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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Winter cover crops are a great way to build up your garden soil in the winter.

Also, boxwood shrubs are popular in the landscape.

Today we are going to talk about them.

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 Carl Wayne Hardeman, Mr.

Carl is a master gardener right here in Shelby County.

And Carol Reese is with us.

- Hey Chris.

- Carol is an ornamental horticulture specialist with UT Extension.

Thanks for joining us today.

- Well, thank you.

- We're going to talk cover crops.

- Cover crops.

- And I know you know a little bit about cover crops.

- I do.

- So let's start with this one.

What are cover crops?

- Okay, well, you know, you could just say it's farming with no bare ground.

- [Chris] Okay.

- I mean, you could say that and essentially what you don't want in a garden, is any bare ground.

- Okay, so, then why do we need to plant cover crop?

- Well, there's a lot of good reasons and I kind of like to put it in context.

And one is that we as gardeners and farmers I think we have a responsibility to at least preserve the quality of our soil and improve it.

So there's a full range of practices called regenerative farming of which cover crops is a part of it, to build soil health over time, which is important because we don't digest food, the microbes in our gut do.

Okay?

So we want to eat healthy plants and healthy plants don't digest food either.

The microbes in the soil digest it and then grow into their roots and then inject it in there.

So, that's why if you have bare ground, there's nothing for the microbes to eat, and they die.

And so that's another reason for having, the reasons, well, prevent or reduce soil erosion.

- [Chris] Right.

- We all know, like Dr.

John Bradley said, one time these farmers think that a beautifully plowed field is beautiful, right?

- [Chris] Right.

- And it's out there doing soil and wind erosion, you know?

So, we want to prevent that.

We want to reduce compaction by improving health, and essentially what we're trying to do is, there was a quote this morning about a friend of mine, said It's not really how much rain you get, it's how much you keep.

- [Chris] Uh-huh.

- So, they, if you have cover crop on there, you're retaining much more of the moisture.

And if you look at the side of the road, how green all those plants and trees are because they have got good soil structure and all these things.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And another increase in soil health or fertility, and that's essentially you're feeding the microbes in the soil and that, another increase in soil structure, such as voracity as this year's crops die, they leave little, the roots decompose, leaving little air and water channels which is a good thing.

- [Chris] That's good.

- And frankly, a lot of plants produce or scavenge nutrients.

- So what kind of cover crops can we use?

- Well you know just about anything.

Like, if you're, it depends if you're trying to do this in the summer or spring, fall, winter, right now we're kind of talking about winter.

- [Chris] Right.

- So something that grows during the winter, things like greens, turnip greens, rutabagas and so forth.

My hakurei turnips that grew all last winter, this spring I'm still pulling them up.

They're still great big white turnips.

Of course we didn't have a winter.

Annual rye grass, winter wheat, and stuff like that.

You know, when y'all were talking about last week about chickweed, right, you get chickweed.

Well, this depends on how in the spring, how late can you wait before you start planting?

Well, if you plant a good thick rye or winter wheat, it'll choke out the chickweed.

So, you can do it organically without spraying anything, okay?

Like I said various grains, various legumes, clover, vetch, you know peas.

Even, well I don't know if it'd be a cover crop, but I grew fava beans last winter.

You know, fava beans like cold weather.

So, anyway, always trying something, right?

- [Chris] Always trying.

- Experimenting about something.

- You're a master gardener, you know you gotta do that.

- Everything is experimenting, no failures.

- That's right.

And I guess somebody is probably thinking, hey, aren't some of these weeds that are out here considered to be cover crops?

- Why not?

- Why couldn't they be?

- I'd rather have chickweed there than bare grass.

- That's right, cause he just mentioned.

- And the Land Institute, West Jackson, is growing grains in prairie grass that has 231 species of plants in there, that 230 of them are weeds.

You know, soil diversity.

- [Carol] How do you define a weed?

- That's right, that's right.

A weed is something that's hard to pull up.

(Chris laughs) - Okay, we're pretty much the ones who define it as a weed.

- Right, if you're gardening for wild life, they're like please, please, leave the weeds.

- That's right, that's true.

- Let me ask you about the legumes.

So why are legumes important as a cover crop?

- Okay.

- Cause I've seen it all the time.

- Yeah, well, Mr.

Chris, the answer is they fix nitrogen out of the air into the ecomicorisal fungi.

- [Chris] Wow, okay!

- That grow in the side of the roots and they take the nitrogen out of the air and fix it to the nodule and so it's in the soil.

So you're getting free nitrogen.

- [Chris] Free.

- By the way, you know where the, this is a rhetorical question, you know where most of the nitrogen comes from?

And it's not that plant Millington, but it's from lightning.

Lightning and that and the microbes which are tiny enough to be able to break down larger molecules and separate from that.

- Well let me ask you about this too.

About the cover crop, so do we need to till those under or what, you just leave them there?

- I would like, like John, I'm following one of my heroes.

Dr.

John Bradley and somebody come up with a good reason to till, you know, somebody and let's just start with, if you had roots on your plants, would you cut off 99 percent of the roots?

(Chris laughs) You wouldn't, would you?

Well, the root system of the plant, since its been fed by all of these fungus roots, is spread over a vast area.

That's why it's able to pick up nutrients and water and everything from a wide area and grow into the plant.

If you go out there and till, you're just cutting up all of that web, that web that exists that feeds the plants.

So that's one, that's good enough for me, there's other reasons.

- [Chris] Okay, okay.

- You don't till it, you kill it and seed through it.

- You drill it.

- You drill it, right.

- Right.

- Yes, but you're going to have to do something to get the cover crop down, to be able to do that.

- Well, West Jackson does it, the Land Institute, but yeah.

Another one of my heroes, Sandy Wise, is County Agent down in Union County, Mississippi, he's going to take a drill, an actual drill and drill holes in his garden.

And put plant, and you can mulch and kill your weeds smother them out.

You know you don't have to spray.

- Good stuff, man, we appreciate it.

- I love it.

- Appreciate that information, Mr.

Carl, it's good stuff.

[upbeat country music] - All the annuals here are begonias, but as you can see, they don't look even.

And one of the reasons is, all annuals in the nursery are given growth retardants to help branch and keep the plant compact.

And environmental factors are what causes them to grow or be stunted.

Like this begonia here.

Nice and compact and blooming, but not filled in like it should have.

And then you have other problems here of stem rot that has killed these first two begonias.

And, I'm standing here and there's water standing on top of the ground and I'm squishing.

There's something wrong with the irrigation system that's not evenly distributing water to all of these plants.

And some are way too wet, and others are getting just the right amount of water to be nice and even.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Ms.

Carol, boxwoods.

Before we start on that, singular or plural?

- Plural, I mean as the singular form of the word is plural.

- [Chris] It's plural, okay.

- Yes.

- Boxwood, okay, I always wondered that, because I think Dell might have mentioned that to me a couple of times, so, alright.

So let's talk a little bit about boxwood.

- And you're also saying it properly, boxwood, a lot of people just call it box, common box, it used to be boxwood is one word.

- Okay, alright, so let's talk about the cultivars.

- Well, let's talk about species.

- [Chris] Oh, species, alright, okay.

- And I always tell the story when I start talking about boxwood, when I worked in a garden center in school, a man came in and said, I need to buy one.

The UPS backed over my boxwood.

- [Chris] Right.

- And I said, what species, you know, is it Japanese little leaf, is it Korean box, is it common box?

I don't know.

So, we've got to know which one, and then when we get into the species, all the different cultivars because they all look a little bit different.

So we actually didn't have the same one he had, so if you get, if you do put boxwood in your landscape, one thing I want to start with right away is make a note somewhere of what exact species and cultivar you purchased.

So if you ever do need to replace one, and you probably will.

- [Chris] And you probably will, right.

- You'll know exactly what to ask for.

- [Chris] Okay, alright.

- The one that I, everybody around here loves to call American Box, there is no American boxwood.

Because it's, they are, if it's of the English or common box, the one that you normally see in the formal gardens, I was taught to call that common boxwood.

It's actually North African.

- [Chris] Wow.

- [Carol] Western Europe and Eastern Asian origin.

All of them are.

I'm wondering if it got called American because it was so well used in the Williamsburg, colonial Williamsburg, it's a very popular plant.

But common boxwood to me is the more proper name.

It's a picky plant.

(Chris laughs) It's a picky, picky plant.

It does not like our hot sun.

It does not like our cold wind.

- [Chris] Oh boy.

- Both will make it turn bronzey orange.

And so I always, it's like Goldilocks, it's too hot, it's too cold, this is just right.

You've got find just the right site for them and then the root zone, because if they have any sort of poor drainage issues, they're out of here too.

And they get root rot in the cold, so, all kinds of things.

- [Chris] That's a lot of problems.

- People say, you hate boxwood.

I don't hate boxwood, I like boxwood.

I just like to see them well sited in a, boxwood can be a beautiful thing.

As extension agents, you and I learn to hate plants we get a lot of phone calls about.

- [Chris] That's right (laughs).

- Please plant something else!

- [Chris] That's right (laughs).

- Give me a little green shrub that's going to do well where you need a little green shrub.

So the common box, it has a more pointy leaf.

And this is how I identified it for the man, I said the common box has a more pointed leaf and it smells a little bit like cat urine.

- [Chris] Oh gosh.

- He said yeah, that's it.

Some people actually like that smell.

- [Chris] Okay.

- But it's an interesting smell.

So, it's going to be dark green, needs some sun, I mean, needs some shade.

And needs some protection from the wind.

We do, in the Korean little leaf types and the Japanese little leafs and the Korean types, they will take more hot sun.

- [Chris] Okay.

- [Carol] They can still brightens up in the winter, but they have bred now, and they have kind of cultivars, to me the whole issue with the boxwood is making it stay green.

It's hard to keep them green if they're not happily sited.

So the Japanese little leaf are more suited to our hot sun and if you get one like winter Jim, naturally some of these they have gone back and crossed with the English box or common box.

Boxer sempre virens, and you know I love to teach a little bit of Latin.

- I know you do.

Go right ahead.

- What does semper fi mean?

- It means always live.

- Always faithful.

- Yeah, semper fi means live.

- Does it?

- Semper fidelis means always faithful.

- Semper fi is short for that, right?

- Yeah.

- So anyway, semper virens is always green, semper virens, you see a lot of things named semper virens, it means it'll keep its green color through the wintertime.

So then within that group you'll have some really cool ones, like Gramdambly or Derunk, which are tall pyramidal forms.

But everybody likes to like that little bitty mounding edging box we call the suffriticosa.

Suffriticosa is just a horrible plant for this area, it is not happy, it doesn't do well.

It looks sparse, and I see people trying and trying to make it grow where they want it to grow.

I see a lot of people do restorations of old historic gardens and the original plan called for this boxwood, so they keep putting it in there and keep killing it.

And I like to quote Darryl on that, he said they are sacrificing pragmatism for the sake of historical you know, so I just, let's get over it.

Let's go to one that actually will do well.

So I do like them, they just need to be well sited.

- [Chris] Right.

- Also, and I like read this somewhere, it's so true, about the time you take a pruner to them, most people shear them into such unnatural forms why would it matter anyway?

But I fell in love with them one day wandering around the Ralston Arboretum, I found the collection that had been allowed to grow naturally.

And nobody had touched them with their shears.

And they're beautiful, they can be kind of frothy and weeping and all sorts of cool textures.

So, if you're going to put it in the hot sun, the message is, go with the Japanese little leaf types or the Korean types and you're going to have a lot better luck with it.

I have one that's called unraveled, it's actually a weeping boxwood that I've had in a pot for many years.

In the hot sun and the cold wind, and it's done beautifully.

So you've got to find the right boxwood for the job.

- Okay, so stay green, that's good.

- Yes.

- Okay, go ahead.

- I've got to talk about pruning them because this is what people do badly.

- I was just about to say that because you know we get more questions about pruning boxwood than anything else.

- Number one, don't prune anything.

- [Chris] Uh-oh.

- Anything.

- [Chris] Anything?

- Anything in the fall.

- [Chris] What?

- After August, you should be through.

If you prune anything after August, and boxwood is a great example and it has time to put out new growth and then it's extremely sensitive to frost.

So you're going to get all these brown tips, I see it happen over and over.

In the landscape, we've got this horrible little burnt shrub because they pruned it at the wrong time.

So if you do prune it at the end of the winter, that's when you want to do it.

- [Chris] End of winter?

- Right.

And you should properly prune it by going and doing what's called plucking.

You go in and remove some of the growth, don't shear it, you want to let light into it as best you can.

- [Chris] Right.

- And that's going to keep it healthier and more - But you know folks like to shear it, they like to make balls and right across the top.

You know that.

- And you get this question a lot too, we got this giant old boxwood, what do we do to control the size?

Can we cut it down?

Will it leaf out?

So what do you tell them?

I give them about half, 50/50 chance.

- That's what I tell them.

- They won't leaf out, they'll leave out.

- Yeah, leave out, there you go.

Yeah, exactly right.

- You can reduce its size gradually over a few years by doing the plucking method.

If you reduce, reduce, reduce, allowing it to produce new growth, in the interior until it's still a healthy plant.

You can reduce its size, you just can't do it all at once.

You can't reduce it all at once.

- Okay, well, we have a little time left, American Boxwood Society.

- Yes, if you really love boxwood, and I don't, I do like boxwood, the American Boxwood Society is a great society to join, learn all about the different cultivars and what does well.

There's a splendid boxwood collection as you mentioned Dell Skaggs at the Dixon Gardening Gallery right here in town, and Cheekwood, Cheekwood also has a very good boxwood collection.

And they often have boxwood meetings, at Cheekwood, if you want to join one of those societies and learn a lot more about boxwood.

- And I'm pretty sure Dell could teach you a lot about pruning techniques.

- Oh, Dell, Dell's awesome with the boxwood, he's my go-to guy for boxwood, no doubt - Absolutely, alright we appreciate that good information, Carol, thank you much.

- Alright, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - These are some snapdragons that I am going to move up 'cause they've been in these little seed trays for about eight weeks.

And so, what I do is I take a little bamboo, you can use a pencil eraser, anything that will help push that plug up.

And what I do is kinda squeeze the cell a little, telling it it's time to come out.

And then I just push, there's a hole in the bottom.

So, I just push the plug up, squeeze the bottom so he doesn't fall back in there, and then I pull him out.

And this is what I'm gonna plant.

This is my potting mix.

Fill the pot about half way.

But I'm just gonna take this little plug, and this is a single-stem, so I can bury it fairly deep.

So, I just put him back in there, and I back fill.

And I kinda tap it around, and that one is ready to go.

We'll water it after- Always, always water after you up-pot.

[upbeat country music] Alright, this is our Q and A session.

Mr.

Carl, you help us out, okay?

- Okay.

- Here's our first viewer e-mail.

"What should I have planted in my garden already for the fall and early winter?"

And this is from Leonard in Boliver, Tennessee.

So, what needs to be in the ground already?

- Well, it's a vegetable garden?

- We don't know.

- Yeah, we don't know but I, these could go either way.

I'm a huge fan of the chards.

Swiss chard especially - [Chris] Beautiful plant.

- Yeah, especially the Rainbow Lights and Neon Lights, ruby colored, orange, yellow, golden.

And they hold up very well too.

You know, hard freezes.

- [Chris] Okay.

- So, don't get any of that flowering kale, those flowering cabbages, once we have a good hard frost, they're outta here.

- [Chris] Gone.

- Well, I like turnip greens.

Especially the hakurei or Tokyo or just right, whatever you want to call it.

They grow all winter, kind of like a rutabaga.

- [Chris] Okay.

- And there's a beautiful, if again, they're looking for something ornamental, as well as edible, there's a red mustard that's just beautiful.

Little delsaki red, gorgeous big broad purple leaves.

- Red cells, I think.

- Yes, there's more than one.

- That's lettuce, I'm sorry.

- Lettuce is red, yeah, that is red, though.

Some of the lettuce would be an option as well.

- Can you plant those things now that we're talking about though?

- It's a bit late because it's a little tiny baby and we have a hard freeze, it will probably knock it out.

But who knows?

We haven't had a winter.

I just planted a few a couple weeks ago.

I planted some of the hardier forms of kale, like red boar Russian Kale.

And the Blue Russian kale, they're extremely tough and will take a hard freeze.

And some of the chards, some of the Oriental cabbages the pok choy and Bok Choi, maybe, you know, just depends on how soon we have a real hard freeze.

- Okay, I'm assuming we'll have a hard freeze at some point.

- We assume we might, but we have mild winters sometimes where it really didn't get cold.

- Okay, alright, Mr.

Leonard, hope that helps you out.

Alright, here's our next viewer e-mail.

"Should I put my hibiscus in pots and bring them in for them winter?"

This is from Ms.

Ann.

So, yes, everyone's now gearing up and hunkering down for winter, so what do you think about that one?

- Is it a winter or I mean it is a hardy hibiscus or tropical hibiscus?

- See, we don't know.

I don't know if she knows.

- The hardy, this is the perennial hibiscus, of course, will die down in the winter and come back and bloom.

The Chinese hibiscus, the tropical forms, usually got more gaudy, smaller flowers, you would need to bring that in.

I just hate to, you know?

(Chris laughs) You know, you can buy them again, they never look good through the winter, they struggle by the time you put them out and get them back into a state of good health, you've lost a month of summer bloom to me.

But if you wanted to, sure, if you've got a good bright sunny window or something like that where they might get a lot of light, treat them for insects.

- [Chris] Yeah, I was going to mention that.

Definitely treat them for insects.

- Cause if you've brought some insects in, they're going to multiply.

- That's right.

- And find the sunniest place you can, keep them just barely watered, don't over water it.

- Okay, get as much of the root ball as you possibly can, put it in the pot.

- Yeah.

- Okay, if you want to bring it inside, you can do it that way.

- Yes.

- Okay, alright Ms.

Ann.

Here's our next viewer e-mail.

"I planted purple fountain grass at my mailbox.

Do I leave it in the ground all winter?"

Is one question, the second question is, "Do I need to cut it back once it turns brown?"

And this is from Mark, so?

- I see purple fountain grass sold as a perennial a lot of times in the big box stores.

And it is not.

- It is not, okay.

- It is not.

It's an annual.

It, purple fountain grass, if you're talking about pennisetum rubrum, - [Chris] Rubrum, probably what you see at the big box stores.

- Right, no, it's not going to make it and you might as well let the frost kill it and buy it again.

Not worth digging up, trying to over-winter it.

There are some other red foliaged grasses that could come back, the pennisetum properiums gonna be a great big one, it's been coming back for us at the station.

But it doesn't have those pretty fluffy grass seed plumes that they want from the purple fountain grass.

- [Chris] Which I like to, yeah, I actually have that at home.

- I do too.

But it's an annual, I'd buy it again every year.

- Okay.

- As far as any of that ornamental grass, you know, it's structure.

It's pretty, brown is not an ugly color, you know?

And I think about the critters and the, I've got a lot of home birds that roost inside my, I call them knock 'em out roses, you know, and inside, I don't trim various things up until the spring because I want a place for the critters.

- Remember I said don't prune anything after August.

I leave my grasses standing absolutely all winter whether they're annuals or not, because I like the way they look in the winter and they do provide food, you're absolutely right, Carl, good point.

- Glad you brought that up, man, you're right.

Okay.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can I leave my banana tree in the ground through the winter or should I bring it in?"

And this is from Paul.

So everybody's again, you know, looking forward to the winter.

So this is banana tree.

You want to start on that, Mr.

Carl, what do you think?

- Well, you gotta, there's two things.

The root is really what you want to and that's fairly shallow and so what I have done in the past is trim it back maybe a foot or so.

Dig it up, take it and just throw it in the corner of the garage and but what you're trying to avoid, is freezing.

- [Chris] Right.

- Which is not that big a problem, you could mulch over it.

The other thing is our soil tends to be wet in the winter.

And you can rot the root on that, although they grow in wet, like down in the Cayman Islands.

They're growing in soggy land, but they can rot here.

- And I'd like to offer him another option, which is there is a hardy banana, the more than one, there's a couple actually.

A small dwarf form, a yellow bloom in form, I believe is musa velutina, but musa bijou, the bijou banana is a monster, you know, you gotta put it in a good place because it's going to become an enormous grove over time.

But it's hardy to ten below.

- [Chris] Wow.

- You don't have to dig it up, freeze it, kill it down in the ground, and then come spring, once it gets warm, here it comes again.

So, you're gonna have a great big banana, probably 15 feet tall that's going to come back for you every year without digging it up.

- Okay, yeah, my neighbor actually you know mulches it.

Puts a mulch, puts like a black tub over it over the top of it and does that.

And it seems, and it works.

Comes back again every year.

Alright, so here's our next viewer email.

"My cryptomeria is turning brown near the center trunk.

Should I be concerned?"

And this is from Mr.

Billy.

It's turning brown near the center trunk.

- You know that's - But you know what too?

But we've had so much hot, dry weather.

- Yes.

- If they have not been irrigated.

You know what happens next, right?

- Yeah.

Needle drop.

- The needles will start dropping.

- Yeah, but it could also just be shaded out.

Any tree, the leaves in the interior that are not getting sunlight are a debit.

They suck sulfosynthate from the little leaves that are getting sunlight that are producing the photosynthate that feeds the tree, so the tree says, hey, I'm getting rid of these jokers, they're freeloaders, they're not helping me out.

- [Chris] You've gotta compensate, right.

- I'm done with them, so that could be all it is.

A lot of times at work what we'll do with a lot of our conifers is go in the interior, just knock those loose needles out and shake them out, and then it looks fine, and there's nothing wrong with the plant.

- Right, but again, thinking about our recent, you know - Yes.

- Drought like conditions, moderate drought-like conditions.

- But if the new growth looks fine.

- Yeah, the new growth is fine, of course we don't know that.

- Right.

- But yeah, but I didn't realize you could just go in and shake them.

But I know they have to compensate, right, so they can shade it, okay.

Alright, Mr.

Billy, hope that helps you out.

Well, Mr.

Carl, Miss Carol, we're out of time.

- Thank you.

- Alright, thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an e-mail or letter.

The e-mail 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.

We have more information on cover crops and boxwood online at FamilyPlotGarden.com.

While you're there, take a look at the garden calendar.

Thanks for watching, 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]