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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Peppers at the store are so expensive, but they're easy to grow in your garden.

Today we are planting some.

Also tree borers can be devastating and they are hard to detect until it's too late.

That's just head of 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 Dr. Natalie Bumgarner.

Dr. Natalie is the Residential Consumer Horticulture Extension Specialist for UT Extension, and Dr. Frank Hale will be joining me later.

Alright doc, we're at the square foot garden.

- I know.

- It's The Family Plot square foot garden.

- I know.

Exciting!

- What do you think?

- Great for small spaces.

It looks awesome.

We got some cool season, early warm season.

- Okay.

- I will admit that I have eaten a few of the peas already.

- They taste pretty good?

- Yeah.

[laughs] They're pretty good, yeah.

- Pretty good?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Well look, we're glad you're here and we want to plant peppers.

It is that time.

- Oh, yeah.

- So tell us a little bit about the peppers that you brought for us today.

- Yeah, so I actually brought you a selection of some of the peppers that I'm growing in my research plots in Knoxville.

- Good deal, good deal.

- So you're gonna have kind of a mini trial system here, and I actually brought some grafted and some ungrafted peppers, and we're gonna put in a tiny research plot.

So we're gonna have kind of a control and a treatment going here.

- So can we tell the people what you mean by grafted and ungrafted?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Okay.

- So these are actually peppers that have a different scion and rootstock, right?

So the leaves come from a different plant than the roots did.

- Gotcha.

- And you can actually look a little bit close here and see where they were cut together.

See that little angle.

- I see it.

I see it.

- Yeah, so that is the graft union.

- Got it.

- And the purpose of this is to improve both potentially disease resistance as well as productivity.

- Oh, we like productivity.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay.

- So I have done grafted tomato research actually for several years, going back even to grad school.

And this is the second year that I'll be working with grafted peppers.

- Okay, got it.

- And so when we think about these crops, say maybe we prefer heirlooms or some of our favorite open pollinated types of cultivars that don't have some of the soil-borne disease resistance that the newer cultivars have.

Well, this allows us to get the best of both worlds.

- I like that, okay.

- Yeah.

Or possibly we have a good site, not really a lot of disease challenges, but we just wanna up the vigor.

And what this allows us to do is have a vigorous root system that can even increase the plant size, potentially increase the productivity.

And so those are the things that we'll be looking at, plant, fruit number, fruit size.

- Okay, yeah, I like that.

That sounds good.

- Yeah.

So, of course, you to do the comparison, we have Big Bertha ungrafted and grafted.

So- - Big Bertha?

- Yeah, yeah.

And I bet we've got several folks that grow- - I bet we do- - Big Bertha.

It is one of our favorite.

It's an elongated bell.

So most of the time I harvest it green, but it'll ripen all the way to red, if you can leave it out there long enough and keep it healthy.

So this has been one of our favorite performers over the last few years in several of our home garden trials in Knoxville.

Now we're trying to graft it.

- We will see how they perform here in our square foot garden.

- Yeah.

- How about that?

All right, so you wanna demonstrate to us how you're gonna plant Big Bertha?

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So I think maybe we will start with the ungrafted because there's gonna be just a little nuance with the grafted plant that we'll talk about.

- Good.

- So, now, I only have one tag here, which is not a perfect demonstration, but we'll imagine that we have enough tags so that we can always leave one with our plant.

So we can see we have pretty good root coverage throughout the root ball, but not a lot of, you know, it's not root bound.

- Okay.

- So I consider this a pretty good size.

And just so you know, and of course our viewers, these have been out in our shade house for the past week, couple of weeks.

And so they've been hardened off.

- I didn't, yeah.

- Ready to go.

- I didn't just pull 'em out.

- Gotcha.

- From the warm and happy greenhouse.

So- - So why do we need to harden them anyway?

Just in case somebody asks that question.

- Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Great.

Well, yeah.

Sometimes we all throw around terms, don't, yeah.

So with the hardening off, what we really wanna do is acclimate the plant to the outdoor condition.

So when they're growing in a greenhouse, especially in kind of our humid, Mid-South environments, they have had high humidity, they've had lower light.

And so they've been babied, right?

It's been perfect for ideal and rapid growth, but we want to kind of toughen them up a bit.

And so we get them used to higher light levels.

We get them used to air movement, right?

It's been windy in the past few weeks and so- - It's been windy that's for sure.

- They have gotten used to more air movement because, of course, when we have 'em inside with very low air movement, they don't have as thick a cuticle, they're not gonna lose water as much.

And so transitioning them will help them reduce the stress once they get in the ground.

- Good deal, good deal.

- So here in your square foot garden.

- Yes.

- There's a very simple planting system.

I didn't need to bring my measuring tape or anything.

- Okay, none of that?

- Because one plant in one square.

So when I plant these, I wanna put them so that my...

I'm just real similar to the depth that I was in the pot.

- Got it.

- And you've got, oh, this is, you know, This is great.

- Do you like the soil?

- Oh, this is very easy to work with.

- Yeah - Yeah, really.

- Good.

- Really friable and what, good tilth.

That's what we say, right?

- Good tilth.

That's the word, tilth.

- Good tilth.

So I wanna keep it pretty close to the level that it was in its growing container, but I'm gonna make sure that I cover up that media just a little bit because that peat moss will dry out rapidly.

So I'm not gonna push down hard, but I'm gonna kinda tamp that down, firm it in there, make sure I get good soil contact with those young roots.

And then of course, we'll come back in and do a little bit of watering to again, kind of settle that soil around those roots and get it started off.

And if we have a little bit of soluble fertilizer, we might give 'em just a little bit.

- So just a little bit?

Okay.

- Little bit of a shot as well.

- Okay, so do we need to be concerned about those lower leaves or is it okay?

So, I mean, these are actually the cotyledons and these are the first true leaves.

And for the most part, we'll just plant 'em and let 'em go.

We're all still pretty healthy.

We don't really have any serious yellowing or anything going on.

- Sounds good.

- We'll actually find that on some of these grafted plants, we have actually, the cotyledons have already come off and some of these lower leaves, we may just go ahead and remove.

You can see we've got, yeah, secondary shoot.

- How about that.

- Coming through there?

So beside our ungrafted plant, we are gonna put in a grafted plant.

I'm gonna pull this little stake out.

This was actually what secured that graft.

It is a tiny little silicon clip.

And then as the plant heals, it just pops off.

- How about that?

- So we don't need it.

I just kind of keep it as my shorthand.

I always know what my grafted and ungrafted plants are because we have the small silicon clip.

So the key to planting is to make sure that we do not bury the graft union.

- Don't bury the graft union.

- Because we might get then roots coming from our scion, which would not have, maybe that soil-borne disease resistance or that vigor.

And this is similar to tomato, this is similar to the way we plant a grafted apple tree, right?

- We wanna make sure that we always have that graft union up above.

So we can clearly see our graft union.

And in an ideal world we'd have an inch and a half or a couple three inches.

We will do what we can in this instance.

And so I'm gonna put 'em once again right here in the middle.

And then we can easily see.

Oh, yeah, we're just gonna barely cover up that top.

- Okay, just barely.

- Yeah.

- All right, okay.

All right.

- And of course, we'll come back in a little bit and put some support.

- Okay.

- On those.

But, you know, their stems, they're not completely straight.

They got blown a little bit while they were hardening off, but they're pretty stocky.

- Okay.

- And so they'll- - They look good.

- Yeah, they'll hold up pretty well.

So for our third pepper, we'll go ahead and stick him in the ground.

And he is once again gonna go right in the middle of our square foot right here.

- All right.

We're watching that technique there.

Okay, all right.

- Just covering up our- - Just covering it up, okay.

- Peat moss there and there is our miniature pepper trial, ready to rock and roll.

- Miniature pepper trial.

How about that, that's pretty cool.

We get to have our own trial right here in The Family Plot square foot garden.

- Yeah.

- This is citizen science right here.

- Citizen science at its best.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Dr. Natalie, thank you so much.

We appreciate that.

- Yeah, yeah, this is cool.

I actually have some other community gardens and spots around the state that are growing some of these trials.

So it'll be fun.

You are the furthest west location.

So you're our warmest site, yeah, - All right, so good for us.

So people are gonna be checking us for that data.

- Absolutely.

- All right, good deal.

Thank you much.

- Yeah.

[upbeat country music] - Our strawberries are not growing in the most ideal conditions here.

Last year when I renovated it in the fall, I put down white plastic and I planted into the white plastic for the strawberries.

Except over the winter, the sun totally degraded the white plastic and it all blew away.

So that wasn't good, first of all.

But as you can see now, we've got a lot of weeds and we're getting problems with our strawberries.

So here is an example.

We're getting this rotting going on.

We also have some strawberries that are being eaten by slugs.

A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that it's not growing on plastic.

We have a lot of berries.

Unfortunately, about half of 'em we can't eat.

[upbeat country music] - Alright doc.

- How are you doing Chris?

- How you doing today?

- Well, I'm pretty happy.

I brought all my- - I see!

- Wood-boring insect display.

Yeah.

- All right.

So let's talk a little bit about those tree borers.

- Yeah.

Why are wood-boring insects important?

They can actually cause the decline of a tree or even the death of a tree.

They're tunneling into the wood, they might be feeding underneath the bark, and they're actually injuring the tree.

And often you think of them as nature's way to decompose a tree while it's still standing.

- Okay.

- They usually act go after weakened trees or declining trees, but there's some pests we have will go after trees that look apparently pretty healthy.

- Okay.

- So what happens when you see a hole in a branch or in a trunk of the tree?

Can you see these holes here?

This is a camphor shot borer It's a ambrosia beetle from Asia.

It came over here.

And when you see holes in the tree, that means that beetle's been in there probably a year.

- Wow.

- Or even longer.

That means those are the exit holes.

- Okay.

- So that indicates.

Now a lot of people get yellow-bellied sapsucker and other woodpeckers' holes confused, but these are more random, where the yellow-bellied sapsucker more encircles the trunk of the tree.

- Right.

Okay.

- But ambrosia beetles, when they tunnel in, just think of somebody with a drill.

They drill straight in the tree and then make a right or left turn.

So I split these twigs.

And once inside the plant, then they inoculate it with a fungi.

And the white ambrosial fungi is what the larvae feed on.

- Okay.

- So they make their own little mushroom garden inside your tree, and that can be a big problem.

Often in late winter, early spring, we'll see the granulate ambrosia beetle.

And as you can see here, the beetle will have these little toothpick-like frass tubes.

As they tunnel in, they eject out he saw dust like frass.

And you'll see these little things maybe inch long or so.

And if you touch 'em, they just disintegrate.

- Right.

- So to protect against these, you have to put a protective insecticide spray on the bark of the tree.

So- - Now, when would you do that?

- Well for ambrosia beetle, like the granulate ambrosia beetle, we do that when we get those first 70-degree temperature days in late winter, early spring.

The beetles start flying then become active.

And we actually put out traps baited with ethyl alcohol.

They go right to it because a stressed tree releases ethyl alcohol and they'll go to the trap.

And so we all usually tell our county agents when the beetles are flying so they can get the word out.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- Every year we also see clearwing borers.

Now this, you can see these round holes, clearwing borers, And here is actually the lilac borer.

You can see it, or a banded ash clearwing.

I think it's the lilac borer.

It also attacks ash trees, lilac and ash.

This is a native clearwing borer.

So it's actually a moth.

It flies around during the day.

It's a day flying moth, and it'll lay its egg.

Other clearwing borers would be the dogwood borer, the peachtree borer.

Let me show you some, what these moths actually look like.

- Yeah, that's so neat.

- They're called clearwings because they don't have all the wing covered with scale.

- Okay.

- And so they mimic bees and wasp and they float around in the sunshine like you would see a bee.

And so predators kinda leave them alone.

They're not gonna mess with a bee.

They don't wanna get attacked, so to speak.

[Chris laughs] Sometimes though we don't think of the peachtree borer will attack plants in the genus Prunus, which includes cherry laurel or Otto Luyken laurel.

So this is the trunk of one.

And you can see that it is totally bitten off.

If I turn it around here, here's the actual moth, lays its egg on the trunk.

The caterpillar then feeds underneath the bark.

And you can see here, all the bark has been, has got off the, you know, fallen off.

So this girdles the plant and kills it.

- Okay.

- The water can't go up and down the tree.

So that actually killed the plant.

We have some other beetles that are called... Let me move this out of the way.

These are called metallic wood-boring beetles.

And the larvae are called flatheaded borers.

And so the larvae gets underneath the bark again.

And as you can see here on this tree trunk, it kind of makes a spiral as it goes and feeds underneath.

Kills that can cambial tissue.

So the beetles come out, they often lay their eggs on the sunny part of the side of the tree, south or southwest side in the spring.

And then the caterpillars are underneath, and they're gonna be underneath the tree for a year or so.

- Wow!

- And then they'll come out the next year usually.

Sometimes we have a new pest that's a called the emerald ash borer.

Its from China.

- Yeah.

- And it got over here in 2010.

We found it in Knoxville area.

And now it's in Middle Tennessee.

- Oh-oh!

- And it's headin' this way.

I don't think it's been found here yet, in West Tennessee But you can see here, this is the wood of the tree underneath the bark.

And, look, you see these meandering tunnels.

That's where the flatheaded borer larvae, it's kinda flattened and it can live there and it feeds.

Feeds on the cambial tissue.

So that's the water conducting tissue, the growth ring tissue that allows the plant to grow.

So this will, within a few years, kill the tree also.

- Wow!

- So we're really gonna lose probably most all of our ash trees, native ash trees in North America.

This, the little pink, shows here where there's a D-shaped exit hole.

I just painted it pink so it show up better.

It's kinda hard to see on the bark.

So we did that to accent it, but that means that that beetle had been in there a year and it emerged in the spring.

So we generally used systemic insecticides to....

If there's a tree, like an ash tree that you wanna preserve, in your front yard and side yard, a real nice tree, you can treat it with tree injection products like Triage, or we can drench around the roots with systemic insecticide.

So you can kill- - Can you use those as a preventative though, 'cause we can get questioned a lot?

- We don't recommend using the insecticide.

They're a little expensive, until you actually have these sited in your county.

- Okay.

- Once they're in your county, you can start protecting it.

- Okay.

- So I wouldn't do anything right now.

There's no need to.

But if you notice trees in general, with wood-boring insects, they're gonna start see some branch die back in the top of the tree first.

You'll see a thinner canopy, fewer leaves.

With the emerald ash borer, you might even see epicormic sprouts that are at the base of the tree.

So it's putting up all these little sprouts 'cause the top of the tree's just starting to die.

So you really wanna treat this though early before there's much damage if you wanna preserve the tree.

- Okay, gotcha.

- I just wanted to show you here is, we made a nice little display showing the emerald ash borer.

The beetle is right here, the beetles.

They're not very big at all.

- No they're not.

- But they're metallic green, emerald color.

The larvae are what do most of the damage.

And they're elongated, might be inch or so long.

Kinda cream-colored.

So this is really ecological disaster.

It's gonna kill most of the ash trees in North America.

And that it got over here.

Once it got here, we couldn't do much about it because it already started to spread.

People actually cut down trees, move firewood.

So that's why it's important not to bring firewood into our state parks- - Glad you brought that.

- From elsewhere.

- Right.

- A pest we don't have in Tennessee and we don't want is the Asian longhorn beetle.

It's one of the round-headed borers.

This is also, you can see it has a real long antennae.

That's why it's called longhorn beetles.

We have native longhorn beetles, but this one likes to attack maple trees and buckeye trees, and horse chestnut.

So we have millions of maple trees.

We don't need a wood-boring pest.

- No.

- The closest infestations, Claremont County, Ohio east of Cincinnati, Ohio, but north of Ohio River.

They're trying to eradicate that right now.

Doing a pretty good job.

So whenever this is found, we actually go in and try to eradicate it because it could do a lot of damage.

- Wow!

That's some good stuff.

- Yeah, there's just lots.

And we really tell people that when it comes to wood-boring insects, you have to have some preventative sprays.

When you plant a new tree and you put it in the ground, you wanna drench it with an insecticide for pests like roundheaded borers, flatheaded borers, those beetle borers.

That will protect them.

Other type borers, like clearwing borers, you'll have to put a trunk spray, but we have all that information at UT Extension Publications.

We can check out PB-1589.

- Okay.

- It has a lot of information.

- Look at you, you already on the number.

That's pretty good, thank you doc.

That was good information.

- Thank you, Chris.

- Good stuff, good stuff.

[gentle country music] - So our cauliflower's coming along really good, but if you notice we have something eating it and I actually have seen it.

It is a imported cabbageworm.

And imported cabbageworms can be very hard to find, especially if they're down inside the plant.

One of the easiest ways to take care of them, and also an organic way, is to use Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

The caterpillar will eat the Bt.

It will give them a stomachache.

They'll stop feeding almost immediately and a few days later they'll die.

And so we're gonna spray Bt here on the cauliflower.

You don't need to soak it, but you just need to spray all the leaves.

And I got some on my finger, but because it's Bt, it's not that big of a deal.

Let's make sure that I wash my hands when I'm done.

And make sure the...

The cabbageworms like to feed on the tender new growth in the middle, so just make sure that I got that covered as well.

So there we go.

This is now protected, at least until it rains, from the imported cabbageworm.

[gentle country music] - All right, doc, here's our Q and A segment, you're ready?

- Yeah, let's go.

- These are some great questions, right?

- I know, good mixture, yeah.

- All right, so here's our first viewer email.

"Will Orange Rocket barberry grow with only morning sun?"

And this is Alice on YouTube.

I thought that was pretty interesting.

With only morning sun.

And I know a little bit about the Orange Rocket barberry, right?

So zones, what?

Four, five to nine.

- Yeah, I mean, they're pretty versatile.

- Pretty versatile.

- Yeah.

- Beautiful plant, but only morning sun.

What do you think?

- Yeah, I mean, like, barberry is nice in the sense that it can be full, it can be partial, but even when we think partial, we say four to six.

I'd be concerned that we might not get as high quality coloration.

- See, that's what I'm thinking.

- Was that where you were gonna go?

- That's where I'm going, yeah.

We want those vibrant colors, full sun!

- Yeah.

- Full sun, okay?

If not, you're gonna have a lot of green foliage.

- It's kind of a survive- - Yeah, it's gonna- - Thrive issue, you know.

- Right, right, right.

But yeah, if you want those colors to pop, then I'm thinking full sun.

- Yeah.

- All right, so there you have it Alice.

You have full sun for those vibrant colors.

Thank you for that question.

Here's the next viewer email.

This is interesting.

"I saw your video about cherry gummosis.

"Two months ago I planted a one-year-old "Royal Crimson cherry tree.

"Today I noticed two spots "on the lower trunk of my young cherry "that looks like yellow sap that is dry.

"It is right at the base of the tree.

What can I do?

Could this be what you're talking about?"

Thank you and this Esther Med on YouTube.

So do you know a little bit about gummosis?

- Yeah, tree health.

Isn't this one of the most challenging, because there could be so many, you think about environmental, you think about insect, you think about disease.

- Think about disease.

I think about mechanical injury, I think about drought, I think about cold spells that we had, of course, earlier this year.

So a lot of things come to mind, but yeah, gummosis, I think about plant stress, of course, right?

And it can be either one of those.

But the fact that the spots were toward the lower trunk.

- They were low, yeah.

- Made me think about the cherry tree, peachtree borer.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, this whole family, it's a challenge whether we think production or ornamental.

In fact, sometimes it limits the use of cherries as ornamental trees or reduces their lifespan.

- Yeah, they have a lot of issues, but that peachtree borer, if there's frass mixed in with the gum - Right.

- I think it could be the borer.

And if that's the case, then guess what?

It's nothing you could do.

- Right.

- It's already in there.

It's already done its damage.

So at that point you should try to keep the cherry tree as happy as you possibly can, as comfortable as you possibly can.

- Palliative care, I guess.

- I guess.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So yeah, that's all I could think about for that.

- Investigate the sap a bit more.

- Yep, just a little bit more.

And if you have any dead, dying limbs or whatever, you might wanna prune those out.

- Yeah.

- That could help, but yeah, at this point, yeah, keep it as comfortable as possible.

- Yeah.

- If you can.

So thank you for that question.

All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What are your thoughts on sodding with centipede grass "on the east side of Chattanooga?

"What is the best cultivar?

"I've had centipede where I lived "in Clemson, South Carolina, and I loved it!

So easy to care for, thank you."

And this is Eric from East Bernard, Tennessee.

So I like that he loved it.

So centipede grass, of course, it's called the lazy man's grass, right?

- Low maintenance!

- Because it grows so slow by stolons, right?

But as far as sodding and east side of Chattanooga, I think that's possible.

- Yeah.

Whoa!

And we are I think the warmest part of East Tennessee.

Chattanooga has a little bit of a micro-climate that's even much relatively different from where I live in Knoxville, but cold hardy still.

- So cold hardy, right?

Low temperature hardiness, TifBlair.

- Yeah.

- Okay, that comes to mind.

We know a little bit about that here in the Memphis area.

It performs very well, especially in acidic soils, right?

So get your soil tested, of course.

- Yeah.

- But yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, get TifBlair and I think you should be fine.

'Cause again low temperature hardiness, frost tolerance, performs pretty well in acidic soils.

We have acidic soils here.

- Yeah.

- I think you'd be fine.

- Yeah.

- I think you'd be fine.

I would give it a shot.

- Yeah.

Give it a try.

- I would give it a shot.

- I'm up for anything that reduces a little bit.

[Chris laughs] - Right, yeah, 'cause yes, yeah, low maintenance once you get it established for the most part, and again it grows so slow.

So slow.

Keep a lot of the foot traffic off of it, you'd be fine.

But yeah, he knows a little bit about it anyway.

He grew it in South Carolina.

- Yeah, some experience, so yeah.

- So, he does that out of experience, so that'd be good.

So yeah, TifBlair, Mr. Eric.

That'll help you out tremendously.

Thank you for that question.

All right, Natalie that was fun.

- Yeah, got some questions.

- Yeah, this is good.

- Fun variety.

- All right, thanks so much.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us a email or letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org 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.

The plants are in the ground and the bugs are showing up to the feast.

Go to familyplotgarden.com to find out what you can do to keep them at bay.

We have videos and links to extension publications about all sorts of garden bugs.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]