- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South, I'm Chris Cooper.

It's getting late in the summer and it's time to start planting fall garden.

Today we'll plant some fall vegetables.

Also, the corn is getting ready to pick.

We're going out in the garden to look at our corn.

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 Tom Mashour.

Mr. Tom is a master gardener in Tipton County.

And Mr. D. will be with us later.

Alright, Mr. Tom.

We always appreciate you coming by and planting our garden for us.

- Appreciate being invited.

- Alright, so fall gardening, what are we gonna be planting today?

- Well we're gonna plant some spinach, mustard greens, cos coy, which are Romaine lettuce.

And some beets.

And the nice thing about fall crops is they don't need pollinators.

So we don't have to worry about bees or anything else doing our work for 'em.

- Alright, so how do we get started with our fall vegetable planting?

- Well, worked up the soil a little bit, soften it up.

- That's good.

- [Tom] Next thing I wanna do is plant the seeds.

Now, the seeds are very fine, and kind of somewhat difficult to handle.

One of the tricks I find that works really well, excuse me, is an old spice container.

It's got the little holes in the top.

It works out great to put the seeds out.

And also found that taking the holes that's in the top, I cover all but two.

You don't wanna over plant, cause that means you're gonna over thin.

- [Chris] Makes sense.

- So what you do is just take the bag, in this case it's gonna be purple top mustard greens, excuse me.

You just pour it in there, put the lid back on.

- Yeah, I see you have tape over the top.

- Yeah, I got tape, I said the only things not covered is two bottom holes.

And I don't know if you can see it or not, but it puts out just about that much seed.

- Pretty smart, I like that idea.

- And now, on the four type of greens that most people plant is turnips, collard, kale and spinach greens.

You plant 'em about 18 inches apart.

So there's no need to plant the whole row.

All you literally have to do, and I wanna put down my marker first, because I may end up forgetting what I got where.

- Which is why it's always a good idea to label, right?

- Absolutely, especially when you get to my age, I can't remember why I went to the bathroom, you know?

(Chris laughing) - Okay, so you put the marker there.

Now normally, of course you would have a lot bigger garden.

But in our case, it's gonna be small for demonstration purposes.

And since you're gonna plant 'em about 18 inches apart, that's the final spacing, then all you have to do is just tap, 18 inches, tap, 18 inches, tap at 18 inches, tap.

- [Chris] How 'bout that, okay.

- And it's all done.

- [Chris] That's it.

- Yeah, now I gotta do is just rake over it.

- Because they are real small seeds.

- They're very small.

- [Chris] So don't have to be buried very deep.

- Matter of fact, about a quarter inch is pretty much standard.

Now, what do I do with the seeds?

Well I just return 'em to the packet.

- [Chris] There you go, okay.

- Now I just return those to the pack.

I'm not covering 'em up yet, I'm gonna cover 'em all at the same time.

- [Chris] Okay.

How'd you learn that trick?

About covering it up.

- Some people been using it in the past.

The problem is some people used to use salt shakers and they would mix it with sand.

And some other items like that.

I find that this just works great.

Okay, now we're going to do Bloomingdale spinach.

- [Chris] Seeds are a little bigger.

- Just a little bit.

'Bout the same size as radish seeds.

But they still go through the holes.

- Oh yeah, they coming out.

- Now in this case, I'm just going ahead and plant the whole row, 'cause the spacing is gonna be, oh about three inches apart in the final one.

So it's easier to do it that way.

And I'm just gonna go over here about another 18 inches and, but you notice I'm doing it thinly.

'Cause I don't like to thin.

Okay.

- [Chris] Alright.

- That's it for that.

And then put my marker.

I shoulda done this first.

(Chris laughing) - Okay, can you get over there?

- It's alright, I just gotta (mumbling).

I did right about there.

It'll be close enough that I'll be able to identify it.

- That's close.

- Um hmm.

Next thing we're gonna do is plant some Romaine lettuce.

Oops, first of all I gotta return this back to the packet.

- Most of us like the lettuce.

In their fall vegetable gardens.

- Yeah, my wife is really fond of Romaine lettuce.

I particularly prefer the Iceberg lettuce.

But there ain't no way it'll grow in this area.

(Chris laughing) Idaho, maybe.

But not in our area.

- Not exactly Memphis, right?

- Now this is the Romaine lettuce.

Now before I try doing this, I'm going to the lettuce are thin and long.

So I'm not sure if it's going to work through here or not, but I'm going to find out.

Put in, check it.

- [Chris] So we're gonna do a trial huh, just to see if it works.

Yeah, it came out.

- [Tom] It works.

- [Chris] Yeah, it works.

- So, same idea.

You wanna have about three or four inches apart.

So this time I'm gonna put my marker down first.

- Alright.

- [Tom] And then thinly put it down.

- [Chris] That's thin.

- [Tom] And that's it.

Now, if I was doing a big garden.

Then I would probably use my seeder machine.

You pour it in there and you walk along and it drops the seeds at the right distance.

It even has a little marker so you mark the next row.

It drags a bar across.

You set it to 12 inches and it will put your line 12 inches apart.

- Okay, now Mr. Tom in the little time that we have left, how about we go ahead and cover it up and get it, you know fertilized and watered in.

- Alright, on the fertilizer, on the greens, spinach greens, turnip greens, it doesn't matter what greens, it could be kale, collard greens, mustard greens, and of course turnip greens.

They all need high nitrogen, zero phosphorus, zero potassium 'cause you want fast all green growth.

So, we're gonna do is gonna take and first of all, I'm gonna put some 34-0-0, which is your regular lawn fertilizer, but it's almost, well it's one third nitrogen.

Now these are gonna be baby plants.

So you don't wanna over do it.

All you do is want a little light dusting.

Later, those on the spinach and the mustard greens.

Again, all you want is greens.

Notice I didn't put down much.

- Oh yeah, it's not much.

- Just like a baby, you don't feed a baby a big four course meal when it's born.

Same thing here.

Now I take my garden rake, now you'll find that you actually end up using this side more than this side.

And all you do is I'm just gonna rake the seeds in, just like that.

Since they're gonna be planted shallow anyway, they don't have to be planted deep.

And just by raking the soil over it like that that just kinda spreads 'em out.

- [Chris] That's pretty good, gets the fertilizer into the ground and the seeds are covered up.

- The only thing left to do is water.

- [Chris] Alright.

- Now, - [Chris] 'Cause after put in that fertilizer you gotta have the water, right?

- Gotta have the water, well the plants all gonna need watered.

And then they're gonna be have to be watered frequently during the early stages because they are planted shallow.

Especially on low humidity days like today, they need to be watered more frequently until they start coming up and producing roots.

And then they can find the water themselves.

Isn't this cute?

(Chris laughing) I use it for decoration.

This is the first time I actually used it for watering, 'cause it's got the holes in it.

- [Chris] It serves the purpose, right?

You just gonna lightly water over the top, huh?

- [Tom] Um hmm.

And you just want to water where you want the seeds to come up.

Of course the rain may throw a trick on you, but done.

- Alright, so there we have it.

- [Tom] Okay.

- We appreciate that Mr. Tom.

- Well thank you sir, appreciate it.

- Alright, thank you, yes sir.

[upbeat country music] - Cannas are an iconic garden plant for the South.

We sort of associate 'em with hot, lush tropical summers as we often have.

Perfect for this site with soils that stay a little bit wet, and a lot of heat and sun.

But, they are subject to a certain number of pests, and one is some insects that will do leaf damage.

This is very typical of Japanese beetle damage.

And, you see the skeletonized leaves, the feeding.

The other one's probably gonna be leaf roller, which is very different.

They feed when the leaf is curled tightly.

So, you'll see a circle that goes in dots all the way across the leaf.

Now, both can be easliy controlled with Sevin.

But, I don't like to do that because Sevin is so very hard on our bees and our other pollinators.

You know, the thing to do, maybe if you didn't want to use those insecticides, would simply be to cut off the damaged foliage.

And the new foliage will come out quickly, just give it some extra water and fertilizer, and you'll get new lush foliage.

So, that would probably be my choice.

[upbeat country music] Alright, we have Mr. D. out in The Family Plot garden.

And we gonna look at our corn So where do you wanna start with the corn, Mr. D.?

- Well, we got corn, we got a corn crop.

But this is probably a pretty classic example of why you don't see a lot of sweet corn in raised beds.

Sweet corn takes a lot of space to grow.

I mean even if every one of these stalks produced an ear, which it did, we've got five.

I'm not sure yours over there really produced one.

- It tried to produce one.

- That's five ears of corn.

You and I could make a meal off this five ears of corn.

But this corn requires a tremendous amount of water.

It has a massive root system and it requires a tremendous amount of water to make a good corn crop.

And we see here some classic symptoms of this corn probably didn't get enough water.

When you have marginal leaf burn on just about any plant, that indicates that you either have too much water or too little water.

Here we have marginal leaf burn showing up on this corn leaf, classic on the edges of the leaf it's burned.

And I would say it's lack of water, not enough water.

But other than that, I mean I don't see any insect pressure on the corn.

I'm gonna pull one of these, I mean we're a little late to harvest sweet corn.

And I'm gonna check it out and see what we have here.

- [Chris] (laughing) Look at that.

- Now, we shoulda harvested this a few weeks ago.

And you woulda actually have had some sweet corn.

I guess this is peaches and cream.

Either that or it cross pollinated with something it wasn't supposed to cross pollinate with.

I assume it's peaches and cream.

But, you see, you have a lot of empty spaces on the cob here.

That indicates that a hundred percent pollination did not occur.

And that coulda been because of lack of water, the way corn is pollinated, the pollen, the male structure of the plant is up here on the tassel.

And when the pollen is produced here and it falls off, and it falls on the silks, every one of these silks, so silk is a hollow tube, and the pollen travels through the silk to a kernel of corn.

And for a kernel of corn to be produced, pollen must have traveled through that silk.

Now, 100 degree temperatures can adversely affect pollination, and we had some of that in the past few weeks.

We could have damaged the pollination here a little bit.

But, this, you see our corn cob is not very large in diameter.

Just, I think it got thirsty and it didn't really like the hot weather that we had.

Also, not only is water an issue in a raised bed like this, but see how close we have this okra?

- Yeah, spacing.

- The okra seems to be thriving and the okra has out competed this corn.

It's out competed it and it's like a foot apart, a foot away from the corn, so that's another issue.

When it did rain, or when it did get watered, the okra grabbed most of the water very quickly.

But I don't see any insect damage, I don't see any evidence of corn earworm on this one.

- [Chris] So corn earworm is pretty much the major problem?

- [Mr. D.] Corn earworm is a major problem with sweet corn, it really is.

I don't know, this sweet corn may be Bt.

Sweet corn, it may have Bacillus thuringiensis engineered into it and that would reduce the damage from corn earworm.

- But what if it wasn't Bt engineered?

Then what?

- [Mr. D.] Then you might have very, very likely have an infestation of corn earworm.

But I don't see any evidence of that and it may have simply been because this corn's kind of isolated.

And there's not a lot of corn earworm moths that flying over would think that this is a corn field.

(Chris laughing) Probably at least.

You know, but I don't see any evidence of damage.

- So that's pretty much the only pest that we know of with corn is the corn earworm.

- Well, there's also a corn borer that gets into the whirl of a small corn plant and it will feed in the whirl as those baby leaves are emerging and even though it's a little bitty worm and it's feeding on the little bitty leaves, as the plant grows, the leaf emerges and those little bitty holes that were in the whirl are now big holes in the leaves.

And so when you see corn leaves that have big holes in the large leaves, that's probably an indication that back several weeks ago it was infested with the corn borer, east European corn borer.

But I don't see any evidence of that either, so I don't, and those are the two worms that are the biggest problems with sweet corn production.

Corn borers and corn earworms.

- Okay, now corns are they heavy feeders?

Fertilizers are they very heavy?

- Corn requires quite a lot of nitrogen and you know in agricultural production you put at least a pound of nitrogen for every bushel yield that you want.

If you want 300 bushel corn, you need to put 300 units of nitrogen out there.

- [Chris] Oh wow.

- So, yeah it requires quite a lot of nitrogen and that might be a limiting factor here too.

This corn is not dark green, it's kinda light green, so it probably didn't get quite as much nitrogen as it wanted.

However, the okra over here has a good dark color and it apparently it's getting adequate nitrogen.

But you gotta understand, when you have a raised bed like this, those okra roots are out here by this cucumber.

The corn roots are out here, the corn roots are over here on the other side of the okra and it's in the squash area.

So the roots are just mingled all together.

And you know just because you planted them in a, a plant this big, just because you planted it in a little row, doesn't mean the roots are gonna stay right there.

They're taking off, they're looking for water.

And okra is more successful in drier conditions.

Okra doesn't require as much water as corn.

It's more related, it kinda acts like cotton.

Cotton can get along fine under dry conditions most of the time, and hot conditions, they love, okra and cotton love hot weather.

Corn, not so much.

So my recommendation is, the raised bed next year, let's don't plant sweet corn.

If you wanna plant sweet corn, let's plant about six rows right over there next to the building.

All up and down through there.

And then we'll have, we'll have sweet corn.

- Alright, well we appreciate that Mr. D. [upbeat country music] - Deep watering's really important with vegetable plants.

But, a lot of times the surface of the soil will get a crust on it that won't let you get the water through.

It'll just want to run off.

So, here's a way that I use to try and deep water my vegetable plants.

I take a milk carton that's empty that I've rinsed out, and I put a little hole here in the bottom.

Doesn't have to be very big, maybe an eighth of a inch in diameter like that.

Now, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take that milk carton and put it here next to the plant I want to water.

And then just go ahead and fill it up.

I will fill this with a gallon of water, and it'll take it 5 or 10 minutes to empty out.

And, that then let's the water soak in instead of running off.

Every day you can go out and just fill up all your milk cartons if you have one next to each plant that you want to water.

And, you get deep watering of that plant every day.

[upbeat country music] - All right, this is our Q&A session.

Mr. Tom, you come in and help us out, all right?

- Okay.

- Here's our first viewer email.

"Our concord grapevine is about four years old, "and this past year put out hundreds of grape clusters.

"My mouth was watering at the thought of homemade "grape jelly.

"Then my beautiful grapes I have been watching over "started shriveling up.

"They look like nasty, dried up raisins.

"I still have about 40% of my grapes "and they are just starting to ripen.

"But boy and I perplexed about the dead ones.

"Any thoughts on what happened?

"They start out with a dark circle spot and then just dry up."

And this is from Dina here in Memphis, Mr. D. She's perplexed, but she gave us a hint.

They start off with dark circle spots, then they dry out.

We know what that is, don't we?

- Sounds like black rot.

- Sounds like black rot to me.

- That's the number one, the most serious and most common disease of grapes in the southeast United States and probably everywhere.

And it's one of the reasons that we recommend putting grapes on a regular spray schedule.

It can easily be controlled if you do that.

And the very fact that she's got as many that have survived, quite a few of 'em have survived, tells you that, you know, that is a good indicator that if you take a few steps to try to control the disease, you can.

And on our Home Orchard Spray Guide under grapes, it basically recommends starting out very early, you need to start when the new chutes just begin to put out with just a fungicide, captan or mancozeb is what's on the UT's recommended list.

And then at pre-bloom, when the first blossoms open, is one of the most important times to spray, to control black rot because most damage from black rot occurs from pre-bloom through four weeks after bloom.

Mancozeb and Immunox, are the most effective and what UT recommends, but starting pre-bloom, when the first blossoms open, you spray with that fungicide.

Then again, when most of the blooms have fallen off, you spray again and then every 7 to 10 days, you spray.

And if you just get in the habit of doing that, if you see other problems out there like Japanese beetle for instance, all you need to do is put a little carbaryl in that spray mixture.

And one application will take care of both the Japanese beetle and the black rot.

But very very common problem, it's common even on wild muscadines, you'll see black rot.

- I see it all the time.

- What publication is that that the people can research?

- That is, I accessed this through the Red Book, UT's Red Book and it's Home Orchard Spray Guide.

- All right, and we actually have those publications in our office.

So if you wanna come by, you can get 'em from the office.

Sure can.

Alright Dina, hope that helps you out.

It is a common problem, that black rot.

- Very common.

- Here's our next viewer email.

"My mums in the flower bed are blooming early.

"They have always bloomed correctly in the fall.

"Do I need to do anything so my mums will still bloom "in the fall?

Why are they blooming early?"

And this is Cindy.

I can tell you why they're blooming early because they need to be pinched back in the summer.

Okay?

So because they were not pinched back in the summer, hence they're blooming now.

But here's the deal, we're late in the season so I wouldn't pinch 'em back now because we may not have any blooms to enjoy in the fall.

- Right.

- Okay?

So I would just leave 'em be, Ms Cindy, and you'll be fine.

But that's why- - Next year.

Next year.

- Yeah, next year.

- I can tell Cindy that I got the same problem.

I just thought I had super chrysanthemums because I get two blooms a year.

In the fall and in the mid, early summer, it starts blooming.

Not as strong as it did in the fall, but I'm gonna start learning to pinch back.

- Yeah, you have to pinch him back, you know, a few times in the summer and you'll be just fine 'cause it makes for a compact full plant when you do that.

But at this point, I wouldn't pitch 'em back because we just too late in the season.

So enjoy your blooms now, Ms. Cindy.

And just remember this for next year, you have to pinch 'em back a few times in the summertime and you'll be just fine.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"I have a tulip poplar, 'bout 25 years old "that exhibit some strange symptoms.

"It has large, rough, dark crotches "from which somewhat spindly branches grow.

"Some of these branches curve toward the ground.

"Also the leaves of the tree stay curled along the edges "and don't fully form the typical shape.

"What's causing my tulip poplar to do this?

"Is it better to put this tree out of its misery "before it gets even bigger and more expensive to cut down?

"The tree continues to grow, "although it drops a lot of dead wood in my yard and doesn't look all that good."

And this is from Randy.

What you think about that Mr. D?

A couple of couple of thoughts here with this one.

- Yeah, it's probably one of the cankers.

There's a couple of cankers that affect tulip poplars.

You know, this may be something that you might want to get a certified arborist out to take a look at.

- I agree with that.

- You can, you know, you can treat these, both of the cankers.

I think Nectria is one and Fusarium canker is the other.

Both of these are fungal type, fungal in nature.

And you can have some success with fungicides.

You also can cut out some of those.

But on the central leader, when in that kind of situation, when you cut that out, you cut the whole tree down.

- Right, it's gonna be tough.

- But it, you know, that's a state tree of Tennessee, is that right?

- Yes it is.

The state tree's the tulip poplar.

- You know, I'd probably, I don't think it's gonna kill the tree, but again, you might wanna have a certified arborist come out there.

I mean the fact that it's dropping the limbs is not a, not a bad thing because a tree that's growing, and if it's growing and it's producing, you know the upper canopy, it always will be shading out the lower limbs and then it will be dropping limbs all the time.

So this is just a common, fairly common problem on this tree.

- Cankers.

Big problem.

Verticillium wilt is something I thought about 'cause he mentioned that the leaves are not the full size that they need to be.

So that's something else that might be causing that as well.

So- - That would be more serious.

- Yeah, that'd be very serious.

- That'd be more serious.

Yeah.

But a certified arborist could definitely tell you that, give you the information that you would need.

All right, Mr. Tom, Mr. D, we're outta time.

- Thank you.

- Good deal.

- 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 the time we have for today.

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]