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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Lizards are bug eaters.

Today, we're going to learn how to attract them to our gardens.

Also, give your grocery store orchids a new lease on life by repotting them.

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 Mary Schmidt.

Mary is the Wildlife Backyard Center Curator at Lichterman Nature Center, and Randall Bayer will be joining me later.

Thank you for being here, Mary.

- Thanks for having me back.

- Always fun to have you on the set.

- Yeah, I'm excited today to talk about some lizards.

- All right, so we're talking about lizards.

- Yeah.

- So here's my first question.

How do you attract lizards to your garden?

- Well, there are ways to attract lizards.

The biggest thing is you wanna create a habitat.

So creating a habitat includes components of food, water, shelter, and space.

So most lizards are insect eaters.

So you wanna try to attract insects.

So incorporating native plants is a great way to draw in insects.

Lizards also are cold-blooded animals.

So their body temperature is related to what the outside temperature is.

So our temperature doesn't really change.

We're what's called warm-blooded.

But cold-blooded animals like lizards have to use behavior to change their temperature.

So putting spots for them to warm up and cool down.

So rocks out in the sun where they can warm up really quickly, or hiding spots, snag piles, things like that where they can escape the heat of the sun as well.

- How about that?

Isn't it interesting?

- Yeah.

- All right, so you say they eat insects.

What kinda insects?

- So it kind of depends on the lizard.

If they're climbing lizards or ground-dwelling lizards.

But mainly they're gonna be looking for the biggest payoff.

So the bigger the insect, fat caterpillars, things like that, that can give them a lot of energy.

They're typically gonna go after crickets, stuff like that.

- Okay.

So somebody's probably wondering.

So the benefits, I mean, why do we need to have them in our garden anyway?

- Yeah, so anytime you're attracting a predator, it means you're doing a really good job at creating a whole habitat.

So when you see lizards, which are predators to insects, it means you're doing something right.

They're gonna help control insect populations in your garden and keep everything in balance that way too, so you're not overrun with a bunch of insects.

- Wow.

So habitat.

It's all about the habitat.

- It's all about creating a habitat.

- Okay.

And you mentioned space, so you said they need space?

- Yeah, so all the animals need space to raise young.

So lizards are gonna be laying eggs.

And so depending on the lizard, they can lay them in different places.

Mulch piles sometimes, or compost piles.

We're gonna talk about one that loves to lay in compost piles.

But yeah, so just providing some of that space for them to raise young or lay their eggs.

- Okay.

So now we don't wanna be using insecticides, right?

And we want to attract those lizards, you know, to our habitats, so.

- Right.

Because insecticides a lot of times are not specific to one type of insect.

And so you're basically killing off the food source for the lizards.

- Okay.

Yeah, we definitely don't wanna do that.

We're trying to attract them 'cause they're helping us out.

- That's right.

- They're beneficial.

- Yeah, I mean, they're way better at catching insects than we are.

- Oh yeah, that's for sure.

All right.

So what did you bring for us today?

- Okay, well, I brought a really interesting one to start with.

This is called a glass lizard.

- Glass.

[chuckles] Okay.

- So.

- Wow.

- Let me get him to calm down here.

So what's the first thing you notice about this lizard?

- Yes, no legs.

- That's right.

So legs aren't necessarily a characteristic of lizards.

That's not what separates them from snakes.

But there are two characteristics that separate lizards from snakes, and you can see it on their face.

Calms down here for me.

- Just a little excited.

- Yeah.

So if we look at his face, one, he's got an opening right behind his eyes, and those are ears.

So snakes don't have external ears.

So those holes right there are one of the characteristics of a lizard.

The other one is he can blink.

- He can blink?

- Yeah.

So snakes don't have eyelids, but lizards do.

So those are the two main characteristics to tell lizards from snakes.

- Oh my gosh.

- Now something else I wanna, well, this lizards actually is kind of getting ready to shed.

He's got a few scales coming off.

But one of the defense mechanisms of a lot of lizards is when they feel threatened, they can drop their tails and their tails continue to wiggle and move to distract the potential predator.

- That's interesting.

- And so this one years and years ago, over 10 years ago, this lizard lost part of its tail.

- I can tell.

- Yeah.

So you can see they will grow back, but they typically don't grow back as long, and a lot of times, they're a different color as well.

- Wow.

- Yeah, so just a really interesting lizard.

Glass lizards are found in the southeastern United States.

And mainly coastal plains.

So sandy areas near, beaches and dunes is where a lot of times you'll see this in its native habitat.

- How long do they live?

- Well, this one has been at the Nature Center for over 10 years.

So sometimes they can be 15, 20 years old.

In the wild, their lifespans are a lot shorter because obviously, they have predators.

Things like raccoons and opossums, coyotes, things like that.

- Okay.

Well, how about that?

- You wanna meet another one?

- Yeah, let's do that.

- All right.

- This is neat.

I can see how people could tell, you know, look at that and be like, "Oh, it looks like a snake."

- Right, but then when you look close at its face, you can see it's got those holes and if it blinks, it's not a snake.

- Wow.

- Okay.

So this next one I brought is a lot different.

He's really bright, right?

- Yeah.

- So this is called a green anole.

Now I'm not gonna get him out 'cause I'm not sure I could catch him again.

But what's so unique about green anoles is they are native to North America and they're one of the only native color-changing lizards.

So they don't change like chameleons but they can change from a green to a brown color.

And so right now he's mainly on the substrate that's green.

But if we had more brown in there, you would see him start to change over to a brown color.

- What causes them to change colors though?

- So it's mainly their background.

And with these guys, it takes some time.

And so the color is a way to camouflage on what they are and hide from potential predators.

Birds, things like that for these ones.

- Wow.

How about that?

Now, how long do they live?

- Not as long, maybe just a few years.

- Just a few years.

- Yeah.

These guys though, good climbers, as you can see.

- I could see.

I can see.

- And more common in the south, especially places like Florida, you'll see them all over.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We brought one more lizard to talk about.

- Interesting.

- And this is a different type too.

And you can see he's gonna look a lot different than the anole we just talked about.

This one is a skink, S-K-I-N-K. And skinks are characterized by these short, stubby legs.

There's 15 species across North America.

So kind of every different region in North America has their own kind of skink.

This one is called a five-lined skink.

So really, now this is a female, her lines aren't as defined as the male, and she's a little bit older too.

But when they're younger, what's really interesting is they have blue tails.

So their first couple years of life, they're gonna have these blue tails.

Because in the wild, blue is usually a sign that it's a dangerous or a poisonous or venomous animal.

These guys are not, but they're kind of tricksters.

And so to protect the young ones, they have those blue tails.

But as they get older, they lose that blue coloration on their tails.

- Okay, so what do skinks eat?

- Skinks are the same way, a lot of ground-dwelling insects.

Now these guys can climb okay but they're going after a lot of things on the ground.

And this is the one I was mentioning before about the compost or the mulch pile.

So that's where the skinks like to lay their eggs.

And the five-lined skinks are really interesting because in most lizards, there's no parental care.

They lay the eggs and leave.

- What?

Okay.

- But in five-lined skinks, the female will stick around the eggs until they hatch, which is pretty unique.

- How about that?

- Yeah.

So with these guys, a way to attract them is if you've got a mulch pile and you've got those basking spots, big rocks, and then of course, you're incorporating native plants to attract your insects, you're probably gonna attract some skinks as well.

- So guess what, we actually had skinks in our butterfly garden.

- Oh, that's awesome.

That's great.

- They're helping us out, right?

- Absolutely.

- So again, you don't have to use any insecticides because the skinks helping us out.

- That's right.

That's great.

- How about that?

That is pretty good.

So let's say this again, in order to attract these to our gardens, what do we need to do?

- So always think of create a total habitat.

So not just incorporating one thing, like a basking spot.

You might get some, but if you're incorporating a food source like insects, bring them in with your native plants, shelter.

So even things like under overturned pots to give them a place to get out of the heat in the middle of the summer.

And then water sources too.

Mainly, you don't have to incorporate like a big water source for them 'cause they're taking little droplets of water.

So you could have a little fountain and you might see them come to that or a little water feature as well will attract them.

- That'd be good.

You know what I'm sitting here thinking?

My mom is scared of lizards.

- Really?

- Yeah.

I need to tell mom, come on now.

They're beneficial.

- Yeah, these guys are totally beneficial.

And even our glass lizard who kind of looks like a snake.

Really beneficial and not too scary.

- Not too scary.

Mary, always fun to have you here.

- Great to be here.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Okay, so what we're looking at here is the Chrysanthemum lace bug.

You might be familiar with lace bugs from azaleas.

We see those quite often, azalea lace bug damage.

However, this is a different type of lace bug that is specific to plants that are in the family of Chrysanthemums.

So this plant is actually an Aster.

It's in that same family.

And you can see we've got some general yellowing here.

These symptoms are called stippling.

This is a sucking insect.

And so we got to looking, and we certainly found them here, they are Chrysanthemum lace bugs feeding on an Aster.

So to treat this Chrysanthemum lace bug, you could use an insecticidal soap or a general purpose insecticide like permethrin.

And I would do that as soon as possible.

[upbeat country music] - We're glad you're here.

We get a lot of questions about orchid care.

Can you help us out, please, sir?

- Yes, all right, I will.

Today, I wanna talk about growing on grocery store orchids.

Which a lot of people buy and they soon kill them after they bought them and they come to me and they ask why is it dead?

So I'm gonna talk about how to care for this orchid after purchase.

And actually, while it's still flowering as well.

So orchids like these mostly grow on trees in the tropics or on rocks.

They store water in pseudo bulbs like these, or in fleshy leaves like these, okay?

When it rains in the tropics, which is a daily event, the roots of the orchid are like a sponge and they absorb moisture.

The moisture is then maintained there, and then it's transferred to the storage organs on the orchid, like the leaves or the pseudo bulbs.

So after it rains, the habitat dries out quickly and then the plant waits for the next rainfall.

So each day the roots are wanting to dry out.

So when you purchase this orchid from your local grocery store, it comes and it's sitting in this ceramic pot usually.

- Aha.

Look at that.

- No holes in the bottom.

- No holes.

[Chris laughs] - And it is potted in sphagnum moss, which retains a ton of water.

Okay?

So this is fine if you let this dry out between waterings.

Okay?

So if you stick your finger down in there and it's dry, it's time to water it again.

So when it's flowering, it's okay to leave the plant in this medium and in this container, making sure you don't leave a lot of water in the ceramic container.

But what people often do is they overwater these, okay?

And what that does is it causes these nice roots to rot, okay?

And the crown of the plant rots as well.

And then the leaves start to droop, okay?

And people think, "It's run out of water."

- It needs more water.

- It needs more water.

But what's really happened here is that the roots have rotted off and the crown's rotted.

So the plant can't actually take up any more water because its roots are gone.

Once it reaches that stage, it's finished.

So what we wanna do then is after the plant flowers, okay?

Is to remove it from this medium and put it in something that will drain much better, and be easier to water so you're not gonna overwater it.

So what I would do, and I'll just demonstrate here, what we're gonna do.

Hopefully is get the plant.

- There you go.

- There we go.

And they come, it's in a just a cheap plastic pot that they mass produce these plants in.

And there's the roots.

and they're nice and pliable when they're wet, okay?

So orchid roots are stiff when they're dry.

You can see that?

You can break that, it crunches.

- Yeah, sure did.

- These roots are nice and pliable.

So you wanna make sure that this medium is nice and wet before you try and repot it.

Okay, because the roots will become nice and pliable once you have done that.

So I just remove all this sphagnum.

- So if you break some of those roots, is that okay?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

That's fine, okay.

- Yeah, it's okay, but you probably won't break very many when they're moist.

But make sure you, any orchid, make sure you soak it before you go to transplant it.

'Cause it'll make the roots very pliable and then you can position them in the pot afterward.

So there, I've removed- - Wow, you did a good job of that.

How about that?

- We removed all that sphagnum there you can see the healthy root system.

So it's nice and green.

The root tips are nice and green.

These are healthy roots.

You don't wanna see, if you see brown roots, that means they're dead and you can remove those as well but these are all nice and healthy.

So what you wanna see with an orchid is nice, healthy roots.

And you also generally wanna repot orchids.

When the roots are growing, like in the springtime is the best time to repot orchids.

So I've got that out of the way.

Now we can go ahead and pot it.

And I prefer clay pots for a couple reasons.

One reason is that the pot breathes easier, so you get lots of air exchange and it'll dry out.

Once it's been watered, it'll dry out quickly.

These orchid pots are especially made with slots in them so that the water will run out.

So you can buy these at your local home improvement store.

And so they're fairly easy to obtain.

If you don't have the orchid pot, you can just use a regular clay pot.

So I just prefer clay.

Some people like plastic, but I prefer clay 'cause it dries out.

The other thing with clay is it's heavy, okay.

And it's not as easy to tip over.

When you have a plant that's in a plastic pot, it's easy to tip over, especially in a greenhouse.

So the clay gives it that stability that it needs.

So then I go ahead and I put an extra drainage in the bottom of the pot.

I put these pot shards, which are broken up clay pots.

So when you break a clay pot, you just save the pieces or you can use styrofoam pellets, some people like to use, anything to provide additional drainage.

Charcoal is another thing you can put in the bottom.

So I just put that in there for extra drainage.

Plus it gives the pot extra weight.

Okay, so the pot is nice and heavy.

Then potting, I'm gonna use orchid bark.

Okay?

Which is available again at your local home improvement store.

It's available online.

It's fir or pine bark.

And it's well-drained, it's pH balanced.

It will last two or three years, okay?

So about every two or three years, you have to re-pot the orchid, but lasts quite a good long time.

- It is.

- So you can buy that in bags at your local home improvement store pretty easily or online.

So then, it's a simple matter of taking the orchid and positioning it in the pot and getting all the roots down in there.

And then pouring the bark in around.

Maybe I'll just take some and take it by hand and put in there.

So the bark will sift down and around the plant.

And you wanna make sure you keep the crown of the plant above soil level, okay?

So it doesn't rot.

So that's the other thing here that you wanna do.

- Oh, there you go.

You've done that a couple of times, huh?

- I've done this a few times.

Yeah, so you get all that nice bark in there, push it down in nice and firm.

A few more pieces there.

Okay.

That and then.

Okay, so there, it's positioned nicely in there.

This stake can be repositioned.

- We keep it stake, right?

- We can keep the stake, yeah.

You may have to readjust it a little bit.

The other thing you can use to keep this plant stable while it's becoming accustomed to the new pot and growing into the medium, is to put one of these in there, which is a rhizome stake.

Okay?

So this rhizome stake clips on the edge of the pot, but you put it near around the base of the plant.

- Oh, how about that?

- And just push it down in.

Okay, let me turn this plant around this way.

So I push that in there and that will help the plant stay in position while it begins to take to the new pot, then you can remove the rhizome stake later on.

- Then it's ready for watering.

- Then you just water it.

And then this, if it's, you know, in the summertime, if you've got it outside under shade, you could water it every day and you won't worry about it.

In the winter, if you bring it inside and grow it under lights or on a window sill, you can water it every few days.

- Good deal.

- And you're not gonna worry about having that rot.

- Well Doc, we're glad you're here.

That was some good information.

What did you think about that?

- Very good.

- Good information.

Learn more about orchids, so thank you much.

- Okay, well glad to do it anytime.

- All right.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Gardening's all about experiments and we're gonna do an experiment on tomatoes this season.

So we have three tomato plants we're gonna plant.

We're gonna plant one in the dirt with no protection against blight.

I'm planting these using the trench method.

We're gonna do a tomato plant where we cover the soil with mulch.

And we're gonna do one where we cover the soil with mulch and we also use fungicide.

And so we're gonna see what happens.

Now that we're planted, and these are all Super Sweet 100s same variety, same planting date.

We're gonna go ahead and mulch two of them.

So now two of our tomatoes are mulched.

So in theory, the mulch is gonna keep the fungus from bouncing off the dirt when it rains onto the bottom leaves of the tomato plant.

So we're gonna see if that works.

We're also gonna see if fungicide is effective at reducing the fungus for the one that is mulched with fungicide.

So we'll be visiting these tomatoes a few times this season to see how it's going.

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

Y'all ready?

- Ready.

- These are some good questions.

- I like these.

- All right.

You like these?

- I do like these.

- Oh, it's gonna be good.

- It's gonna be good, Mary.

- She's very excited.

- She can't wait y'all.

So here's our first viewer email.

"How do I get rid of the tiny flying insects in my houseplant soil?"

And this is Lori from Sanger, California.

So what do you think about that, Jessie?

- The fungus gnats.

- Yeah, fungus gnats.

- Mary and I were talking, you wanna let your soil dry out.

- The gnats aren't really affecting the plant too much.

They're annoying.

- Yeah, it's just annoying.

- Yeah.

But yeah, I think if it's possible, depending on what the plant is, to let it dry out a little bit more, you could kill all the larvae that's in the soil.

- You definitely can.

So that's why you should let it dry out, kill the larvae.

And believe it or not, there's a soil drench that contains Bti though, you know.

Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis.

Say that real fast.

So yeah, it's a natural occurring product.

And you can kind of just crumble it up, mix it in some water and just kind of use it as a drench.

If you wanna go that route, you have a lot of pots that have problems with fungus gnats.

- And then you would spray that on them or?

- You drench it in the soil.

- Put in the soil, okay.

- Right, 'cause the eggs are there in the soil.

So you can do that, but yeah, just watch your watering.

I think that'll work, Ms. Laurie.

Thank you for the question.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What fungicide should I use to treat a rose bush?"

And this is Patrice from Cumberland, Maryland.

So I have a couple of questions for Ms. Patrice, right?

So when we're talking about rose bushes, what diseases are we talking about specifically?

Black spot we know is a major problem with roses, right?

Or major fungus of roses.

So if it's black spot, you can use copper-based fungicide or neem oil is something else you can use.

Or could it be powdery mildew, which has to do with, you know, humidity.

Right?

So with powdery mildew, you can use sulfur or neem oil.

So I'm all about using the low-impact pesticides.

There's also rust.

So rust could be an issue too, right?

So if it's rust, again, you could probably use copper based fungicide, neem oil.

So it depends on what diseases we're talking about.

But those are the three major diseases of your rose bushes.

Now if it has rose rosette, you're in trouble.

You have to dig that out, but yeah.

- Yeah, sometimes, you can maybe thin out your rose bush a little bit too to help, you know, when everything's touching then everything's spreading and you're not getting the airflow, maybe it might be getting too moist in there, so - Right, I would agree with that.

- Maybe thin out a little bit.

- Yeah, thin it out a little bit.

And as far as controlling like all three with one fungicide, I mean, I would always go with something like neem oil.

- I would too.

- 'Cause it has fungicide properties, that are good for black spot or any type of fungal leaf spot, mildews, and things like that.

So I think that'll work.

- That's my go-to.

- That's the go-to, Jessie.

So I think it works.

All right, so thank you for that question.

We appreciate that.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Why are my light purple-colored iris all starting to bloom white?"

And this is hope from Chicamonga, Georgia.

So what do you think about that one, Mary?

- Well, I think there's a couple possibilities.

The first one that comes to mind is that it's reverting back to its wild coloration.

So the seedlings coming up from the previous year can come up from a purple plant as white.

And so that is a possibility.

Just reverting back to- - I can see that.

- The wild coloration.

Definitely look into a soil test.

- Yeah, definitely do that.

Definitely.

- So, you know, if it's really alkaline, that can affect your color as well.

But a lot of times, it's those purple ones are actually producing white ones the following year.

- So yeah.

Soil pH, you know, something we could look at.

You know, I'm thinking about light, you know?

The light conditions changed any?

You know, it's getting a lot of light, now it's not getting enough light.

And then I always go to moisture.

Or temperature, you know, could be something else too.

The fluctuation in the temperature.

Was it too hot now it's cold or vice versa.

- Yeah, I was thinking of hydrangeas, the color can be affected by the soil pH, so.

- Yeah.

- That's a possibility.

- So it's a possibility.

- Definitely.

- So a lot of possibilities there, Hope.

But enjoy it.

Enjoy it.

That's what I would do.

All right, so Jessie, Mary, we're out time.

Fun as always.

- Always.

- Fun as always.

Thank you all much.

- Thank you.

- 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 beneficial animals in the garden or orchid care, go 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]