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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Ikebana is the centuries-old Japanese art form of flower arranging.

We are going to see how it is done.

Also, there's always a weed in the lawn.

We're going to look at different ways to apply weed killer.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female narrator) 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 Mary Heim.

Ms. Mary is a Master Gardener right here in Shelby County.

And Mr. D. is joining us today.

- Howdy.

- Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Always good to have you Ms. Mary.

- Thank you.

- Alright, so Ikebana.

What is Ikebana, I've heard the term before, of course, a lot of time, but what is it exactly?

- It's an art form, it's a Japanese form of flower arranging that's quite different from the American style, and it's much simpler, a lot of open space, and in Japan they often put their arrangements in a little alcove, and they use it as a form of meditation even when you're creating your design.

So like when there's a class in Ikebana that's offered at Memphis Botanic Garden, and when we go to class we try to remain quiet, so you can listen to what the flowers want you to do.

- You hear that Mr. D.?

We're listening to the flowers.

- That's not like Master Gardner class.

[Chris laughs] - Right.

Alright.

- So we have, what I want to do is show you some of the more primary, basic designs like you would learn in a beginner's class.

And there's different schools of Ikebana.

And I have been going to Ichiyo Ikebana.

- (Chris) Ich-i-yo?

- Ichiyo, in Japanese I's are pronounced like E's.

So that's why Ikebana is eek-a-bana.

- (Chris) Gotcha.

Getting a good lesson here.

- And one of the first ones that we always started with was, this is called a Moribana or a Suiban.

A low, round bowl, or it could be a low, long rectangular size.

And most people, now I also want to emphasize, now I'd love for y'all to try it at home because you can really just take any kind of pan at home, and do something with it.

You don't have to have expensive containers, and so I thought I'd show you how to do that.

You start with this.

Your next item you will use is called a kenzan.

It can be shown as a needle-point.

A lot of people have them from their grandmother's time.

It's quite sharp.

And you can get them in different, the needles can be further apart.

You would place the kenzan, never in the middle.

You would also place it to one side, up front, there's a rule about summertime it's in this end of it, so you don't have to put it in the middle.

Because this is going to be very asymmetrical.

It's not what you're used to.

But the thing about it is, you can buy three flowers, and pick some greenery from your yard, and that's it.

So you can buy an expensive flower by stem, and it would work just fine.

- (Chris) Ok. - I'm going to work towards, facing me, and then I'm going to roll it around so you can see how I do it.

And the first thing I'm going to use is my hydrangeas.

- Those are beautiful, by the way.

- These came from my yard.

- Look at you!

- I had a quite a few of them, and I'm really pleased with the way they came out this year.

- You should be, those are beautiful.

You are a Master Gardener though, right, that's to be expected.

- Ok, you would always put your largest one on the bottom, so we're going to try and find the best top one.

Most all the time you remove almost all the leaves, because there's beauty in the stem itself.

- (Chris) Beauty in the stem, ok. - So, this might be too long, but, I'm going to use three flowers and make a triangle.

And you want the first one to be as long, certainly as long as your container is.

And then the next one should be three-fourths the size of this one.

And then the next one should be three-fourths the size of the second one.

So, sometimes you have to trim and work with it.

So I'm going to place this first.

I like this one, I need to trim it off just a little bit.

I don't want it nearly as tall.

Get rid of some of these leaves.

You also like to lean... and with a kenzan you can cut them at an angle, and then place it and lean it somewhat.

Now my largest one, this is pretty large, I'm going to cut it quite short, and I want it to face me.

- Ok. - A lot of times you can do a silhouette, like this one to the side, so you can appreciate all forms of the flower, not just the front facing, but the side of it.

- How 'bout that.

Ok. - Now I've got some Aspidistra.

I love this variegated-- - That's a beautiful leaf.

- Uh-huh, it really is.

I've started to collect things in the garden that I can actually use in flower arranging, so I've been conscious of buying things that will work for that.

Now your Aspidistra, or your greenery, should be, there should be one between these two, one between these two, and one between these two.

And you would again have a tall one.

Whoops, see how that happens?

You have to push it down hard, and you can hurt yourself on those needles.

- (Chris) They are sharp.

- (Mr. D.) You wouldn't want to just leave those laying around.

- (Chris) Don't do that.

- No.

I kind of collect them.

You can find them in antique stores, in some stores, but you certainly can go online and find them.

[scissors snap] - (Chris) Ok. - Now this one, I'm going to make it quite low, and just for variety, I'm going to fold it under, and stick it under the kenzan, just to hold it a bit.

So that you have a little bit of variety.

Let me roll this around so you can see what I've done.

And I only used one kenzan.

The other part of Ikebana is we always use a mat of some kind.

And this is just like a little bamboo, you can use a placemat, you can use...

I'm going to use greenery here in a minute, but you would place this, not in the center of the mat, but to the side.

Because once again, it's asymmetrical.

So you've got something that's, I think is lovely, but it's very simple.

If you don't like your kenzan showing, which you can see it, you can put small rocks in there, and you'll have, I don't have water in this, but you would.

And it adds to it.

Some people will actually take a leaf and add to it to hide the kenzan.

Also, we use a lot of driftwood, a lot of dried materials, you mix dried and fresh.

And you could just lay it in there like that.

- (Chris) How 'bout that.

- So it looks, it's simple, but it's interesting.

And the point is, you'll notice so much space.

Nothing is touching each other, and it shouldn't be in this particular kind of arrangement.

So it's fairly easy.

The containers in the summertime, you use a lighter container, in the winter you might use a darker one.

There's, chrysanthamums are a very Japanese Ikebana look.

Especially like a spider mum, you know that open up really big.

So you could do several easy arrangements.

And you would put this, probably against a wall.

When we work in the class, we have a background, which is tri-fold like kids use on their reports.

- Ok. - And you get a black one, or a blue one, and it, you can really see how it pops out then.

And you can re-arrange and critique your own design.

- Well look Ms. Mary, we definitely appreciate the basic, this is the basic form, right.

- Yeah, right.

So people will actually go try you know.

I have elaborate containers and stuff, but nobody has those.

So I wanted to get something that people could possibly relate to.

- Well look, we appreciate the demonstration.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Node.

- Node, yeah.

That's a good one, yeah.

Yeah, I remember when I was taking botany we had nodes and inner nodes-- - Right I remember that.

- Yeah.

So, I got an example of that I want to show you, too.

Right here, this is a bay leaf, you know the plant, that's the herb.

That's the bay leaf we buy in the grocery store.

But, a node is a little bit of a bump on the stem.

See it's little bumps?

Those are called nodes, and it's the place where there're buds, and the buds can be a leaf bud or they can be a flower bud.

So, it's the little bump on the stem where leaves or flowers arise.

And so, it's a bump here, a bump here, bump- And dormant, when they're dormant you know, trees right now you can really see-- - Right, yes you can.

- You know, all the little nodes.

So, it's the place where the buds are, and they can be flower buds or leaf buds.

- It shows up really good on a corn plant.

- Oh yeah?

- Or bamboo.

- Oh yeah, certainly yeah, on bamboo for sure yeah.

[upbeat country music] - Alright Mr. D., let's talk about killing those weeds in lawns, how 'bout that.

- Yep.

Good thing to do, good thing to do.

- Yes.

- I'm going to first start talking about some of the least desireable-- - (Chris) Least desireable.

- Something I, this hose-in sprayer, I have never been able to do a very accurate job of applying herbicides with this.

It's good for some things, spraying trees-- - Shrubs, right.

- and things like that.

But I personally can't, I don't do a very accurate job of putting products out.

And most of the herbicides are very specific about how much you need to put out per thousand square feet.

And that means that if you put out too much right here, you may kill your turf grass.

If you put not enough over there, you're not going to kill your weeds.

So you need to be pretty exact when you're applying herbicides to your lawn.

You need to do a really good job making sure you get an even application.

- Ok. You just don't prefer that though.

- I do not prefer the hose-in sprayer.

I'll let you have that.

- Ok.

I'll hold that.

- Another totally different way of putting out herbicide is dry form.

There are dry forms of fertilizer out there that you can use your fertilizer spreader like this, this is an example of a fertilizer spreader, and I think it throws about a ten foot swath.

- It does, that's what I use at home.

- And very, very accurate.

- That's what I use.

- And there are several herbicides out there that are strictly granular.

And you can use this type of fertilizer spreader, the drop spreaders, the push-type spreaders that also throw a pattern.

They are very accurate, and do a really good job with those.

Ok.

Probably the most common way of putting it out is using spray tanks.

- Oh yeah.

- This is a very common spray tank, I think this one will hold two and a half gallons of water.

You see it's labeled herbicide.

- That's right.

- That means you don't want to use this to spray your tomatoes for late blight.

Because you may have a little bit of herbicide left in the tank, and you may take care of your late blight, but you may also take your tomatoes out.

- And you always mention that as well, you're always talking about label, label.

- That's right, very, very important.

I go with a little bigger rig here, I've got a backpack sprayer, I've had this for years, and I like it because I don't have to stop and pump it up, and then go again.

But this is a backpack sprayer, it will hold four gallons of material.

- You've got a gauge too.

- I've got a pressure gauge on it so I can hold it at the pressure that I want it at, or keep the pressure the same.

With one of these you'll start out with high pressure, and when you finish you've got low pressure.

And you're putting out more product at high pressure than you are at low pressure.

So that means all you need to do is just walk faster, as you got high pressure, and slow down as you're doing the low pressure.

It's very important to calculate how much water you're putting out.

And I had, I looked at a label a little while ago of a common lawn product, and the recommendation was one and a half fluid ounces per thousand square feet.

And that is either in, it's a wide range in how much water you can use, from .5 gallons to 6 gallons of water.

- Man, that is a lot.

- Probably the more water you use, the better off you are, in my opinion.

- Right, ok. - That's just, there's more margin for error when you're putting quite a lot of water out, you're probably getting better coverage too, when you're putting quite a lot of water out.

- Ok. - But what we've got here, in this area right here, I think that we're thinking about treating is 500 square feet.

And so you need to determine the square footage that you want to treat.

The label says one and a half fluid ounces per thousand square feet.

That means if you're only treating 500 square feet, then you need .75 ounces.

Half-- - Half of that.

- Half of 1.5 fluid ounces.

So the first thing I would do, is I would put just pure water in my tank and spray that area to determine how much water I use.

And we're going to do that.

I've got a gallon and a half of water in the sprayer right now, and so I'm going to spray this area.

And we will, then re-fill it and figure out how much water it takes to re-fill.

- Oh, ok. - And, I can look at the gauge on here, if I use a half a gallon of water, on this 500 square foot area, then I know that all I need to mix up is a half a gallon of water when I get ready to spray, and in that half gallon of water I need to put .75 fluid ounces in that half gallon of water.

And then spray it exactly the same way I did when I was doing the test, and then I have no waste, I'm not over doing it, and I'm not under doing it.

If you want to do what I mentioned about putting half out going one way, and half out going the other way, then you half the .75 which would be .3-something or other and you put that in a tank, put out a half a gallon going one way, you should be empty when you get through, put you a half gallon back in and put the other half in.

And that way you can do away with your streaking, you may have some checkerboarding, but do away with your streaking.

But let me put this thing on, let's see how, let's get this out of the way, and see how much water we're putting out in this area.

- So you're going to start walking what, normal speed or?

- Yeah, normal, just like I'm going to do when I'm spraying.

Let me start right over here.

I'll get back here and start.

- Ok. Oh wow.

- Ok. - Alright.

- Let's see what we got.

Ok, I put out about a half gallon of water.

So that's kind of what we guessed that we would do.

So I know that when I get ready to put the product in there and spray this, I need, because I'm going to do it in one application like that, I'll put .75 fluid ounces, that's the way you do it.

And it's very accurate.

- Yeah, that's real accurate.

One last thing.

So what are your recommendations on spraying when the wind is too high?

What is too high to spray?

- Don't spray if the wind is too high.

And probably 10 miles an hour, 10-mile an hour gusts is probably as high as I would go.

Ideally, 4 to 10 miles an hour is good.

If it's below four, you may actually have temperature inversion, and that can increase the possibility of volatility, you know, picking up and going off.

Don't spray at night.

- Don't spray at night, ok. - That's usually when the inversions are more than likely.

But that 4 to 10 miles an hour is probably pretty good.

- Ok. - Pretty good thing to keep in mind.

- One last question, do you-- - Well one other thing I want to say, be sure to read the label-- - Right.

- And understand these herbicides kill broadleaves, and they're designed to kill certain kind of weeds.

You notice I didn't get too close to the strawberries over here because that herbicide might kill strawberries, so I didn't even want to get any drift on it, and I didn't want to get it to where the strawberry roots would get to it, so if you're going alongside flower beds, things like that, give yourself a buffer zone.

It's better to have to deal with a few weeds, then to kill your desireable plants.

- Ok, I was going to ask you just that.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because most of your plants, for the most part, are broadleaf.

- That's true, most of your ornamentals.

- So you gotta be careful.

Alright, thanks for that demonstration Mr. D. - Good deal.

[gentle country music] - Once garlic has actually been cured for three to four weeks, somewhere in a dry spot out of the sun, it will look kind of like this.

And the easiest way to go through and clean it is actually to cut off the top, and then cut off the roots, because you need to leave it hanging up with all the soil on top of it, you do not wash it, because if you wash it before you hang it up, you could have a lot of mold issues along the way.

So the easiest way, cut the top off, go through and cut the roots off, leave all the soil on, and these outer shells will actually peel off to a really clean bulb.

And this is what you store inside your house once it's been cured.

So you can go through and peel it off until you get all the dirty shell off of the garlic bulb, and that's a finished garlic bulb.

[cheerful country music] - Alright, here's our Q & A segment, Ms. Mary, you jump in there and help us out if we get into trouble, alright?

- I'll try.

- Alright, here's our first viewer email.

"I planted my tomatoes two weeks before my daughter, "and they are the same variety.

"My garden soil is extremely humus, "and her soil has never been tilled, "or had anything planted in it.

"Her plants are short and scraggly looking, "but have lots of large tomatoes.

"Some are ripe.

"My plants are almost eight feet tall "and loaded with smaller green tomatoes.

"I have been successfully growing tomatoes for "over 30 years, but this year has been disappointing so far.

Why has this year not been a good tomato year?"

And this is from Tommy in Millington.

So it's kind of interesting, you know.

His daughter planted in ground that's never been planted, and nothing has been planted in it, seem to be doing ok, and his, not so much, right?

- Yep.

- 30 years, Mr. D., he's been successfully planting tomatoes.

You think it was a bad year for tomatoes?

- Well, his are eight foot tall, and loaded with smaller green tomatoes, you know.

- [laughs] Right.

- It sounds like what he's doing is promoting vegetative growth, so he may be over fertilizing a little bit.

I mean, he's been growing them successfully for thirty years, so I'm not going to argue with that.

He obviously knows what he's doing.

But, you know, I can see, we had a wet spring.

- We had a wet spring.

See, that's my thought.

- Cool, and, well I take that back.

We didn't have a spring.

We went from winter to summer.

- Yes we did.

- So for, I know we have quite a lot of fire blight around, which usually happens when you have cool, wet weather.

We had a lot of that, and so he may have had some disease pressure, and some things that may have gotten kind of a slow start.

But, I, his daughter must have inherited some of his, she's figured out how, and there's nothing at all wrong with growing tomatoes in ground that's not had tomatoes grown before.

- Right.

- Rotation is good, and so she probably has less disease pressure than he's got if he's growing them where he's grown them for awhile.

But why has this year not been a good tomato year?

You know... beats me.

There's a lot of farmers that are saying why has this year not been a good corn year.

- Yeah.

- A lot of corn farmers had to re-plant their corn.

And, so.

- It's been a tricky start to the year though, you know, if you think about it.

It's been wet, it's been raining, it has been cold, the ground was saturated, and cool for a long period of time.

Then we jumped right into summer.

- That's right, exactly right.

- So if you put the tomatoes in the ground early, then they just sat there.

Right, until it warmed up and dried out, but, yeah, I'm with you, eight foot tall is not bad.

[Chris and Mary chuckle] - And he's got them coming, so, loaded with little green ones.

- Yeah, got smaller green ones.

- Just control your diseases on them, and you'll have them till frost, keep them going.

- Yeah, that's right.

- I think he needs to ask himself, is there the possibility that he may have been over-fertilizing just a little bit.

Given the weather conditions that we've had.

You know.

- Sure, alright.

There you have it Mr. Tommy.

Alright, 30 years, that's a long time.

Alright.

- (Mr. D.) Not going to argue with that.

- If you get it figured out, let us know, ok.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I put too much fertilizer on my new plants.

Is there anything I can do to save them?"

Ms. Mary, what do you think about that?

- I don't think you're going to save them.

- You don't think you're going to save them?

- I don't.

- Too much fertilizer on the new plants.

- Did it just burn them up, I assume?

Or?

- Too much fertilizer can do that.

Yeah, but is there anything that you can do to save them.

- Dig 'em up.

- Dig them up, ok. [Chuckling] - That's a thought, I've done that with blueberries before, dig them up and replant them.

I wonder what kind of new plants they are.

The only thing that's going to...

I wonder which fertilizer, he put too much-- - (Chris) That's what I wondered.

- If it's nitrogen, nitrogen stays out there from four to six weeks.

And water will take it out, and so if you're over nitrated you've got an immediate burn, and if they're still alive, probably going to be ok.

If you put too much phosphorus out there, then he's got years to worry about that.

- (Chris) Right.

- Put too much potash out there, it's just this year, you know, next year he doesn't need to add any potash.

- (Chris) That's a good point.

- If I were him I'd get a soil test, and find out exactly how much too much is-- - (Chris) Fertilizer, right.

- But as far as moving the plants is an option.

- (Chris) Moving the plants is an option.

- You can't take, we have no way of sucking lime, or-- - (Chris) You can't take it out.

- fertilizer out of the soil.

Mother Nature will take it out eventually through leaching.

- (Chris) That's what I thought.

- It's not a good thing to do because it costs you money, you waste money when you put too much fertilizer out, and then you also potentially contaminate groundwater.

And you don't want to do that.

That's why we always say-- - (Chris) Don't guess, soil test.

- Don't guess, soil test.

And just put out what you need.

- Put out what you need.

- Save you some trouble.

- Yeah, you're exactly right, 'cause waiting on it to leach out, or trying to flood that area to force it down, you just don't know how much is in there, and you can't get it out.

So yeah, good options there.

But yeah, why guess, soil test.

Ms. Mary, we say that all the time.

Ms. Mary, Mr. D., we're out of time, it's been fun.

- I've enjoyed it.

- 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 joining us.

We just saw Mary show one way to do an Ikebana arrangement.

If you want to see another style, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We also have a great video with Mary about arranging grocery store flowers.

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]