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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Sheet mulch can stop weeds and make your garden easier.

Today, we're going to show how to put it down.

Also, strawberries are some of the earliest fruits.

We'll be making some strawberry jam.

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 Walter Battle.

Walter's a UT Extension specialist.

And Cathy Faust will be joining me later.

Walter, always good to have you here.

- Oh, so happy to be here today.

- Yeah, so we out in "The Family Plot" garden?

- Yes, great place to be.

- All right, and we gotta talk about mulch, right?

- Oh yes, mulch, something that's very, very, very important.

- Okay.

- And one of the things I would like to start with is to talk about the plastic type mulch.

- Okay.

- You know, these here are the artificial types.

And basically, what you have is a landscape fabric, which is pretty much just strings of plastic woven together.

- Okay.

- And then you can also have just the black plastic.

- Just regular plastic.

- 'Cause, you know, and you can get any of these at any garden center or landscape supply dealer or whatever.

But the main thing that we want this to do is stop weeds.

That's you know, the gardener's biggest enemies - That's right.

- Is weeds.

One of the big enemies, right?

So, and these do a great job if you wanna go that route of preventing weeds, you know, from messing with your crops.

So this is a really good product that we're gonna put down here and you know, just get started doing it.

It's just one of those things you have to do.

- Okay, yeah, and we refer to those as the sheet mulch.

- Yeah, sheet mulch.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

That's the sheet mulch.

And like I said, they're easy to plant into.

- Yeah.

- And also, they work well with irrigation-type things, 'cause you can put those emitters or hose where you want it to be, you know, so that you can water it.

So a disadvantage in a sense, you can't just pour over the top, so to say.

But you can water underneath.

And one big difference between these two is that this woven landscape fabric, it is porous.

- Yeah.

- So therefore, you know, rain can get through.

- That's good.

- Where the black plastic sheet can't get that.

- Not so much.

- Not so much.

- Yeah.

- And also, I will tell you this, I will warn you, that on this here, nut grass can get through.

- Yes, yes.

- It can get through.

But hey, but you can manage it a lot easier than other ways.

So yes, that's kind of what we use these products for.

It really keep your garden nice and neat and clean.

And that's what we like to see.

- All right, so I guess you wanna demonstrate to us, you know, how you actually lay it down.

- Sure, absolutely.

Usually, I will precut some of these.

We're gonna start with the plastic first, the sheet plastic first.

And let me set this aside.

- Okay.

- And so.

Let me kind of get this one started.

Okay, and we'll just kind of.

- Yeah, wherever you need me to be now.

- Yes, just go up there on that end.

- Okay.

- And.

And we'll have to do some cutting.

- All right.

All right.

- Yes, and.

And we'll just set this out.

We'll get it all nice and pretty here once we get it laid out.

And then, Chris, if you don't mind, I would say, set these down about every, I guess one every, you know, foot or so.

- Okay.

- Maybe two feet.

- Two feet.

- But we'll be fine, yeah.

I'm gonna kind of hold it tightly down here.

So Chris, one of the things I would like to do, since we have more, oh, more than what we need, I like to tuck this under.

Let's go about maybe about a foot.

And.

- You got it?

- Yes, uh-huh.

Tuck this.

- So that crease right there.

- Yeah, put this, and then when we tuck it, it would just, you know, hold a lot longer.

Just be a lot better.

- Okay.

- Okay, ready?

- Pull your side.

- Yeah, okay.

And let me get down there.

- All right, yeah.

- Okay, and I'll tuck this in right there.

I'll get that one.

- You got that?

I'm gonna put one right here.

- Yeah, I put another one up.

The reason you wanna use these pins, it kind of helps control the wind, things like that.

Keep it from blowing up.

And they really do a great job of really tying them down so that you can work.

You wanna be able to work in your bed without having a lot of problems.

- Yep.

- And that should do it.

- I think you got it.

That's good?

- Yes, mm-hmm.

That should have us down on the sides.

And then, we'll take care of these middles.

Well, that one, we finished up nice.

So next, we'll move to the landscape fabric.

And what we will do, we will cut two strips here in order to cover this bed.

And so let me unfold.

It's kind of like Christmas time.

See what we get when we unfold here.

- See what we get.

- If you hold that for me.

- Okay.

Open it up?

- Okay.

And we'll cut here in this crease.

And that's the beauty of this product here.

Just regular ol' scissors can cut it.

You don't have to have any special kind of shears or anything like that.

We were doing pretty good.

Let me catch you on this.

- It's getting there.

- And then we'll go right here.

- There we go.

- All right, there we go.

- Yeah.

- And I'll set these aside here.

So now we have our two sheets here.

We'll just let this go to the side.

And then we'll, since the wind wants to blow.

- The wind, yeah.

- That's the importance of the pins.

We can overlap up there.

Just keep pulling, pull onto to yourself.

And this, and we should be fine here.

Pin this down.

Let me bring you.

- Yeah, I think we got that overlap pretty good too.

- Yes, I think you got that one overlapped well.

- Yeah.

- Here you go, just put two there.

- All right.

- So of course, one of the big things with using plastic materials, of course, is disposal.

And because you will have to, you know, get rid of it at the end of the growing season, so it does become a bit of a problem.

The thing about the woven plastic is you can reuse that for a couple of years.

So that is kind of an advantage that they do have, or the landscape fabric itself.

You can reuse it.

- Oh, yeah.

- All right?

- All right.

- And then we get the other one.

- Overlap a little bit?

- Yeah, 'cause we'll overlap when we'll pin that down, yes.

Come your way.

- Can almost come up to that green.

- Yes, uh-huh, move it up your way, keep moving.

And we are good to go.

- We're good?

- Yeah, we might need to come over just a hair here.

- Okay.

I'll tuck it under here.

- Okay.

Okay, we'll catch these two corners up here.

- Okay.

- I'll catch the corners down here.

- Go back this way.

- Let's see here.

About three to go down the middle, and I'll take care of the edge here.

There you go.

You know, to tie those in and we'll have it done.

- All right.

Get down here.

Do it like this.

- All right, well we have that in.

And by the way, the University of Tennessee has an excellent publication on this gardening website.

You can get it at UT Publications, and it's called Vegetable Gardening, you know.

- Okay.

- In Tennessee.

So just get that.

It has an excellent guide to all the different types of mulches, including the artificial ones.

- And we'll make sure to have that publication on our website so people can see it.

- Good job.

- All right.

So Walter, thank you so much.

Next week, organic mulches.

- Okay.

- Are you ready?

- Yes, sir.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] - It's easy to be attracted to beautiful flowering baskets for summer color.

Mandevilla is a great choice, for it's long season of flower with low maintenance.

Watering is the real challenge for being successful with these hanging baskets often 'cause they can dry out very quickly.

Use your finger if you can reach the basket to test.

If that soil is starting to dry out, then water it again and water thoroughly, let it drain out of the bottom.

If it's too high and you can't reach it, try lifting it with a broomstick to tell when it's light, it's thirsty.

When it's heavy, it probably doesn't need any more water.

Also, as the season changes and you have more foliage and it gets hotter, you might need to have more water to it and reverse as the days become shorter and nights begin to cool, as we get toward fall, you may need to reduce those watering needs.

Also remember that if you are doing that much watering in this small container, a good little fertilizer boost midsummer would be a great thing to do.

[upbeat country music] - I love strawberries.

Strawberries are my favorite.

I can't wait to taste them, Ms. Cathy, you know that.

- Okay, well, we'll go ahead and get started, Chris.

As you know, we get a lot of calls around this time of year.

- Okay.

- "I wanna make strawberry jam, "but I don't wanna use the water bath.

I just wanna can them, put them in the freezer."

So we did a little bit of research.

All of these recipes called for a tremendous amount of sugar.

- Okay.

- And we're trying to cut down on our sugar.

So I purchased this low-sugar pectin, and we're gonna make about less than two pints this morning.

But you wanna use your freshest strawberries possible.

And the farmer's market is open.

So you can get your fresh, beautiful strawberries at the farmer's market.

- Or you can grow your own strawberries, which we've done here.

- Yes, you can.

Yes, you sure have.

And go ahead and stem them and then mash them in a single layer, using a potato masher.

- Okay.

- Now some people will say, well, why'd you, why can't you just put it in a blender?

I'm afraid that if you puree the strawberries, it's like baby food.

So we say that you just mash them with the potato masher, and we're gonna put them in this small pot.

Now, I know you're thinking she's not making very much jam.

This is going to be less than two pints, but that's okay because I just wanted to demonstrate to this, demonstrate quickly, how this works.

So we're gonna turn up our heat into one and a third cups of berries.

That's what we have, one and a third cups of berries.

And according to the pectin instructions, about one and a half tablespoons of low-sugar pectin.

- And what does the pectin do, Ms. Cathy?

- Oh, this is what causes the strawberry jam to gel.

- To gel, okay.

- And sugar is also important in causing the strawberry jam to gel.

So we're gonna stir this, we're gonna stir it constantly for about one minute.

And it's gonna take a little while for this to stir up.

But we're gonna stir this until it comes to a rolling boil for one minute.

Now let me tell you a little bit, I did some experimenting.

The other day I tried a recipe that said, no boil strawberry jam.

And I said, okay, that sounds easy.

I ladled it into the jars, put it into the refrigerator, and the next day, it looked like sugar.

It just, it was, and the recipe did call for a lot of sugar.

And I thought, I'm going to save this jam.

So I poured everything back into the pot, And I let the strawberries cook down for a few, about one minute, put it back in the jars, and it's beautiful.

It's really, really pretty.

- What a difference that made.

- It made a huge difference.

And this was using about five cups of sugar to three cups of strawberries.

- Wow.

- So you see.

- Five cups of sugar, wow.

- We have so many people with diabetes.

- Right, right.

- I don't wanna tell them to go for this.

- Right.

- Then this, which is what we'll be sampling in a little bit.

This is our low-sugar pectin.

And you see the difference between the two.

You can tell this is a much deeper red.

And then this looks a little bit lighter.

And we used, I think it was about five cups of sugar to three cups of berries for this.

- Okay.

- So we've got our sugar.

We need to add our sugar after this comes to a rolling boil.

But let's talk about some of the advantages in doing strawberry freezer jam.

One advantage is it can be ready right away.

- Okay that's good.

- And you know, whenever we're using the hot water, the water bath method, you have to seal the jars.

If we're gonna put these in the refrigerator or the freezer, you don't have to worry so much about the lids sealing, although we are heating the jars to 180 degrees, so that they will seal.

- Okay.

- It's also, like we said, the berries seem to be fresher.

They're a brighter color, easy to do.

However, if we don't process this in a hot water bath, we're gonna have to put them in the refrigerator for no longer than three weeks.

So you've got to hurry up and eat it.

Or you can put it in the freezer for up to three months.

Some people say, okay now.

- There you go.

- This is, boiling, let's time it for one minute.

Gotta time it for one minute.

Can you help me with that, Chris?

I can barely see this.

So we're gonna let this boil for one minute.

The disadvantage here is who has that much freezer space?

[Chris laughs] You know, you hate to open your freezer and see 24 cans of strawberry jam.

What I have done with my previous batches, I gave it away immediately.

- Okay.

- You know, I just gave it away to friends and family.

- Yeah, I like strawberries, but yeah, that's a lot, yeah, 24.

- So you need a whole lot of room.

So let's just go ahead, get this to cook down for one minute.

- Okay, got about 30 seconds.

- It says stir constantly.

You don't want it to stick.

- All right.

- Okay, now if I were at home, I could adjust the heat a little bit better, and it would be a hard, rolling boil.

But we're, in the interest of time, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna go to the next step where we add one half cup of sugar.

So I've got one and a third cups of berries, one half cup of sugar.

That still sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

- It does, it sure does.

- But that's okay because otherwise, we would have a whole lot more than that.

- And it's smelling good already.

- Oh, I love the way it smells, yes.

Makes the kitchen smell really good.

But you know what else we're gonna add to it?

Jelly and jam has a tendency to foam up.

- Butter.

- So I'm gonna add like maybe a half of a teaspoon.

- Wow, just a little bit of butter.

- Just a tiny bit.

And this should cut down on the foaming.

- Ah.

- Because you don't wanna have a jar of foam in your jam.

Okay.

Would you say it's come to another hard boil?

I think it's boiling.

Let's go ahead and start timing it one minute.

- Okay.

You have five.

- Okay, it's looking good.

- All right.

- Good, thank you.

- Oh yeah, that's coming to a good boil.

- Yeah, that's coming to a good boil.

Excuse me, Tanya.

Now we're gonna take out our jars.

Now remember we said we had to heat our jars because if we don't, and you put that hot product in a cold jar, it will crack the jar.

- Ah.

- We're just gonna spoon this in.

- Oh, Tanya, doesn't that smell good?

- It does smell really good.

- It's boiling away.

And we wanna leave about one half inch of head space.

- Okay.

- If you go on YouTube, people use no head space, or they might use an inch and a half.

And we wanna go ahead and use our bubbler, get those air bubbles out.

Now we have our lids that have been heated to 180 degrees.

We're gonna lift this off.

Oh wait, I've gotta wipe this first.

Yeah, you have to wipe your lid.

See, you don't want any residue, - Okay.

- On the lid.

Okay.

And you put your lid on.

- This is a real good lesson here.

[Tanya laughs] - And then you just screw this on fingertip tight.

- Fingertip.

- Yeah, fingertip tight.

And we've got jam.

- How about that?

- Wow, that didn't seem hard at all.

- Okay, and you see, it looks like the fruit has come to the top of the jar.

So we're gonna let this stand at room temperature until it's cool enough for us to put it in the refrigerator.

And like we said, you can keep it in the refrigerator for three weeks or your freezer up to three months.

Now many of the publications I've read have said you can keep it in the freezer up to one year.

I don't think you can do that for the low-sugar jam.

Maybe you, you know, if we had a lot of sugar in this, but I would not use it for this jam.

- Okay.

- But since we have got some angel food cake.

- Oh.

- And I know someone had a birthday recently.

- Ah, well that's right on time.

How about that?

- We're gonna have some birthday cake.

- Tanya didn't know that was gonna happen today, did she?

- Did you know it was her birthday?

- I did, I sure did.

- Okay.

You get the first piece 'cause you're the birthday girl.

- Thank you, and strawberry is my favorite.

- Ah, see, there you go.

I love strawberries.

- Aw, I'm so glad.

Okay.

And we have this.

- I can eat strawberries anytime of the year, I'll tell you.

- Let that cool because it's very, very hot.

- Thank you so much.

- You are welcome.

- Happy birthday, Tanya.

- Well thanks.

- A little surprise for you there.

- I mean Facebook is wonderful.

- Yeah, we keep up with everything.

- It's really good.

We keep up with our friends.

Okay, Chris.

I'll cut a slice for you.

- Oh, Mr. D's gonna be so jealous.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

- Let me fix this.

- Thank you for that demonstration.

- Oh, you're quite welcome.

It was so easy.

- Easy, it was quick.

Tanya.

- Thank you.

- I may even, I may even try to make some of in my kitchen.

- Okay.

- Thank you again, Ms. Cathy.

- You're quite welcome, Chris.

- I appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - What is this weed that's showing up in our pollinator garden?

Ah, this is common vetch.

Common vetch is an annual winter weed.

Has alternate leaf arrangements, also produces tendrils.

Tendrils means that it likes to climb.

As you can see here, it has a pod.

Inside of this pod would be more weed seeds.

And in early spring and summer, this plant will produce a purple flower.

This plant can form a dense mass.

So you definitely want to get it out.

If you want to control it, a couple different ways you can do that.

Manually, I would just find the root system and if you can, you know, pull it up by the roots.

All right, because you really don't wanna be spraying chemicals in your pollinator garden, vegetable garden, or any other garden for that matter.

So if you can pull it up by the roots, look at that long tap root system there.

Right, nice white fibrous root.

Or if you have to, there's a chemical that you can use.

It'll be a broad-leaf weed killer weed.

Read and follow the directions on that.

But again, I would just pull it up.

So, common vetch, annual winter weed.

[upbeat country music] All right Walter, this is our Q and A segment.

You ready?

- Oh yes.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"What are these bumps on the leaves of my walnut tree?"

And this is Linda from Atlanta, Georgia.

So can we help her out with the bumps on the walnut leaves of that tree?

- Well, there could be a couple of things.

- Yeah, we talked about this a little bit.

- Yeah, so I'm gonna give the wrong answer first.

[Chris laughs] But sometimes you see these little, these little galls and blisters on things.

It's phylloxera - Right.

- Is what we see on some things.

But in this case it's what?

- Yeah, so it's gonna be the walnut blister galls.

Right, which are actually caused by mites.

So the eriophyid mite.

- Right.

- Right, so it's feeding of course, on the leaves, caused the little bumps.

Inside of those bumps will be little bitty mites.

- That's right.

- Right.

So the thing about it is, this is on a walnut tree.

It's not gonna cause any damage.

- No, they really don't affect much at all.

So don't worry about that one at all.

You're in good shape.

- I wouldn't worry about any type of control.

- Right.

- Any type of insecticide or anything like that.

The tree, you know, can withstand.

- Yes.

- You know, that damage from the eriophyid mites.

- Yes.

- So the walnut blister galls, caused by the eriophyid mites.

How about that?

- Listen, hey I tell you, a walnut tree, you get a blister named after it.

It's pretty good.

- Yeah.

So Linda, we thank you for the question and for the picture.

Thank you for the picture, appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can coffee filters be composted?"

This is Rick from Millford, New Jersey.

That's actually a good question.

So what do you think about that?

- Typically I would say yes.

- Okay.

- Particularly, you know, if you, if you know for sure that they're, you know, they're all paper, just remember one thing.

Some of them do contain microfibers or plastic if you're really getting into that.

- Right.

- Right now.

- Right.

- But I don't see any reason why it couldn't be composted, you know, in.

I don't see why it wouldn't work.

- Yeah, I don't see why it wouldn't work either.

My wife is a coffee drinker, right?

So, you know, they have the unbleached filters.

- Okay.

- Right.

So the unbleached filters of course, don't contain any chemicals, right?

So those you can definitely compost.

- Yes.

- And what I would do with those, I would, you know, tear 'em apart, you know, because the smaller you can get 'em, the quicker they can be composted, right.

Breakdown and be composted, right.

So they also have, I know, 'cause we've been looking for it, the bleached filters.

- Yes.

- Right.

So the bleached coffee filters actually will contain some chemicals.

So if you get your compost pile, of course hot enough or whatever, you know, that may work for you.

- Yes, yes.

- But the unbleached, you know, definitely you can use.

- Yes.

- And then two, if you have the coffee grinds in the filter, you can use all of that together.

- You can use all of that.

So it's kind of a win-win situation all the way around.

- All the way around.

Yeah, use it all together and that'll be a nitrogen, you know, fixer, you know, for the soil, for those plants.

Yeah, so can you compost coffee filters?

Yes, you can.

- Yes.

- But look for the unbleached kind.

Tear 'em up into the smaller pieces 'cause they break down faster.

Rick, thank you.

That was a good question.

We appreciate that.

Right, here's our next viewer email.

"Where's the best place to plant fig trees?"

And this is Sam from Byhalia, Mississippi.

He says he's "been told to plant on the south side of a house or building."

All right, so we appreciate that question from Sam.

So what do you think about that?

- Well, Sam has been told correct.

- All right, yeah.

- And the main thing is, you know, as long as they're in full sun, that's where they like to be, in full sun anyway.

And obviously on the south side of a property.

It's gonna be warmer there as well.

So I think he's in pretty good shape there with that.

- Yeah, I think Sam's in good shape.

Yeah, so you wanna plant it to where it gets six to eight hours of direct sunlight.

I hope you have a good drainage in that area.

Give it a little space.

- Yes.

- Right.

You're gonna need some space, and I think it's gonna be fine.

- Yes.

- You know, south side protected from the cold winter winds, you know, and then, I will select these two varieties though, Celeste.

- Okay.

- Brown Turkey.

- Okay, okay.

- Yeah, down there in Byhalia, Mississippi.

- Okay.

- Those are the varieties I would select, Sam, and I think you'll be good.

So yeah, give it all the sun that it needs.

South side of the building.

It works.

- Sounds like a winner to me.

- Sounds like a winner to me.

You gonna have a lot of figs.

That's for sure.

- That's correct.

- All right Sam, we thank you for that question.

All right, Walter, that was fun as always, man.

- Fun as always.

- Thank you much.

- Yes, sir.

- All right.

Remember, we'd 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 to day.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about anything we talked about, 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]