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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Fertilizer is important for plants.

Today, we are going to show how to do the math to convert recommendations to different kinds of fertilizer.

Also, every gardener needs some tools, but which ones do you have to have?

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 Peter Richards.

Peter's our local gardener, and Joellen Dimond will be joining me later.

Hi Peter.

- Hey, how you doing?

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you too.

So I understand we're gonna talk about fertilizers calculations.

There's math involved?

- Yes, there's math involved.

- Oh, wow, okay.

- So, but it's not hard math.

- It's not hard math, not hard math.

- This is not hard math.

This is pretty easy.

No, not complex algebra or anything like that.

- Okay, we're good then.

- So yeah.

So when you're trying to figure out if you need to fertilize your lawn, first thing to do, always soil test.

- Yes.

- So get the soil test, find out what your soil really needs.

It may turn out it doesn't need nearly as much as you think it does.

So there are three major parts of soil analysis, you could say, the three macronutrients.

You have nitrogen, you have potassium, and you have phosphorus.

Nitrogen, often in a soil test, is not tested for because it is very transient in the soil, and by the time you get your soil test results back, the nitrogen's totally different than what you sent.

So yeah, it comes quickly, it goes quickly.

So, you don't really need to worry about that.

You do need to side dress and give plants nitrogen.

That promotes green leaves, but you don't have to worry too much about testing for it.

So that leaves you with potassium and phosphorus, and those last a lot longer in the soil.

And so that's what you're really concerned about with your soil test is those two, in addition to pH and some of your micronutrients, but those two are the ones we're really gonna talk about.

- Right.

I would agree.

- So let's go back to nitrogen real quick.

For nitrogen, to figure out how much nitrogen you need, recommend going to your local Extension service and finding out when they recommend that you put nitrogen on this particular plant every year.

And you can do that, you can Google, for instance, here in Tennessee, I would Google "Tennessee Extension, when to side dress corn," or something like that.

And that way, I'll get a recommendation from Extension in my state and that'll come up high on the results.

- That's exactly right.

- Yep.

So when you get your soil test back, you have a recommendation that you should put down, let's say 1 pound of 13-13-13 per 100 square feet.

Okay, well, you go check your garage and you find out you don't have any 13-13-13.

Instead you have something else.

So what we're gonna do is talk about how to convert that into what the recommendation says.

So some of the typical fertilizers that you'll find that people will have, you have ammonium nitrate, which is 34-0-0, so the numbers, the first number is nitrogen, then you have phosphorus, and then you have potassium.

- There you go.

- Those are the three numbers.

So ammonium nitrate has 34% nitrogen, 0% of the other 2.

- Got it.

- Okay.

You have the balanced fertilizers that you can find at your big box stores.

So you have 8-8-8, or 10-10-10 or 13-13-13, those are the most common ones that you find.

You have equal parts of each, so that means 8-8-8, you have 8% nitrogen, 8% potassium, 8% phosphorus.

So you also have triple super phosphate, which is 0-46-0.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So that is all phosphorus, roughly half by weight.

You also have lawn fertilizers.

You can use lawn fertilizers.

Be very careful if you do that it does not have any herbicides in it.

- Yes.

- Yes.

[chuckles] - That is good.

That's exactly right.

- But your typical lawn fertilizer's about 30-0-4-ish, and depending on which one you get, it could be different.

You also have some organic fertilizers.

So you have a blood meal is 13-1-0.

Bone meal is 3-15-0, and potassium sulfate is 0-0-50.

That one may or may not be organic.

It depends on the process it was created by.

Some are organic and some are not, potassium sulfate.

So let's get to the math.

- Okay, oh boy.

- So let's say that the soil test recommends 1 pound of 10-10-10 per 100 square feet, okay, but you go to your garage, you find out you only have 13-13-13.

Don't go to the store and buy another bag of 10-10-10.

You don't need to, we can just do the conversions.

So what you do is you do what is recommended divided by what you have.

So 13-13-13 is what you have.

10-10-10 is what was recommended, so you do 10 divided by 13.

So instead of 1 pound of 10-10-10 and 100 square feet, you put down 0.77 pounds, about three quarters of a pound of 13-13-13.

- Okay.

- You get the exact same value, exact same nutrients, and you don't need to go buy another bag of fertilizer that's gonna sit in your garage.

- That's right, yeah.

- Yeah.

So a little more difficult is if you have the partial fertilizers or the incomplete fertilizers that only have something in one number.

That happens a lot in the organic fertilizers.

- Yeah.

- So for instance, let's take the same thing, it recommends 1 pound of 10-10-10 per 100 square feet, and so we need 10 of nitrogen.

Well, blood meal is 13-1-0, okay?

So you're gonna need 10 divided by 13 pounds of blood meal, and that comes out to 0.77 pounds to have the same amount of nitrogen.

You're also gonna have just a tiny bit of phosphorus in there because there's a one.

- Yeah, okay.

- So now we need to add phosphorus to our mixture to get that balanced fertilizer.

So we can add bone meal.

It is 3-15-0.

So you'll do 10 divided by 15, or two thirds of a pound, 0.66 pounds, to have the same amount of phosphorus.

Now we're gonna get a little bit of nitrogen in there as well because there was a three in the nitrogen position, but that's probably close enough.

You don't really need to worry about the nitrogen being exactly perfect.

If you wanted to, you could pull back a little bit on the blood meal and let it be covered by the bone meal, but I wouldn't worry about it.

It's not really enough to matter.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I don't think it makes that much difference with that.

- Yep, so then we're going to use potassium sulfate for the third number, and once again, you're gonna have 10 divided by 50.

That gives you 0.2 pounds of that.

So if you spread that three quarters of a pound of blood meal, two thirds of a pound of bone meal, and 0.2 pounds or a fifth of a pound of the potassium sulfate, you're gonna end up with the same as a 10-10-10 fertilizer.

- Okay.

Got it.

- Yep.

And that's all organic.

Just requires a little bit of mixing in there.

- Yeah, just a little bit more.

Okay.

- Yep.

So the potassium, especially, stays in the soil for a very, very, very long time.

There's lots of potassium in the soil, and it actually gets there because there's a lot of potassium that plants can't use that is in the soil.

As the soil slowly gets weathered and you have some microbial action, that potassium becomes available to the plant.

So don't go dumping potassium out on your ground unless you do a soil test.

- Right.

Highly recommended.

- Yes.

And the soil test, if you get it through an Extension service, or some private labs, they will have recommendations.

They'll say, "Put out this much for two years, or for three years."

And then at that point, you wanna retest because you may have sufficient at that point.

You don't want too much.

If you start to get too much, your plants start doing weird things, and you can't get it out of the soil.

- That's the key thing, yeah, you can't get it out, if you put too much in.

Yeah, that's key.

- So for mid-season fertilizers, you got a side dress, you know, so a lot of times those recommendations are gonna be 34-0-0.

- Yeah.

- You know, put out 2 pounds of 34-0-0 per 100 foot a row, or you know, whatever it is.

Once again, you can do the same math.

It is what is recommended divided by what you have.

And so you can use blood meal for that.

You can use 34-0-0, you could do 30-0-4, which is your lawn fertilizer.

Once again, make sure it doesn't contain any pesticides or herbicides in it.

So that is how you do the math to get from the recommendation to what you have, or from the recommendation to your organic fertilizers.

- That's good.

- Yeah.

- I think it's easy to follow.

- Yeah.

It's not too hard, just remember, yes, it is recommended divided by what you have, yep.

- That's easy to follow, Peter.

That's pretty good.

So even I can do that calculation.

Pretty good.

So thank you Peter, we appreciate that.

- Sure.

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

It is a winter annual weed.

It reproduces by seed, likes soils that are high in nitrogen, and here's another valuable thing about chickweed to most, it is edible.

So you can definitely eat mouse ear chickweed.

If you want to get rid of it, if it's moist, you can easily just pull it up, or you can just use a broadleaf weed herbicide.

Please read and follow the label.

[upbeat country music] Alright Ms. Joellen, spring is almost here, right?

- Yes.

- Folks are itching to get out into the garden, but they need good gardening tools, right?

- Yeah, there is a array of gardening tools that I use all the time.

- Okay.

- And we're just gonna go over some of them today, if that's okay.

- That's fine.

That is fine.

- And the number one garden tool that I use all the time are these hand pruners.

- I would agree.

- And there's so many things you can do with these hand pruners.

I mean, I keep 'em with me almost all the time when I'm out in the garden.

There are all kinds, and they're all good, but the best thing I can tell you is make sure that they are scissor action ones, where, this blade passes this other blade.

That's the scissor action ones are the best.

They last the longest.

Some of the others that are anvil don't last as long.

But these, no matter how inexpensive or expensive they are, they all work the same and they all work well.

And if you've noticed, since it's the beginning of the year, I have already cleaned and sharpened all of my tools.

- You did a good job, they look good.

- Including the wood parts have linseed oil on them.

So everything is ready for the spring.

- Mr. D would be so proud of you.

- Yeah.

[Chris laughs] The other thing I use all the time are gloves.

There's so many things that are sharp out there, I just have gotten comfortable wearing gloves, and if you use gloves enough, you will be comfortable wearing gloves.

- True statement.

- There.

So now besides cutting stems up to about three fourths of an inch, if you need something a little larger than that, then you're gonna go with these, called loppers, and they give you more leverage and they've got a bigger blade on 'em, and you can cut stems up to two inches with these.

So anywhere from one to two inches cuts with the loppers.

If you need anything any larger than that, I would suggest the hand pruning saw.

And I like the ones that have a retractable blade 'cause these are very sharp, and what's good about these is they're not like a regular saw.

They cut on the pull.

- Ah.

- So, and they cut, this particular one, with this double serrated edge it's got, it cuts really fast on the pull, almost like butter, through like up to maybe three and a half, four inch limb, but I wouldn't do anything any larger than that.

About three inches is average that I use this for.

- But cutting on the pull is good though.

- Cutting on the pull because it's not like a saw, but it cuts more on the pull, so you're pulling it back to cut it.

- Hmm, that's good.

- That's what's different about this type of saw compared to a regular saw.

Another thing that I use a lot for planting seeds is this claw.

Sometimes weeding, if you've got some small weeds, it's easy just to scratch the ground and get the weeds out.

Also, when you're planting seed beds, like lettuce, and you know, radishes, onions, small seeds, you get a good, you know, you can rough up the ground and get a nice seed bed for the seeds to be planted.

So I use that.

- Okay.

- Trowel, oh, this is one another one that I use a whole lot for a lot of things.

Now I like the narrow, there are wider blades.

- Yeah, I have one of those.

- I like the narrow blades.

I think this part of the country with the soils we have, this one seems to, you know, get into the soil and able to work easier to make a hole to plant, you know, small plants with this one.

I also will weed with it.

- All right.

- You know, then you can just sit and cut around the ground and get the weeds up.

- Yeah, shovel the weeds.

- So I use it a lot for a lot of different things like that.

And then there's something like this, called the pruning fork.

Dividing plants is the number one thing I use, and digging up bulbs, like tulips that are done for the year.

That's what I use that for.

- Could you use that for a compost pile?

- Yes, and turning compost.

See, I compost on the ground, so I don't have piles, but yeah, that's what I would use for that too.

Next is one that a lot of people don't know about, and it's a triangular shaped hoe.

and it's called a morrow hoe.

Again, it's good for weeding, but it's really good at making edges on beds.

If you've got a sidewalk and you've got a planting bed next to it, it makes a nice edge so that you can put mulch down to the sidewalk so that the soil won't keep running out onto your sidewalk.

I use it a lot for that, and I also use it in the garden, When I make my rows from planting my corns or my beans, I just roll this down and I just sit seeds in and you just take it and you just cover it back up.

It makes it real easy to plant rows of seeds in the garden.

- All right.

- So I do use it for that.

Next is a small shovel.

And after the transplant trowel, I mean if the plant is like a quart or a gallon size, so it's a little bit bigger, I will use this to plant those plants.

So it's just a little bit, small plants.

- Okay.

- Gallon size and below.

It's good for that.

Then of course, if you've got landscape shrubs and trees, you're gonna need and do some heavy, like we've used this out front to turn up the amendments for our beds.

So that's what I use the larger shovel for.

And of course the next is the leaf rake.

And I use it not only to get debris out of the way, leaves, I also disseminate the mulch, as you watched me with that.

So it's very versatile and, you know, cleaning up the yard with anything, I like the leaf rake.

And of course then there is the garden rake, and this is to move like rocks, and mulch, and dirt in large quantities.

- Okay.

- The leaf rake will just kind of go over the top of it and it gets small debris, but the garden rake gets larger debris, larger soil, larger rocks, and you can really do some moving with it.

And I probably use it the least, but when you need to move something, you really need it.

So I've always had one, and have used it.

And, of course, the last thing you need is a broom.

- Is a good broom.

- Is a good broom because you should always clean up after yourself.

So those are the ones I use all the time.

These are the ones that if you're starting out, these would be good tools for you to get to have for your garden.

- And they can purchase these tools?

- These are found everywhere.

- Everywhere.

- Everywhere.

There's nothing new and revolutionary here.

Now there are a lot of specialized tools, I use these.

You find 'em anywhere.

I haven't found anything else that I like more than what I already have.

So I've been using these.

- And they look good.

I mean you cleaned them up real good.

[laughs] - I did.

- But again, if you had to use one tool, what would that one tool be?

If you just had to have one, what would it be?

- I would use my hand pruners because they do just so much.

- Right.

And being agents, you know, we have to have that 'cause we stop on side of the road and pulling things for demonstrations and stuff.

- Yeah, we do.

- You know, and such.

- But yeah, I like them, my hand pruners.

Actually the hand pruners was probably the first one I had for myself when I was starting out, and I've gathered all of these over the years and inherited some of 'em, so.

- Okay.

And it's always good to, you know, clean the handles off too so you don't get splinters.

- Yeah, well and- - And those type of things.

- And one thing is, if, like with the crape myrtle bark scale now, if you are pruning with any of this with a crepe myrtle bark scale, you wanna disinfect that, because you don't want to transfer that to another crape myrtle that doesn't have it.

And if you are, if you have to cut and and dig up diseased plants, it would be best if you put a little rubbing alcohol or a little bleach water, something on 'em to disinfect it, so you don't move diseases and/or bugs in your own yard.

- Good point.

Glad you brought that up.

All right, we appreciate that.

That was good.

We know these are your tools that you use.

- These are mine.

These are mine.

- Good deal, thank you Miss Joellen.

I appreciate that.

[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 kind of 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 going to plant.

This is my potting mix.

Fill the pot about halfway, 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 backfill.

And I kind of tap it around and that one is ready to go.

Always, always water after you up-pot.

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

Y'all ready?

- Yeah.

- All right, these are some great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"How do I get rid of weed vines without putting down massive chemicals?"

And this is Jennifer in Memphis, Tennessee.

She says she has all sorts of vines in her backyard.

Listen to this, ivy, trumpet vine, morning glory, and honeysuckle.

Those are some tough vines.

Those are tough, so Joseph, she wants to control these without using massive chemicals.

What do you think?

- You have to dig 'em out.

- Okay.

- Dig 'em out, and get as many of the roots out as you possibly can, and just, you know, understand that you're probably gonna still have some more coming up.

So it's gonna be an ongoing process.

- Right.

- For sure.

- Yeah, wear your gloves, yeah, get some pants, you know, long T-shirt, you know, proper PPE, 'cause yeah, you're gonna be doing a lot of pulling if you're not gonna be using chemicals.

- Yeah.

A lot of polling.

- Right.

- For sure.

- Peter, anything to add?

- Well if you just don't want to spray everything and you're okay with using some chemicals, you can cut them to the ground and just dab some glyphosate or Roundup on the cut end.

That'll help speed the process, and it's very targeted so it's not going to get everything else.

- Right.

That's another way to do it, you know, for sure.

There's gonna be a lot of work either way you look at it.

And then something too I would like to add, I mean you can try to mow it down, you know, if at all possible, you can get a lawnmower and then just try to mow it down as as much as you can.

But yeah, if you're not gonna be using massive chemicals, then yeah, a lot of pulling and then the dab technique, you know, something that you're gonna be doing.

- Yeah.

- All right, Jennifer- - Actually a win.

- Yeah.

Good luck to you.

Yeah, that's gonna be a lot of work but thank you for that question, we appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I noticed this leaf "as I was raking the outdoor area of my home.

What causes this?"

And this is Sandra from Brownsville, Tennessee.

And Ms. Sandra, thank you for that picture.

It's a nice picture.

So what do you think, Joseph?

What causes that, that we saw on the leaves?

- So these are just galls.

- Just galls.

- Yeah, just galls.

It's not gonna do any damage.

Galls can be made by fungus or diseases, or insects, even mites, but they're harmless.

It's not gonna do anything.

- Right, so you don't have to worry about trying to, you know- - No.

- Get a chemical out or anything like that.

- No, no chemicals, nothing cultural either, just it's gonna be what it's gonna be and it's not gonna hurt anything.

It's not gonna bother anything.

- Okay, Peter, anything to add?

- Well, the galls, yeah, a lot of times they're made by insects.

The gulls in this particular picture is probably made by an insect.

Hard to tell which one, there's so many of 'em.

But a lot of the insects that make galls are actually beneficial, and so what they do is they come in and they chew on the leaf a little bit, or they lay an egg there- - Lay an egg.

- And the hatching larvae chew on the leaf and its saliva makes the leaf do something weird.

- Yeah.

[laughs] - So it causes a growth and then the insect develops inside the growth, and so, obviously, insecticides can't get to it, but you can have cynipid wasps, which are very beneficial in the garden, they make galls.

You have eriophyid mites, not so beneficial, but they make galls as well.

[laughs] Jumping plant lice or psyllids, aphids, some can make galls as well.

And there's a really cool gall that I have come across that is the willow pine cone gall.

- I knew you were gonna say that.

- Yeah, and it's amazing what nature can do, but it looks just like a pine cone, attached to a willow tree, and willows don't have pine cones.

But it's created by that insect and the reaction of the tree to the insect creates this thing that looks like a pine cone.

- I think that is so neat.

- Yeah.

- I think it is.

Yeah.

It's just you one of nature's oddities, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Just admire it, I think it'll be all right Ms. Sandra.

- No, they're really cool, some shapes.

- I think they are cool, but yeah, the insects, the mites, also viruses, you know, viruses, you know, can cause galls, fungi, bacteria.

Yeah, just enjoy it, I think it's fine, but yeah, thank you for that picture, that's pretty good.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"My euonymus bushes have been healthy until last summer.

"They look ashen in color and are dropping leaves.

What is going on?"

And this is Theresa from Dayton, Ohio.

She says she has seen what might be little white bugs on the bottoms of the leaves.

Hmm, so what do you think about that, Peter?

Little white, yeah.

- That sounds like what happened at my house a few years ago.

- Oh it happened at mine.

- Yeah.

No, that's euonymus scale.

You know, when the scale is named for the plant, it likes it.

- Yeah.

[laughs] - But that's what it is, they live on the bottom of the leaves.

They suck the sap out of the plant.

So they're sucking the life out of it, essentially.

And yeah, at first it starts out, you know, you have a green leaf, and then when they get on there, you get little white dot on top of where they're sucking on the bottom, and then eventually the leaf starts to, you know, it starts looking really sick, yellow, ashen, like she said.

- Yeah.

- So the way that I fixed the problem is I used an imidacloprid drench and I drenched around the plants.

It doesn't work overnight, but within a couple months, it took care of the problem.

I did that, oh, I don't know, it was probably five years ago and they haven't come back yet.

So, you know, they're not just going to appear.

Something needs to move them there.

So it could be a bird, it could be something else has moved them to the plant.

And so until something else moves euonymus scale to your plant, it'll be fine.

Luckily on my plant, it hasn't happened again yet.

- That's it, that's it, yeah, read and follow the label on that product.

Anything you want to add, Joesph?

- Make sure they're getting plenty of water, and nutrients, you know.

Make sure it's getting the organic material that it needs.

Fertilizer, that'll help, you know, defend off different stresses like the scale.

- Yeah, yeah, 'cause usually when you have insect problems, it's due to stress, some type of stress.

So I had the same issue as well.

So Peter, you know, pretty much talked about is yeah, what you can do.

But yeah, the white bugs would be the male scales.

The female scales look like oysters, right, and they can do a lot of damage.

They can actually make the leaves drop off the shrub.

So I remember one thing Felder Worsher always told me.

So Felder would always say, "Beware of plants that have pests named after them."

Euonymus, euonymus scale.

Yeah, so there you have it Ms. Theresa.

So good luck with that, all right?

So Peter, Joseph, thank you much.

That was fun, that was fun, thank y'all 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 watching.

If you want to review Peter's fertilizer calculations, or learn more about gardening tools, 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]