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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Gardening is a great way to reach and teach kids life lessons like responsibility and consequences.

Also, you want to make sure you don't get hurt in the garden.

Today we're going to talk about garden safety.

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 Dr. Kelly.

Dr. Kelly is a retired professor of horticulture.

And Mr. D is here.

Thanks for joining us.

This is going to be fun, Dr. Kelly.

- Well, yeah.

- But guess what?

School is about to start up again, right?

Soon!

- Not long.

- So I understand you have some back to school projects?

- Yeah, yeah, yep.

I do a lot of programs with agents, like 4H agents and we do a lot of different things and do school programs.

And work with teachers to have ideas for things to do and its becoming so important that we engage our young people into nature.

And I was showing you in this week's Time Magazine, there is an article about how it has now been scientifically proven that the time we spend in nature has therapeutic value.

It lowers blood pressure, it makes us feel better, lowers anxiety and depression levels.

So there's a lot of really good reasons to engage kids in outdoor activities early on.

And to do it through school or at home, you know, either way is great.

But I have some things here that I want to share with you that I have done in that past with kids and one of the fun things that we have done is to show children how to press flowers, or press leaves, or press anything that will go flat between absorbent pieces of newspaper.

And a lot of people would use, like, big encyclopedias or big phone books, or things like that.

And here I've got Queen Anne's Lace and you can see it's pretty flat.

Now that's been in there a while and you put it between pieces of newspaper and then put that in, like, a big book.

Or you can do something small like this.

This is just a little plant press that I made.

You see it's got my name on it so nobody messes with my plant press.

And you connect it with like a rubber band to go around it and again it's got, so I think I do it this way.

It's got the pieces of news print in between the pages and I just did this little petunia yesterday.

And typically you would not be looking at this and messing with it until it got good and dry and then you can pick it up and then do fun things with it.

You can make a collection.

Like a lot of students have to do a wildflower collection or a leaf collection.

So you could do that.

That's a school project that's required for some high school students.

- (Chris) It's nice.

- You know, to do that.

Or you could do a really nice, and these are my four leaf clovers, since I'm Irish.

- (Chris) How about that?

- I'm really lucky.

I can find four leaf clovers.

So I press them and then I frame them.

Or you can get more elaborate and do something like this.

- (Chris) That is nice.

- Really artistic, you know?

And kids are great at this and you just attach the dried plant material with Elmer's glue and, you know, put it in a picture frame.

- Something easy to do for kids.

- Yeah, something fun, gets them outside, gets them collecting things.

And this is a bookmark that's made.

That's the Queen Anne's Lace that I showed you.

And this is really fun and easy for kids to do because this is just card stock.

Then you cut it the same dimension of just old plain clear packing tape.

And the kids don't have to cut it, they just put this thing on there, zip that over there and then they get a hole punch and stick in some yarn, something, you know.

So here's another one.

So all kinds of fun stuff.

- [Chris] Yeah, that is neat.

- Yep.

So that's using, and you can go out with the kids and collect all kind of fun things in the fall with kids.

We do scavenger hunts, we give them a list.

You know, get something stinky, get something sticky, get something fuzzy.

[laughter] - A lot of good stuff.

- Yeah, and I've got to show you this 'cause it's got our Mississippi State stuff on it, right?

So this is like a list of some of the scavenger hunt things that we do.

Something that smells good, something that's got a leaf insect or disease damage.

Something to get the kids out and getting fun things to do.

- That was good stuff.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Tell us what else you have on the table.

- Well, yeah, this is another good thing here.

- Let's talk about that one.

- This is, yeah, let's look at this.

First I'm going to show you this.

Now, you know, a lot of people like getting newspaper and they just throw it away or use it to start fires.

Well, you can make your own little propagation seed cups.

And you just shred up, this is just some newspaper shredded up and put in a bucket or something and get it really good and wet.

And then you get you a cup about this size right here.

You pack all that in there, you know, pack it around.

And then just set it up somewhere to dry.

And then while that's drying you can poke a hole through the bottom for drainage, but you don't have to 'cause it's going to lose water from the sides anyway.

So that's a fun project for kids.

They get to get wet, they get to get messy, which is good for kids.

- (Chris) Yeah, kids like that.

- Yeah, they do.

And then this is something that we have done with the kids, too.

This is a wildflower seed ball.

And all you do is get wild flower seed, or you could just use zinnia or just any kind of flower seed and what you do is you get them out and you just get some old clay from some place.

It's not any good in the garden, you know.

So you get your clay and then you get them to put the seed all in a bucket and they get to get in the mud and get it all like this.

- (Chris) And getting dirty and nasty.

- Getting dirty, yeah.

And then they wipe their face.

Anyway, and then they put them in little balls and set them up and get them hard and then in the fall, when you sow your wildflowers, like in October, they just go out, take 'em home or part of a school garden, throw them out on the edge of the lawn or something where they can, as the winter rains come, and the beat on the soil and spread the seed around.

Like nature, it's kind of like you mimicking nature.

Now, some of the kids get really creative and make little faces.

Like this is a sweet gumball and this child did, I think that's some kind of sea creature.

And this is an old eaten up pine cone.

Yeah, that's a large mouthed bass.

Yeah, see that mouth?

Yeah, he's saying, "Go dogs."

Go Mississippi State.

[laughter] - That's good stuff though, Dr. Kelly.

- And then do you want to show these?

Have we got time?

- We do, we do.

- Okay, this is, I like to encourage, you know how you said responsibility and leadership skills, well this kind of gives them some responsibility.

These are little plant head or plant creatures that you can make and they're made from knee high hose.

Now you fellas probably don't know what that is.

It just goes up to your knee and it's just a hose.

This one's white, this was maybe a nurse.

This was a nurse's or something maybe, I don't know.

Anyway, this is just, you pack soil and you put rye seed.

Like rye grass or creeping red fescue or some small kind of seeded grass right in the bottom or the toe of the stocking.

And then the kids, of course, decorate it.

This one she's got it some ear bobs.

Ear bobs.

(talking over each other) You're too young to know about ear bobs.

Then they put the little eyes, the little googly eyes and then the child has to take care of their plant.

And you put it, this is the wick that brings the moisture up, you know, and then it'll germinate.

Obviously this child did not take care of Hazel here.

She succumbed.

Anyway, you can do a caterpillar like this.

This is, again, it's just the knee high hose that is segmented.

And then the seed is distributed throughout the soil.

This one you just put it in the toe because you don't want hair growing on Hazel's face.

You know, the grass coming out her face.

But on the caterpillar, it's just interspersed, you mix it with the soil first and then just put it in the stocking and then tie a knot in the hose.

These are just knots in here in the hose.

And then of course the child has decorated the face.

- (Chris) How about that?

- And that's just cute as it can be, yeah.

And then the little tail and then the grass comes up.

And I have seen them trim their, they'll cut their grass and this one, I had even one child that let it really grow long and then she plaited it.

- (Chris) How about that?

- Yeah, it's pretty cute, yeah.

So that teaches them some responsibility and the needs of a plant.

They need light, they need water.

You know, those kind of things.

- Dr. Kelly, that's some fun stuff.

I think teachers will really enjoy that.

[gentle country music] - Hardiness.

- Hardiness.

- Always a good one.

- Well, that's what we are, right?

We're pretty hearty, yeah.

But, when you think about plants, and you use the term hardiness, what you're referring to typically is cold hardiness.

You know, the hardiness of that plant to cold temperatures.

And, our plant zones or USDA plant zones are based on that cold hardiness, you know, for where and what.

What are we here in Memphis, we're zone seven?

- Yeah, seven.

- Aren't we seven?

So, that's what-- - Some would say 7B, - Yeah, yeah.

So, that's-- - Depending on where you are.

- So that means we can only grow plants that were hardy, supposedly, that were only hardy from 0 to 10 degrees.

That's as low as they can take, that single digit in there is all they would stand.

And, you know we're always pushing the limit on that, you know.

So, that's what it is, it's the hardiness of the plant to withstand cold temperatures.

And as you know, we can grow things down here that can't grow up north.

Well, you know, obviously because we have warmer winters.

And then if you think about another hardiness, you know there's another zone map that is a heat zone map.

And I know you're familiar with that, Chris, but it's based on- Basically, it's the United States rated on how many days above 86 degrees does that region have.

And, I think Jackson, Mississippi has like four months.

[laughs] - Memphis is not too far behind.

- No, and you go up to Seattle and they have maybe two weeks, you know.

So, and it's mainly, that kind of hardiness mainly has an impact on our herbaceous plants.

You know, like hostas and things like that really just do wonderfully well in Seattle, Washington and get nearly as big as half this table.

And down here, the heat, they struggle.

You know, they really just don't, so that's a heat hardiness.

[upbeat country music] Alright, Mr. D., let's talk a little bit about garden safety.

So where do you want to start with that?

- Well, you know, it's hot out there.

- It is hot!

- But first, let me say that gardening is one of America's favorite pastimes.

It's a good physical activity for you to get involved in.

Hunting season's closed, it's too hot to fish, so getting out there in the garden this time of year is a good thing.

It'd be good to spend an hour or two a day out there, everybody would be healthier.

You wouldn't have to go to a sauna.

- (Chris) Right.

- But seriously, out there right now it's important that you protect yourself.

You know, I work out in the sun every day.

I wear a long sleeve shirt, I wear a hat, I wear work gloves, I work in the soil.

And it's important to protect yourself when you're out there anytime, but especially in the middle of the summer.

You have to make a conscious effort, you need to make conscious effort to drink plenty of fluids right now if you're out in the sun.

And you need to avoid alcohol and avoid sugary drinks and things like that.

It's really really hard to beat water, just good old water.

You need to, if you're using power equipment, it's important to wear safety goggles and hearing protection.

And I'm taking some of this information from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

They've got a real good fact sheet on garden safety and I encourage you to take a look at that.

But insect control, you know, chiggers and mosquitoes are really active this time of year and we've got diseases out there that mosquitoes carry.

It's important to use insect repellent if you're going to be out that contain deet.

That's probably one of the best, the best, insect repellent out there.

And be sure that you do that.

Always keep in mind, safety first in whatever you're doing.

Many times in the garden we're dealing with tools that are sharp, hoes, and I'm not talking about knee high hose.

[laughter] Hoes and shovels and pruning sheers and things like that.

Be careful when you're using them, be careful when you sharpen them and many of them do need to be sharpened and sharpened tools work better than dull ones.

But be careful when you're doing all that.

Let me see what I got over here on page two.

Know your, going back to the heat, know the symptoms of being overheated.

- (Chris) Yeah, that's a good one.

- If you feel dizzy, if you feel nauseated, if you have a headache or something like that, stop what you're doing and, you know, go to the shade or go to an air conditioned area and cool down a little bit.

...That's pretty... oh!

If you work in the garden all the time, out in the dirt, it's important to keep you tetanus shot up to date because the tetanus organism lives in the soil.

And if you cut yourself, you know, you can very easily contract that disease so it's important to keep your tetanus vaccinations up to date.

- Let me ask you about-- - I leave anything out?

- Are ticks active?

Ticks?

- Ticks are.

Ticks are very active right now and they also carry some pretty bad diseases.

The insect repellent with deet will help repel those.

Ticks, mosquitoes, can be dangerous because of the diseases they carry.

Chiggers can just worry the heck out of you.

If you have blackberries and blackberries are ripe now or they're nearing the end of their production, I guarantee you, I don't care whether you have tame blackberries or wild blackberries if you pick them you're going to get chiggers if you don't use insect repellent.

And sometimes you'll get them even if you use them.

- (Chris) Deet is some good stuff.

- I think one of the things that I always try and do is just go get a shower real quick and scrub real good right after you've been out in the thicket.

- That's a good idea.

- You know, 'cause that will get some of that stuff.

And then you can see if you've got ticks and things you can-- - (Mr. D.) Take it out, yeah.

- You can pluck them off!

- We've actually had a few agents, Carol Reese being one of them, got attacked by a tick.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so you have to be careful out there.

- I've had tick fever as well.

I sure have and it took a long long time for them to diagnose because the symptoms were just so strange.

You know, so.

It's not good.

- It's really not.

It's really not.

- I guess something else to think about, too, Mr. D, what about using ladders?

Folks that are trying to prune and things like that?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- That's why I try to keep my fruit trees less than eight feet up my, I'm not 6 feet tall, I'm 5'10" and I've got pruning sheers that are two feet long, my loppers.

And so my fruit trees are just two inches short of eight feet 'cause I'm not going to work them from a ladder.

You just don't need to do that.

If there's any way you can stop doing that.

Now, with apples and peaches, plums, and nectarines, you can do that pretty easily.

Pears are pretty hard to not let get taller than eight feet.

But, I mean, and you've got to be brutal with them.

You've got to really do some serious pruning in late winter.

But I just do not recommend working from a ladder.

- Just get a professional if it's above your head, is what I usually tell people.

Get you a good arborist or somebody who knows how to handle chainsaws way up in the tree and that kind of stuff.

It's just too dangerous.

- Another thing in the garden, many times we use pesticides, so be very careful that you follow and read the label direction of pesticides.

Store them in areas where children can't get to them or pets can't get to them.

You know, storing those pesticides.

Make sure they stay in the container they came in.

It's not a good idea to pour them into a plain container because there's some pesticides out there that look like Kool-Aid and look like Gatorade and things like that.

Pretty green pesticides, Gramoxone is a really pretty green color and it's very toxic.

And then, you know, Liberty is purple.

There's a lot of real pretty colored pesticides out there.

So leave them in the container that they came in and store them, you know, and keep them away from kids and pets also.

- How do you dispose of those pesticides?

- Use them for a labeled use.

If you have extra pesticides leftover, talk to some of your gardening friends, find out if they need them and let them use them for label purpose.

The best way to dispose of a pesticide is to use it for it's intended purpose.

And that is the best way, I'd rather do that.

Other than that you'll have to go to landfills and some toxic waste landfills.

So use it for the purpose it was intended to be used for.

Don't over-buy pesticides.

They last a long time, if you store them.

On the label it tells you how to store them.

Try to keep them from freezing.

Put them in a closed case and you can store them and you can use them for years and years.

They last a long time.

That's the best way to dispose of them.

- Alright Mr. D., I appreciate that.

Folks to be safe in the garden, no doubt.

[gentle country music] Now I'm about to show you what we call bacterial leaf spot.

As you tell from this leaf, look at all of the spots.

This is how you can tell this is bacterial leaf spot.

If you look closely, you can see the yellow halos around the necrotic area.

And necrotic just means decaying tissue.

But again, it's the yellow halos, which are pretty well pronounced.

Necrotic centers, bacterial leaf spot.

You usually see this any time you have a lot of rainy weather.

The spores are in the air.

They land on, of course, this leaf.

You have high humidity, right behind that you get bacterial leaf spot.

To control bacterial leaf spot, of course you can use a copper-based fungicide, or you can use Daconil.

Please read and follow the label.

[upbeat music] - Alright, this is our Q & A session.

Ya'll ready?

This is going to be fun.

- Oh, yeah.

- Alright, here's our first viewer email.

"I have five pepper plants and they are all tall, "but are not producing any peppers.

Is this common?"

And this is from Craig in Middleton, Tennessee.

Mr. D., what do you think about that?

- I may refer to... over here.

[indistinct chatter] - Yeah, I know what's going on-- - You know?

- I do.

- Let's go.

- Because my peppers are doing the same thing.

And I grow my peppers in pots so that I don't have to stoop down, I'm getting old.

So I don't like to stoop down so I grow my peppers up.

But temperatures, daytime temperatures above 90 degrees will cause blossom drop.

And that, obviously, if you don't have blossoms you're not going to have fruit.

And nighttime temperatures above 75 degrees will do the same thing.

And obviously we've been having-- - (Chris) We've had that lately.

- We've had those kind of things happen.

So don't despair, if that's the problem, they will continue to flower and when temperatures moderate, you will get some fruit set.

Yeah, and of course they need at least six hours of full sun a day.

And if you, you may have a deficiency of pollinators because these plants are pollinated by little insects and things, so you've got to have pollinators around and if you think that might be a problem, you need to have more pollinator plants that attract those.

Like pretty flowery things that will bring in the bees and the other pollinators.

- Or you may have to help pollinate yourself.

- Exactly, you could do that, exactly.

- Temperatures above 90, 95 makes the pollen less viable.

- It sure does.

- Right.

- It does.

- So it has to be stimulated within the flower, so you might have to do that yourself.

- That's true, that's true.

- So that's what I think the problem is, Mr. Craig.

So we appreciate that question.

Here's the next viewer email.

Mr. D.'ll like this one.

"I planted pecan in a pot in March, it is now 11 inches tall.

"When is a good time to put a pecan sapling in the ground and how long do they take to mature?"

This is Ms. Gene in Covington.

You're the pecan guy.

- Yeah.

And if I were going to the trouble to plant a pecan tree-- - (Dr. Kelly) You wouldn't do it from a seed!

- I would not do it from a seed because, even if you know what tree that came from, that pecans are cross-pollinated and so it's only half.

The mother tree is only half of what that pecan is.

It might be from a little bitty small seedling tree somewhere else.

Because they're wind pollinated, they are cross-pollinated.

And, you know, to answer your question, I would plant it in the fall, winter, late winter.

But if I really wanted a good pecan tree, I would go to a pecan nursery or a garden center and get a variety that you want.

And by the way, one pecan tree, unless you have others around, you must have others around, unless you bought this pecan and brought it in.

But remember, I said it's cross-pollinated.

And so we don't even know whether this one is a type one or a type two pecan so you wouldn't know what kind of pollinator to get.

You need two pecan trees and one needs to be a type one, one needs to be a type two.

And the only way you can figure that out is if you buy them that have a label hanging off of them.

How long does it take them to produce?

If you get some of the newer precocious varieties, you can probably be eating pecans in six, seven years.

Five, six, seven years.

If this is off of an old Elliot or Stewart or something like that, it could take 15 years.

- From a seedling.

Then you don't know what you're getting.

- It takes a long time.

So I would look at it that way.

If you want to get pecans pretty quick, go on and buy you a couple, three or four.

At least one type one and maybe a couple type ones and a couple type twos.

- So there you have it Ms. Gene, hope that helps you out.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can you please explain to us gardeners about these awful "tomato hornworms?

"How and when do they come to be on our tomato plants?

"Do hornworms come out of the soil or are they from eggs laid by a large moth?"

And this is Ms. Hazel in Eads.

This is actually a good question, though.

I mean, did it come out of the soil or from eggs that are laid by moths?

- Yes.

- They do come from the moths.

A hawk moth or it's called a sphinx moth, or a hummingbird moth.

- And they pupate in the soil.

So it's the sphinx moth, they're sometimes called hummingbird moths, but it's a sphinx moth.

It's a real pretty moth.

The moth will lay an egg on a tomato plant and it'll hatch and it'll be a little bitty hornworm and it gets bigger the more it eats.

And you can find them by looking for the droppings, is the easiest way to find them because they're so well camouflaged.

You know, tomato plant-- - (Dr. Kelly) Look for the bare stem.

- (Mr. D.) That's where they've been.

Yeah, that's where they've been.

- (Dr. Kelly) Can defoliate a tomato plant.

- (Chris) Yes they will.

- Fortunately a real good product to control them is BT, baccillus thuringiensis does a good job of controlling them.

There's no waiting period, it's not harmful to humans, it's not harmful to beneficial insects and you can put that out there and that'll take care of them.

But they are from, and after they finish, this old boy right here that we've got on the table.

He's about done, he's about as big as he's going to get.

So he'll crawl off in the ground, fall down in the ground, and he'll pupate.

And then next spring he'll-- - Come out as a moth.

- Turn into a moth, yeah.

- And here again, are the droppings.

- Yeah.

- Little worms have little droppings, big worms have big droppings.

- No doubt about that.

- And that one is, by the way, a tobacco hornworm.

The tomato hornworms have a V on them.

You can tell the difference.

They have V as in, "Wow, I could've had a V8."

Just remember that for tomatoes.

That one has just slashes on the side so that's a tobacco hornworm.

He doesn't have the V's, got the slashes.

- Alright, Ms. Hazel, there you have it.

Mr. D. Mr. D, Dr. Kelly, thank you, we're out of time.

- Yeah, been fun.

- 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.

To get more information on any topics we talked about on today's show, go to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

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]