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

I'm Chris Cooper.

The correct soil pH is very important to plant growth.

Today, we're going to show how to correct bad pH.

Also, don't go pulling out those chemicals every time you see a problem, you may not need to do anything at all.

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 Mr. D. Mr. D's a retired UT Extension Director.

And Amy Dismukes will be joining me later.

All right Mr. D, we always tell people to get their soil tested, right?

- Right.

- Soil pH is all about nutrient availability, but will they have to lower or raise their pH?

How does that happen?

- We have products that can do that.

- Okay.

Yeah, products they can do that.

So let's talk about lime first then.

- Okay.

Don't guess, soil test.

I'm going to repeat that don't guess, soil test.

That's a phrase that extension services has been using for years and years and years, but to raise pH, and that's primary, the primary problem, most plants, most vegetables most fruits need a relatively high pH between 5.8 and 6.2.

Seven is neutral.

- Right.

- So that's what you're striving for.

You know, 6, 6.5 even.

- Yeah, 6.5 is good.

- 6.5 is good pH.

- 'Cause that's the range where a lot of your nutrients are available to the plant.

- Bermuda grass, most lawn grasses most vegetables and most fruits.

That's what you strive for.

- Exactly.

- And when you get your soil tested I'm using the UT Extension soil test report.

When you get it tested, you'll get a report like this back and when you get the results back you see this and you go, oh my gosh.

Now what do I do?

And on the back, it tells you exactly what to do.

Now, for example, if you are in a situation that a lot, I find a lot of homeowners are in, and your pH is down around 5.2 or 5.5, you need to raise your pH because you have ornamentals you have vegetables, fruits, or whatever.

The instructions will tell you how many pounds of lime to add per thousand square feet.

- It is that good.

- So in an example if you need to raise the pH from--this is strictly an example from say 5.8 to 6.2 you may need to add 50 pounds of lime per thousand square feet.

So it's very important that you know just how much square footage you are dealing with you know length times width equals area, you know?

And so you figure that out and you know how much lime to put out.

There's several different kinds of lime.

You can get agricultural ground limestone, you can get calcitic limestone, you can get dolomitic limestone, you can get pelletized limestone.

This is an example of pelletized.

Pelletized lime is really easy to put out because it will go out through your fertilizer spreader.

Your push spreader's really uniform and it does a really good job.

Some of the agricultural ground and dolomitic and things calcitic some of that is really powdery, very powdery.

And the only way I know to put that out is with a corn scoop.

- Oh my gosh.

- Or a shovel.

You just kind of try to scatter it out as evenly as you can.

- Right.

- But just follow the instructions, do the math.

If it says 50 pounds per 1,000 square feet if you've got 10,000 square feet to treat that's 10 times 50, you need 500 pounds.

That's a 50 pound bag right here.

So, and that will do the trick for you.

- Pretty easy to spread.

- Yeah, it is.

Now, if you need to lower the pH and that there are just a few examples of where you need a low pH, but they are very, very important.

Blueberries is the number one reason that you need a very low pH for blueberries.

Four-point-eight to five-point-two is ideal, and I would lean toward the 4.8.

I used to say it needs to be almost acid enough to burn the soles off your boots.

- Oh my gosh.

- It needs to be very, very acid for blueberries.

Azaleas are an example of an ornamental that do better in acid soils, camellias also do better in acid soils.

But, we are standing in a situation where our pH here is seven, it's neutral.

These blueberries as you can see-- - Struggling.

- You know, they're alive.

This one has a pretty good crop of blueberries on it.

And this one has no blueberries on it.

This one looks healthier than this one.

They're two different varieties.

I believe this one is Tifblue and I believe this is Climax.

- Right.

- But the main reason this one doesn't look as well as green as this one is because it's got a crop of blueberries on it.

But we need to lower the pH from 7, down to at least 5.5 or at least 4.9 it's got to get below 5.2.

We've got to get it below 5.2 for these blueberries to flourish.

And the way to do that, it tells me on the back on the instructions, it says the soil pH should be within the range of 4.8 to 5.5.

I disagree with the 5.5.

- You disagree with that.

All right.

[laughing] - It says if the pH is above this range apply 2/10ths pound of elemental sulfur per 100 square feet for each 1/10th unit the pH is above 5.2.

I counted the number of 10ths between 5.2 and 7 and I ended up with about 26 of them.

So I need 2/10ths of a pound of elemental sulfur per 10th.

Did the math, bottom line is I need 5.2 pounds of elemental sulfur per 100 square feet, is what I need.

Okay, I had done a little, I stipped this off and I think there's about 50 square feet around each of these blueberries because those blueberry roots are going to go out as far as the soil is kind to them.

and the further they can go out, the more moisture they can get.

- Right.

- So I'm gonna spread that out a little bit.

- Okay.

- Now, this is a common acidifying product that you can find at the local lawn and garden centers around, but this is not elemental sulfur.

This is 30% sulfur.

To get elemental sulfur, you're probably gonna have to go to a farmer's co-op or something like that somewhere agricultural that's used to selling to farmers.

We can make this work since it's 30%.

Elemental sulfur is 90%.

So we have to use three times as much of this to get the amount of sulfur out here that we need to.

- Which can be done.

- But now, if we were using regular sulfur, regular sulfur is white, this has-- you'll see some of that as I'm putting this out.

I would say it's going to look like it's snowed out here, we've got to put that much out.

So, with that being said, are you ready for me to go ahead?

- I'm ready.

- And let's start trying to improve-- we're going to try to improve the environment for these blueberries.

- Now let's do that, let's do that.

- My target is 2.6 pounds per plant of elemental sulfur.

This is a six-pound bag.

I'm going to put it all out.

- We'll put it all out.

- Each of these plants is going to get a bag.

- So, a bag a plant.

- That's right.

All right.

See the sulfur blowing?

Okay, the Bermuda grass may discolor a little bit because it doesn't really like acid soils.

- So how long do you think before we start to see any changes in the pH?

- Not tomorrow.

- Not tomorrow.

- pH changes do not happen overnight.

- All right.

- So if you've got a problem, the sooner you can treat the better.

Some of this pH change won't occur, you know, till next year but these improved acidifiers are time-released.

Some of them will be released earlier than others.

And you know, you don't want a drastic change and then it start going the other way immediately.

You only should have to do this, actually, once you get the pH low, as long as you don't add lime to it, it should stay down.

With liming and raising pH, you may have to do that every four or five years but there's really no need to soil test every year, I would soil test every two or three years and every three or four years even.

- Awesome, so let me ask you this.

Should one water that in, or?

- You can, it'll probably make it start to work quicker.

Don't water it to the point where it'll run off.

You don't want to wash any of it away.

You want it all to go down into the root system.

- All right, Mr. D as always, we appreciate the demonstration.

So we will let you get to that other blueberry plant over there.

- Okay, good deal.

[upbeat country music] - It seems that there's an aphid species for every plant species that is out there.

This is our tomato plant.

And as you can see here, it has aphids.

Aphids have piercing, sucking mouth parts.

They love plant sap.

This can actually weaken the plant.

So here's what you can do.

Instead of pulling out the harsh chemicals, you can use low impact chemicals.

So I would suggest something like insecticidal soap.

Make sure you read and follow the label on that, and neem oil.

You don't want to spray any of these pesticides during the heat of the day, but again read and follow the label.

If you decide not to use any of the low impact pesticides, don't fear.

Lady beetle larvas love to eat aphids.

So if you see those beneficials on your tomato plants, or any of your plants for that matter just let the beneficials just do their job.

They will control those aphids for you.

[upbeat country music] - All right Amy, let's talk about landscape insects and let's first start with, what is IPM?

We hear that term all the time.

- Yeah, that's a big fancy word, basically, and it means integrated pest management.

And the goal behind IPM is to not focus just on the chemical control method, but it's to utilize the other methods of control because often chemical control may not be needed.

- Okay.

- So basically what we want to do with IPM is we are going to first determine what's going on, number one.

- Okay.

Number one.

- Specifically with insects.

So that would be the ability to be able to recognize insect damage from other disease or potentially human error or animal.

My dog has flattened several grasses as of late and I was trying to figure out what was going on and now I know, but, so recognizing what type of damage we might actually have going on first.

- Okay.

- And then when we move into the insect world, of course it's obviously become very important with our pollinators.

- Sure.

- Pollinators are on the news right now.

And many times we don't actually need to take control measures.

So with that IPM, we have cultural controls and that can be anything from keeping the weeds down because insects also harbor in weeds.

Weeds also compete for nutrients with your plants that weaken your plants, and therefore sometimes make insect infestation a little more feasible.

We always talk about plants are like people and the weaker the person, the more susceptible we are to issues and same thing with the plant.

So, and then of course we have mechanical, which would be anything from pruning, proper pruning, to remove let's say a branch that may have insect eggs overwintering on it.

Maybe just a little bit of diseased or destroyed tissue that may have some damage that we need to go ahead and get off.

And then sanitizing the area to get up all of that possibly dropped leaf litter that may have overwintering eggs on it as well.

And then we also have what we call the biologicals.

- Ah ha.

- And this is where it gets kind of fancy and scientific.

Now folks always like to ask about, well I'm going to go buy ladybugs to put out in my yard.

And here's the kicker.

If you don't have a food source for the ladybugs, - Guess what happens to them.

- They're going to leave.

- They're gonna leave.

- So what I usually tell folks is why don't we start to look around and let's first see what type of beneficials we're noticing because often if we don't have a major infestation yet and we have beneficials present they're going to do the job for us.

So give them a chance.

And that's pretty much where we move into developing or deciding if we need a chemical spray it's determining our threshold of activity.

- And that needs to be the last thing.

- The last thing.

- The last thing.

- Yeah.

And even then you don't have to go hardcore.

You know, we have these oil sprays, we have insecticidal soaps.

We have what I call the good old coffee cup with water and a squirt of soap in there for Japanese beetles.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and it works just great.

- Sure does.

- So that would be the last approach would be the chemical approach is to where we determine what type of insect we actually have occurring before we jump in.

I call that know before you go.

- Know before you go.

- Yeah.

- Now what else do we need to know about plant material for insects?

- Well, with what's it's really, really important and that kind of gets into it, and any extension agent can talk to you about it or master gardeners, but there's different insect damage caused by different insects.

And sometimes it can get a little bit confusing.

And I did bring some trick samples here.

But you know, we were talking about it before and I'd say, when we see holes in the leaves we have many different things that can cause holes in the leaves.

Now this right here, to be quite honest with you, I'm infatuated with this.

[Chris laughs] I think this is phenomenal and I had a plant that looked like this, but we had a sample come in a couple of weeks ago in Williamson County and they wanted to spray.

This is just a small native leafcutter bee that does not sting.

It's not damaging the plant.

It just takes a beautiful little perfect circle and it'll use it to make nesting.

So this is not something we would actually treat for.

- Right.

- Whereas if you didn't know, you might pull out that insecticide and start spraying blindly.

- Sure would.

- Now another one that I brought that is very interesting to me often.

- And a good one.

- This is a great one.

And we get this all the time.

This is where it becomes really specific to know that host plant you're dealing with.

This is actually not insect damage.

Right now, we're looking at a bacterial pathogen on laurel.

We know the host.

We know what this damage looks like on laurel.

We don't spray.

- That's right.

- So it gets just a little bit tricky sometimes, but then there are other instances let's say, and we're going to use this piece as a nice example.

We've got holes.

These are getting to be rather large holes.

Okay, this is probably a little weathering, but when we flip it over to the other side.

- Tell-tale sign.

How bout that.

- What we have are some carpenter bees.

Now I'm going to tell you guys another trick as well.

You hear about spraying for carpenter bees, or pushing a little insecticide down in the hole.

- Heard that.

- Number one, don't caulk the hole.

My mother will kill me for saying this.

- A lot of people do it.

- She caulks the holes, and the bee, he's gonna to come back out.

So you now have two holes versus one, but this is actually a shed, from a piece of a shed that fell down because of carpenter bee destruction.

- It fell down.

- It fell down.

It collapsed completely because the entire structure was covered in these guys.

And a nice heavy wind came along and it crumpled to the ground.

- Impressive.

- Now, folks want to spray for this.

- Sure.

- Another story I'll give real quick, dad used to impress us kids.

Anybody knows about carpenter bees knows that the males don't actually sting.

So my dad was the superhero who used to kill carpenter bees with his hands when we were little.

[Chris laughing] So if you get brave and you want to go about that way you're welcome to do that, but we also have some perimeter sprays or barricades where we basically treat or seal the wood.

And then again, we have carpenter bee traps now and they are actually pretty effective I have to say.

- And we have time for a few more.

- Yeah.

Well this is another really big one on the let's say Leyland cyprus, arborvitae, any of those evergreens.

Probably the only evergreen that I have not seen this guy on I'd say is pine trees, but we often get calls.

I know you get them too.

"My evergreen tree is browning, it's turning brown.

It's turning brown, I don't know what's going on."

It's very gradual, not immediately, but it looks like it's bronze.

Then it gets a nice sheen to it and then the entire branch browns out.

Well, this is a tricky one.

This guy is actually called the spruce spider mite.

Well, we immediately want to try to treat for this, right?

Well here's the kicker, the spruce spider mite's not active in the summertime.

They're only active in the fall or winter.

- Likes cooler weather.

- Right.

So this would be an example of something that we would actually wait and we would wait and treat in the fall because the insect is not present.

So there is no need.

We are spraying for no reason.

And I don't know about you, but I know I don't like to waste my time or my money.

- Amy, that's a good stuff.

We appreciate that.

- Thank you.

Yes sir.

- All right.

[gentle country music] - We can see that our sweet corn here clearly needs some attention.

This was all planted at the same time, it's the same variety, but obviously this sweet corn got a little boost probably when the lawn folks came by and fertilized this Bermuda grass.

A routine side dressing is necessary for non-leguminous plants.

A rule of thumb, a mound of nitrogen is about a half a pound of actual nitrogen per 100 foot of row.

We've got 25 foot of row here.

We're putting out 34-0-0 so I need about 6 ounces of 34-0-0 to get the amount of actual in out here that I need.

And I'm going to do that, I'm going to try to put this out just as evenly as I can.

I don't want to run out.

I would rather have to come over it twice.

It should change the color of these corn plants pretty quickly.

With sweet corn, one side dressing is all you need.

Commercial farmers, when the corn gets about 14 inches tall they go in there and they will side dress and they're done.

[gentle country music] - All right, Mr. D, it's a Q and A session.

- Let's do it.

- Lot of good questions here.

All right.

Here's our first viewer email.

I like this one.

"Chris, help!

"I know you get this question several times a year "and usually in May and September, "but we had moles blowing up "our yard in January and February this year "and without touching the yards on either side of us, "and we have had our long time local lawn "maintenance company put down chemicals "in the spring and fall to control, eliminate them.

"What can we do to get moles out of our yard?

And who can we call, Ghostbusters?"

[laughing] Doug and Gigi in Bartlett, Tennessee.

Ghostbusters, right?

- No it'd be mole busters.

- No, mole busters.

Right.

Mole busters.

[laughing] - You know, this tells me... - Mole question, a mole question.

- This tells me that Doug and Gigi have good organic matter in their soil.

- Uh huh, uh huh.

- They have lots of earthworms and moles love earthworms.

They just need to get in touch with their hunter instinct.

Buy a good scissors-type mole trap and find a long tunnel.

And set that trap over that long tunnel and try to catch them.

One mole can tunnel over two hundred feet in one night.

- That's a lot.

- So they think they've got a lot of moles.

Probably not, you may have one or two.

- So why the long tunnel though?

- The long tunnel is probably a transportation tunnel.

If you just put your trap over a little small tunnel that's a feeding tunnel, probably, so the mole will tunnel over here and grab a worm and have a tunnel over here and grab a worm, and he may not ever go back to those little short tunnels.

But if you can find a long tunnel, four, five foot long, then he's probably-- that might be a transportation tunnel.

Leave it there for a couple of nights.

A couple of days, and if he doesn't catch anything move it somewhere else, just move it and I guarantee you you'll catch him.

And if you use a good trap.

Now I've not had any luck with the spear-type traps.

- Okay.

Those harpoon and... - Harpoons, I have not had any luck with those.

I've tried them and I but the scissors-type...

I'm talking about, I probably catch 14 or 15 moles a year.

- [laughing] Okay.

- And I live out in the woods, you know, and so I'll catch one and I'm okay for two or three weeks and then another one will come, and I catch them.

- So they-- the trap works.

- The trap works, the trap works, but mole, poison peanuts, baits and things like that, you know, moles are carnivorous.

They like nice, juicy earthworms.

So why would one want to eat a poison peanut?

- Right.

- You know, that just blows my mind.

I'm thinking the mole's gonna see that poison peanut and he's going to go around it and go find him a mole.

I mean earthworm, but... trap 'em.

- Trap 'em.

- Yeah.

- All right, Doug and Gigi.

[laughing] Scissor trap.

All right.

We know the scissor trap does work.

Thank you for the question.

Mole busters.

- Mole busters.

Maybe that's what I need to do when I retire.

- Mole busters.

[laughing] Trap moles.

All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have ants eating the blossoms of my "yellow crooked neck squash.

"What do I do about ants?

"I have hand pollinated, but the squash are small "and falling off.

"Please help me.

I have worked so hard this year to do better than last year."

And this is Idy from Port St. Joe, Florida on YouTube.

Ants eating the blossoms.

But here's something too.

All right, that we should take into consideration.

But the squash is still small and falling off, even though if the hand pollinating.

So that tells me something about pollination there, right?

- I've never seen an ant eat a squash.

You know, ants are generally beneficial in a garden.

Now they're going to be around if you have aphids.

- Sure, sure.

- And, because aphids secrete honeydew and ants like that.

But the ants aren't the problem.

What do you think?

Do you think the squash didn't get pollinated or?

- I don't think it got adequately pollinated.

- Even though she tried to hand pollinate-- if you're trying to hand pollinate a male blossom with a male blossom, it's probably not gonna work.

And sometimes you only have male blossoms on the plant for awhile.

- And that does happen.

- And I can understand that being confusing, but... - 'Cause the male blossoms actually appear first then you would get the females, but you know the difference between a male of the female because the female will have a little ovary that looks like a squash.

- Right.

- Under the pedal.

But yeah, I'm thinking inadequate pollination.

So you gotta make sure that, you know, go back and forth with the male and the female.

And then of course environmental conditions that may be some stresses there, but I just think it's pollination.

Maybe you don't have any bee activity, you know, maybe but you can still, you know, hand pollinate but you got to make sure you've got the male and the female to do that.

- Yeah.

That's right.

- Right.

Because again, I mean they're small and falling off and that's the problem.

- Biology, good old-fashioned biology.

- Good old-fashioned biology Idy.

So we thank you for that question.

Mr. D that was fun.

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 joining us.

If you want to learn more about soil pH or integrated pest management, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

We have information on all the topics we talked about today, and many others.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]