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

I'm Chris Cooper.

In the heat of summer, many ornamentals slow down.

Today we're gonna talk about some summer-blooming lilies that buck the trend.

Also, we're going to aerate the 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 Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and Booker T. Leigh will be joining me later.

Good to see you, Joellen.

- Good to see you.

- How you doing today?

- Doing good.

- All right, well look, we're gonna talk about the types of lilies and how to care for them.

- Yes, we are.

And the lilies that you're gonna get in the mail or at the garden center anywhere, are gonna be bulbs.

- Okay.

- So we're gonna have to care and plant for those, but we're gonna talk about the types for right now.

- All right, let's do that.

- And the most common one found in garden centers are Asiatic lilies.

They have the widest range of colors of all of the lilies.

And they only get three to four feet tall.

So they're the smaller and shorter of all of the lilies - Okay.

- That you can buy.

They like zones three to nine, found in lots of parts of the country and the world.

Very good Asiatic lilies, they're grown everywhere.

- Including my garden.

- Yes.

- Yeah, so I have several of them and I love 'em.

All right.

- They're pretty.

And next are the oriental lilies.

- Okay.

- Now they are bloom in the next, in June and July.

And depending on the variety, people will probably recognize these like the Casa Blanca, the very large white blooming, and Stargazer, which is the pinks and whites.

- Okay.

- But they average four to six feet in height.

Of course, the Casa Blanca is one of the taller ones it might be a little bit taller than six feet.

They're zones three through nine also.

- That's good.

- And so they are the second most popular lily and most common found.

- Okay.

- Now the aurelian, they're the next kind, are the aurelian or trumpet lilies.

And the Easter lily is probably the most famous trumpet lily there ever was.

It's Lilium longiflorum, and for it to bloom, 'cause Easter is a span depending on the time of year, the different years, Easter doesn't always fall on the same day.

So the forcing has to happen at a certain time from Easter for that two-week window when it's blooming.

- Right, gotcha.

- But those are forced.

But after it's done, you can plant it in the yard, in the garden.

Yes, can be a perennial in zones 5 through 11.

- I did not know that, okay.

- Yes, yeah.

And now they will bloom later in summer, like, June and usually in June.

- Okay, so they will bloom again.

- Yeah, they'll bloom in the garden, and they'll multiply just like all the other lilies, especially if it's the right kind of soil.

- Okay.

- I have one of the heirloom lilies, I just got it.

It's the regal lily, Lilium regale.

And it's white with a yellow throat on the inside of the petal.

On the outside of the petal, it's a pink and burgundy wash on the outside of it.

So as it opens up, you've got all these colors, and it's beautiful.

But it's heirloom because it has been cultivated for over a hundred years.

- Wow, a hundred years?

- Yes.

It's beautiful, and it does well in the garden.

It's a good lily to start with.

- Okay, a hundred years?

- A hundred years.

- Wow, okay.

- And again, these trumpet lilies, usually three to six feet, depending on which one it is.

And these have fragrant flowers.

Majority of these aurelian or trumpet lilies have fragrant flowers.

- Okay, that's good to know.

- Now there's a new one that's fairly new, but I mean, fairly new to me and in the industry are two different things.

I'm sure it's been worked on for a while.

They're called Orienpet Lilies.

They're a cross between Oriental and the trumpet.

So a lot of times you'll see an OT in their name, because they're Oriental and trumpets, called Orienpets.

And they have the best of both worlds, though.

[Chris chuckling] They're vigorous plants, they can get four to eight feet tall, and they're fragrant and the flowers are thicker and kind of a waxy sheen to them.

- Alright.

- That's why they're getting to be very popular, because they are so hardy.

- You are excited about that idea.

- I am because I just bought one.

- Alright.

- I'm gonna try it out.

They're zones three to nine, too.

Next are the tiger lilies.

Now I always thought tiger lilies was the same as the lily, but they aren't part of the lily family.

Problem is their genus is tigrinum Splendens.

And they have black spots on them, and they're orange-- - I'm familiar with those.

- They're orange.

And they're found along the roadsides in much part of the country because they are vigorous and they can be supported by that.

They'll get three to four feet tall also.

But the difference, if even have smaller flowers, each stalk might have up to 20 flowers on it.

So if you get a few stalks, you're gonna have a nice bunch of flowers on that.

- Oh, you get your bang for your buck.

- Yeah, and they're gonna bloom a little bit later in July, maybe the beginning of August.

They are zones three to nine.

- Okay, wide.

- One important thing about them that people will like, they are deer-resistant.

- Deer resistant?

- Deer do not like them.

Now the other lilies is like candy- - Right.

- To a deer.

But these happen to be deer-resistant, - Deer resistant, alright.

- Deer resistant.

- That's good, that's good.

- Now, you say, okay, you've got all these lilies.

Now I have tried lilies before and I had beautiful lilies.

It was, I was starting, 'cause I really like lilies.

They're one of my favorite flowers.

They're fragrant, they're bold, they're gorgeous in the landscape.

I really like lilies.

But I have had some trouble with them because I have voles.

And just like the deer, lily bulbs in the winter, are like candy to voles.

So one, I went from two years of gorgeous blooms to none the next year because the voles ate them all.

[both laughing] - The deer didn't get 'em but the voles did.

- Voles did, yeah.

- Oh, okay.

- So you gotta watch for voles.

Put 'em in cages, that's what I'm gonna do with these.

- Okay.

- I've decided that since I have a vole problem and I still want lilies, I'm going to put mine in cages.

Also, wet soils is probably one of the worst problems with lilies.

And probably the number one cause of death of lilies is not a well-drained soil.

When we say lilies need to be planted in a well-drained soil, that should be underlined three times with three exclamation points behind it.

- Okay.

- Because really once they're established, they can take drought pretty good.

I mean, think of it, if some of the lilies are out in the fields- - Right, roadside.

- Yeah.

They don't need a whole lot of water.

- Okay.

- And they like kind of a neutral pH, which is about 6.8 to 7.

So if it's too acidic or too alkaline, you've gotta adjust it so it's closer to being neutral.

- Okay.

- They like neutral soils.

And you wanna plant them three to five inches deep in the ground.

And that's gonna depend on the type of soils you have.

Like here, three inches would be plenty deep.

Two inches might even be better because we have such heavy soil and they like, you know, light soil.

So don't plant them too deep in your heavy clay soils.

But in other parts of the country where the soils are looser, five inches, yeah.

And in the winter for more northern climates, you probably do wanna do the four to five inches.

- Okay, in deep.

- Maybe even six depend because that'll help with the frost and the cold.

- So is there a correct direction, orientation of planting the bulbs?

- Again, they're gonna have a point on them.

And like one of the bulbs that I just recently got, they have the, the roots are dried underneath it.

So you can see the roots.

But the wide part is where the roots are.

And the point again, just like tulips, is up, because that's where the stems are coming up.

And mine already had some stems coming out and the roots were still down there.

So it was very easy to tell which was up on those.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

In colder climates you might wanna put some mulch in the fall.

Again, that's just to help them over winter.

When they start dividing, 'cause if they like it there, they're gonna divide and you're gonna have lots of them to give away or to put in other places.

About every three to four years, they suggest you divide them if you need to.

- If you need to.

- Yeah.

If it's not growing, if there's still only three or four stems after three or four years, then I would just keep letting it go.

- Oh, you just let it go?

- Yeah.

- 'Cause I often wonder how would you know when to divide 'em?

- Well, when they start getting big and clumpy.

And they might be starting to get into other plants you have around them and then you're gonna say, "Hey they're getting out of control."

I wanna thin them a little bit.

- Got it, now is there a time of the year when you should divide them?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- I would divide them in the fall and if you really wanted to the spring, but you could might, I mean if you had to, you could do the spring.

But I try to leave things alone that are gonna bloom and I like to wait, let them bloom.

And that's the other part, after they finish blooming, you need to cut off the seed heads 'cause you don't want them to form seeds.

You want them to take all of that energy down into the bulb.

So it'll bloom next year.

And you'll see green stalks of leaves and it might look funny, but leave them because it's just like the daffodils and other bulbs that you have to let it die naturally so that energy goes back into the bulb, so you'll get blooms for next year.

- Got it, makes sense.

- There is one other thing that sometimes they get is lily mosaic virus.

So key is it's vectored by aphids.

- Oh, okay.

- And so if you don't ever have aphids on your lilies, then you really don't have to worry about it.

But if you do have aphids on your lilies, you might go, "Hmm, I think I need to get rid of these."

And then if you start noticing different colorations in the lily and they're not looking healthy, you'll probably have the lily mosaic virus and you'll want to dig those up and get rid of them, 'cause there's no cure.

- Okay, yeah, alright.

- But I have not seen that.

I have never seen that.

But it's out there.

- Okay, alright.

- But they're beautiful.

- They're beautiful.

And again, the best time to plant the bulbs will be- - Well you can plant them in the spring or the fall.

- Spring and fall.

- In the spring, you wanna wait, you can plant them, there's a large window of time.

In fact they'll keep selling you bulbs up until May.

- Okay.

- Because the best time to plant them is four weeks before the end of the frost.

So around here that would be March.

But, and then up until June.

Because like I planted mine in beginning of June.

I got them in, I planted them right away.

But I got the last window of time that they would send them to me.

They may not bloom this year and I really don't care.

But I've got a start.

- Got a start, right.

- And then if you wanna plant 'em in the fall, 'cause they sell them both times of the year, 'cause you can plant them both times of the year.

But they all bloom in the summer.

And then you would plant them in the fall four weeks before the first frost.

That's a more set time.

You really need that time to plant them so they can get established in the ground before winter.

- Okay, yeah, we definitely could tell you like them.

- Oh, I love lilies.

- The summer-blooming lilies, right?

- They're beautiful, they're fragrant, they're gorgeous.

Really stand out in the landscape.

- All right, well Joellen, we appreciate that good information.

Alright, thank you much.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] Well it's been about seven weeks since we planted our annuals.

These are all the primary colors, the yellows, the blues, the reds.

And these three colors seem to work very well together.

We've got different textures and colors and it's all looking very nice.

We've got the yellow sweet potato vine.

We've got the red SunPatiens and the blue Ageratum.

and they're all looking good.

So these three primary colors and all the planning that we did ahead of time to make sure we had the different colors and the different textures really does make a difference in the landscape.

And these look very nice, so always plan ahead.

Think about the plants you're gonna have, the textures, the colors that are gonna go together and you'll have a successful planting.

[upbeat country music] - All right Booker, we're out here, we actually have an aerator- - Aerator.

- To aerate our lawn.

So why do we need to aerate anyway?

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

And over a period of time that's gonna happen, especially you got a lot of traffic on your lawn kids playing on it, you cutting it, mowing across and walking across it.

And then you need to aerate it sometimes.

And the aerater is gonna loosen the soil up.

For that water to get through the soil, you can move through the soil when it rain, the fertilizer can get down to the root system.

You want all that to happen to your soil, to your grass, if not, whenever you put fertilizer down, it's just gonna stay on top.

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

So you want to 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 is your warm-season grass, when the grass began to come outta dormancy.

And this probably last of April or the first of May.

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

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

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

You need to water or the root system will dry out.

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 months when it go in dormancy.

You don't wanna do Bermuda grass in September, 'cause your dormancy it not doing any growth and those roots gonna be exposed all winter long, and that could damage your grass.

- Sure, sure.

- So this is a good time.

No, it's not too hot now.

Probably some rain and something, you need to water it in.

And that's so nutrients can pass through the soil.

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

- Okay, so it's not that often?

- Not that often, you aerate, unless you got somebody out there doing something all the time, that's playing football or whatever you doing on your lawn or something like that.

And having a compact soil.

And that why I tell folk don't mow your grass when it's real wet, because when you're wet and damp a lot, you can-- - You''re compacting.

- You compact the soil down.

So you don't wanna do it then.

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

- Okay.

- Because that's the one thing you wanna do that.

So just an aerater here, I know it's a good thing And what the aerater will do, it punches holes into the soil.

- Okay.

- You go up and down and you go across and you get a good coverage on there for that water and stuff and 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 leave them, you put 'em in the thing there, you just leave 'em on the ground and over a period of time they'll break out.

- Okay.

- And they'll compact and 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 that year it just kinda, so pretty and everything.

Because my soil was real compact, had been in the house over 20 years, and I said I need to do something to my grass because it just wasn't doing good.

I need to do something to it.

And I said, look, let me aerate it, cover it.

And I did that and it really helped.

And if you've been in your own house for a while, you got compact soil, and you see the water ain't getting down to it like it should, it don't look like it should look, aerate it.

- Aerate it, okay.

- And, like I said, you got Bermuda grass, you wanna do it probably right the first of April, say last of April or the first of May.

- Okay.

- But fescue in September.

- Okay, and the grass will recover from of course, the aeration itself, no problem.

- That why I say you wanna do it when it begin to grow, - So it'll recover- - Recover quick.

Yeah, it recover and there and stuff.

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

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

- Okay, alright, Booker.

- Yeah, you do what you show me, show I do it and everything, because when I was doing it last time it was pulling me down the thing.

You be very careful when you're doing that, so we don't go and do this, show you how to do it.

- Okay, yeah, okay.

[aerator chugging] [aerator whirring] - So what do you think?

- Man, it's good.

Tell you to do, don't do it when it's wet.

Do when it's not too hot.

But it's good though, what you need to do.

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

Make sure I try to cover every spot in there, so.

And this is gonna help the grass a lot better.

You'll see it again next year.

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

- Okay.

- Aeration is very important.

- Okay, yeah, we can see the little plugs that it pulled out.

- See the the plugs come out of the ground and everything.

So going through that, if you wanna do it real good, you can't go back across another way.

- Okay.

- And that will help some too.

But this should be good enough.

That one way should be okay.

- Okay.

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

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

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

The water begin to penetrate into the soil.

And you go out there and just look at this grass, you can tell whether it's compact or not.

When it rain, 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, this is a good thing to do.

Aeration, I like doing it.

And, it's good- - It's good for the grass because of why?

- Good for the grass now, yeah.

Less water, air move through the soil and also get fertilizer down to it.

And you need that, 'cause grass need to breathe, too.

Those root systems need some air.

And that's why we do aeration to soil and things.

And like I said again now, Bermuda grass, you wanna do it probably about last of April to the first, between May and fescue grass is a cool-season grass, you wanna do it when that grass begin to grow and fescue be sometime in September.

- All right, Booker, we appreciate that demonstration.

- Oh good.

- Get a work out?

- Good work out.

I won't go to gym today.

[upbeat country music] - This is a spirea and it is deciduous.

So until the leaves started coming back out again, we didn't realize how much of it had died, either due to the cold weathers we've had or is just time for the plant to self-prune.

But we need to get rid of the dead out of this and make the plant look better and it'd be healthier.

So we're gonna start and prune out some of these dead branches.

We are pruning these as far down as possible and what we're finding is some of 'em, we don't even have to prune because they're so brittle that they are just coming apart themselves.

Well there's the last dead branch.

Now the shrub is dead-branch free and it's gonna be looking better.

And the summer will go on and it'll continue to bloom for us, and be pretty.

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

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- Oh, these are some good questions.

- Yes they are.

- All right.

Here's our first viewer email.

"How can I overwinter a hibiscus tree?"

And this is Tom from Hamilton, Ohio.

So Mr. Tom, guess what?

Joellen actually has done this before, right- - Yeah, I've done that.

- The hibiscus tree.

- Well the thing is, in this part of the country I have always put mine in the garage.

But we don't get cold winters like they do.

- Right, right-.

- So they're gonna have- - This is Ohio.

- To actually bring it inside.

- Right.

- And you might wanna treat it with some kind of insecticide, whether it be an organic insecticide or a systemic insecticide or something.

Because it is invariably, even in the garage, before I took it back outside, it got aphids and some little spider mites and things like that.

- Right, yeah, - That must have been lingering from being outside where it was normally taken care of by other bugs, so.

If you'll spray it and take it inside, you're gonna need to put it in as much light as possible.

Thinking, it's been outside.

- Yeah.

- So you wanna put it in as much light as possible.

It's still gonna lose leaves, 'cause nothing is gonna be as intense as it being outside.

- Right.

- So you're just gonna have to hopefully, you hope it survives through the winter with losing some leaves.

And I wouldn't keep it very wet.

- Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

- I would keep it on the dry, yeah, keep it, water it infrequently.

Make sure it gets really dry before you water it again.

'Cause you don't want a root rot.

- Yeah, right.

- Because look, there's not as much light for the plant to use, so it doesn't require as much moisture as it did when it was outside.

- No, that's a good point, it's real good.

Yeah, so watch the watering, for sure.

And don't be alarmed if any leaves fall off.

It's natural.

- Yes.

- Yeah, it was outside.

Now it's inside.

- And they'll come back when you put it back outside.

- Oh, they will, they're beautiful.

That'll work.

So there you have it Mr. Tom, thank you so much.

Appreciate that question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I want to use a crape myrtle as a shade tree.

Should our prune to one trunk or several?"

And this is Morgan from St. Louis, Missouri.

- Wow.

- So, that's a good question.

- That is a good question.

- Good question.

- Alright, so what do you think about that, because we both have crape myrtles at home.

- Yeah, and they do tend to be bushy.

But I mean, there's very few single-trunked crape myrtles that I've noticed.

I mean the trunks themselves are very ornamental.

So usually you have them at odd numbers.

Three is a very popular odd number to have.

And sometimes they'll go up to five.

But three is a good number- - I think so.

- To leave, but this is it.

If you have the crape myrtle and you have all these stems coming out, pick three.

I don't care if they're big or little, that are the furthest away from each other in a triangular shape, because the larger the trunks get, you don't want them to grow together.

- Got it.

- To get included bark.

For the health of the tree, make sure that they are furthest apart.

Because they'll keep getting bigger.

I mean the base of mine are at least two, about three, four inches.

- Yeah, so are mine.

- Round, so just think about that.

Don't leave them close together.

- Right, and it will provide decent shade.

- It will do that, yes.

- It will definitely do that.

- Some of 'em get to 30 feet tall.

- Yeah, that's good though, that's a good question.

So we thank you Morgan for that, right?

So several trunks, not just one, several.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"Do I need to amend my perennial bed?

After seven years the soil has gotten hard."

And this is Francis from Norfolk, Virginia.

What do you think about that?

Amending the perennial bed, right?

And it was actually, when it was first established, was amended with compost.

- Good.

- And it was loose, of course, at that time.

- Yes.

- So what do you think about that?

Because you're someone that actually prepares a lot of beds and such.

- And I have a lot of perennials at my house.

And you know, perennials don't need a whole lot of care once they're established.

- Okay.

- They don't seem to need much care, but if you want to, you can, but think about, the root systems are probably in all that soil.

So even though it might seem hard to you, it might be just full of roots.

That was my other thought with that.

- Right.

- And if she wants to add anything new, that'd be fine too.

And if she wants to amend it where she's planting that 1 a little bit, remember to only 20% amendment to the existing soil.

- Okay.

- And she can do that.

- Yeah, 'cause that was a question about should we only amend when we plant new plants?

- Yeah, I would think so.

If you just want to, you can amend them, put a little, I would put more compost on it than anything else.

And see, a lot of times, I just leave the leaves.

- Yeah.

- And let them compost and be the mulch on top of the ground and I don't even- - Yeah, okay.

- I don't even worry.

And then that will also, the composting of the leaves that are acting as my mulch, it actually feeds the plants.

So I usually don't do anything - Okay.

- To them after that, 'cause they don't require it.

- Right, and you're right, 'cause you can always address that situation by adding compost or leaf mulch or something just to the surface.

- Yeah, you could just do the surface.

- Just to the surface, just let it break down over time, let Mother Nature take care of that for you.

- Yeah.

- And it'll provide of course, nutrients for those plant roots.

Because we are talking about a perennial bed.

- Yeah, its just perennials.

- Yeah, right.

So I think that would-- - Yeah, I like all my perennials, I like them to grow close together.

Not on top of each other- - Right, yeah, right.

- Because you want some air movement around them.

- Sure, good point.

- Close together and that's when you start dividing.

- Alright.

- If they get too close.

- Alright, well Frances, we hope that helps you out there.

Thank you for that question.

Joellen, it's fun as always.

- Yes it is.

- Thank you much, appreciate it.

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 find out more about summer-blooming lilies or aerating your lawn, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have information about this and many other gardening topics.

Go check it out.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]