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

I'm Chris Cooper.

It's time to plant the summer flower bed.

Today we will be planting begonias, Coleus, Angelonia, and elephant ears.

Also, make sure you plan before you plant your landscape plants.

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 Carol Reese will be joining me later.

Hey Joellen.

- Hi.

- Yeah, I guess what we're about to do.

- Oh, well, you know, we've got, it's time to change out to the summer annuals.

And you know, we had planted some Swiss chard in here.

We covered everything up with some bird netting to keep the deer from eating the pansies.

And you know, it worked.

- It worked.

- It worked really well.

Some of the pansies did good, some of them didn't.

This part of the country, sometimes some varieties of pansies don't do as well as others.

Obviously, the red ones that we planted did not do as well as the white.

The Dianthus are doing beautifully.

- They look beautiful.

- They look good.

Dianthus tends to be somewhat perennial here.

So we are gonna dig these up to put them somewhere else.

And we decided not to leave the Swiss chard this summer 'cause we don't want anything else to eat it.

So we're gonna dig it up and put it in the garden.

- All right, so we're saving up our material this year, - You're saving the majority of the plant material.

- I like it, I like it.

- Yep.

- The first thing we gotta do is get this netting off.

And it should be fairly easy pulling up these stakes.

- Alright, I'll take that.

- And let's see, we've got some containers there that we will dig up.

We'll put the Dianthus in this one.

- Okay.

- And we'll dig up Swiss chard in that one.

I don't know if we, how rooted they are.

So we will just see.

[shovel scratching] I'm gonna save this mulch.

I am just trying to dig up the root ball of this without, and getting as many roots as I can without getting too many.

Don't wanna make big holes in the ground.

I'm not pulling it by the tops.

I'm just getting the root system so it stays together.

- It's pretty good root systems too, huh?

- They're really nice root systems.

- All right.

- Basket full of flowers, there we go.

Now we'll get those in the ground somewhere.

Next we'll do the Swiss chard.

- Okay.

- Then we'll do the same thing with these.

Move them mulch away.

- Alright.

- And dig down.

Try to get some roots with it.

- That's pretty good root systems on here too.

All right, Joellen.

- Now the last one.

- It's the last one.

- Now these, it's dry.

So we need to take all of these and wherever we're transplanting to, we need to get them watered and put them in the ground as soon as possible so that they stay nice and healthy.

And we've got some daffodils left.

We'll leave those.

We've got some pansies we've got to get rid of, a few weeds here and there, not much.

Got a little bit of leaves in here.

I might take the rake and just get those up.

[rake scraping] Looks pretty good.

- Yeah.

- And you know, we could leave the daffodils just the way they are, and let them... - So there's no need to tie 'em up yet?

- Yeah, we could tie them.

We could just leave them.

- Just leave them, okay.

- We'll see what it looks like.

They seem to be in the back and I don't think they're gonna bother what we're gonna plant.

- Alright.

- Before we plant our annuals, I wanna give them just a little bit of fertilizer.

Slow release.

[container rustling] It won't be very much, just enough to get 'em started.

- Yeah, what does your mom say?

- Just feed the chickens.

- I like that.

Feed the chickens.

- Yeah, feed the chickens.

They don't need much.

[container rustling] We've got Colocasia here called Black Night, Black Magic, excuse me.

These will get larger.

It's early in the season for us.

So they're fairly small.

Picked them up from the nursery, and you see one of them has a weed.

- Ah.

- So we'll get that weed out.

We don't wanna encourage the weed in the bed.

- That's right.

- We're gonna, only have three of these.

And in between them, we're going to put some nice bright yellow Coleus.

- Hey, I like Coleus.

- Here and here.

- Uh-huh.

- And those should fill in together, and we'll have Angelonia and red begonias to go with this.

We'll plant these five first.

- Okay.

- See how well they're rooted.

Again, we got our normal thing.

And we've mulched this bed, just move the mulch out of the way.

- Right.

- And dig your hole.

- Now these are pretty good sized pots, Joelllen.

I mean, how deep do we need to dig?

- Well, they need to to be the same level that they are right now.

So don't put 'em any deeper than the container is right now.

So yes, you'll have to dig a little bit bigger hole, 'cause these are six inch pots.

I don't know how well they're rooted.

So I'll look, and like I said, it's early in the season, there's not a whole lot of roots.

So I'm gonna be careful to keep this root ball together.

And I've put it in the ground.

Take the tag out.

- Tag out.

- Add the soil around it.

- Is it necessary to tickle the roots?

- Not on these.

- Not on these, all right.

- Put some mulch around it and be done.

- Be done.

Hey, that looks good.

- Coleus.

Coleus is better rooted than the Colocasia, or the Black Magic.

- All right.

[soil scratching] - Okay, now we can set out the Angelonia.

There are all kinds of Angelonias, usually come in whites.

There's pinks, there's blues, and different shades of those.

They are, they get about 12 inches tall or so, sometimes a little taller.

Just depends on the variety.

And they'll last most of the summer.

In the heat of the summer they might go away, but then they'll come back when it gets cooler.

- Got it, so tell me a little bit about your pattern.

- I'm just gonna, I like to do random, because we never know what's gonna do well and take over, because we've got sun and shade on this bed.

- That's a good point.

- So when I do a random pattern, whatever's doing the best will fill in that area and then the whole bed will be full.

Okay, we're gonna move the mulch out of the way, get to this dirt, the soil it's in here.

Loosen the soil.

Nice hole there for it.

Pop it out of the container.

See it's got some circling roots.

So we just move those around a little bit, place it in our hole, find some dirt around the side of it and put mulch up over the top, and be done.

- Be done, got it.

[plants rustling] - We're gonna add a little pop of red color to all of this with our red begonias.

Again, we'll do these randomly in between all of this.

Still kind of thinking of our random spacing, thinking of triangles.

- Triangles, all right.

- Keeping them spaced apart.

And you'll notice we're kind of ignoring the daffodils, still spacing things evenly around them.

These are not as well rooted.

It's early in the season for begonias, so we will not have to, unless I see some roots.

We'll just plant them.

[plants rustling] There we go.

It's already colorful, and they haven't even grown in.

- It looks good.

- Yes.

- How about that?

- Anxious to see how this looks in a little bit, especially when the Angelonina get to blooming and that white standing out.

- Yeah.

- The purple Colocasia gets larger.

- I like it.

- Coleus fill out, it'll be real pretty.

- And this is some new plant material for this area.

- Yeah, this is something new for this area.

So we'll see what they do.

- All right, I enjoyed so much doing this.

- It's fun.

- This is fun.

Thank you, Joellen.

Appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - This Japanese maple is under stress.

Any time trees are under stress, the secondary insect pests will be wood borers.

We always talk about wood borers.

And look, here's evidence of a wood borer.

There's a exit hole there.

Right, here's one here.

There's also one there.

So what happens is, of course it'll burrow into this wood, right?

And it's gonna disrupt the flow of water and nutrients to the upper canopy of this tree.

Once it does that, it's gonna be difficult to actually control the wood borer once it's in the wood itself.

So at this point, there's not much you're gonna be able to do.

There's not gonna be any chemical or anything else, right?

So at this point, I usually tell folks to keep the tree as comfortable as possible.

That means watering the tree and fertilizing the tree.

So again, wood borers are secondary pests.

They can be a pain.

[upbeat country music] All right, we have Ms. Carol Reese herself.

She's the Horticulture Specialist with UT Extension.

We're gonna be talking about landscape planning.

So where do we need to start with that?

- Well, I think a lot of people think about it in a lot of, I always think that the first thing they should do is start from inside the house looking out the windows.

I think unfortunately a lot of people go outside and look at the house.

And I think a lot of it should not be, not necessarily even about what it looks like, but that they should consider what I want that landscape to do for my family.

In a dream world, how are you gonna utilize your outdoor space?

And there's so many ways that it could serve you.

If you like to do outdoor grilling or entertaining, if you got need a place to play sports with the kids, if you've got pets, a lot of people now like to grow their own food and vegetables and herbs, and have edible landscaping space.

And of course my passion is gardening for wildlife.

So that's a thing.

But I think all that should come first with make that landscape serve your family and your lifestyle.

Make it a a happy place for you to live, and then think about how to define that space for those needs.

- Okay, let's talk about foundation plantings and its origins.

- Well, it was started really because in the old days, a lot of our houses started way up high off the ground, you know, to keep 'em away from the termites and the wood rot, wooden floors and such.

And if you look at European homes or even old style homes in this country, they did not have the foundation plantings.

That was a recent, in probably about the Victorian eras when it began.

So they began to do it so that the house didn't look like it was floating up in the air.

And now it's simply a bad habit.

And so people are sentenced to pruning their shrubs, and there's no way that that serves their lifestyle.

In fact, I think it's a detraction from their lifestyle.

All that time you could spend out enjoying your landscape.

Instead you've gotta keep those shrubs from swallowing your windows.

And why?

Why do we do this?

You know, I know I taught landscape design with a English woman and she said, "You Americans slam all the shrubbery against the house, "and you put a oak on either side of the sidewalk, and you think that's a landscape design."

And she actually defined landscape as defining outdoor space for user needs.

- For user needs.

- So every family is gonna have different situation, pets, kids, elderly, whatever it is that you like to do.

So I think every family could be put into the same house in the same landscape and should have something different.

- Sure, wow.

Wonder why we do that.

Yeah, we do slam everything up.

- Yeah, so then once you've defined those needs, and I say just do a simple balloon sketch.

I don't go with all that, do a detailed landscape plan, because for one thing, it's very difficult.

I think it's easier to design on site, but say you wanted to define different areas of your landscape for different uses, that this is gonna be where I'm gonna grow edibles, and this is where the kids and pets are gonna play, then you're sort of like building a house.

You're gonna define it with walls, which may be actually structural, or they may be plants.

You might even think about ceiling.

You either have open sky because you want the sunlight on your vegetables or your rose garden, or you want shade because it's where you're gonna hang out and grill in the afternoon, and want people to sit outside and enjoy.

So that will determine your sky, your roof, rather, then your walls and then your floor.

Is your floor gonna be turf because you want to run and play and need a place for the pets?

Or do you wanna have a NoMo landscape?

That's a great way to go in the South.

I always quote my old friend Plato Touliatos, that "The easiest garden to have in the South "is the woodland garden because the south wants to be woods."

So we know that's true.

If we plow a field and leave, and come back in a few decades, we're gonna have a woodlands.

So woodland gardens need some work and some editing, certainly, but they're certainly easier to work in than the hot sunny garden.

- Sure, now let me ask you this then.

The average homeowner's probably thinking, "I can't design my landscape."

I mean, is it, where do they need to go to get the resources to be able to do this?

- Well, the Master Gardener classes, I think I show, of course I teach your landscape design class and show lots of slides that demonstrate these ideas.

But I say, look out your own window over your sink, or wherever you spend time.

And if you don't like what you're seeing, you're the artist in charge.

So block those things you don't enjoy seeing.

If nothing out there you enjoy, create something, a vignette for you to enjoy through the seasons.

And I always tell people to think about all four seasons that you can enjoy, but you're the artist in charge of your views.

So just start there and what's your priority area?

You know, pick one and just start there and begin to work.

And also, I don't want people to be afraid because I keep hearing this right plant, right place thing.

You know, it makes it sound like you've gotta get it right the first time and then your landscape will be perfect for here and forever.

And that's just not true.

It's gonna change over times, your needs out of it.

Plants get bigger than the tag said.

Areas that used to be shady become sunny when a windstorm comes through, and we change our house.

We redesign our house.

We put a window in, we change the floor, we paint.

You can move plants, you can cut 'em down, you can add too.

So I know you don't wanna have to do a lot of that, but it's gonna happen.

And one of the great comforting things I read was, "Every great garden's been in the wheelbarrow three times."

So I think that's one thing.

If I can do anything, it's just to relieve people's fear to just get out there and try something.

Now are there times to hire a professional?

Absolutely, I don't wanna do a whole lot of work to drainage, or build structures.

And also, I think every time I've ever hired a professional, they gave me an idea I hadn't thought about.

So just having another brain in on there can be a good idea.

So that might be a place to start, just to pay somebody to come out and do consulting.

- Okay, but yeah, I definitely wanted to ask you that question 'cause I get it a lot.

"I'm just, I don't know anything about landscape design.

How do I go about doing this?"

So it can be relatively easy, or it could be as hard as you wanna make it, right?

- Yes.

- Just kind of depends on what you want.

- And I start, you know, people say drag hoses around to define beds.

Hoses are heavy.

I like to use that light plastic rope you can buy at Walmart or wherever.

- Oh, nylon ropes.

- Yeah, and just to tie it to a couple of stakes and hammer it out, define your beds.

And bigger is always better.

You're gonna fill 'em up faster than you think.

And then just put some stakes in the ground where you think you want the plants to go.

- That's smart.

- And write the names on 'em and move them around and make adjustments.

You know, it is really not rocket science.

I say anybody who can design a beautiful interior room or can do a great flower arrangement.

Same principles, no matter what field of study you're in or what art form, even music has similarities, 'cause you want some structure, some melody line, some rhythm, and then you want some improvisation on that.

And the improvisation's where it starts to get kind of fun.

You know, that's when you start getting into the pretty stuff instead of the functional stuff.

- So you can have music in your landscape.

I like that concept.

- Yeah, because think about the boring ones that you see.

You've seen the one of these, one of those.

If you sang that, it would be [humming melody].

- Yeah, I like that.

- We don't want that.

And also, I think a lot of people think they've gotta have grass when the shady landscape really loans itself to not having grass.

And that moss can be a beautiful asset, and a mossy floor as your flooring can be fantastic in the woodland garden.

More people are getting into that now.

- Yeah, they are.

Alright, well thank you for that information.

I hope that'll be a good start, you know, for our homeowners who are interested in landscape designing.

[upbeat country music] - Joellen and Chris dug up the Swiss chard about an hour ago.

And you can see it's already really wilting 'cause it's kinda warm today.

So we need to get it in the ground quickly.

We're gonna use this raised bed for it.

So because it was already growing somewhere, a lot of the roots are damaged, which is why it's so wilted.

You need to very carefully take the plant and put it into the soil, and make sure that it is buried to the same level that it was before.

And then more important than anything else is we gotta make sure that this is well, well watered, 'cause the plant has a lot of leaves, and not as many roots as it used to have.

We could even come in here to the bottom, and maybe remove some of these leaves here to reduce the amount of water the plant needs to take up.

So I'm gonna go ahead and plant the rest of these here.

So we're done planting them.

I watered them really good.

I wanna make sure that the wet soil isn't just on the very top.

So I'm just going to pick a spot here and dig down a little bit, and yep.

I went down about six to eight inches and was still wet, so that's good.

We'll need to, you know, make sure that these plants stay watered for the next week or two until they have regrown some roots so they can then survive on their own with just the rain that we get.

So we'll have to see how they do.

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

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- All right, these are some good questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Is there a secret to getting watermelons to grow large?"

And this is Katrina from Alexander, Arkansas.

She says, "All her other veggies grow well, but the watermelons are never larger than a cantaloupe," all right?

So can we help her out?

- Well, I hope so.

- Okay.

- I'm wondering what type of variety of watermelon she's growing.

Because the big thing now is small watermelons, you know, the little individual-sized watermelons.

So, I've grown large watermelons.

My son has even grown large watermelons.

But you only have one or two, you only leave one or two fruits on one vine.

That's how you're gonna get some bigger ones.

And you've gotta watch, you know, is it getting pollinated enough?

- Does have, yeah, enough space?

- Yeah, space.

- It's gonna need to sprawl out, of course.

- Yeah, we have a lot of area that we can sprawl the watermelons in.

And you know, pollination is one, and watering, and this is the problem, consistent watering.

And I know I have trouble with that during the summertime too.

But it's consistent watering that they like, and 'cause they need nutrient water a little bit longer and more consistently through the growing season when they're producing.

So that's usually the hardest part is the consistent watering.

- I would agree with that.

It's a watermelon, right?

So it's gonna need a lot of water.

So it just, it's pretty much 95% water, is what it is.

So yeah, consistent watering is going to be huge, right?

But again, let's go back to varieties.

It makes a difference, right?

- Huge difference.

- So there's a couple.

Jubilee actually get a pretty good size.

There's a Carolina Cross that actually gets pretty large, and there's another one, it's called Black Diamond.

Right, and I'm familiar with those, and they actually get a pretty good size, right?

But again, soil fertility, pollination, watering is gonna be key, Ms. Katrina, and we think that'll help you out.

All right, thank you for that question.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"How can I keep rabbits from eating my sunflower seedlings, "and then the birds from eating the mature sunflower seeds before I can?"

I hear you, Mr. James.

That's pretty funny.

So how do you keep the rabbits away and the birds away?

- Well you know what, there's something called bird netting.

- There's bird netting, right.

- And like we did out front with the flowers here to keep deer from eating them, you can do the same thing.

You put some stakes up around the small seedlings and put your bird netting over it.

The rabbits can't get into that, so they'll leave it alone, and go somewhere else where it's easier to find something to eat.

And of course then when you start, after it's pollinated, and they start forming seeds on the sunflowers, you're gonna have to put bird netting around it again.

But remember you've gotta keep it away, 'cause the birds can land on it and they can still get in there.

But you've got to keep it loose and away from the seed heads.

- It's gonna be a little work.

- You might have a little bit of a tent situation going.

- Right, right, bird netting, yeah.

- That can, that will work, bird netting.

- I've seen that done, so that would definitely work.

You know, something else I'm thinking about, you may want to, you know, plant some companion planting somewhere else, or put that bird feeder, you know, in another location so they stay away from, you know, your sunflower that's producing those nice seeds.

I love sunflower seeds, by the way.

So that's what I would do.

I would cover it up, 'cause yeah, those scare tactics and repellents and things like that, yeah, no, cover it up.

I think you'd be fine.

Right, so it'll keep the rabbits away.

- Yeah, keep the rabbits away, and then when they get bigger, then put some kind of tent away from the other ones that you're trying to mature, and I think you'll be fine.

- I think you'll be fine, Mr. James.

Thank you for that question, all right.

- Good question.

- Yeah, keep those rabbits and birds outta there.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Is there a fruit tree spray I can use on both my peach and apple trees?"

And this is David from Millington, Tennessee.

He says, "The trees are planted close together."

So is there a fruit tree spray he can use?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Because just if you go to any box store, you can buy fruit tree spray and it's listed for both of them.

So you can use that.

I would get a guide, whichever, you know, he's here.

So you know a local fruit tree spray guide so he knows when to spray.

And they have those all over the country, - Right, sure do.

- So find that.

- Yeah, we definitely have 'em.

Yeah, you can come to our office.

Yeah, we'd be more than happy to print that guide out for you, 'cause you know, when I think about fruit tree spray, of course it's going to contain a fungicide.

It's usually gonna be captan, and it's also going to have an insecticide, and it's usually malathion.

Right, so you're gonna read and follow the label on that.

It's gonna also tell you that in our spray guide, all right.

Wear the proper PPE, you'll be fine.

You'll be fine, because yeah, for peaches, you're definitely gonna need a fruit tree spray.

And of course you're gonna need that for your apples as well.

So there you go, David.

Yes, you can buy a fruit tree spray, read and follow the label on that, and you will be just fine, all right?

Joellen, that was fun as always.

- It was fun.

- Fun as always, thank you much.

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.

It's time to start planning and planting this year's garden.

Familyplotgarden.com has over a thousand gardening videos to help this year be your best garden year ever.

Go check it out.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]