- Howdy.

I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener," light up the Night with fireflies.

On tour, Cyrano Carroll turned an eyesore rental yard into a pollinator paradise.

Ben Pfeiffer, founder of Firefly Research and Conservation, explains why fireflies are disappearing and what we can do to help.

Carder Nastri shows how to propagate succulents, and Daphne Richards answers your questions.

So let's get growing right here, right now.

- [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(gentle upbeat music) - On tour, Cyrano Carroll wasn't keen on digging in until a chance opportunity changed his life.

- When I first started planting, I would plant full-sun plants in full shade, and so I kind of just had to learn what worked.

I kind of just built it up one plant at a time.

In my downtime, I found that it was like a very meditative and fun hobby.

Well, my name's Cyrano, and I've lived here for six years.

Even though both my parents were big gardeners, it never really piqued my interest, I guess, until now.

And so I just started planting in the yard because there wasn't much here.

The slope of the yard was definitely a challenge, and so I didn't really have a design in mind, and I didn't really intend for it to be tiered like it is now and have different sections at different levels.

But that's kind of just how it played out, was just, "Well, I'm gonna do this corner because I wanna look at something pretty there."

And then kind of like a puzzle, you just keep adding on to that.

You could lay out pavers in a straight line, or you could create a pattern and make it, you know, prettier to look at.

I think the best way to do it and find that flow is to walk the intended route a few times and see what feels most natural.

And then from there, you have your path on where to lay your pavers out.

And you might not always do them in a straight line.

It might be staggered just to create a little bit of fun in that short little movement, in that little walk.

I've created a barrier with plants just to separate the areas and kind of highlight the different areas and make them separate.

And that was just a better alternative to me than putting up a fence, first of all, 'cause it's a rental property, so I'm not trying to throw money into it.

And so making a barrier with plants was just a different way of creating different spaces, separating spaces out.

A lot of the plants I got for free, you know, from either trading, or maybe my mom gave me some of 'em.

The front strip of the yard is sort of part sun.

So I kind of just wanted to add a lot of color to look at as you're passing by it and kind of just stuck in little treasures and things I've found just to add points of interest to the yard, I think, so that when you're walking by it, small things will catch your eye that you maybe didn't see there before.

I especially am attracted to plants that have the kind of blue or silvery-looking foliage.

I think that's why I wanted stuff with attractive foliage, so that if it doesn't bloom a lot, I'm not let down.

There's still something there that's appealing to look at.

And then the path, I kind of created for my cats to walk through, but they don't use it.

What spurred on the more clean look of the north side of the front yard was just that I happened to have a lot of nice-looking gravel, and so I wanted to kind of work around that and not make it as wild or crazy-looking.

Whereas the south side is more like found materials that I like dug out of a dumpster or I got off Craigslist.

I wanted to try to make it, to keep it clean-looking, and that's why there's kind of a bunch of right angles, especially with some of the rocks that aren't supposed to be stepped on.

They're just there kind of to separate the area but also just give it an interesting feature to look at.

I can't remember where I got the sink from, maybe on the side of the road, but I just had it sitting around.

So I decided to bury the sink and then plant the hoja santa in there.

And I topped that with rocks just to give it a kind of cleaner look.

But the sink kind of creates a little border around the plant.

I think it's an old shower basin.

It's really heavy.

But that was buried in my backyard.

So that had been here, I don't know, that's probably been here for 20 years or whatever.

And I sealed the holes with waterproof tape 'cause there was a drainage hole in the bottom I guess for, you know, the bottom of the shower.

And so I thought that would make a great pond.

I really liked the teal coloring to it.

I happened to have pond liner left over from a landscaping project, and so I knew that I wanted to add a second pond that would be in-ground.

I actually put clay in the bottom of the pond because that makes a really good pond soil because it doesn't float.

And so that's how I was able to plant plants in there.

I felt weird buying rocks, but I did buy pea gravel and then river rocks.

And then the gray kind of pavers I just got out of a dumpster, and so I kind of just happened to have those laying around.

The kind of obelisk-looking fountain is also created with those pavers that I scavenged.

And the actual fountain is just a hollow old steel pipe that was also, you know, found out of a dumpster.

And I fitted that into a plastic nursery pot that had the bottom cut out, and I kind of just buried that in the clay and then put a bunch of rocks on top of it to hide it.

That nursery pot actually holds the metal pipe in place.

The strip along my driveway, it's one of the only spots in my front yard that gets full sun.

I wanted to stick to a color palette because I knew I was doing really close planting.

So eventually it's going to look pretty wild, which is what I wanted.

But I think the color palette being white, yellow, purple, and pink, I think that gives it a little bit more pattern and stability in that chaos of it being totally overgrown and crazy-looking.

It was here when I moved in, that little rusted piece of fence.

So I wanted to give the vines something pretty to climb up for me to look at instead of just bamboo stakes in the ground.

Well, I think my yard has changed my life just in the way that it's given me an amazing outlet that kind of combines working with my hands, which I like doing, with being creative.

I think it's also just made me appreciate plants more in general and added a quality of life that I wouldn't have if all these beautiful plants weren't here, if it was just blank like it was before.

Just having something beautiful to look at when you walk outside I think is really, really important, and it does make a huge difference.

- Glowing, glowing, gone, is that the fate of summer's beacons, our fireflies?

Well, today, Ben Pfeiffer, founder of Firefly Conservation and Research, spotlights how to help these critters.

Ben, how are you doing today?

- I'm doing great.

It's good to be here.

- Wonderful, welcome to "Central Texas Gardner."

We're thrilled to have you here.

How did you get started?

What's your background?

How did you get interested in this bright bug?

- Yeah, as a native Texan, I just always had a curiosity for 'em.

And I did a trip to Puerto Rico many years ago, and I got to kayak into a bioluminescent lagoon.

And seeing the water light up just piqued my curiosity for bioluminescence.

And so I came back to Texas, and I said, "Well, what's here?"

I was just really curious on what the species diversity was, and that kind of transferred into an adventure across Texas and meeting different people and learning and getting into it.

My background is in biology, so I studied biology in college, and so that was a good background to get started, but it was a burning curiosity about what the diversity was here.

- And you also have a background in beekeeping?

- I do.

(laughs) - And you're a naturalist.

- Yes.

- And then also I had read that you have some marketing expertise that you sort of steamroll that into your creation of your website, correct?

- I did, yes.

So that was kind of a nice coincidence.

- Wow.

Really quickly, I think the biting question is, lightning bug or firefly?

- Hmm, that's a good question.

I get that asked a lot, and it usually comes down to where you're located.

So if you're in the really Deep South, it's lightning bug.

- Okay.

- You're in Texas, generally, fireflies or lightning bugs.

But whatever you call 'em, at the end of the day, they're really beetles.

They're in the family Lampyridae, and that's a very diverse group.

And there's around 2,000 species in the world.

- [John] And they have distinct flash patterns.

- [Ben] Yes.

- [John] Why?

- Well, each species has its own distinct flash pattern, and it's how they tell each other apart at night.

- Okay.

- At night, there could be five or six species that are flashing up high in the tree canopy, lower on the ground.

And if they all flash the same, they really can't determine who's who.

- [John] Right, right.

- So, a female needs to see a male, and a male's gonna have a distinct flash pattern that's gonna vary by a variety of different factors.

They actually live for about a year to two years as the larval state- - Okay.

- Crawling along the ground in the soil and in the leaf litter.

So, as adults, they only really live anywhere from two to three weeks.

- The male is flashing to attract a female, and then they're mating.

And then where is the female laying eggs, or how does that work?

- Yeah, so there's an active period they're flashing and trying to communicate with each other.

It's a form of sexual communication really, the flashing.

And then a male will mate with a female, and then he basically dies, and then the female will go and lay eggs in several different locations.

And she can lay thousands of eggs at a time.

There are some males that flash and some females that don't, and vice versa.

- [John] Okay.

- There are fireflies that just use pheromones to communicate with each other.

- I thought I read too that some of the females are flashing to specifically attract a meal more so than a mate.

- Yeah, that's Photuris.

It's kind of the femme fatale of fireflies.

- Ah.

- And we have them here in Texas, and in certain spots they're really abundant.

And really what she's doing is she's trying to acquire compounds that make her poisonous and those compounds that she gives to her eggs.

- But they're not doing so great right now.

Is that correct?

- Yeah.

That's kind of the unfortunate side of the story.

What's really happening is it's kind of contributing to habitat loss that's occurring across Texas, and part of that is related to just rapid development and changes in land use.

And they are disappearing.

The good news is is that they are doing well in places that they are protected.

So habitats that are protected, whether it's private land, conservation land, park, they're doing pretty well there.

But on other places where there's lots of land-use change, they're disappearing at a pretty rapid rate.

And development that goes on these days, a lot of times what they do is they raze the entire piece of land down to the bedrock.

And so that removes the soil, organic matter, vegetation, and that's gonna remove firefly habitat.

The other component of that is that people like to live along rivers and waterways, and when they go in, and they build a house or a development, a lot of times what they do is they remove the vegetation that's along the waterway.

And that's called the riparian corridor.

- Right.

- And when that gets removed, that's firefly habitat.

- Light pollution, even if that structure is there, light pollution in itself can have really deleterious effects as well, correct?

- Yes, it can.

And the reason why light pollution's bad is because it interferes between males and females being able to see each other.

If you've got a really bright light that's shining into a habitat, it's gonna wash out that light that fireflies produce, which is kind of a weak yellow-green light.

And that white light is broadcasting in all spectrums, and it gets in the way.

- How can we help?

What's the best way to go about designing your yard or your lightning bug habitat?

- One of the best things you can do is try to get to know your local species of fireflies 'cause this is gonna help inform you about what you might need to do in order to attract them.

And gardeners do a really great job of attracting fireflies because, you know, they add a garden.

They add really great soil and plants, and that kind of helps attract females to lay eggs.

So, get to know your local species.

You can make amendments to your soil.

So you might go out in your backyard and say, "Well, I've got very compacted soil, and there's not a lot of vegetation here.

And all I've just got is lawn grass.

What can I do?"

So you can look to your soil, make amendments to add organic matter.

You can lightly till your soil, which is helpful.

And what that does is it helps moisture and nutrients get in.

And then next kind of what you wanna do is plan out where you might want a firefly habitat.

- [John] Okay.

- And some of the best places are kind of along a tree line and sometimes in an open area as well, where you can kind of create like a moat basically for firefly habitat 'cause you're just trying to attract females to lay eggs there and then places for fireflies to hide during the day.

- [John] Leaf litter is a big important factor for the developing beetles, right?

- Yes.

- So leaving that leaf litter down.

And then native plants, especially tall grasses and a biodiverse community is really important for them as well.

- It is.

It helps retain the soil moisture.

The roots go really deep down in the soil, and when it rains, they're pulling moisture up, and then it's keeping it there.

Plants, you know, do a good job of casting off like organic matter to help enrich the soil, and so that's beneficial.

- Okay, and some of those species like switchgrass.

We have some two-flowered melic, native sedges, white beebrush.

Those are just really good at really creating that structure for them as well.

- Yes.

- And also wood brush piles or decaying wood, how does that play a role?

- Logs and brush piles are beneficial 'cause they occur along a riparian corridor.

You think when a flood happens, it washes a lot of that down.

It provides places for the fireflies to hide during the day, and it's a great place for females to hang out.

And, you know, fireflies are gonna crawl underneath a log or under a rock, and that's where they're gonna reside during the day to avoid desiccation.

So, adding that to environment to kind of create a firefly habitat in your yard is a great place to start for that.

- And the larva eat the decaying wood as well, correct?

- They do, they actually eat the worms and the snails.

- The worms, okay.

- So they love those earthworms in the soil.

That's one of their primary foods, but also the native snails that we have.

- Okay.

- And they're very predaceous, and they consume rapidly.

So anything they find, they're gonna do, and kind of what you wanna do when you think about creating firefly habitat is you're actually creating habitat for the food that fireflies eat.

- Ah, okay.

- Yeah, so the kind of pest insects, the stuff that kind of builds the soil.

And so you wanna provide habitat for the native earthworms and those little snails, and that's what's gonna help keep the fireflies and the larva alive.

- I wanna mention you have the firefly certification program, correct?

- Yes.

- How can folks go about doing that?

- Yeah, so they can visit the website to get a sign.

It's a self-directed certification program, and it really addresses four main factors for firefly habitat and things that you can do.

It's restricting pesticide usage 'cause that's not beneficial.

Provide plant diversity by planting plants in order to encourage soil moisture.

Restricting light pollution in the yard and providing a habitat for them.

And so those are some of the great ways that you can encourage fireflies in the yard.

And if you qualify for all of those, we maintain a database of all the habitats, and that goes to help fireflies in the local area.

- What's your website again so people can visit and find out more information?

- Yeah, the website is firefly.org.

And they can go on there and find the certification program and just a lot of information on fireflies in general.

There's a firefly field guide as well, and people can go.

If they have any questions too, I can do habitat assessments, and sometimes I'll go and visit different spots.

And if you know of any great firefly displays, I'd love to know.

- Well, Ben, thank you so much for visiting us today.

This has been a lot of information.

Definitely go, folks, and visit the website, where you can learn more about how we can help save these really glowing, friendly critters.

Next, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

(gentle upbeat music) - One of the best things about gardening is watching the cycle of life unfold right in your backyard.

So we were thrilled when Heather Sommer from Galveston sent us her video of monarch butterflies.

While visiting her in-laws in Houston last fall, she noticed that they had every stage of the monarch butterfly process going on in their yard.

She grabbed her phone and made a video for the kids she works with as a speech language pathologist.

We edited together short sections from her video, but you can see the whole thing on her YouTube channel, Ms. Heather Rainbow Speechie.

All her videos are terrific for kids and the whole family too.

This is a great time to divide agaves.

Gineen Cooper has a question about her foxtail agave that she brings inside during the winter.

It's grown into a C-shape and hangs out of the pot.

It also has a bunch of baby agaves called offsets or pups.

She'd like to cut off the enormous top and repot.

We reached out to Carder Nastri from Fireproof Plants, who told us that the foxtail agaves tend to form kind of a long trunk.

Just cut the head off right at the base of the rosette.

Then root the decapitated head after allowing the cut surface plenty of time to heal and callous over.

The remaining stump will also sprout new life in time and a couple of new heads.

Be sure to use perlite or pumice as the rooting media to ensure good drainage and to keep the succulent stem from rotting.

We'd love to hear from you.

Head to centraltexasgardener.org to send us your questions, pictures, and videos.

- Next, multiply your succulent supply with propagation tips from Carder Nastri.

(gentle upbeat music) - What's up, guys?

Carder here from Fireproof Plants, and today we're gonna be going over one of the coolest parts of cactus and succulent care, and that is propagating.

So the first way you can propagate is through taking a branch cutting, and most plants you can take a branch cutting from.

Euphorbia francoisii roots very easily.

Now the one thing though you wanna be careful about when you're taking cuttings, especially from a Euphorbia, is that you don't wanna get their milky sap on you.

The Euphorbia milky sap is pretty famous in the plant world.

It can cause blindness in some species, and it can kill you.

It is filled with all kinds of alkaloids that you do not wanna get on you or have your pets ingest.

I have my handy gloves on.

You kind of wanna take a cutting where the plant has a joint or a union because that's gonna be the easiest place to break it off.

I'm gonna rip this guy off right at the branch.

Boom, and you can see all that milky sap that's coming out.

Now that we've taken this cutting, you wanna let it heal for about 48 hours.

Once it's healed, put it into a pot with some dirt and don't water it.

The plant does not have roots yet, so it can't uptake any water.

After a week, water it slightly, and it should start to take root.

Grafting is the process of joining two plants by fusing their phloem and xylem, their vascular tissue.

By fusing this tissue, the two plants can become one and share nutrients and help each other grow.

A slow-growing plant, this scion, is put on a faster growing plant, this Trichocereus.

That is why we graft, to make plants grow faster and flower quicker.

So here we have two Adenium seedlings, also known as the desert rose.

And we're gonna put the head of one onto the other.

The scion is the piece that goes on top.

I'm gonna cut this guy's head off.

Boom.

And now let's cut a little wedge.

And when we cut this wedge, what we're exposing is that ring of vascular tissue that I had mentioned earlier.

Let's cut the head off this guy.

Boom.

So we're gonna cut vertically right through the middle of that vascular tissue.

Let's put it into the cut we made on our stock, and now we will get our tape.

And just like you would any other wound, let's tape it up and apply some pressure.

So we will leave that like that for at least eight days.

And don't touch it.

Don't touch at it.

Don't look at it.

Don't think about it.

And in about a couple weeks, you will have something that looks like this.

Now for this one, we're gonna do this differently from the last one where we cut it vertical.

We're gonna do this horizontal.

So we're gonna find a good spot to cut this guy in half at.

Boom.

Can you see that little ring in there?

That is what we're aiming for.

We're gonna clean up our wound here a little bit.

We're gonna add some little chevrons.

This helps for when it's healing, that it won't kind of keel over on itself.

We really want it to be as flat as possible for this.

These rubber bands will come in handy here in a second.

So when we're attaching the scion onto our stock, we actually don't want those growth rings to perfectly line up.

We wanna make like a Venn diagram so that they overlap a little bit.

So let's cut this puppy in half.

Boom.

We're gonna put it just a little off-center.

We will get our rubber band, and just like we used the tape on the vertical graft... Whoops, this is the hard part.

This is the hard part.

This is where the artistry comes in.

Agaves and cacti will form pups very readily.

As you can see on this Agave victoriae-reginae, it already has some little pups right here, and all I gotta do is not stab myself and pluck him off of there.

Oh good, I even got a root.

If you can keep a root, that's great.

And all I gotta do is stick it in some dirt and in about a week, water it, and you have a new agave.

If it's that easy to make a new plant from a pup, how do we make this plant make a bunch of pups?

Well, we gotta kill the growing stem.

We gotta kill the apical meristem.

This process is called hot-nailing.

So what we're going to do is we're gonna drive this nail through the growing stem, that apical meristem of this cactus.

What's gonna happen is it's gonna force this cactus to grow out of its areoles, these little openings right there.

The areole is where all the action on a cactus happens.

It's where the flowers come out.

It's where it pups.

A lot of things happen.

It's best to do this with a hot nail, but if you don't wanna burn yourself, you don't have to use a hot nail.

Ready and boom.

You really wanna make sure you get down the center and really get rid of all of that growth stem.

And this is an example of one that I killed the meristem of about six months ago, and you can see the damage there at the top.

But look right here.

We got one, two new big old pups coming out of that guy.

I suggest you go and chop the heads off your plants.

It's a lot of fun, and you can make more.

So from "Backyard Basics," I'm Carder, and see you next time.

- Want more from "Central Texas Gardner"?

Follow our producer Linda on Instagram for behind-the-scenes content, and go to centraltexasgardener.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

As always, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(cheerful flute music)