- Hi.

Thanks for joining us for The Family Plot, Gardening in the Mid-South.

Seed catalogs have a dizzying array of choices.

We'll talk about how to pick the right seeds for your garden.

Also, planting bulbs now will give you beautiful, early spring flowers.

Today, we're going to show you how to plant tulips.

And we'll talk about what gardening tasks need to be done over the winter.

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 Tom Mashour.

Mr.

Tom is a master gardener in Tipton County.

Joellen Dimond is here.

And Mr.

D is with us today.

Thanks for joining us.

- [Mr.

D] Glad to be here.

- All right, Mr.

Tom.

Let's talk about selecting and buying seeds.

Because over the winter folks are going to get their seed catalogs, and they're going to want to buy a lot of seeds.

So, let's help them out.

- Well, first of all the catalogs usually start showing up in November.

- [Chris] Okay.

So, be patient, they'll be here in a week or two if not a little bit longer.

- [Chris] Okay.

Let's talk about the advantages of growing from seeds, let's start with that.

- Well the advantage of growing plants from seeds is your selection is humongous.

If you're like, for example, looking for the tomato plants that your grandmother used to grow, more than likely you'll find it in a catalog.

So you've got a tremendous selection of seeds.

And seeds catalogs also have a lot of information about the plants.

General information about, say for example, tomato plants.

Then detailed information on each variety of tomato plants.

It's fun.

- [Chris] (laughs) - It's fun.

And also, you can save money.

A substantial amount of money if you're doing a lot of seeds.

- But if you're only going to do a couple tomato plants, then rather than going through the trouble of doing it, is to just go ahead and buy the couple plants that you want.

If you can find the plants that you want.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And your retail stores, (coughs) Excuse me.

In the retail stores, you're lucky if they'll have maybe 15 varieties of tomatoes.

One seed catalog, a tomato seed catalog, has 450 varieties of tomatoes.

They also have like 106, no, I think it was 185 varieties of different pepper plants.

Everything from ornamental peppers to the ghost pepper.

And 60, 67, I'll say 60-70 choices on eggplants.

And this is all in one catalog.

And that is not all-inclusive.

So that's the biggest advantage.

And like I said, you can grow them ... Another big advantage of them is that, especially like from a catalog, is that you can order your seeds now.

Retail stores, they usually don't get the seed packets in until after the Christmas season because the garden sections are usually where the seeds are.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- And that's where they put the Christmas stuff.

So you have to kind of wait to get your seeds.

And like I said, the selections are just too numerous to count, really.

- [Chris] Okay.

So those are the advantages, what about, of course, the disadvantages?

- Well, the big disadvantage is (clears throat) you're changing, swapping your equity, sweat equity, for the sweat equity of the growers.

So it's not cheap.

If you're going to just do a couple plants.

If you're doing a lot of plants, then yes, it's cheap.

A lot cheaper to do it that way.

The catalog seeds are more expensive than the local seeds.

Also, catalog seeds are usually sold by the number of seeds in the pack.

Whereas at the retail stores they're sold by the weight.

30 miligrams, whatever.

You have to have someplace to put the seeds.

So you might have to make one of those homemade grow stands to start them up.

Because you've got to have the right environment for it.

And you can't start tomato seeds outside in the wintertime.

Or pepper seeds, or whatever.

Very few plants you can start.

But the biggest disadvantage is the fact that it's time.

But the kick is, it's fun to see that life growing.

You know?

- [Chris] Sure.

- You get out there in the garden, I don't know about other gardeners, like me, but many times I'm down there on my hands and knees waiting for the seeds to germinate.

Just checking them out.

And when they do it's just a big kick, you know?

It really is.

Knowing that, "Hey, I started these plants from seed."

- [Chris] What's another source for getting these seeds?

- Well, basically there are three main sources.

- Okay.

- First of all, the catalogs.

- Right.

- And you can go on the internet and look at them online.

Or you can order them and they can send them to you for free There's a few companies that charge $5, very few, but with your first order, you get credit for the $5, so it ends up not costing you anything.

In a lot of the catalogs, our general catalogs like these are, where it has vegetables in one section, and then flowering types in the other section, and they're full, good-sized pictures, and a detailed write-up about each of the plants.

Another source, of course, is the retail store, where they got the different packets, but again, they're limited as to how much they can have on the shelves at any one time, and type of seeds.

So they may have like three or four types of cucumbers, but in reality there's probably 100-150 - [Chris] Or more.

- Types of cucumbers.

Another source is your feed and seed stores.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- Okay now, they sell the seeds, common seeds, by a scoop.

Now this is vegetables, they don't usually mess around with flower seeds.

They do have the packets, just like the retail stores, but on their vegetable seeds they usually have scoops.

Which makes it really, really cheap to buy the seeds.

And I also encourage people, that when you order seeds from the retail, again the retailer or you order them from the catalog, or you get them from the feed and seed store, write down the year that those seed are.

Because if you don't use them all, you can put them in the refrigerator or freezer and they'll keep.

- [Chris] So how do you go about picking a seed that's best for you, though?

- Well, (clears throat) again, excuse me.

Again, cool season, warm season.

On one of the previous episodes we talked about planting cool weather crops.

- [Chris] I remember.

- So if you're going to start your, like, beets, onions, lettuce, things of that nature, you want to start planting them just before the season starts getting cooling off.

And as everybody knows in the mid-south, our springs are like that, and our falls are like that.

It seems like we go from hot weather to cold weather.

So we have a short growing season for the cool weather stuff.

So sooner you can start them, the better it is, and what you pick for growing is what you like.

- [Chris] Right.

- Okay, for example, I love beets.

- [Chris] Oh really?

Okay.

(laughs) - But how many people see beets in a produce section of a supermarket?

And I was over at one of the places and I look at their green onions and there was like 12 green onions, the bundle was about this big.

My green onions, one onion is that big.

- [Chris] (laughs) - And I like onions.

My wife doesn't like to eat onions, but I like onions.

But the main things is growing what you like.

There's no need to grow something that, number one, that the family doesn't like.

Number two, if you've got limited space, grow the things that you like that's expensive.

Bell peppers are expensive.

Individually, 50 cents a piece.

Yellow squash, if you like yellow squash, if you grow them, they're easy to grow, then grow those.

But don't waste your time on things you don't like because, well it's just a nature thing, you're supposed to grow these things, if you don't like tomatoes, don't bother with them.

- [Chris] Okay.

All right.

Well we definitely appreciate that information Mr.

Tom.

- Thank you my friend.

- All right.

Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - This is mouse-ear chickweed.

It is a winter annual weed.

It reproduces by seed, likes soils that are high in nitrogen.

And here's another valuable thing about chickweed to most, it is edible.

So, you can definitely eat mouse-ear chickweed.

If you want get rid of it, when it's moist you can easily just pull it up.

Or, you can just use a broadleaf weed herbicide.

Please read and follow the label.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Joellen.

So you're going to tell us a little bit about planting bulbs, right?

- Yes.

- [Chris] Tulips specifically.

- Tulips.

- So what do we need to know to get started?

- Well, this is a typical area like you're going to see around anybody's house.

It's got some shrubs next to it.

It's next to the entrance of your door or the porch.

And you say, "Oh, I'd like to put some flowers there," so we're going to start from scratch, just like the homeowners would start from scratch.

- [Chris] Okay.

- First thing we're going to do is we're going to scrape off the mulch, because we want to save that because we don't incorporate that.

So first we'll scrape off the mulch, and then we're going to dig down about eight inches and turn the soil over and add some amendments.

- [Chris] Okay.

All right, so let's go ahead and get that started.

- And you notice there are a few weeds in here, but we'll take those out.

- [Chris] I could pull those out while you're doing that.

- [Joellen] And that looks good.

- [Chris] Okay, it does.

- You want to dig down eight inches.

And you'll see there's not as good soil there, but look, we've got worms.

- [Chris] Right.

- [Joellen] Yay!

So that means we've got good soil here.

- [Chris] Good deal.

- [Joellen] And you just simply turn that over.

It's nice and moist.

Because we want to add amendments but we're going to incorporate those next.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Joellen] All right.

- [Chris] All right.

- Now we're ready for our amendment.

- Okay.

So what do we have here?

That we're going to use?

- This is some organic compost with cow manure in it.

Which has been decomposed, of course, but you can use your own compost, like you know, if you've made your own compost, that would be something to add.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And it will loosen the soil, break up these large clods, and it will make the bulbs much happier in the ground.

- [Chris] Yeah, we want the bulbs to be happy.

We do.

Do you want me to grab that and set it up for you?

- [Joellen] (laughs) I always use my gloves.

- [Chris] Now we're just spreading this, right?

- [Joellen] Spreading this.

We've got three bags to cover this area, so we'll kind of evenly divide them.

- [Chris] I'll start on this end.

All right, Joellen, so we have down our manure.

What do we do next?

- I would like to add a little bit of bone meal.

- Okay.

- It can be any kind, any type of bone meal.

This happens to be an organic one.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And we will sprinkle that down on, we'll sprinkle that down on the bed because we want to incorporate it now because we want to amend it inside because we need to get it down, deep in the ground like about, like six inches, so that the bulbs will benefit from it.

- [Chris] Okay.

Now what does bone meal do?

What's the purpose of it?

- It's mostly phosphorus, and that will help the roots to establish, and the stems and the shoots to grow.

For the bulbs.

- [Chris] All right.

- [Joellen] And it doesn't take a whole lot.

- Yeah, I was going to ask you how much you actually put down, but okay.

- [Joellen] I kind of just sprinkle lightly, because we don't want to overdo it.

But we do want an even coat on the ground.

And very good.

That's all we will need.

- [Chris] That's pretty even.

How about that?

- And now we will incorporate it with the compost in the ground.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Joellen] And can I have the yeah, that one.

- [Chris] Okay.

- This is too heavy to do that with.

- [Chris] All right.

- [Joellen] And it will look like this is a little bit raised, but that's the whole point, to get good drainage.

- [Chris] Okay.

Drainage is so important.

We don't want those bulbs to rot, of course.

- [Joellen] I would say we're ready to set out our bulbs and plant.

- [Chris] All right.

Now what kind of bulbs do we have today?

- We have two different types of bulbs.

We have the yellow daffodils, and we've got red impression tulips.

- [Chris] Okay.

- We're going to set a few daffodils at the back, because they will stay in the bed and we won't want to disturb them.

- [Chris] Okay.

Now this is going to be a real good lesson because most folks don't know which end to put in the ground so we're going to find out from Joellen which one it is.

- (laughing) Yeah.

Well, the pointy end goes up.

If you can see this right here, those are actually roots that have dried up.

And it'll form new roots at the base here.

- [Chris] Okay.

- So this end goes down and the pointy end goes up because that's where the stalk will come out with the daffodils.

I like to set things out first, and then plant.

- [Chris] Now how far apart should they be?

Does it matter?

- [Joellen] I like to put daffodils about 12 inches apart because they multiply.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Joellen] And I'll put our tulips in front, and tulips are the same way.

The fat part of the tulip is the bottom, the pointy end is the top.

Roots will come out down at the bottom, stalk will come up at the top.

- [Chris] Okay.

Good deal.

- And depending on how thick you want these, I want these to be an accent, because we've also decided to put pansies on top of this for winter color.

And these will come up in the spring.

Through the pansies.

- [Chris] Through the pansies, okay.

- So we don't want to plant them too close together.

Now we're ready to plant, but if you'll notice, these are planted every other, kind of in a triangular pattern.

- [Chris] Yeah, I noticed that.

- If you put them that way it'll look fuller, and take up less plants.

And they'll be evenly spaced.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And you can plant with either a bulb digger or a trowel.

And if you'll notice, both of these are marked at four inch intervals so it tells you your depth to four inches.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Joellen] And most of these bulbs six inches is all you really need.

Our soils in this area are really heavy, and for drainage purposes we would like to have them no more than six inches deep.

Now that we've got the bulbs all planted, we have decided to put pansies on top of that for the winter color.

- So what we're going to do is put down a little bit of slow-release fertilizer.

- [Chris] All right.

- [Joellen] And that's to feed the pansies all winter long.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Joellen] Then we're going to rake the mulch back over the dirt area.

And then we're going to set out our pansies and plant them.

Now these you want to make sure we don't get into the crown of the plant.

- [Chris] Mm-kay.

- Crown of the plant is at the soil surface.

So we really don't want to plant these any deeper than the soil is here.

So don't try to cover up the top of the plant because you'll bury the crown.

Yet you do want enough soil, what I usually do is I scrape the mulch away, and just put a little bit of mulch near the plant but not up against the stem.

- [Chris] How about that?

- That looks good.

- [Chris] Ta-da.

- Now these will grow and fill in, and then the bulbs will come up in the spring and give us a completely different look.

- [Chris] That's going to be nice.

All right.

Joellen, we definitely appreciate this demonstration.

- You're welcome.

- [Chris] We can't wait to see the beautiful colors in the spring too for the bulbs.

- I can't wait.

- All right, thank you much.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - I have just moved up this plant.

It's a Digitalis.

But, I also have three or four different colors of Digitalis.

So, in order to remember which color and cultivar this is I use tags.

You can use, this is a plastic tag that can be reused, or it can just move along with the plant.

This is also an option, a popsicle stick.

As long as you can write on it.

This you might need to use a marker.

With these I use a pencil.

And what I'll do is just write the scientific name on there.

You don't have to do that, but I do.

And then, I'll put the common name.

This is Camelot Peach.

Most important to me, I like to keep information on my tag.

I will put the date that it was seeded, and then the date that I up-potted, which on the back I will put a T for transplant.

And then, I will put today's date.

I also keep this tag.

I just kind of lives with the plant all the way through.

I will, when I plant it in the ground, I will set it in the ground beside that plant, and then I will put a P on the tag, put the date it was planted.

And, actually, you can keep these, and it gives me a record of how long it took from the plant to be seeded to when I actually planted it in the ground.

[upbeat country music] - All right Mr.

D, what do we need to do to prepare for the winter?

- If you're putting your garden to bed and you're not going to do any gardening, like you are, Mr.

Tom.

I would kind of break it down into taking care of my tools.

You know, my hand tools.

Taking care of my gasoline-powered equipment, and my spray equipment.

You kind of break it down into those three.

Those are the three things that I try to take care of, getting your equipment ready.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- And we'll talk a little bit about that and then we'll mention briefly some of the sprays, applications that you may want to put out on fruit trees if you have fruits over the winter.

But on your hand tools, I would make sure they're clean, that's the number one thing, your shovels, and hoes, and rakes, and things like that.

Make sure they're clean.

Coat the metal parts with a light coat of oil, you can use WD-40 or you could use your burnt cylinder oil that you have leftover when you change the oil in your lawnmower or your tiller.

And have an oily rag that's saturated with that and make sure that all the metal parts are coated with a light coat of oil, one way or the other.

If you have wooden handles, lightly sand those wooden handles.

I know the shovel that you use, one of the shovels you used was really interesting.

It's one that I'd love to get some boiled linseed oil on.

But oil that shovel up and then take a again, a shop cloth or a piece of a towel, or an old t-shirt, and saturate it with boiled linseed oil and just rub it all up and down that handle.

And it'll be ready for another year of work.

Sharpen your shovels and your hoes and all that.

Go ahead and knock the burrs off of them if you hit rocks with them and things like that, and do that before you coat it with oil.

And that should have your hand tools, you know, ready to go.

As far as your tiller and your lawnmower, and your things like that, change the oil, put clean air filters in.

Probably best to run the fuel out of them, let them run completely out, that's probably the best thing to do.

If you're going to be using your, like I'm going to use my mower all winter, mulching leaves, - [Chris] Yeah, I will too.

- I make sure that I have stabilizer in the gasoline.

Make sure you do have stabilizer in your gasoline and you'll be okay to leave that fuel in your machines if you're going to be using them over the winter.

And I do that anyway.

Your sprayers, by all means wash them out, take the tips out and, you know, put them in detergent.

Your strainers and all of those, and rinse your, triple rinse your sprayers and hang them upside down where they can completely dry out.

And, you know, you'll be good to go there.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And as far as fruit trees, I look at home orchard spray guides.

There are some dormant sprays that you might want to put out after all the leaves have come off.

We're probably a little bit early on that right now, but as you get on over into the wintertime you can spray with dormant oils and on apples and pears, liquid lime sulfurs and things like that to take care of some of the insects that might over winter, in the bark crevasses and things like that.

But that'll kind of get you going in the right direction.

Get ready for winter.

- [Chris] Okay.

Now I know you did have information about deer.

Because I know a lot of folks are having problems with deer this fall into the winter, so yeah, let's help them out with that.

- Deer season will soon be open.

- [Chris] (laughs) - It opens around Thanksgiving.

Actually, muzzle-loader season opens quicker than that, I think it's already open, both seasons already open, and you know if you get a 12-year-old with a 243 or a 223 you know, take them out.

They are a real problem, and you know, I got hit by a deer last year.

Fortunately the score still, I've taken more deer than deer have taken me.

- [Chris] (laughs) - But it did several thousand dollars worth of damage to my pick up truck.

And that's not an uncommon occurance.

Rut is about to start, and deer are even crazier during rut than they are any other time of the year.

That means the females come in heat and so the bucks are chasing them and they're more active right around dusk early morning or late after ... you know in the evening, they're kind of crepuscular.

They like the low light times.

And have your headlights on bright when you can, you know, don't blind the oncoming traffic, but get them on bright as soon as you can.

And blow, use your horn, and slow down.

If you see one that crosses the road that definitely doesn't mean that's all of them.

There may be another, bigger one right behind it.

As far as in your landscape, I know they're creating some damage eating, you know, there's not as much green foliage out there now so they're coming into yards and you know, fences, exclusions, you can tie a dog out in the yard.

Tether a dog out there.

This is really, you know, a tethered, a tethered dog, barking dog will do a lot to keep deer out of your landscape but if you go with a fence, you've got to have it at least eight feet tall.

And that's not a ... You're talking about two four foot fences on top of each other.

- [Chris] My goodness.

- If you're choosing landscape plants and you're in a deer, in a highly populated deer area, go to the UT extension, or TSU extension, they can give you a list of plants that deer don't like quite as much as others, and you know, plant the ones that are least attractive to deer.

That will help you there.

There are some repellents out there that might give you some temporary relief.

But, you know, human hair, and things like that, might give you some temporary relief, but don't count on it to be permanent.

- [Chris] Wow.

- And it's just a sign of the times.

My young apple trees, I have, I think I have a half a dozen apple trees, and two of them the deer are using to sharpen their antlers on.

You know they're deer rubs.

I will take care of that.

I do not live in the city limits.

I will take care of that.

- [Chris] (laughing) You will take care of it.

You will.

Okay, then Mr.

Tom, Joellen, Mr.

D, we're out of time.

Thanks for being here.

- [Joellen] You're welcome.

- 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 joining us.

If you want to get more information about butterfly gardens, Japanese maples or hundreds of other gardening topics, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

While you're there you can ask us your gardening question.

I'm Chris Cooper.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]