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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Flowers look great in the garden and in the house.

Today, we are talking about the best plants for a cutting garden.

Also, we will be aerating a lawn.

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 Celeste Scott.

Celeste is a horticulture specialist with UT Extension and Booker T. Lee will be joining me later.

Celeste, always good to have you here.

- Thank you.

I'm so glad to be here.

- Well, look, we are gonna talk about one of your favorite topics, right?

- I know.

That's what I was gonna say.

I just love this topic.

I just love cut flowers.

- I know you do.

I've seen you in action talking about cut flowers.

So can you tell us a little bit about cut flowers and your favorites?

- Sure, definitely.

So, I think today we wanted to focus primarily like on cut flowers for home gardeners.

- Okay, good.

- I tried to pick out some of the easiest things that I would recommend, you know, first time growers trying.

- Okay.

- And really gonna focus on annuals, so- - Good.

- Things that they can grow from seed and plant directly in their garden.

- Okay.

- Before we get into the warm season versus cool season, that's kind of how I like to divide 'em up just to keep things clear for people, a couple tips that I have for folks.

- Oh, good.

- On placement in their garden.

- Good.

We like tips.

- So number one, if you have a designated space for cut flowers, you are gonna be more apt to actually cut them.

- Okay.

- Right?

Yes.

So, but another strategy would be to intersperse them into your existing landscape, right?

- I like that.

- And they're beautiful, but then you're gonna like that aesthetic value that they're bringing to your landscape and you won't wanna cut them.

That's my struggle anyway.

- Oh, okay.

- I see where you're going.

- When you intermix them into your landscape.

But if you have a designated space where like this is my cut flower garden and the purpose of these plants is to be cut.

For me to bring them inside and enjoy them indoors.

- Okay.

- I feel like people are gonna get more joy from them.

- Okay.

- You know.

- I like that.

- With that strategy.

- I like that.

- Okay.

So give them their own designated spot.

Make sure you have access to water.

- Okay.

- And most of these are gonna do best in full sun, so at least- - Full sun.

- Six hours of sun a day.

So those are kind of my top, you know, pro tips for placement.

- Like 'em.

Okay.

- Now, we'll jump into cool season.

- Okay.

Let's do it.

- Cool-season cut flowers.

So some of my favorites are snapdragons and sweet William and I've got both of them here with us today.

I like to start both of these as transplants indoors before I plant them outside.

I have them started right here in soil blocks.

Now, these are still a bit tiny.

I would probably grow these on another, you know, two weeks before they got big enough to put outside.

I would want them to have at least two sets of true leaves.

And right now we're at one set of first leaves and one set of true leaves.

- Okay.

Okay.

- So they both need to grow on a little more.

Now, as far as timing goes for these, we are calling them cool-season annuals.

Both of these are cool-season hardy annuals.

- Okay.

- So we could start these seedlings in the fall, plant them in our garden in the fall, and they're gonna overwinter our Zone 7 winters, okay?

They're not gonna do a lot of growing, but they're gonna be sitting there.

- Okay.

- And then when spring comes on, that's when they're gonna do the majority of their growth and development.

- Got it.

- And like right now I have some of both of these blooming in my garden right now.

So you're gonna get that super early season of spring bloom.

But that doesn't mean that you can't start another batch in the spring, right?

So if you pick the correct cultivars of each of these, they have some cultivars that can tolerate our heat of summer a little better than others.

So for example, for snapdragons, if I wanted to plant some snapdragons right now and them survive our hot summers, we would need to look at cultivars that are considered Group 3s and 4s, okay?

Some examples are Rocket.

That's one of my favorite to grow for the hotter times, so you can definitely do that, right?

Most people think snapdragons are early spring only.

- Yeah.

- No, we can make it work even planting in the spring.

You've gotta be careful on sweet Williams because some of the cultivars require a cold period.

That means you would have to plant them in the fall to get a spring bloom.

But some of my favorite series, there's one called Sweet and there's one called Amazon, that do not require a cold period.

So we can plant these- - So you can plant those.

Okay.

- In the spring and we're still gonna get summer blooms from these.

- Okay.

- So they prefer these cooler night temperatures that we still have in spring to get established, but we're gonna be able to see their blooms in the summer, as well.

- Got it.

Okay.

- Okay?

So you've got two strategies for cool seasons.

You can start 'em in the fall, get early spring blooms.

You can start more in the spring, get summer blooms.

- Okay.

- Does that make sense?

- That makes sense.

I'm writing this down.

That's good.

- So those are two easy ones that I, you know, suggest folks kind of get into if you've not done it before.

Easy to get up, germinate.

I would start both of these as transplants.

I would not direct seed either one of these in a garden 'cause the seeds are so small.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- Got it.

- So when we're talking about warm-season annuals, the stipulation there is that they cannot survive our frost.

So we want to make sure that we're targeting either starting transplants or direct seeding them to correspond with our last frost date.

- Okay.

- For spring.

Okay?

And that's what we have going over on over here.

I've brought with us today some sunflowers and some zinnias.

Those are my probably top two go-tos.

- Okay.

- If you've never started anything from seed before, if you've never grown a plant from seed, you're gonna have some good success with zinnia and sunflower.

You're gonna build up that confidence.

- Oh, that's good to know.

- Right?

Also on my list of things that I say are kind of our gateway warm-season cut flowers are celosia- - Okay.

- Cosmos and then we- - Love cosmos.

- And all of those have beautiful blooms, but we also need some filler, right?

We need some foliage to kind of mix into those arrangements.

And basil is a really fun option.

So basil branches really well.

You can harvest it several times throughout the season.

- So the herb basil?

- The herb basil.

Yes.

Even the bloom on basil, if you let it get far enough to actually create a bloom.

- I don't think I've seen a bloom.

- Oh, they're beautiful.

But let's go back to talking about when we need to, which of these do best with direct seeding?

- Okay.

- Does that sound good?

- That sounds good.

- Okay.

So all of these, the zinnia and the sunflower could do fine being direct seeded in the garden.

You could just plant them right out in there.

They would do fine.

However, I prefer to start everything by transplants and that way, I can place them exactly where I want them.

- Ah, okay.

- In my garden.

- Okay.

- And so that's what I brought with us here today.

And I have started these in plug trays because they're larger seeds.

This is our sunflower.

You can see have a lot of- - Look at those roots, wow.

- Good healthy root development.

- Yes, they're healthy.

- You want it filling up that entire plug.

You see how it is holding all the soil for you.

These are ready to be planted.

- Wow.

- I would not be hesitant to take those sunflowers out and plant them today.

- So let me ask you this, what kind of soil media is that?

Or potting media?

- Yes.

This is just a professional like PRO-MIX type kind of mix.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

So it's primarily peat moss based.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

And then I wanna show y'all the roots of these zinnia.

So the zinnia again have good root development.

Not quite as much, but I would still be comfortable planting these out in the garden even though the plants are small.

I know that scares people.

- Yeah, they're small.

- They're like, those are too little to plant outdoors, but they're really not.

As long as it's warm and we've passed that frost date, you can plant these plants directly in the garden.

- So do they have to be hardened off?

- Yeah, it would help to take these outside.

So hardening off is this process where, you know, I like to put them on my porch where they get some shade.

- Okay.

- They're not in direct light, but they're having to, now they're being exposed to wind, right, so they're- - A little movement.

- Movement.

- Yeah.

- The soil is drying out a little more rapidly so they're kind of learning how to deal with that loss of water.

And then I would probably do that for four or five days.

- Okay.

- Then introduce them to a little more light.

I'd like to do that on the weekend when I'm home.

- Okay.

- You know, so I can watch 'em.

- You watch 'em, right.

- Yeah.

- I got you.

- So put 'em in some sun for, you know, the weekend.

Make sure they're gonna tolerate that and then they'll be ready.

- They'll be ready.

- They're nicely hardened off.

- Okay.

That's good.

- They're ready to plant out into the garden.

And that goes for both things that I've started in plug trays or in soil blocks.

I harden off the soil blocks, as well.

- Gotcha.

Okay.

- So- - That's good.

- Definitely you can do your direct seeding.

Again, you wanna wait for your frost date to be passed, 'cause these are warm season.

- Right.

- And then, but you could also start them as transplants.

You could aim for starting them about four weeks before your last frost date.

- Okay.

- That way when the frost date comes, you can have a plant that's already growing, right?

So that's gonna speed up your bloom.

Because if you plant some by seed and you plant some that are already transplants, right, the plant's already growing- - Right.

- You're gonna have this built-in secession.

The transplants are gonna bloom about three or four weeks before your seeds bloom.

- Okay.

- So that's a way that you can get this natural secession of continuous bloom all through the season.

For the celosia and the basil, the seeds are smaller.

- Okay.

- So I like to start them for sure transplants and then put them out into the garden.

But for direct seeding, sunflowers, zinnias are gonna be your go-tos for first time home cut flower gardening.

- Wow.

Thank you, Celeste.

I could tell you like this.

- I do.

- All right.

Thank you much.

We appreciate that.

That was good information.

[upbeat country music] Let's take a look at our bean plants here.

As you can see, a lot of the older leaves are yellow or yellowing.

And to me, that's usually an indication of nitrogen deficiency.

It starts with your older leaves first, then it moves up the plant to your younger leaves.

So what we need to do is add more nitrogen to it.

Beans are legumes, and even though they actually do fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, it pulls it down into the roots, it can still be deficient in nitrogen.

So therefore, you would need to add a nitrogen fertilizer to it to green those leaves up, especially for your new growth.

Just put it right outside the drip line of your bean plants.

Make sure you get that watered in.

Once you get that watered in, you will start to see your newer growth become a lot greener.

It's not gonna do anything for the ones that are already deficient.

But again, your newer growth will be nice, pretty and green.

[upbeat country music] Hi, Booker.

We are out here.

We actually have an aerator.

- A aerator.

- To aerate our lawn.

So why do we need to aerate anyway?

- Chris, over a period of time, your soil will get compact sometimes and that mean water, fertilizer not getting down to the root system.

- Okay.

- And over a period of time, that's gonna happen, especially you got a lot of traffic on your lawn, you know, kids playing on it.

You cutting it, mowing and crossing, walking across it.

And then you need to aerate it sometimes and the aerator is gonna loosen the soil up for that water can get through the soil.

It can move through the soil when it rain.

The fertilizer get down to the root system.

You want all that to happen to your soil, to your grass.

If not, for then you put fertilizer down, it gonna stay on top.

It's not gonna get down to the root system.

So you wanna loosen that soil up some.

And you got Bermuda grass and you got fescue grass.

You got a warm-season grass, and you got a cool-season grass.

And the best time to do that in your warm-season grass, when the grass begin to come outta dormancy.

- Okay.

- And this probably last of April or the 1st of May.

- Okay.

- It is not too hot because once you aerate it, you expose your root system to the heat.

So you don't wanna do that to it now, so.

If it real hot and you do it, then you might need to water it in or something.

You need to water because those roots system will dry out.

- Okay.

- And for fescue lawn, you wanna do that probably in September when that grass begin to grow.

So you don't wanna do it in the winter month when they going dormancy.

You don't wanna do Bermuda grass in September because it dormancy is not doing any growth and those roots gonna be exposed all winter long.

That could damage your grass.

- Sure.

Sure.

- So this is a good time.

It's not too hot now.

You know, it probably get some rain or something.

You need to water it in.

And therefore, nutrients can pass through the soil.

So we need to aerate it probably, depending on how many traffic have on your lawn, maybe every four or five years depending on how much traffic.

- Okay.

So it's not that often.

- Not that often you aerate.

You know, and then you got somebody out there doing something all the time, just playing football or whatever you doing on your lawn or something like that.

And having a compact soil.

And that's why I tell folks, don't mow your grass when it's real wet, because when you wet and damp a lot you compacting the soil down so you don't wanna do it then.

- Okay.

- So you wanna make sure that when you cut your grass and everything, it kind of dry.

- And know that's the one thing you wanna do there, so.

This is just an aerator here.

Know it's a good thing there.

And what the aerator do, it punches holes into the soil.

- Okay.

- You know, you go up and down and you go across and you get a good coverage on there for that water and stuff to pass through the soil.

- Okay, so it pulls the plugs out so we can leave the plugs on the ground?

- You can leave the plugs on the ground.

You don't to worry about putting in the thing there.

You can just leave 'em on the ground and over a period of time if they'll break out.

- Okay.

- And they'll compact and they'll be built into your soil.

- And aeration is something that works 'cause you said you did it in your own yard.

- I did mine a couple years ago and I could see the difference that grass.

That year, it just came out so pretty and everything because my soil was real compact, I had been in the house about over 20 years.

And I said I need to do something my grass because it just wasn't doing good.

I need to do something to it.

And I said, look, let me aerate it in COVID and I did that and it really helped, you know, and if you been in your house for a while, you got compact soil and you see the water and things not getting down to it like it should, it don't look like it should look, aerate it.

- Aerate it.

- And this, and know, like I said, you have Bermuda grass, you wanna do it probably about the last of April to 1st of May.

- Okay.

- But fescue in September.

- Okay, and the grass will recover from, of course, the aeration itself.

- Yeah.

That's why I say you wanna do it when begin to grow.

You wanna begin to grow so you don't wanna do it in its- - So it'll recover- - Recover quick.

Yeah.

It recover and that stuff and that.

And I wouldn't do it on a real, real hot day, you know, like in there, so I wouldn't do it then.

If you do, you need to make sure that you water it in, you don't wanna expose those root systems out there because they could dry out.

- Okay.

All right, Booker.

- Yeah, you wanna do a good deal and show me I show for I do it and how I look at everything in there 'cause when I was doing last time, they was pulling me down the thing.

[Booker and Chris laugh] So you must be very careful when you're doing that, so we don't- - Okay.

- Go and do that in and show how to do it in.

- Okay.

Yeah.

[aerator whirs] [aerator whirs] So what you think?

- Man, it's good.

I tell you, do at a clip.

Do it when it not too hot.

But it's good, though.

That's what you need to do.

You see how I was going up and down, just like mowing your grass?

Make sure you try to cover every spot in there, so, and this gonna help the grass be a lot better.

You'll see it again next year.

This year, you'll see how it grow real good.

- Okay.

- Aeration is very important.

- Okay.

Yeah.

We can see the little plugs that it pulled out, too.

- See the plugs come out the ground and everything, so going through that.

If you wanna do it real good, you can go back across another way.

That will help some, too.

But this should be good enough.

Just one way should be okay.

- Okay.

All right, Booker again, so how often do we need to do this?

- Probably about, you know, every three or four years depending on how much traffic you have on your lawn.

And know, what I would do there, I would just look at my soil and see how the water begin to, is it doing anything?

The water begin to penetrate to the soil.

And then you have to look at this grass now.

You can tell whether it's compact or not.

When it rain, the water kinda stand for a while.

Also that when you're adding fertilizer to it and your grass not doing anything, it might just be standing on top of the soil.

It not getting down to the root system.

So you can tell that when you do that.

So this is a good thing to do, aeration.

I like doing it, and it's good.

- And it's good for the grass because- - Good for the grass now.

Yeah, let water and air move through the soil and also get fertilizer down ot it.

And you need that because grass need to breathe, too.

Those roots need some air and that's why we do aeration.

Aerate the soil and everything, so, and like I said again now, Bermuda grass, you wanna do it probably at the last of April between May, and fescue grass is a cool-season grass.

You wanna do it when that grass began to grow.

And fescue being sometime in September.

- All right.

We appreciate the demonstration.

- Oh, good.

- Good workout?

- Good workout.

I don't have to go to the gym today.

[upbeat country music] - Well, we've got our basil here and it's growing very nicely, but it's only got three main stems on it.

So we would like to trim it and we wanna take off that apical dominance that it's creating and we wanna spread that around to the other shoots that are starting out.

So what we'll do is we'll take it and we'll go down to the next place that there's a joint and we will clip it right there.

And then these branches will come out and so will these.

It'll force all of them to come out and it'll be much bushier.

So we'll do that to each one and then we'll take off this bloom 'cause we don't want it to bloom.

We want it to continue to produce beautiful leaves.

There we go.

Now it'll bush out and produce more leaves, more for us to harvest to make pesto.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

Here's our Q&A segment.

Y'all ready?

- Yes, sir.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Why do some of my plains coreopsis "flowers look like this?

"The plants are healthy, but four of the flowers look like hamburgers."

This is Christopher from St. Augustine, Florida.

And thank you for the picture.

- Yeah, it was a really good picture.

- Good picture.

Right.

- Excellent picture.

So this condition is called fasciation.

- Yeah.

- And a lot of people, you know, may try to, you know, kind of go directly to a disease or an insect or you know, what is causing this?

But in this particular situation, fasciation is just a natural mutation.

It's just happening, occurring naturally on its own.

And essentially what's going on here is the growth point in that plant, the meristem, as it's developing, just can become elongated.

It can become flat and distorted.

We use a lot of different terms to kind of describe this look that is happening with fasciation.

Sometimes we'll see fusion between two blooms.

So it'll look like the head of a bloom is, you know, connected and then ray pedals along the edges.

Sometimes we'll see like a ribboning effect, right?

And then other times, like in this picture, we saw that flattening.

- Yes.

Real flat.

- Of the meristem of that comb.

So it can look a lot of different ways, but it is a pretty unique, you know, occurrence in nature.

It's not hurting that plant.

- Nah.

- Had this been caused by Aster Yellows, which I feel like is something a lot of people might have like migrated towards as a cause, we would need to rub that plant out.

- Right.

- Because that can be spread, vectored through insects to other plants.

But that is not what this is, so it's just fasciation.

It's a cool, unique occurrence.

- Yep.

- Enjoy it.

- It's cool.

- Tell your friends about it.

- No, I think it's pretty cool.

It's just one of those oddities - Yeah.

- In nature, right?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

I would adore it.

I think it's pretty cool.

You know, you have something that you can actually show people and be like, guess what?

This is growing in my garden.

It's pretty neat.

- Yeah.

I think it's cool.

- Yeah, I think it's pretty neat - And I've seen it in tomatoes.

There are certain tomato varieties that have what are called super blooms.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so you know, it's the same thing as several flowers that have grown together- - Together.

- And it creates usually a large cat-faced tomato.

- Yeah.

- But it's just kinda cool.

- Yeah.

I think it's pretty cool.

So yeah, thank you for that picture.

- For that hamburger flower.

- That's pretty nice.

Yeah, the hamburger flower.

Hey, you might have a new flower.

How about that?

So thank you for that picture, Christopher, and for the question.

We definitely enjoyed seeing that.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"How do I prevent cane borers in raspberries and blackberries?"

And this is Gary from Dry Ridge, Kentucky.

He is "concerned the borers will kill his plants and doesn't want to prune."

So Peter, he doesn't wanna prune.

- Actually if you're worried about borers- - Yeah.

- Pruning's probably one of the best things you can do- - Yeah.

- With blackberries and- - Yes, it is.

- Raspberries.

So it's the rednecked cane borer.

- Okay.

- Has a two-year life cycle which is nice 'cause that means that it makes it easier to control if you know what to look for.

- Right.

Right.

- So in the early summer, a female will come along and about six inches from the tip of a cane, they will lay an egg and then they will go and they will girdle the cane above and below where they lay the egg.

- Pretty impressive.

- So the cane then wilts and that's how you can see if you have, you know, your stand of blackberries or raspberries and you see a wilted cane in early midsummer.

That's probably what's going on.

So what happens is the egg hatches after a couple weeks and bores into the cane at that point in between the girdling.

And then it will bore down maybe about an inch and then it stops for the year and it overwinters in that location.

So once again, if you see that wilting, go in, cut the cane two inches below where you can identify where it's been girdled and you'll be able to see it.

Then you've removed the cane borer.

- Yeah.

- It's gone.

- It's gone.

- Then, anyway, so it overwinters a couple inches below that girdle.

Then the next year, that's when it bores down through the entirety of the cane all the way to the crown of the plant and it will affect the cane.

- Yeah.

- Now, once it gets to the crown of the plant, it will overwinter underground just under the soil surface, but inside the plant for the next winter, at which time it then pupates.

You have an adult and the process starts over.

- Starts all over again.

- So by regular pruning of your blackberries and your raspberries, you can get rid of a lot of this cane borer problem and it helps.

That pretty much solves the problem.

- Yes.

- And then also scout.

And when you see that little wilted bit, just cut it off and you're good to go.

- You see wilting or flagging.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, I'm gonna throw this out there.

- Throw it out there, Celeste.

- So you know, with our raspberries and blackberries, we've got primocanes.

We've got floricanes, okay?

- Yeah.

- So the floricane, the cane that produces the fruit of that current season, if you are managing those crops the way that we're supposed to, you're gonna be pruning those out anyway, right?

And so those cane borers are not identifying primocane versus floricane, right?

So you could have some in both, right?

- Right.

- So when we're trying to identify like thresholds, like how much is too much, like when do I need to look at some other kind of control option?

And in this case, insecticides are not gonna be very effective unless you are an excellent scout.

But if, you know, you were growing and that was gonna be an issue, like the 10%, if 10% of your primocanes, 'cause your primocanes are gonna make your fruit for the following season.

So you remove all your floricanes.

You don't have to worry about those ever making it to the crown because you're removing those canes anyway.

- Yep.

Got it.

- So after that, look at what's left.

If 10% of your primocanes that are gonna be fruit bearing the following year, you can tell that they have those cane borers, that might be a flag for you to be an excellent scout the next year to be able to target an insecticide spray.

Because the only time we can target them is when they're in their adult female form while they're laying the eggs.

- Laying eggs.

- And that requires like again, like I said, very excessive scouting twice per week and then we really have a very narrow option of insecticides that are super even effective for this.

The active ingredient in that product is bifenthrin, so- - Yeah.

Wow.

- You know, just going out when you notice it and spraying 'em with an insecticide is not gonna help you.

- No.

- Yeah.

- So, pruning for sure.

- And you think about it, 10% is a lot.

- It is.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Another thing is if you have a lot of wild raspberries or blackberries rather around your area, that may help encourage the population because they're having a chance in the wild to get down to the crown, pupate and- - True.

- So if you have some that are nearby that you know about that are out in the woods that nobody cares about, it might be worth it to go out there and destroy those plants just to reduce the insect pressure on your plants.

- Right.

- I think that will help - Yes.

- Prevent the cane borers.

Right.

And something else, too, that came out of your discussion, right?

It is always important to know the life cycle, you know, of the insects that we're talking about.

Right, because there's a certain time that you can actually target, you know, the insect that's in question- - Right.

- Because, yeah, if you miss, you know, that point, then it's too late.

- Yeah.

Everything you do will do nothing.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's very important to know the life cycle of those insect pests that are out there.

Yeah.

We appreciate that question, Gary.

That's a good question.

Good explanation, so thank y'all much for that.

Celeste, Peter, always fun.

- Yeah.

- Always fun.

Thank y'all so much.

- Thanks.

- All right.

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 learn more about the flower varieties Celeste talked about or how to take care of your lawn, go to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have information on these topics and many more.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]