- Hi, thanks for joining us for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Voles can destroy your flower bulbs.

Today we're going to build bulb cages to keep them away.

Also, we'll be talking about fertilizing trees.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and Wes Hopper will be joining me later.

Joellen, always good to have you here.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

- So we're gonna build cages?

- Yes, wire cages.

- Why are we building wire cages?

- Well, I've, I don't know about you and a lot of the other homeowners, but voles invade my yard and they love to eat things like tulip bulbs.

- Yes.

- Which is time, it's getting time to plant tulip bulbs and you want them to come up in the spring, so you have to protect them.

- Okay.

- Also, some lilies, voles love lilies, and hostas.

- And hostas, that's right.

- So I actually, this is my father's.

- Yeah.

- It's been cut in half because I didn't need it as long as he had it, [Chris chuckling] and I, the other half of this has a hosta in it at my house, buried in the ground, and what we're going to do here is we're building a box with a hinge top on it.

We'll bury this in the ground.

You'll plant your, either your tulip bulbs or any plant that you wanna protect from voles in it.

You cover it and wire it together, and then you bury the whole thing in the ground.

So you can make these any size you want.

- Okay.

- It, this happens to be the size that I need for what I'm doing.

Plus, remember, the whole thing has to be buried in the ground.

So you're gonna dig a lot to get this in the ground.

So whatever you build, you have to bury.

- Okay, so guess what?

Let's go ahead and start building that cage.

- All right, let's do that.

And so this is actually twenty-four inches long and twelve inches wide, and so now that I have this cut and I've cut these and what I did is to make them, this is, I tried to wear gloves.

There's a lot of wires here.

You gotta be very careful because there's little ends - Yes.

- On the wires that I have had to cut off, every single one of these, [wire snipping] so that it is less sticky.

- Okay, - But you have to be very careful 'cause you are working with wire.

- Yeah.

- So anyway, yeah, that's how I cut off all of those.

- And I guess you have to have proper tools as well, right?

- Yes, you have to have, I use these nips, these wire nips, and then I have wire cutters, my tape measure, my marking, because what we're gonna do now is divide this up.

I've marked six inches here, six inches here.

We've gotta do the last six inches, [tape measure clattering] so that we can have places that we can bend.

We know how to bend it to get that size and make the box with a permanent marker.

It'll go away eventually.

So now what we need to do is bend it along these marks, and the easiest way I know how to do that is to simply- - Ah.

- Put the wire at the edge.

- Got it?

- Of a table and bend it.

Once you get it started, you just make sure you can bend it.

There.

- Okay.

- And it's wire so it's flexible.

Then we take the next one and we bend it.

- Yeah, all right.

It's bending pretty good, okay.

- And then we've got our last part here.

- Last bend.

All right.

- And that's it bending, and as you can see, it kind of makes a box.

- Yeah, there you go.

I think that looks good, Joellen.

- But to form it, to give it the better shape, and to also, I mean if you just put this in the ground, the voles are just gonna go, "Oh, what a nice highway."

- Just come right in.

- Yeah, so we gotta put stuff on the end now, and this is about 1/2-inch gauge wire.

There's the holes that are half inch, because you've gotta give enough room for the plant, either tulips or these are lilies.

The stem has got to be able to fit through this wire.

- Right.

- So 1/2 inch is about as small as you can go and not have problems with your bulbs or your plants coming up through it.

So we don't do all three sides, but we will do these and you, I just simply wire them together.

Now you can use any kind of wire you want.

I happen to have a bunch of this florist wire.

So to me, it is easier to use this, and what I do is I simply start it here and twist it, and then I use this like you would a needle and thread.

- Ah, got it.

- And I just simply thread it through here, and this florist wire is thin.

So it threads nice and easy.

- Just right through.

Okay, so just go all the way across.

- All the way around.

- Okay.

- Again, be careful.

It's sharp.

And since it's not long enough, you just simply get another wire if you can pick it up off the table, [Chris chuckling] and attach it to this one, and you keep going.

And as you see then, you get to the end and you could just leave this to attach the top lid to it, or you can cut it off, whichever one you want to do.

I think I'll just leave it so we'll attach the lid to that, and then we'll try to do this other side.

And as you'll notice, we're wiring this to the side, but we're not wiring the top up because you have to be able to open it to put your bulbs in.

So you only are fastening this, the sides down on three sides, and I imagine the florist wire will not last as long.

- Yeah.

- As the other wire, so you may have to rewire it again, but you're not gonna just put it in the ground and leave it.

You'll probably be digging it up occasionally.

- All right.

Cut that.

- So there we go.

Now we've got our box.

- Box, yeah.

- And to fasten it down after you, you're gonna, you probably need to make sure it's flat 'cause you don't want any spaces left.

I'm gonna cut this one off now 'cause I wanna use this end as a tag.

You've planted it in the ground, you've got your bulbs in it.

You've put the dirt over the top of your bulbs.

You get the dirt at the top of the basket, you put your basket over, and I usually fasten it on all three sides.

- Okay.

- And you just do something like this and make sure the wires stay down.

I fasten them on this side and then you can do one or two more on the front, and this should be enough to keep the voles-- - It should be for sure.

- Out of here, and your-- - Wow, How about that?

- Your bulbs safe to come up and bloom for you in the spring.

- That'd be cool.

So how many bulbs would you put in here?

- You know, actually you could probably get seven of them in here, or five.

- Okay.

- I mean the bulbs themselves don't get more bigger than like here or here.

You could do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or eight.

You can put them almost on top of each other together.

Like, these are lilies and of course I can't, I don't wanna take them out of the pot, but the voles love lilies, and so what I'm planning to do is after I bury this in the ground, I put dirt in here.

I'll take these out of the pots, and I'll probably put two of these per cage.

- Mm, okay.

- So that, but then just remember you can't leave these in the ground all the time.

Tulips, more like annuals here in this part of the country, but you can leave them as long as they're still producing bulbs for you and flowers in the spring.

The lilies, when they keep dividing, you're gonna, they're gonna keep dividing in the cage.

So you're gonna have to dig them up every few years and divide them and make more cages.

- Make more cages.

Okay, I got it.

All right.

So I guess at some point you have to train the plant to come up through?

- No, you don't have to train it.

No, Mother Nature will do that for you.

But you just gotta remember that this stem, these stems of the tulips will come through this half inch.

- Okay.

- And they'll just come up.

You'll never know this cage was underground, but the voles will not be able to eat your bulbs.

- And that's the key, right?

We don't want the voles to get in there to.

- Right.

- Get this delicious meal, right.

- Yes, so you'll have blooms in the spring or in the summer.

- Joellen, we appreciate that.

It's pretty neat.

- You're welcome.

- Yeah, so from Pops to yours.

- Yeah.

- It's pretty cool.

Thank you much.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - This one's a tough one.

This blackberry plant is, it looks like part of it is dying.

You notice the leaves turned brown here, and then on the other, on the tip, you got six or eight feet of vine here that appears to be healthy.

The only thing that I can figure out that it might be is sun scald.

This vine does better when it's shaded.

It's not used to being in the sunlight, and this, the afternoon sun is beaming right on this vine right here, and I think that's probably what our problem is.

The backside of the vine appears to be more healthy and there's enough xylem and phloem back there on the back to provide water and nutrient exchange to reach the rest of this vine.

Shade cloth might help, but that's what I think it is.

Sun scald.

[upbeat country music] - Hey Wes.

Man, we out here.

We talking about trees a lot, right?

- Yes.

- The question we usually get is about fertilizing trees.

So what is the best way to fertilize trees?

- There's a few different ways to fertilize trees.

First, let's start off with the time of year, the pruning.

- Yes, okay.

- I feel like it's best to fertilize at the beginning of fall.

- Okay.

- And also in the early spring, but let's go back to the late fall.

You want to get your pruning out of the way.

Go ahead, if you're gonna prune the tree, do your pruning first.

Like, remove some of this growth that's coming off of it right here if you don't want it.

Kind of thin the tree out just a tad just to get rid of some unnecessary growth or dead branches, and then come in and let's do some fertilizing.

- Gotcha.

- Take a look at this root system that we have here.

- Yeah, pretty impressive.

- I mean, we can actually see these roots.

There's a reason for that.

Some of these roots are growing in a girdled fashion.

That might be due to the excessive mulch that has been used over the years.

I'm gonna guess this tree to be about 10, twelve years old, roundabout.

- Okay.

- This tree needs deep root injection.

You could do a granular, just spread it out over the ground.

That's not gonna go very deep.

It's probably gonna end up down here for the grass.

- Yeah.

- You could do a drill hole method where you could take a drill holes in it, just get a long auger bit, and you might get caught up in some roots.

So that's not necessarily the best way, but it works.

Just drill some holes and pour you some compost or some good organic material, organic fertilizers down in there.

- So we use the organic material though.

Is that something we rake, you know, over the holes?

- You can rake.

Yeah, just you can pour it in there depending on what type of mixture you're using.

Is it gonna be in the powder form?

Is it gonna be in a liquid form, or is it gonna be like in a dirt form?

- Yeah, okay.

- On large trees, we've done vertical mulching where we've used an actual auger, like what you use to put in fence posts.

- Okay.

- In vertical mulching, we drill these holes about every three feet apart to, you know, just to create some airspace and then we backfilled with some organic compost.

- Okay.

- Or sometimes you can put rocks in there just to create the larger airspace.

- Okay, and the roots are gonna move into that space.

- The roots, that's what you want 'em to do.

They don't always do that.

- All right, gotcha.

- So my best practice for deep root fertilizing is to inject the soil with a liquid fertilizer that you inject into the soil at a PSI of about 125 to 150.

You can even go up to 200.

I know people that go up to 200.

So think about this as you're injecting that nutrient fertilizer, the bio, the organic fertilizer into the soil, you're gonna want to use a slow release too.

I'll explain that in just a minute.

- Okay, okay.

- But as you, that PSI, the 150 PSI goes into the ground and it pushes that soil out, it creates an air-water nutrient space.

So it creates space in there.

So like this soil right here, take a look at these roots.

They're growing right on top of the ground.

- Yes they are.

Yes.

- These, you're not gonna find very many of these roots down low.

I promise you, this soil is not, it's good for willow trees and stuff that we have growing around us.

Those are wet, bottomland-type trees.

This is a maple, it's a bottomland tree too, but it's planted in a manicured landscape.

- Right.

- So with that injection, you're going down eight to ten, six to ten inches down and you're injecting fertilizer airspace.

You're gonna start promoting this tree to go to where that water nutrient space is.

- Gotcha.

- So the roots are lazy.

In this case, they're staying on top of the ground.

- Yeah.

- They're growing down the hill.

They're getting mowed over.

- Yes.

- So now we're gonna, as this tree grows, you're creating that space, and it may take several years for this to happen, but you're gonna get a root system that's gonna be down and you're gonna mitigate the soil with your organic fertilizer and other products that you can inject in here.

Let's say for example, you put the fertilizer in the soil and your pH is off.

So that creates that buffering capacity to where, even with the nutrients in the ground, the water's in the ground, that buffering capacity prevents that tree from being able to absorb it through its small feeder roots.

- Okay.

- The feeder roots, like hair roots, they're real small like our hair.

So you want to add something to the soil that's going to change that pH.

Usually it's gonna be lime that you want to add to it.

Okay, that takes a little bit of time for a tree to change that pH, but you just have to do it.

Something else to add to your mixture of fertilizer is mycorrhiza, a mycorrhiza inoculate, and you can get it in either an ecto or exo-type mycorrhizal formula.

In this area we're gonna have Amanita, Rhizopogon, different ones like that.

There's different species of those two right there.

- Okay, okay.

- But what that mycorrhiza does, when you inoculate your soil with it, it actually works symbiotically with the feeder roots.

It grows and its mycelium grows and it attaches itself to the feeder roots of the tree, and now it's feeding off the protein of the roots.

When it sheds its, basically its scale or its bark off, it feeds on the proteins produced by those roots and in turn it works as a sponge and it pulls the water, the nutrients into the tree where typically, before the mycorrhiza was there, it wasn't available to it.

- Okay.

- So they kind of work together.

- Right.

- And research shows that trees that have been inoculated with that mycorrhiza are much healthier than a tree that hasn't been inoculated with it.

So it's very beneficial.

- Oh, that's good.

- Yeah, mycorrhiza.

- That's good, that's good.

Let me ask you about this again, 'cause you mentioned it.

So one more time.

I usually get a lot of questions about, "So, I have my roots above the ground.

"How can I encourage those roots to get back down in the ground?"

Will they go back down into the ground?

- Not typically.

That's a very good question.

So what we want to do with that point, since you've mentioned that, that's a very, very good.

- Okay.

- Good subject right there.

You want to get down and close with the tree and pull this back.

This is gonna require a tool.

- Yeah.

- And these roots that you see right here.

- Okay.

- Follow it back to where it originated.

That root might have come from this side of the tree.

- Yeah, it looks like it did.

- So eventually as this tree is growing, it's not growing vertically with the tree like those.

It's growing across the tree.

So over time, as this girth grows here, it's gonna attach to here, 'cause this root's gonna grow too.

- Gotcha.

- And it's gonna end up girdling this side of the tree.

It may graft into it, being a maple tree, or it may not.

It may just cut the circulation off right here.

So after you trace that root back, wait until the winter time when the, all the leaves are falling, all the nutrients are dropped back down into the root system for storage.

You might want to cut that root off.

- Wow, okay.

- And don't use an ax, don't use a chainsaw.

[Chris chuckling] Find out where it's at and try to use some hand tools so you don't cause damage to other parts.

- Okay, gotcha.

- And then you come back over here to this other side and work on these roots that are closer to the trunk on this side, 'cause you see now we got two sides of the tree that are potentially gonna be girdled.

Cut these off over here, and you don't wanna go crazy just cutting all the roots off, but you're gonna have to at some point- - Right.

- For the tree's health.

- But the tree will still be okay?

- It should be.

- I'm sure people are listening to you like, okay, you're gonna cut that.

- I'm just gonna cut the roots.

Well, you can cut the branches out of the tree, why can't you cut a few roots?

- Aw, there you go.

- I mean, the roots serve a distinct purpose.

You know, conduction, storage, anchorage.

So you wanna be cautious on which ones you cut off.

- Okay.

- But once you get where you feel like you're comfortable, you're not taking off too much, it'd be like me going to the, getting a haircut and they cut off too much.

I'm not gonna like it.

The tree will tell you it won't like it either.

- Right.

- But you get out here and you see these growing on top of the ground.

- Yeah.

- Let's say, let's use another example.

Imagine this is at your grandmother's house and your grandmother walks on a cane or a walker and she can't go out into the yard because you got all these roots.

So just, after you start promoting the root growth down low, think about either adding just a small layer of sod or some topsoil and maybe some sod on top of it.

That way you're hiding the roots.

Now I've done this before with a maple tree.

This maple tree had literally taken over the front yard.

So we can do some root pruning on it, and I was in discussion with the landscaper on this and while we're looking at the, all these roots on top of the ground, and I look at the neighbor's yard next door and I said, "Got an idea, guys.

"We're going to not worry about cutting all these roots.

"We're gonna add and smooth this out with a little topsoil "or organic good soil, and then we're gonna put sod on top of it and then we're gonna be done with it."

- Wow.

- So that was the easiest solution.

- So that doesn't smother the roots, putting the sod on.

- If you put too much dirt on top of it, you're gonna change your water flow and everything else.

So be cautious.

Once you get over, let's say four inches of fill, you're gonna start cutting off the, some of the airflow or the oxygen supplied that gets down deep, but that's where that deep root injection comes from, 'cause you're creating new space down there for your air, water, and nutrient.

- Wow.

- And do that as on an annual basis.

Just include that in on your tree budget.

- Okay, put it in on your budget.

And one more time before we have to leave.

So the best time to fertilize is?

- Late fall or early spring.

- Late fall, early spring.

Thank you, Wes.

Appreciate the knowledge as always.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - What we have here is Japanese privet.

It's an invasive species and you must get rid of it if you have it because it just goes everywhere.

They have the seeds of this and the berries, the birds eat it and they distribute it everywhere.

So that's why it's gotten so invasive.

We're gonna cut it down and we're gonna show you how to get rid of it.

The first thing we're gonna do is just cut all the branches off to expose the stems that are still left that are in the ground.

[branches snapping] [twigs crunching] There, now all the top foliage is gone.

If you want to, to get rid of this and you don't wanna put any kind of chemicals on it, when it keeps coming back, just keep cutting it down, cutting it down because you've got to get rid of the carbohydrate reserves in the root system, but if you want to use some chemicals, use some glyphosate and paint it on the tops of all of the stems.

I'm literally gonna get a paintbrush and paint the tops of where I cut all of these stems.

Now even though we have done this, we have, this plant was very, very vigorous and well and growing.

It's got an extensive root system.

There may be some part of the root system that's gonna try to attempt to come back up.

We will just simply cut it, paint it again, and keep going.

Just keep watching it.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Joellen, you ready to have some fun?

- Yes.

- All right, this is our Q&A segment.

We have some good questions here.

- Sounds good.

- All right, here's our first viewer email.

"What is causing parts of my spirea to twist and turn silvery?"

And this is Mary from Atlanta, Georgia.

- The only thing that when it's silvery, the only thing I can think of that would cause a plant to be silvery is powdery mildews.

- Only thing I can think of, right, 'cause it also causes twisting.

- Twisting, yeah.

That's true.

- Right.

You know, the stem of the foliage, right?

So yeah, you have warm, humid weather.

- Yes.

- Right, and poor air circulation.

- Oh gosh, yes.

- Right, powdery mildew loves those conditions.

- And from what, the picture, it looks like that is a very thick plant.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So you know what, she might want to, after it blooms this next spring.

- Okay.

- I know she's waiting for blooms.

- Yeah.

- This is spirea.

Go in and take a third of the stalks out.

- Ah, good, good, yeah.

- The older ones preferably, and that'll give more air circulation through the plant so that maybe she won't have that problem next year.

- That's right.

I think that would work, yeah.

So that way you don't have to worry about using a fungicide per se?

- No.

- You just go ahead and just, yeah, like you mentioned, thin it out a little bit.

- Thin it out.

I would let it bloom, 'cause it is, right this time now it's set blooms for this next year.

- Yeah.

- And so I would want it to go ahead and bloom, and then I would thin it out.

- I like that suggestion.

All right.

So there you have it, Mary.

Thank you for that question and for the picture as well.

Thank you much for that.

- Yeah, very nice.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"What is this on my peas?"

And this is Tammy from Somerville, Tennessee.

All right, so what did you make of that?

- The first thing I thought of was aphids, even though it's kind of hard to see.

- Oh, man.

Yeah.

- It's not, I mean, I can't zoom in and really see, but that's the first thing I thought of was aphids.

- Yeah, I thought of aphids too.

So the leaves, you know, left behind some slimy debris on the stems and the neem oil did not work.

You know, I would think neem oil would work.

- Yeah, I would too.

- Good contact activity, you know, on those aphids.

I would think neem oil would work.

Read and follow the label on that.

Insecticidal soap is something else you can use.

Or how about just grabbing the hose and just?

- Yeah, you can.

- Yeah, just blasting it off with some water.

- Blast 'em off, and if she really wants, I mean, there's pyrethrins.

You know, a pyrethrin spray, but that would be the last resort of all of those, even though it, pyrethrin spray is considered organic.

- Yeah, it is.

It is, and with any of you know, these sprays that we're talking about, right, you're gonna read and follow the label, right.

It's gonna be intervals when you need to treat, you know, for those aphids, but my whole thing is this.

For every plant species there's an aphids species, you know, it seems like.

- There is, there is.

And they're all different colors.

- They're all different colors, but that's definitely what I think that is, 'cause I know she said on her peas.

There's a pea aphid, there's a cow pea aphid, you know?

So I mean, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so those recommendations should help you out, Tammy.

Read and follow the label.

It's gonna be multiple applications.

- Yes.

- All right, thank you for that question.

Joellen, always fun.

Always fun.

- Yes, it is.

- Thank you much, thank you much.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com, and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee 38016, or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

For more information on flower bulbs or tree fertilizing, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]