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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Avoiding neat lines and grouping plants together can give your flower bed a fresh new look.

Also, we're going to talk about how to control voles.

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 Mr. D will be joining me later.

Good to see you, Joellen.

- Good to see you.

- All right, so we're gonna talk about grouping plants, right?

Something you know a lot about.

- Yes, grouping of plants.

- Okay.

- Versus plants in one line.

- Right, one line, okay.

- And, you know, you think about you have small places in front of a house and typically people will buy one type of plant.

- Yeah.

- And they just plant, you know, in one row, and that's all they do.

- I'm guilty of that.

[laughs] - And that's what a lot of the builder-grade things are, maybe change a plant here or two, but it's basically just a line of plants.

Well, let's make it interesting.

- Okay.

- You can do something interesting in that line.

- All right.

- Use perennials.

Use triangular-shaped placement of your plants.

Like instead of in one line, smaller plants may be in a zigzag pattern.

And then not the same plant.

And then add some perennials, and some annuals, and do something different.

Bulbs, plant bulbs in the ground so you have different colors and different things coming up during the, throughout the year, so it changes and is interesting.

Of course, you're gonna use your design principles.

You know, texture.

Is it coarse?

Is it medium?

Is it fine?

But you don't want just one of those, you wanna mix it up so that there is a much more interesting grouping of plants.

Also the shape and the color.

You know, the shape, you could have an upright, oval, round, horizontal, vase-shaped with ornamental grasses, all sorts of things to break up that linear patterns.

- Okay.

- And you gotta think about it.

Your house is a flat, horizontal surface.

The yard and the sidewalk is a hori-, don't just put plants in a line, that just keeps emphasizing a horizontal surface.

- That makes sense.

- When you mix up, you know, and do triangular shapes and do different textures and colors, you're gonna break up all of that and make a much more interesting grouping of plants to look at.

And we had a schematic, several, we've talked before, it shows the plants overhead, the way you would draw them on a piece of paper, and then when you, they have a 3D image of what they are and you see how tall, some of them things are tall, some of 'em are medium shaped and then some are smaller.

So that's the kind of thing that we are looking for.

And you don't just use shrubs.

You can use a tree here and there, you can use perennials, annuals, bulbs, everything.

So you can incorporate a lot of things in a small space.

It doesn't have to be a whole lot.

First you gotta determine the size that you're planting.

Now once you decide what you wanna do, take a garden hose out there, you know, make the shape what you want and determine how big that area is.

And if there's grass there, you know, you're gonna have to get that out.

And then you gotta determine what kind of environment is that?

You know, is it in the sun?

Is it in the shade?

- Yes, so your light condition, that makes sense.

- You gotta figure what kind of environment you've got.

I mean, is it a low area of your yard?

You know, are you gonna have to think about maybe some wet, plants that like the wet conditions a little bit better?

All sorts of things to consider with the environment.

You need to prepare the soil.

Get it ready for what's gonna be there.

If you want to, take a soil test.

- I was about to say, yeah.

- This is an excellent time to take a soil test and see what we've got.

It might be a new planting in a new yard, or it might be in an established space that, you know, hasn't had a soil test in a long time.

So you need to know what you're starting with.

- I think that is good.

So let me ask you about amendments.

How do you feel about adding amendments, you know, to your beds?

- You can, you don't, again, you don't wanna do more than 20%.

And most plants, the larger the plant is, they really don't need amendments, but the smaller stuff like the annuals and some of the perennials, and I would use a little bit of amendment in those kind of areas, just because you'll get more plants to grow and they'll have a better well-drained soil area for them to be in.

But the bigger, established plants, they don't need any amendment.

- That's good to know, 'cause you, of course, you know there's a difference of opinions about that.

You know, should you amend that site or should you not do it, you know, based on what you're trying to plant?

So, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And they can both exist.

I mean, you can just amend the first few inches of soil and in the smaller plants will be in that, and the larger plants will be down in the original soil.

Because the one thing you don't wanna do is amend everything.

- Right.

- Because then you end up with a bowl that when it water, the drainage around here is just terrible, our soils are so tight.

And then when you amend that much, you just create a bowl that water sits in, you don't wanna do that.

- Right.

- Okay, so now we're gonna choose our plants.

Now, there are a lot of publications all across the country.

- Yes.

- Contact your local Extension services.

There's probably lists of plants that do well in your areas and they'll give you different sizes and environments that they like to live in.

And you can do your research that way.

You can also go to the nursery.

You know, once you go to the nursery, you get to see all sorts of things you like.

But please, read the tags.

- Please.

- Because the tags will tell you, I mean, I know some people say the tags aren't always quite accurate, but they are gonna give you a range of height and size that the plant's going to get to be, and you have to determine if it's got the right light and moisture content for the area you're gonna be planting it, and give you an average of how big it's going to be, and is that something that you want there or do you need to find something different?

- Okay.

- And then when you find them, you're right there at the nursery, just start putting 'em together in the grouping that you're gonna be, you know, there's enough aisle space there, you can just start puttin' 'em together and decide whether you think they look nice or not together.

- So just have fun with it.

- Yes, have fun with it.

- Have fun with it, I love that.

- Yeah, I mean you can, it's amazing what you can find out.

I actually went to the store, I was buying annuals and perennials.

And I thought, "Oh, that's nice.

Oh, I like that, oh, I like that."

And had all this stuff in my cart, and I started looking at it in the cart and I went, "Oh my gosh, everything's fine-textured.

"You know, the colors are pretty, "but that just doesn't excite me.

"There's no, there's no coarse or medium-textured plants in here."

So then I go, "Okay, so which of these do I like best?

"Okay, I'll put this one back and I need to find something with larger leaves."

- You have a lot of experience putting beds together, designing beds, so can you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yeah, we've recently done one at the university where we had a, it was probably about four, five feet wide bed all along the front of a building.

Nice, long bed.

So to break that up, we did some things.

I wanted something evergreen.

- Okay.

- Because most of the time that students are in school it's the winter and we needed something evergreen.

So I picked Abelia and dwarf yaupon holly in there, but I didn't put them all in one line.

I put them in groupings here and then they kind of crossed over and started the other kind.

And I put a perennial called Helleborus that would bloom, that has already bloomed right in around the corners where there was a door, so that something would be blooming, and it's a different texture, and it's a different size than the other plants.

'Cause Abelia has a small leaf, holly's a small leaf, smaller leaf, and then that the Helleborus is a large leaf, and then behind those, when I was doing all this, I put hydrangeas, of course they're deciduous, but they're gonna have a bigger leaf and a bigger bloom in a different time of year.

- Got it.

- And along the front, some hosta here and there, not a solid line, but just broken up in different parts of the bed.

So everything's broken up, it's never a solid line of anything, but it all meshes and goes well together.

It's got all the different textures and colors to be throughout the season for interest.

- So it's not symmetrical, it's asymmetrical.

- Could be, yes.

- Could be.

- Yeah, yeah.

- How about that?

- See that's why you're the expert, that's why we have you on here talking about things like this.

[upbeat country music] - So sometimes I get asked, "How do you know, when you're starting plants, "how do you know whether to start from cuttings or to start from seeds?"

And an easy answer to that can be that some plants don't make seeds.

Certain hybrid plants just don't ever go to seed.

And those are perfect ones to grow from cuttings.

For instance, this is a African blue basil, fantastic plant, beautiful blue flowers, it doesn't make seeds.

So we grow this one from cuttings.

This is a lantana, lantana Miss Huff.

It is a cultivated variety, it doesn't make seeds, so we grow it from cuttings.

This is a porterweed, blue porterweed, doesn't make seeds, so we grow it from cuttings.

Now, an easy one to do from seeds, this is papaya.

These are all little papaya seeds.

About a month ago, this was a papaya from the grocery store, I cut it open, planted a all in this tray, these are all little papayas coming up right from seeds.

This is a moon flower.

This is an annual, you wouldn't wanna do it from cuttings, but it's really easy from seeds.

So grown from seed, grown from seed, grown from cuttings.

[upbeat country music] - Let's talk about voles.

- Voles.

- Because one of the questions that we get at the office a lot is about voles.

- I understand that because there are a lot of voles around.

I grew up calling 'em field mice.

That's what we always call 'em.

You know, they're little, short, mouse-lookin' critters.

They have a short tail, which differentiates 'em from a house mouse.

They are extremely prolific.

They burrow, they feed on plant material.

They, unlike moles and armadillos, they like roots, and they will kill your ornamentals, They are commercially important, I've seen them invade commercial orchards and kill fruit trees.

In the wintertime they will actually girdle the plants, they'll eat bark in the wintertime.

So they're really, really nasty little critters.

And it's one of the few critters that I talk about, I use this "Prevention and Control of Wildlife Damage" book, but it's one of the few critters I talk about where it says, "Shooting is not practical or effective."

They're too small and hard to hit.

[group laughing] - And they stay underground most of the time.

But very quickly, I'm gonna show you that there are a couple of toxicants that are listed.

So using rodenticides are probably one of the most effective means of controlling these.

And there are a couple of 'em out there, zinc phosphide, and then the anticoagulant rodenticides are a little slower-acting, but they do a pretty good job.

And even a snap trap, mouse trap, if you bait it with peanut butter or something like that, you know, can be effective.

Or you can catch a few, but, in a laboratory situation, one of these little mama voles produce 17 litters in one year.

- Wow, that's a lot.

- 17 litters?

- Seventeen litters.

- How many in a litter?

- That's a lot.

- They range from 3 to 13 or 14.

- That's a lot.

- Most of 'em on the average are three to six or something like that.

So they're very, very prolific critters.

They can do a lot of damage.

You know, and you'll see the tunnels.

- Yes.

- You'll see where they come up.

There'll be a hole about inch-and-a-quarter, inch-and-a-half in diameter where they come up, and then they'll tunnel under things, and if you use one of the anticoagulants or the zinc phosphide baits, probably be a good idea to pour them in the tunnels, because they are toxic to some birds, and it might keep other, you know, critters from getting to them.

You can also buy bait stations, you know, or create a cover or create a bait station with the baits in there that'll keep other critters from gettin' to it.

There are 23 vole species in the United States, most of the ones we have in our area are the pine vole, I think that's the most common one here.

But just they're really tough to control.

And I would use all of these methods that I've talked about, you know, not just one.

- And you can't just do it one time because they'll come back, and come back, and come back.

- That's exactly right.

If you completely wipe them off your property, another vole will come walkin' by and say, "Hey man, there's some empty space over there."

And they'll move right in.

- Mr. D, can you do, can you do us a favor?

Can you explain anticoagulant?

- An anticoagulant is a product that when they ingest it, it will cause them to internally bleed themselves to death.

And usually, in the process, it makes them thirsty.

And so as far as rats and mice in your house, or under your house, or in your attic, it's a good thing because it will make them go out and find water.

And hopefully they'll die out there close to the watering hole.

The voles it's not that important, 'cause they're outside anyway for the most part.

Now I've, some of these critters, the voles will come in.

I've caught voles on my sticky traps in my garage.

You know, they come into my garage every once in a while, not that common.

But they are just, they are predated upon by hawks, and owls, and coyotes and things like that, but there's not enough of those predators out there.

- And snakes, right?

- Snakes, yeah, snakes.

- Snakes will get 'em too.

- Rat snakes especially.

- Leave the rat snakes alone.

- Because they'll go down in the tunnel.

- Yeah, they'll go in there, they're one of the few critters will go down and get 'em.

- That's a good reason to not kill beneficial snakes, 'cause the snakes to me, like the rat snakes and the king snakes, those are the ones you want in your garden.

Because if you have a vole problem, that can help, you know?

- It can definitely help.

- And one thing I have found too, that a lot of people, clientele, will think that it's a mole.

Because they'll see those tunnels, and they'll think, and you know, voles will take over an old abandoned mole tunnel, and that's why a lot of people think that the damage to the plants is the moles.

And it's not.

- No, it's not.

- It's the voles.

- The voles, right.

- And they love expensive plant material, you know?

- Oh yeah, I had 'em- - Hostas.

- The hostas and roses.

- Oh, roses, right.

- I had a really pretty knockout rose that was several years old and it was probably as tall as I am.

And I noticed that it was just totally wilted.

And I went out there and it was kinda leaning and I picked it up and not a root on it.

It was gnawed to just a knob.

And of course it was.

- Wow, that's it.

- And hostas will just disappear, won't they, Chris?

They will just disappear.

- Yeah, they sure will.

- It's like that old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's underground, he's pullin' the carrots down as he goes, you know?

- Yep, that's how it is.

- That's what they do.

- That's it, that's what those voles do, buddy.

- That's right.

- So try all the methods is pretty much what Mr. D was sayin', yeah, so.

- And keep doin' it.

- Wow, and keep doin' it.

- Yep.

- Wow.

- Postpartum breeding is common.

Females can breed as early as two weeks of age.

- Wow.

- Like I said, 17 litters, litter sizes range from one to eleven.

- They need to come out with some kind of faults.

You know how insects have pheromones, you know?

- Gestation period is 21 days.

- Okay.

- So, you know.

- Wow.

- Quick.

- A vole that is, okay, 2 weeks plus 21 days is what?

Five week old?

- Five or six weeks, yeah.

- Five-week-old vole is producing babies already.

- Reproducing, wow, that's scary.

- How about that?

- We're gonna be overrun.

- Take 'em out, take 'em out.

- All right, Mr. D, we appreciate that, that's some good stuff.

[upbeat country music] - If your houseplant fern is getting a little big, there's an easy way to do something about that, let's just divide it.

So this is a happy houseplant fern, you can see it's nice and full.

Just gonna squeeze the pot a little bit, take that pot out, and we're just gonna divide it right down the center.

Then with a soil knife, all you have to do is kind of pick a dividing line in the center.

I'm just gonna saw right through it.

Now you've got two fern pieces, each ready to go in their own pot.

I'm gonna stick that little guy in.

Little extra soil, little extra soil, tuck it in a little bit, that's ready to water and go.

Same thing with this one.

Stick it in your new pot, add a little soil, add a little soil, tuck it in, you're ready to water and go.

Two brand new ferns.

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

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are some great questions, all right?

Here's our first viewer email.

"How do you kill Italian arrum?

I just can't get rid of it."

And this is Isa from Portland, Oregon.

- There's a lot of people that will sympathize with her.

- Okay.

- Because it's very tough.

It's got those rhizomes underneath the ground, and so that's a lot of carbohydrate storage in there.

I think she's doing everything right by she sprays them, she digs them.

- Right, so let's talk about that.

Of course, you know, she cuts them and she uses Roundup, right?

- Yeah.

- She also uses the Roundup concentrate.

She applied it directly to the leaves, to the stems, et cetera.

And the last thing she did was, what?

- She dug 'em up.

- She tried to dig 'em out, so.

- She's doing everything right.

But you know, the plants really wanna live.

[Chris laughing] And they just, sometimes it's hard to just keep up with the ones that are regenerating.

Because you leave a little bit of tuber in the ground and it's gonna have enough to start growing again.

And you just gotta keep up with it.

She's doing the right thing.

She just needs to continue and keep up with it.

- Keep up with it.

- Yes.

- Can I offer another suggestion?

- Sure.

- Right, so instead of using glyphosate, right?

How about triclopyr?

- Yeah, you could use that.

- Triclopyr, right?

- Sure, use a different mode.

- It's a brush.

- Yeah.

- Might kill it.

- Little bit different kind of mode of action.

- Different mode of action, and then too, something else I would consider with the triclopyr, adding a surfactant.

- Oh, that's true.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- Because it's going to reduce the tension, right?

- Yeah, because arrum has some nice shiny leaves.

- Oh yeah.

- And, you know, all she can do - Waxy cuticle.

is just put a little dish soap in it, that would be a good surfactant.

- Right, yeah, 'cause you wanna allow, of course that chemical to penetrate, you know, that leaf, right?

- Yeah.

- So add that surfactant, reduces the surface tension.

- Yeah.

- I think that might work.

- That might help her out a little bit.

- Might help, yeah, just a little bit, right?

But it's gonna be work Ms. Isa.

- I know, I'm sorry.

There's a lot of people that sympathize with her.

- Yeah, that's for sure, right?

That's for sure.

So good luck, we appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can you suggest plants I could grow in my small, shady, squirrel-infested backyard?"

This is Suzy Q from Oregon, Ohio.

She says she "would enjoy something with flowers that the very hungry squirrels would not eat."

- Oh, okay.

- So squirrels are eating up stuff, right?

- Yeah.

- Right, so yeah, can we help Ms. Suzy Q out?

- I hope so.

- So, first and foremost, Oregon, Ohio.

You know the plant hardiness zone?

- Probably like 5 or 6.

- Yeah, 6b.

- 6b, okay.

- Right, so your plant should be able to withstand temperatures between negative five and zero.

Yeah, for 6b.

So can we help her out?

- Yeah.

- All right.

- She could do some spirea or some barberry.

- Okay.

- Of course if she wants shrubs.

There's a lot of perennials and annuals she can plant.

- Okay.

- Squirrels do not like things that are fragrant.

So you think of alliums, and hyacinths, and daffodils, lilly of the valley.

- That's a good one.

- Coral bells, lenten roses.

- Yeah, I like lenten roses.

- Astilbe, mugworts, anything that has a very strong frag, spearmint, the mint family.

Anything from the mint family.

They will not like all of that.

- Okay, all right.

And most of those will have flowers.

The plant material you're talking about.

And grows well in shady conditions.

Of course we don't know how shady.

- Yeah, I don't know, there's different degrees of shade, but those can withstand shady conditions.

- Right, how about hydrangeas?

- Yeah, you could have some hydrangeas.

- Okay, do they have flowers?

- They have flowers.

I mean, I've never had, we have lots of squirrels and I've never had them eat hydrangeas before.

But I do know that I used to grow pansies and they would eat all the plugs.

They'd come through and eat all the plugs out of the pansies.

And I'm like going, "Okay."

Yeah, squirrels, they like plants.

They like a lot of tender plants and flowers, they sure do.

- Okay, so we gave 'em some good options for that.

- I hope those are some good options for her.

- Right, yeah, check what your, you know, local Extension Office as well, they have some other- - Yeah, they may have some other lists.

- Choices, you know, for you as well.

Yeah, if that doesn't work.

- But fragrant, fragrant.

Think of things that are fragrant, 'cause they don't like things that are fragrant.

- Okay, I didn't know that.

That's good to know.

Oh, those squirrels.

- Yeah.

- All right, Susie Q, You got some work to do, all right?

Here's our next viewer email.

"Why did my 3-year-old dogwood go into shock "when I watered it during a drought?

Will it come back this year?"

This is Joanne from Liberty Township, Ohio.

- Hmm.

I wish we had a picture.

- Okay, yeah.

- Because I'd like to know exactly where it's planted.

Because dogwood are kind of understory trees.

They like to be at the edge of the forest, they don't like to be in a lot of sun, and yes, I understand droughts, and I understand that a lot of times in the droughty situation, a new planted or a young tree like that cannot pull up enough water in the root system to go through the tree to keep the leaves upright.

- Got it.

- And then because they're falling, you think, "Oh, it needs water."

Then you water it, but it doesn't need water because it's just simply translocation from roots to the chutes that it can't keep up with the heat.

- Got it.

- Then you end up overwatering it, and then it doesn't, then that's worse than not having enough water.

So, it, will it come out of it?

May or may not, we'll have to see.

- Right.

- In the spring.

But I wanna know where it's planted.

You know, and it, I understand droughts, but does it have some kind of relief with shade somewhere during the day?

- Right.

- That's what I'm wondering about.

- That's a good point, that's good.

- But yeah, just because it, in the hot situation, leaves droop does not necessarily mean it needs water.

If she, you have to dig in the soil and you have to see if the soil actually is moist and needs water or not.

Don't overwater during droughts, because they may not need as much water as you think.

It's just the plant itself cannot draw up enough nutrients and water out of the ground to keep the leaves upright.

- All right, so let's talk about this, right?

So dogwoods, of course, shallow root systems.

- Yes.

- Shallow root systems, right?

- Yeah.

- We always talk about consistent moisture.

- Yes.

- It makes a difference.

So you wanna talk a little bit about that?

Consistent moisture.

- Yeah, mulch, it should have mulch around it.

Because if it had, and you remember, you don't volcano mulch, you don't put a mulch about a foot from it.

I would get a nice two, three-foot, to me, I mean, it depends on the size of the tree, you could go up to three feet away and have a nice mulched area.

Especially with shallow-rooted trees like that to protect them from the heat.

- Right, right.

- You could do that too.

But then again, if just looking at the tree is not gonna give you the picture.

You need to check the soil to see if it actually needs water.

- That's a good point, consistent moisture is important, folks.

It's important.

So Ms. Joanne, yeah, go out there, inspect and see, you know, where, yeah, where is the dogwood, first of all?

- Where is it planted?

Yeah.

- Where's it planted?

And then consistent, you know, watering.

It's gonna be key for that.

All right, thank you for that question, we appreciate it.

All right, Joellen, I always learn so much.

So thank you much, appreciate that.

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.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]