Denta, I think it was called because it looks like teeth.

Yeah, yeah, something similar to that but rounded, like round lobes. And the flowers are held on long catkins similar to willows. There are actually a lot of differences between the different varieties and cultivars. So sometimes they have male and female flowers on the catkins on separate trees. So that you'd have like all male tree and all female tree. Sometimes you have catkins on the same tree, some that are male and some that are female flowers that are bisexual on the catkins. So they, they are able to all produce fruit.

That depends on what type it is.

Or is that just because mulberries exist in the wild, but they also exist for cultivation and they've been cult. They've been cultivated for thousands of years. So yeah, it was first. I don't want to say first. Maybe that's not. I'm not completely informed about it, so I should probably avoid saying things like that. But it was cultivated thousands of years ago by, by Chinese for silkworms and it was brought to Europe by the Romans who also were trying, were using it for, I believe, silkworms for producing silk. So because it's been you know, in the wild and cultivated, there's, like, a lot of different kind of hybridization that happened.

Yeah.

Between them. And there's also those three. Those three, the species that I named are actually just the most common ones in area. There's, like, a hundred different species within it. Some of them produce fruits that are, like, really long, for instance. Some of them are, like, a lot shorter. The flowers are. Actually, in some of the research I did, I found that the flowers are known to burst. I think it's called a catapulting. So they burst their pollen into the air, and apparently it's over 600km an hour, which makes it the fastest known movement in the plant kingdom.

Oh, wow.

You got to be careful not to be hit in the face now.

I want to look up videos of that.

Okay. And the fruits are what's called, like, compound fruits. So they're composed of little fruits that are all kind of bunched together.

Yeah.

And they look a little bit like blackberries, but they're actually tighter and denser.

So are blackberries also compote fruits?

They're compound fruits. But one distinction is that a BlackBerry is actually an aggregate fruit, like raspberries as well. But mulberries are actually what's called multiple fruits. I'll pause right there because I see the confusion on your face. So the BlackBerry and the raspberry and. And I guess salmon berries and those. All of those in the. That family have one flower.

Yeah.

And in that flower, there are many ovaries. And those are what forms the fruit. Right. The one flower with the many ovaries.

And that's why there's so many fruits compounded together, because there's many.

Yes. And the mulberry is different in that their catkins, which hold the. Hold the fruit, the future fruit, and the flowers are actually many flowers, each with one ovary. And then each of the little tiny, like, components of the mulberry is the result of one flower and one ovary being pollinated versus the BlackBerry, which is your. What you're looking at is one flower that birthed, like, many babies called druplets.

So it's kind of like octomom versus, like, the Duggar family.

I don't know what you're referring to, but I have some comparatives for you.

So not reality show stuff.

Not reality show stuff. But. But. But, like.

Go on.

Pretty. Pretty sexy. The BlackBerry is the queen bee of the singles gala.

Hell, yeah.

She has. So she has many ovaries, and she kind of, like, imagines she went around Town, meaning all these different guys on the same night. Like a bukake of pollen. From that night of her, like pollen bukake, she produced a lot of tiny little juicy babies. Right. The druplets.

And they all have different baby dicks.

Yeah. So she raises them all in her house. There are fraternal twins, but they don't really know who their daddies are. And then when they. And when they grow up as adults, they're still living at their mother's house. Right. The fruit, it's kind of like an Italian family versus the mulberry, which is like not into pollen bukake at all. He's basically the host of an all night orgy. But the twist is that after they've all enjoyed themselves in like the orgy, the pollen orgy, they decided to form like a polycule co living co op and all live on the same stem.

Yeah. So like the orgy went so well. And they went into this house where the key party, the orgy was happening. They saw it was immaculately designed. Like everything was clean. And they're like, can we all just live here? And you have chickens and a garden. I think we could all just stay together and raise these babies that we're about to conceive.

Yeah. In the same house. Of course. And not sharing the same parents of the same mom.

They made all the men leave.

Yeah. I mean, the men always leave. Yeah. In all of these scenarios, the men always leave.

Just making sure.

Yeah.

So you put out a craigslist ad for a huge orgy.

Yeah.

Like tonight only like couples only men and women. Whatever.

Like no, same sex.

Yeah, exactly. This is a heterosexual orgy.

That's why it's Craigslist and not Grindr.

And all the women, when they're there, they're like this. They're like this. This could really work. We're all getting along. I feel like we're all ovulating at the same time. So we're already on the right. The same cycle. So why do I, you know, I'll help you raise the kids. I'll do the dishes, you do the laundry. I'm really good at vacuuming. Someone else can raise the chickens. And then they all decide to stay together and raise these babies.

It works.

I feel like that would work.

Yeah. Don't get any ideas.

I'm just like, is crisis still a thing?

Not in Canada. No, it's not in Canada. Back to the serious stuff, I guess.

Oh, yeah. What are we talking about again?

Mulberries are quite varied since there's so many different hybridizations that happened. Some are super delicious. Like the one I have in my backyard is actually really, really sweet and has a lot of flavor. But there's one down the street which doesn't taste that great.

How do you know that?

Because I harvested them. I'm gonna say this. So I actually brought a tarp and I laid it so. Because it overreaches the sidewalk, like, over the. Their lot and onto, like, the sidewalk. And mulberries are notorious for causing a lot of mess. They're super. I think it was used for dying at some point in the past. Like, they're very deep dying, like purple and red color. And so I laid down a tarp and I shook the tree and collected all the mulberries and then brought them home and made like a. Tried to. Oh, I ate some and then I tried to make a sauce out of it.

So you went in front of someone else's house and shook their trees for their mulberries.

Okay. Yeah.

Just clarifying for the listeners.

Yeah. That. It's like. It's so gigantic, Jeanette. Like, and. And it goes all over the car that's parked there. It goes all over the sidewalk. They're not harvesting them.

But then they, they, they didn't end up being very good.

No, they weren't good. And that's probably why they don't harvest them. But. But mine are, like, really, really delicious. And I actually bought mine from a nursery that's run by someone who's a little. Has a little bit of, like, prepper energy.

That's what you need in a nursery.

He bred and hybridized this what he calls a Montreal mulberry. So it's super hearty to this zone. In fact, probably like to zone three or something like that. And it's really delicious. So it was definitely. It's a variety that's, you know, top notch flavor.

Yeah.

Mulberry is also known to be a really good plant for fodder. So it grows very vigorously and it grows really fast. And people use it to, you know, quickly increase the biomass of their land. And they'll feed it. You could feed it to, like, goats and you can actually eat the mulberry leaves as a human being. So once I made a dish, it's a Filipino dish that usually is made with dried taro leaves called La ing L A I n G. And. And it's about the only Filipino dish that I.

How long did you live in the Philippines?

I spent seven months in the Philippines and I was hungry the entire time, because I'm vegetarian, it was very difficult. But there was this one place I had lighting and it was just like my go to kind of comfort dish. And it's actually not from the region where I was, I think laying is from the south of the Philippines. So basically I dried the mulberry leaves and. And then I cooked them in a sauce that was coconut milk, ginger, garlic, a bit of sugar and. And it. The fact that you dry the leaves and then cook them again, it really has like a lot of kind of chew and bite to it, which you wouldn't expect in sort of like a leafy greeny. Like you would expect it to kind of be like spinach. You know, when you look at it, it kind of looks like creamed spinach, but it has like a good kind of like bite to it. I don't know if it's really something that I would suggest to anyone to eat if they have access to food, but it was an interesting experiment. Back to the common rhyme. Here we go round the mulberry bush. Oh, yeah, I have the lyrics here. We. I don't actually know that. It's like, here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the, the mulberry bush.

Here we go round.

Here we go around the mulberry bush On a cold and frosty morning. Okay, there's actually. And then it's. This is the way we wash our face. Wash our face, wash our face. Then it goes like, this is the way we comb our hair. So it kind of goes through. So this was actually a rhyme that was created at a prison in the, in the uk.

Oh, weird.

Where they had a mulberry bush or a mulberry tree. It was a women's prison. The rhyme is kind of to keep people on to their, like, daily tasks of what they needed to do in the prison. So wash your face, comb your hair, brush your teeth, put on your clothes, blah, blah, blah. It still existed until very recently, that mulberry tree that ended up getting diseased and cut down. But this prison today is a prison that has very high profile kind of serial killers.

You know, I always watch in my historical dramas in England in prisons, they. They walk around the yard. They walk in a circle in the yard. Was the tree there? And everyone walked around the circle and then they went in and brushed their teeth and their hair. So it was like their morning walk.

Yeah. And apparently the reason why it's a mulberry bush is because I think at some point it replaced a rhyme that was called the bramble. It was like, here we go around the bramble bush. And they kept bush in the lyrics. This is just. I kind of went onto, like this rabbit hole of trying to figure out the origins of the song. But what seems most plausible is this mulberry bush at the His Majesty's Prison in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.

They should have a little gift shop with mulberry treats.

Honestly, like, if we. You're going to the UK soon, you should just go visit this present.

Maybe I will.

But there's apparently the UK's most notorious serial killer who hanged himself there in 2004, I think.

Did he hang himself at. At the tree?

No, I don't think so. Because actually it was kind of kept very dwarfed. Like it did kind of look like a bush. I mean, he might have tried, but it probably didn't really work.

I feel like there be. I wonder if there's like, tours and stuff, like, yes, this is a prison, but come look at the mulberry bush. Well, it's dead now, but it was.

It's dead. But they took cuttings of it before and they're going to actually regrow one of the cuttings and replace it.

They should regrow the cuttings in all the prisons across England.

One of the reasons why in the song they mention the cold is because the UK had actually imported mulberries, I believe, white and black mulberries for the silk production. But it was an epic fail because it was too cold. I. I first came across the mulberry living in Vietnam. Actually, there's. There's a common treat. I don't know if I can call it that, where you. You take mulberries and you douse them in sugar and then you let them ferment into like an alcohol. Yeah, it's just like fermented mulberry. Sweet fermented mulberry. It's delicious. I mean, I. I liked it. Had never really seen it before.

Do you eat that or drink that?

You would just eat it with a.

Spoon because it sounds like how you make tinctures, you know, like soaking something in the alcohol and then all the properties are in the juice.

Oh, yeah. And I think mulberry has, like, quite a few properties.

Oh, we should go into the medicinal properties, like traditional medicine. People say the mulberry leaves, particularly from the white mulberry or mulberry albina, I think it was, are used in traditional Chinese medicine as like a dietary supplement for blood sugar levels and glucose. People have used white mulberry leaves for coughs or throats, fevers, digestion. The branches are used as a muscle relaxant and to relieve symptoms of arthritis and rheumatism.

So would you just take the branches and soak them in water, like make a tea out of them, boil them?

I think you just hit people with them. No. Yeah, it's extracted a different way than you would extract, you know, something from the fruit or leaves. Mulberries also have, like, antioxidant, anti inflammatory properties, which I feel like a lot of berries have that. And there's also research that suggests it could have some anti cancer effects, maybe some neuroprotective effects. You know, it's. It's kind of preliminary research, and I wouldn't, you know, go off your cancer and heart meds and eat a mulberry.

Instead just because of some silly podcasts.

It would be something to add in with those because I know, like, blueberries are like the hot berry, you know, with all the antioxidants, all the.

I mean, I feel like blueberries are already, like, passe, I hear, you know, aronia berries, hascap.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Keep talking about hascaps, the haskap berry, even. I think cranberries. You know, the blueberry is like the orange of the vitamin C world.

It's like the basic bitch of berries.

Yeah. Bbb. Basic bitch berry.

Would you like to get into the astrology of the mulberry?

Hell, yeah. I want to. I want to know that about my mulberry.

Good. So mulberries have a masculine energy, surprisingly, with those sex things. We talked about the planet that represents Mulberry's Mercury, and it's an air sign. And so this is another Mercury, like our last episode, and we talked about our Mercury, the planets in our Mercury placements. You and I were. Chirons are in Mercury. So I didn't want to, like, get into our charts again.

Right.

So I thought, well, let's read Mulberry's zodiac. Like, let's talk about who is Mulberry according to the zodiac. So Mercury is the ruling planet of Gemini and Virgo, and it's exalted in Virgo. So I'm gonna say that Mulberry is a Virgo and it's a man because it's masculine. Astrologically, mulberries are very reliable as Virgos. Virgos are the ones that have, like, the checklists. They're dependable. They get everything done. They really keep the group project together. But they have perfectionist tendencies. They can criticize themselves a Little too much critical of others. Don't squint your eyes at me. I am not a Virgo. They're very analytical thinkers. They pay attention to detail, but they also overthink.

Pause. Because I do think that they are very dependable. Right. As in that they grow really quickly. They're kind of solid. They're very hard working in that they produce so many berries. And also this idea that they are indecisive kind of reminds me of the leaves, how sometimes the leaves are like one way, sometimes they're another way. They change sometimes in the season, their shape. And so I think that that kind of speaks to that.

Virgo men are known to be loyal partners, devoted, attentive. They like those long term commitments and they want to invest a lot of time and effort to nurture their relationships. But they also need a lot of control. They need to control their environment and the people around them. So that can lead to some tension.

I'm just thinking of like the fact that they stain things a lot. So they're controlling their environment.

Do they have a very specific like growing requirement like soil acidity or are they very.

No, they're. They're very, very adaptable. They have actually these roots that run horizontally and then at intervals they then have vertical routes that go down. And they're, they're very efficient at harvesting the nutrients in the soil. Like they don't need any fertilizers. They can grow in any kind of soil.

That's the Virgo man of mulberry.

I can get with that. That sounds like a good man.

A Virgo man would be a good colleague in my opinion. I think you'd get along with a Virgo.

I mean, I like someone who's a planner. Yeah. Although I haven't really dated many Virgos, so I really don't know.

Maybe you should, because the analytical side of their thinking as well, when you question what they're doing, they would like, want to have. They would gladly answer and not take that as like confrontation.

So if you're a Virgo man out there.

Yeah.

Send an email to plantsletspodmail.com with a photo and a description.

And you know, it doesn't just have to be your sun sign Virgo, if you're a rising Virgo or even your moon, I think it would work. You have like three chances to be a Virgo. And if hopefully you like plants or else I guess you wouldn't be listening. Time for jam. Jam. So what are we going to do with our excess of all these mulberries.

Mulberries usually ripen over a very long period of time, meaning that they. They produce, like, all for a very long period of time.

Okay.

And so every day I would go out with a little bowl and I would harvest, you know, like, I don't know, 25 different. 25 mulberries.

Yeah.

And so it makes it a little bit difficult to really do much with them. And they don't really last very long. They're quite sensitive. So what. What I had been doing in previous years is I would have a baggie in my freezer, and every day when I'd go out and harvest my handful of mulberries in addition. And. And also rat, I had, like, raspberries as well. And, like, maybe a handful of blueberries. Instead of trying to do something with them every day, I would just put them into that Ziploc bag. And then, like in the winter when you're depressed and, you know, forget about your garden, you can just kind of pull out the baggie and make pie or.

Yeah.

Some sort of. I don't. Sauce reduction for your turkey at Thanksgiving.

Sure, sure.

We're both vegetarians.

Yes.

For your tofurky. But you could also dry the leaves and keep them to make your Filipino laying.

That's true, too, as well. Yeah. Don't forget about that.

So, Jeanette, what is your seasonal reminder for September in the fall?

Well, I'm going to be back at school, so my seasonal reminder for myself is to remember I have a garden. Maybe have some tarps prepared for any early frost or anything that isn't quite ready to harvest before that, like, potential October frost comes in. And I say potential because does it ever actually frost here?

There? Maybe not recently.

We haven't gotten a lot of days in Salem that I remember where it goes below freezing.

Wow. Yeah. In Montreal, October is quite crisp in September would probably be the last moment for you to put some compost down in your garden. I would be careful not to fertilize too much some of the perennials or the shrubs or fruit trees because you don't want them to put on a lot of growth at this time because then it'll damage the new growth. It'll weaken the plant. You want it to put all the energies into their roots. So, yeah, just be careful with the nitrogen. And you can put compost on your annual beds of vegetables in hopes of giving them that last little boost, but also to prepare the soil for next year.

Nice.

So thanks for getting slutty with us. If you liked this episode send it to your plant friends. Email us with plants that you think are slutty enough to be covered on the show. And of course, please rate star and share with a friend so our slutty garden can grow.

Bye, sluts.

Bye sluts.

Bye, sluts.