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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Fall is when cool-season lawns start to grow.

Today we'll talk about what to do to keep them healthy.

Also, just because you live in the middle of the city doesn't mean you won't have wildlife in your yard.

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 Joseph Seago.

Joseph is the commercial horticulture agent in Shelby County.

Good to have you here, Joseph.

- Good to have be here Chris.

- All right, so let's talk about cool-season fall lawn care.

Where do you wanna start?

- Well, I just wanna start with, you know, right now our tall fescues are probably looking pretty rough.

Just from the heat, you know, they're not looking good.

Probably some brown in 'em, probably some areas that have died and kind of slushed off.

But good news is fall is a great time for fescues to recover.

- Good deal.

Great time, huh?

- Great time.

Great time.

- All right.

- In fact, cool-season grasses thrive in temperatures between 60 and 75 degrees.

- Okay.

- Let's start off with some management practices.

- Let's do it.

- Mowing heights, again, we want to continue using that 1/3 rule, we don't wanna take off more than 1/3 of the leaf blade, every time we cut.

Fescue blends, they really like to be mowed during the fall.

About 2 1/2 to 4 inches.

Irrigation, still important to continue irrigating our fescues.

Again, that 1/2 an inch to 1 inch per week is real good for fescues going into it.

Fertilizing, fall is a really important time to fertilize for fescues.

Again, they're gonna start actively growing around this time, that's 60 to 75 degrees.

They're not gonna grow a ton like they would in the springtime, but they're gonna start growing again.

So it's really important to get that fertilizer down for them.

You need to wait until the temperature, air temperature, is between 60 and 75 degrees before you make your first application of fertilizer.

And then over the fall season, you need to apply about two pounds of nitrogen per every 1000 square foot, throughout the fall.

- Okay.

And it's always good to get the soil tested, right?

- Yeah.

Always do that based on a soil test, for sure.

Fall is also the time where you want to aerate your fescue lawns.

And we're doing that for two reasons.

One, you want to relieve compaction, all right, 'cause soil does get compacted, so you relieve compaction, and that opens up the canopy as well when you take those cores out.

And that helps us when we're seeding.

Like I said, during the summertime, the fescue will kind of die off, kind of leave some opening areas and we'll need to fill those back in.

'Cause fescue is a bunchgrass.

It doesn't spread out by rhizomes or stolons, so they don't really spread out.

So we have to fill those areas back in.

And we do that with what we call interseeding.

And interseeding is when we put the seed back into the same type of grass.

So fescue seed into fescue lawn.

- Gotcha.

- So we wanna start doing that in the fall, kind of depending on where you're at, kind of depends on when you wanna start doing that.

For our area, like for Tennessee, East Tennessee, we'll start in kind of that August, mid-September, then we kind of move over to central region, it's more of the September timeframe.

But for here, for us here in West Tennessee, it's kind of late September to mid-October.

So it just kind of depends on the temperature.

So about 70 degrees.

And you kind of wanna start with a 3 to 4 pounds of seed per 1000 square foot is a pretty good ratio.

Now that's for interseeding, but if you wanna start a new lawn, new establishment of fescue, it's a little bit different.

Again, you know, you want, like I said before, the interseeding is three to four pounds.

You want to use five to eight pounds of seed per 1000 square foot for new establishment.

You wanna select a blend.

So we, most people think of fescue as a tall fescue, but really recommend doing a blend of tall fescue and fine fescue.

Tall fescue is really good.

Has a little bit more heat tolerance, a little bit tougher.

But some of the fine fescues are a little bit more shade tolerant.

Like a Kentucky bluegrass.

- Oh yeah.

- Or a Chewing fescue.

They can tolerate a little bit more shade.

So if you have an area where you need, where you got some shade, you kind of want to blend that together and let that kind of, you get best of both worlds.

- So how much shade are we talking about?

- Filtered.

- Okay.

- I mean, if you're in heavy shade, even a fescue's gonna struggle to grow well.

That's just what we, issues that we have with all turfgrass.

- Right.

- In shade.

So there's a couple different places that you can go to get seed.

Again, we recommend good quality seed.

So you kinda wanna look at your garden centers.

You wanna look at supply companies, landscape supply companies.

They'll generally have a good quality seed or they can get access to it.

And again, a lot of people go online looking for seed and you kind of want to get that blend that will work, you know, for your, what you need for in your yard.

If you got a little shade, get something that's a little bit more shade to mix in with your tall fescue.

There's a couple of different programs out there that you can use to kind of figure out what kind of seeds you want.

And they evaluate turfgrass, fescue seed for performance under reduced inputs and environmental stresses.

So they put these seeds to the test and they only, you know, recommend the good quality seeds.

So the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance is one, and the Alliance for Low Input Sustainability Turf, A-LIST, is another resource that they can use.

- Yeah.

We'll make sure to get that on the website.

- Great.

And then again, after you've kind of seeded, you want to kind of put down a little mulch, straw, that helps keep the seed in place, keep it a little moist and keep, you know, birds and other, you know, things that feed on seeds from getting them out.

But you kinda want, you know, 80 to 100 pounds of clean straw per 1000 square foot.

- You definitely wanna make sure it's clean.

- Yeah.

- Right, 'cause some of that can be weedy, so.

- Can be weedy.

And you definitely don't want that in there.

So good clean straw and just a light, it doesn't need to be heavy.

- Right.

- Irrigation, you want to irrigate lightly and frequently.

You want to keep it moist but not wet, not saturated.

Just a good moist.

And you wanna do that until the seeds are established.

And then after they're established, you wanna shift over to a deeper and infrequent watering.

And again, adjust that based on rainfall that we get.

And you can start mowing it once the seeds have reached, you know, your desired mowing height that, you know, between that three to four inches.

And you just kind of wanna maintain that throughout the growing season.

You don't wanna scalp it.

Again, you're, what you're doing is you're getting it everything ready to have a good spring.

The fall, winter, you know, prep it for a good spring.

- Okay.

Get that root system going.

Got it.

- You also want to keep an eye out for what we call brown patch.

We see it more in the springtime, but it can come up during the fall and kind of wintertime.

Brown patch is a fungal of Rhizoctonia solani.

And it just affects our cool-season turfgrass.

A good fungicide like azoxystrobin works really great, Scotts DiseaseEx, Heritage G, or Strobe 2L are really great products that homeowners can get their hands on.

You want to use, anytime you're treating for fungicide, you want to use fungicides for preventative.

You want to, if you have a history of fungal issues, you want to make sure you're getting that fungicide down.

You want to kinda get that down.

Brown patch is mostly active between the 70 and 90 degrees.

So you want to hit it up about right before it's getting that 70 degrees, and that way you're preventing it.

Of course if it's already there you want to treat as well.

But just keep that in mind that if historically you're having issues, use it as a preventative.

- And definitely wanna make sure you read and follow the label when you're using those fungicides, for sure.

- Yep.

Definitely.

And then we've had some new research that's telling us to, if you use a low rate of nitrogen in the summertime, then it will help fescue kind of come out of, recover better from a brown patch.

- Hmm.

Interesting.

- But it's a very low rate of nitrogen.

And you wanna apply that in the summertime.

'Cause again, most of the time we see brown patch in the spring, late spring, developing in the summertime.

So that can help with recovery in the fall.

- Okay.

You wanna tackle weed management?

- Weed management.

Yeah.

Again, just use a regular 2,4-D, three-way 2,4-D, dicamba herbicide.

You'll have your broadleaf weeds kind of popping in.

Again, and before you establish anything or when you're doing interseeding, you wanna go ahead and take care of those weeds before you do that.

- Okay.

Yeah, that'd be with a pre-emergent right?

- Pre-emerge.

Yeah.

So pre-emergent, you want to get that down when the soil temperature's about 70 degrees for five consistent days.

And you don't want to use a pre-emerge in the area where you're reseeding.

'Cause that'll keep the seeds from coming up.

- Won't know the difference between the grass seed and the seeds of weeds.

- That's right.

So yeah.

- Exactly right.

- So make sure that you don't put that down in the area that you're doing that.

- Alright Joseph, that is great information.

And again, we wanna remind folks, always read and follow the label, you know, on any pesticides you're gonna be using.

Thank you for that information.

That was good.

Good luck with the cool season grasses, y'all.

- Yep.

Thank you, Chris.

- Thank you, Joseph.

[upbeat country music] - This is a wonderful example of differing environmental conditions in a short place, just like you would have on your beds.

This area here is under an overhang and it gets less sun, but this one here gets lots of light so it's shorter.

The other environmental condition we get to look at is that this end of the bed has an irrigation system.

The irrigation head is on this side, so the water's shooting this way and not necessarily getting water clear down to this side of the bed.

So this side of the bed is gonna end up being drier than the other side of the bed with the irrigation head on it.

So in an ideal situation, if we had to place your, if you have a choice to place your bed, try to place it so that it has an even distribution of both water and sunlight.

So if we wanted these plants to be more equal in their size, this bed would not be oriented this way.

It would be oriented this way.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Mr.

D. Let's talk about urban sprawl and wildlife.

We know you like to talk about wildlife.

- I like to talk about wildlife.

I do.

And you know, I lived a lot of my years in an urban area, even though I grew up in a rural area, and I've decided that there's more wildlife in urban areas than there are in rural areas.

Because it's not at all unusual to see deer and coyotes and raccoons and possums and armadillos, and all of those, snakes, all those things in urban areas.

And I've decided that especially the prey animals, the animals that predators are looking for like deer and critters like that, like most wildlife, they feel safer around us humans.

Especially in areas where you're not allowed to shoot 'em.

And so they tend to get close to us because they feel safer.

And so, you know, it's just a, it can be a very expensive situation.

I ran across the most numbers I came up with a few years ago about deer.

Deer by far are the most costly urban wildlife animal for us.

I mean, several years ago, some of the numbers that I ran across were like, we had 1.5 million deer auto collisions per year.

Now I know that's not all in urban areas.

But that's where most of the cars are.

So, and at a cost of about four billion dollars a year.

- Wow!

- And that's several years ago.

- 4 billion.

- And you know, in the 1980s there were 10 million deer in the United States, and estimates today are 20 to 30 million.

And you know, so, and I've personally been t-boned by a deer.

- Wow.

- And there's not a lot that you can do to prevent a deer from t-boning you.

But if you are driving on the road at dusk, especially during the rut, during the fall, early winter, that's the mating season.

That's when deer, kind of like people, they just kinda lose their mind.

You know, they don't have any common sense.

And, you know, if you happen to see a deer, deer's eyes in the headlights, it's better to have your lights on bright.

A long blast on your horn rather than a toot toot, you know, might help.

And it may not.

And if you see one set of eyes in the headlights, expect that there may be some more.

Most, you know, raccoons can really be a problem.

Snakes.

And most of them will have the same recommendations for exclusion.

They'll talk about using hardware cloth to kind of keep 'em from getting down your chimneys.

If you've got chimneys, I've known of raccoons that have gotten in people's chimneys and raised a family, and along with a family of young raccoons, they brought fleas to the house.

- Oh man, okay.

- And you know, that can really be a problem.

So excluding them, if you can, be very careful if you have one in your chimney and you exclude, put your exclusion, your hardware cloth on there where it can't get out, that can be a problem as you can well imagine.

Same thing under your house or things like that.

I've had experience leaving a, walking up to a house and the door, the trap door under the house is open.

And so, "Oh, I need to close that."

So I close it and a few weeks later, there's an odor emanating from the house and you got an opossum under there that got into the heating, HVAC system, and so, and got electrocuted and, you know, so if you have critters in your attic or in your chimney, or under your house, figure out a way to get some lights under there.

And some loud music.

Country music I prefer, loud country music, and give it a little time before you put your exclusion in.

You might also want, even when you, you know, put your exclusion mechanisms up, you may want to have a trap in there, a live trap with some bait in it.

Just in case they get hungry, and you might actually, then go check it in a day or two, and you may have one in a trap that you luckily can get out of there.

But common sense, I don't think they like chrysanthemums, I don't think deer like chrysanthemums.

So try to plant plants that they don't really like.

Vegetable garden, you know, they tend to like a lot of the same things that, that's right, it's a buffet, it's a deer buffet.

You know, they like the same things we do.

And electric fences.

And along with the frightening, the music and lights and stuff like that, might help where that's concerned.

But you know, they were here first.

We're the ones that are, you know, we've come into their area.

- Pushing them out.

- And really they were here first.

And so you need to kind of keep that in mind before you bring your 12-year-old with 20-gauge out, I guess.

- Let's talk quickly about control measures for deer and raccoons.

I know you covered a little bit about the deer.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, if you can't do the 12-year-old with a 20-gauge, you know, in an urban area, I mean there aren't many that you can do that.

Let's do exclusion, you know, try to exclude 'em using, for the raccoons, going into small areas, hardware cloth.

And if you're gonna put a hardware cloth, don't get 1/2-inch hardware cloth, go ahead and get like 1/8-inch hardware cloth.

Get the real small hardware cloth.

'Cause not only will it exclude the raccoons, it'll also exclude, if it's 1/8 inch, it'll exclude snakes, and it'll exclude squirrels.

And it'll exclude mice if it's 1/8 of an inch.

You know, if you get 1/2-inch, you keep the raccoons out, but then the, you know, you may have snakes that show up and mice and things like that.

But you know, that's under your house.

That's in your chimneys.

That's any openings that you have under the eaves of your house and things like that.

And sometimes I've had critters, I had a family of flying squirrels get into my shop and rather than repair the wood, I just put hardware cloth over the hole and took care of that.

And it doesn't look real good, but it's, they can't get in there now.

Yeah.

And it's my shop, it's not my house.

But, and then, but in the deer we've had success at Agricenter with our plots using electric fence wire, you know, leaning it out at about a 45 degree angle and having a good powerful shock on that charger.

You know, and that tends to help a bunch.

- All right.

That's good stuff Mr.

D, 'cause yeah, we definitely know they're out there but we're pushing 'em out.

You said they were here first.

- Yeah.

I don't know how much we're pushing them out.

We're just, they're piling on top of each other I think.

- Yeah.

Nowhere else to go, right?

All right, thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - We have some groundcover here, the Ogon sweet flag.

And we've got a spot missing.

This one has gotten rather large so we're gonna divide it and move it over.

So I'm gonna get towards the center of this.

Got some nice worms.

Leave some of this soil here and we'll move it over here.

Just a little bit wider.

And plant it here.

That's good.

And then we can water it in to make sure air pockets are out of the root zone.

Now it can reside here and improve the looks of the landscape.

And all we have to do is fill in the hole where we dug it up.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q&A segment.

Y'all ready?

- Yep.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"What is this brown caterpillar eating my tomatoes?

Can I control it organically?"

And this is Betty from Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Guess what, Ms.

Betty?

We thank you for the picture, first of all.

Tomato fruitworm is what that is.

It feeds directly on the fruit.

Can do a lot of damage to tomatoes.

It is the most destructive insect pest of tomatoes.

So you wanna control it organically?

You could do that.

You could use Bt.

Bacillus thuringiensis.

Read and follow the label on that.

You can also use neem oil.

Neem oil will disrupt their feeding and their reproduction.

So you could use that.

And then insecticidal soap.

But you have to catch that tomato, you know, fruitworm when it's pretty small.

Right, 'cause it has to be ingested, right?

But those are some organic means to controlling the tomato fruitworms.

Do you have anything you want to add to that, Lisa?

- Just scouting for those early on.

Catch 'em when they're young.

- Catch 'em when they're young.

Right.

Catch 'em when they're young.

Encourage predators, right?

Plant some pollinator plants.

You know, you can get some of those predators to come help out, you know, with controlling the smaller tomato fruitworm.

And I think you'll be good.

So thank you again for that, Ms.

Betty.

Appreciate that picture.

Here's our next viewer email.

"How do I control cedar apple rust on Granny Smith apple tree?"

So this is Lorraine from Abbyville, Mississippi.

She says, "she has sprayed copper fungicide and she knows there are cedar trees growing in the area."

Lisa, so that is good that she knows that.

So how can we help her out?

- Well she would continue with her fungicide program and she can also use other types of fungicides including neem and a sulfur fungicide.

And it'd be good to rotate those.

And if she notices any of the cedar apple rust on the tree to go ahead and cut that out.

Sanitizing her tools, keeping the ground below sanitized, like cleaning up the leaf debris, caring for the tree properly with, you know, water and nutrients.

- Right.

- And if she could get rid of the cedar trees, that'd be good.

But we know that's probably not an option.

- Right, yep.

- Could also plant a cedar apple rust resistant variety of apple.

Liberty is one.

- Yep, yep.

Enterprise is another one.

It's another one, so I would definitely do that.

Right.

Cedar apple rust.

Of course we know it needs a cedar tree and an apple tree to complete its life cycle.

So resistant varieties would definitely help.

'Cause Granny Smith apples, moderately susceptible to cedar apple rust.

All right.

All right, Ms.

Lorraine, thank you for your question.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Ants are invading my garden and house.

"How do I get rid of them?

I don't want to use insecticides."

And this is Paul from Denim Springs, Louisiana.

So can we help Paul out, Lisa, do you think?

- Yeah, I like diatomaceous earth for this.

You can sprinkle that around the outside of, you know, your home, the perimeter.

But again, if it does rain you'll need to reapply.

But I do like that 'cause it's not a harmful insecticide, it, you know, it won't harm your beneficials.

- Right.

That's good.

Anything you wanna add to that, Joseph?

- Yeah, just, you know, keep everything kind of clean around the, wherever they're coming in.

If you can kind of track 'em, trace 'em where they're coming in, pull any mulch back, plant material, you know, kind of eliminate some of their hiding spaces.

If they're coming in, you know, just kind of, you know, keep a clean kitchen.

You know, keep, because again you're trying to eliminate their food source.

So put everything up, and make sure everything is sealed up.

Eliminating the food source, - That would help.

All right, Lisa, Joseph, that was fun.

That was fun.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want more information on anything we talked about today, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]