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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Fall is here, and it's time to plant the winter annuals.

Today we're planting Swiss chard, Dianthus and pansies.

Also, fall is the time to plan for planting fruit trees in the spring.

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.

What's going on?

- Look at our flower bed.

- It's pretty cool, huh?

- Well, you know, sweet potato vine, when it likes it somewhere, the normal, the Marguerite one, just goes crazy, and we have, this just shows that if you have a large bed and you have an area to cover, that a few of these will go a long- We only had five of these.

They'll go a long way in covering up the bed and making it look nice for you.

- Wow.

- They've done wonderfully here.

This area's a little bit smaller.

Maybe next time we go with one of the other varieties that are more dwarfed and they won't go so crazy.

But this has been a very tropical, beautiful result of this Marguerite sweet potato filling this area.

I mean, more than filling this area.

- I think it did well.

- It did great.

- Good choice.

- And everything else did good.

The ageratum did good, the SunPatiens did good.

We still have those three primary colors of yellow, blue and red that look great together, and people have enjoyed this all season long.

- It's still warm outside, so why do we have to take them up now?

- Oh, it's because we have to get the winter color established in the ground while it's still warm, before the cold weather gets here.

- Okay.

Get them established.

- Yeah, we have to get them established while it's still warm, and then they will live through the winter.

- Okay.

It's still hard to pull them out, though.

- Oh, I understand, I understand.

- All right, so where do you want to start?

- Well, I think we need to start getting the sweet potato vine up and then we'll work our way in to the impatiens.

We may have to start a ways back.

- Okay.

- These are nice enough that they would be nice if you cut some and took them inside and put them in some water.

They would look pretty inside.

They might even root.

There are some that have roots on them.

You could cut them here and root these.

Oh, we got some toads or frogs or something in here.

There he is, he's right there.

Just a minute.

We'll get something new in here for you to be around.

- All right, Joellen, so we're gonna pot up these SunPatiens, we're gonna do that a little later on in the show.

- Yes.

We'll get them dug up so that we can put them in a container.

- So we got the SunPatiens out.

What's next?

- Well, next we've gotta clean up the bed, level it off, put down some fertilizer.

- Okay.

- And then we got a little bit of mulch to top off, and then we'll plant the plants that are gonna go in here.

Just gotta rake it up a little bit.

- Gonna rake it up a little bit, all right.

So for the most part, we probably think the soil is still pretty good, right?

- It's pretty good.

We don't have to amend this soil anymore.

Oh, look what I found.

- Ah, it's down there hiding.

It's a pretty good size.

- This is one of those sweet potato tubers.

- Look at that.

- Let's see if we can dig this up.

We can try to dry it and see if we can't plant it.

- That's a pretty good size.

- Yeah, there's a nice tuber for the sweet potato vine.

- It's pretty good.

- This is not edible, not that I know of, but we can save that and try to plant it again next year and see if it will produce a sweet potato vine again.

- All right, experiment.

- Experiment.

- Yeah, be a citizen scientist, I like that.

[Joellen laughing] - So next we'll put down some fertilizer in the bed for the new plants that we're planting, and again, we don't need a whole lot.

- What is the thing your mother says?

- My mother says, "Feed the chickens."

- I like that, feed the chickens.

- And that's basically all we're going to do, is put a little bit down, give them some nutrients, not putting too much down.

It's gonna be winter, it's gonna be colder.

A lot of the slow release with fertilizer works on a basis of 70 degrees, and it's not 70 degrees all winter long, so that's why it lasts for so long in the ground.

And that should be plenty.

- All right.

- We've tried something new this year.

- Okay, I like new.

- We are going to put in an edible focal point in this bed this year.

- Like it.

- We're going to use Swiss chard, and Swiss chard has lots of pretty colors.

- Yes.

- Yellows and oranges, reds, greens.

This looks like it's been chomped on a little bit, but that's okay.

They might be small now, but they will get much larger.

And again, when you're trying to get them out of the containers, you're squeezing the, turning them over, squeezing the root system and letting them come out.

They're nicely rooted.

They're not over-rooted.

Just perfect to be planting.

All right, well, if we're gonna keep these in the bed and they're gonna get 18 inches tall, we want to put them in the back of the bed so we can plant in front of them this year, so we're gonna do that a little bit different than we have in the past.

Now we've got a nice row in the back.

We'll plant these.

These are small, but we want to keep the same soil level that's in these little plugs of plants when we plant it.

So we're gonna push the mulch out of the way, dig our hole, and we plant it.

It's gonna be the same level as the dirt that it was in the container.

I'll put a little bit of mulch over the top and be done.

It's good that I'm seeing the fertilizer just roll down into the holes sometimes when I'm planting, so the fertilizer we know is getting to the roots of the plant.

- Will that fertilizer burn the roots of those plants, you think?

- No.

It's slow release.

- Got it.

- It's not going to burn them, no.

There we go.

- All right.

- Swiss chard planted.

- Yeah, it looks pretty straight, too.

How about that?

- Not bad.

Now we also have, of course, pansies.

- Oh yeah, I love pansies.

- You have to have pansies this time of year.

They do the best out and through the winter.

We also have something called Dianthus.

Now we have planted Dianthus before in this bed, and they've done well, so we've got a different kind this time.

It's just a different variety of Dianthus, and we're gonna plant it next and see how it does.

- All right.

- We always plant in a triangular pattern, so if I've got two Swiss chard here, then to make the other part of the triangle would be one placed here so it ends up being between them.

We'll probably end up with about two rows of these.

There we go.

Now we can plant these.

- Good.

- Again, we're pushing the mulch aside, digging in the dirt, planting it no deeper than the top of the container of the plants we're planting.

Put a little mulch around the top and be done.

- Ah, the breeze.

- It's warm in the sun today.

- It is.

All right, I think I got the last one, Joellen.

- Very good.

- Yeah.

- The last thing we have left are the pansies out front.

- All right.

- And the frog is still hanging around.

- He's still hanging out, just checking us out.

- He's waiting for us to get done so he can be with all these nice plants.

Now we've got white and a maroon, reddish pansy to go with our pink Dianthus and our colorful Swiss chard.

So we're not gonna put these in rows.

We're gonna put them down randomly.

- Huh, okay.

- So it'll be nice and even like a patchwork.

We're gonna get some whites and maroons and we're gonna lay them out until we like the way they are laid out, and then we'll start planting them.

- All right, sounds good.

- Well, I think I have the last two to set out, and then we can start planting.

- Then we can get at it.

- Yes.

- All right.

- Hmm, look at this one.

- What you got?

- Got a lot of roots that are in the shape of the container, which means they're a little root bound, so we probably need to separate these just a little bit so they'll stop going in that container shape.

- You gotta tickle them, tickle the roots, as they say?

- We'll get rid of some of that and it'll stop that and it'll go out from the plant and grow, clear it and anchor the plant in the ground.

- Okay.

Joellen, what are some tips when folks are going out to the stores and looking for some of these plant materials?

What do they need to look for?

- Make sure all the plants are green.

I like them to be just starting to bloom.

- Okay.

- So you can see the color, and then just look at the, you can look at the roots.

Pop one of them out and look at the roots.

If they're a little root bound, just know that you've got to remove that and just get the roots to stop circling in the container.

It's planted for the winter.

Now it has enough of the nice warm temperatures to get established before cold temperatures come, so we'll hopefully get to enjoy it all winter long.

- I hope so.

I can't wait to see what it looks like.

Thank you, Joellen.

- You're welcome.

- Appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] What we're looking at here is powdery mildew on these beautiful zinnias.

We had early spring rains during the cool part of the season followed by a summer that was hot and humid.

Any time you have those conditions, you're going to have this powdery mildew, especially if your plants are crowded like this because they're not getting good airspace.

A couple of things you could do.

One, resistant varieties will always help.

Two, you can use a fungicide.

I would go with a copper-based fungicide.

And the third thing you would need to do if these leaves happen to fall off, practice good sanitation, because these leaves will still contain these fungal spores, and if you water or Mother Nature waters for you, those spores will splash up and they'll get on the other leaves as well.

So again, a good copper-based fungicide, resistant varieties, practice good sanitation.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mr. D, let's talk a little bit about planting fruit trees.

What do we need to start with that?

Is this the time of the year to be doing that?

- This is the time of the year to be really getting involved in planting fruit trees.

It's not the time of the year to stick the trees in the ground.

- Okay, good.

- But it is the time of the year to be preparing your soil, making sure that your pH is right, and choosing the varieties that you're going to plant and choosing whether, you know, doing research on figuring out whether or not that you need pollinators, figuring out how many you need to feed a family of five or whatever, depending on what you want to do with them, going out and choosing the site.

Now is the time to do that.

You can do some site prep and burn down, you can control some weeds and grasses, you know, go ahead and get it ready to do that.

I've got some information that might help with that a little bit.

Get my glasses on here.

Auburn has a real, real good publication.

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah, he knows all about that.

- I've copied a few things from the publication, and it's entitled "Fruit Culture in Alabama".

If you have a sloped area and you're planting rows, don't plant your rows up and down the hills, plant them on the contour, because you don't want to increase the chances of gullies forming and things like that.

In a landscape situation, you don't have to pay a lot of attention to the space things that I'm about to mention, because you can kind of strategically place these trees around to kind of help the aesthetic nature of your landscape.

This is for a family of five.

Tree fruits and nuts, five to eight apples, and they recommend the semi-dwarf apples.

Five to eight peaches if you want to go that route.

Five to eight plums, two to four persimmons, three to five pear trees, four to six pecan trees.

I really don't understand that on the pecans.

On the spacings, on the semi-dwarf apples, fifteen to twenty-five feet apart, because they're gonna spread and you want to be able to get between them, especially with your riding lawn mower or your bush hog and your sprayer and all that.

Peaches, 20 by 20 or 15 by 20.

The plums same as peaches, 20 by 20.

Anytime there's a choice, if you've got the room, go to the more distance between it, because it's amazing how fast those trees will overlap.

Pecans, 60 by 60, and that's some of the older pecan trees.

There are some precocious varieties, some smaller pecans, that you can plant a little bit closer than that.

Pears, 20 by 20 or 25 by 30.

Some of the pear trees get a lot bigger.

On pollination, most apples need to be pollinated.

Some of the yellow delicious varieties are self-fruitful.

Pecans are wind pollinated.

Pecans need pollination.

You need a type one with a type two pecan tree.

Plums and peaches and nectarines are self-fruitful, so you don't need pollinators for that.

Pears need cross-pollination, so you need two varieties of pear trees.

- When it comes time to planting them though, how do you go about it?

- Planting, okay, we've done all that.

You've chosen your varieties, you've ordered them.

You've got them coming.

The smaller plants you can get, the better off, in my opinion.

Two-year-old plants are plenty big.

So, go out.

You want to dig a planting hole.

If you've got bare root plants, it doesn't have to be that big a hole.

It doesn't need to be that deep.

The most important thing when you're planting any fruit trees, that you make sure that you plant it no deeper than the depth that it grew in the nursery.

If it's a grafted plant, usually you got two or three inches of root stock visible above the ground, and you can see where the graft took and came out.

You don't want to cover that up, because if you plant it too deep, it'll die.

I mean, it will not, not that it won't do well, it'll die, because the above-ground portion of a plant is supposed to stay above ground.

Don't mulch it.

Don't pile mulch up against it.

The above ground portion of a hardwood plant is supposed to stay above ground.

It needs air, and if you put it below the ground, it will die.

I can't repeat that enough.

Do not use a post hole digger to dig a planting hole for a tree.

I don't care if it's a little bitty tree, do not use a post hole digger because you're gonna be, you're gonna want to dig it deeper than it needs to be dug.

Use a shovel.

- Uh-oh.

- Like our dirty shovel.

Use a shovel.

[Chris laughing] Dig a wide planting hole, not a deep planting hole.

Dig a wide planting hole and dig it the depth, if it's in a container, a pot, dig it and set it, take it out of the pot and set it down, and if it goes down an inch, take it out.

Add dirt to the bottom and get it so that it is the same depth that it grew in the nursery, and then you bring the dirt around, put the top soil.

If it's got any grass or anything, I'd crumble that up, put it down first, and then try to make a little kind of dam, well out away from the stem or the base of the plant so that when it rains, everything's gonna settle down a little bit.

Keep that in mind.

If you dug it way too deep and then you had to add a lot of soil in the bottom, that's gonna settle down and then it's gonna wash in on it again, so keep that in mind.

You'll actually want it up a little higher if you have a lot of loose soil in the bottom of your planting hole.

- And put the native soil back in the hole, right?

Because it doesn't have to be amended.

- That's right, it doesn't have to be amended.

Just put the native soil right back in the hole.

But do that, and you don't have to stake it.

If it's a peach, plum or a nectarine, cut them off at 20 to 25 inches.

If it's an apple or pear, it'd be 25 inches.

All you're doing is you're telling that plant where the first limbs, you know, you want them to come out.

And then if you've got a real tall tree, cut it down, bring it down.

- Let me ask you this, though.

How do you pick the right tree for your area, for your landscape?

- I go to choosing the varieties for Tennessee, "Tree Fruit and Small Fruit Cultivars for Tennessee", PB-746.

Dr. Lockwood up in Knoxville put together a great, great publication, and in it he's got peaches, the varieties that are good for Tennessee, and there's a bunch of them.

I'm not gonna read them all, unless you want me to.

- We can get them on the website.

- Okay.

We'll put them on the website.

I've got three, four pages of peaches, okay?

Apples, there's not as many apples.

Apples do better in higher altitudes.

Here in West Tennessee in the Mid-South, our altitude is the lowest as it is anywhere in the state of Tennessee, but we can still grow apples.

The thing I like about this publication, it also tells you about the problems, and there are problems you'll run into.

Fire blight and brown spot, brown rot in peaches, plums and nectarines.

There's one section on the apples that have disease-resistant apples.

- Good.

- In a home situation, I would probably recommend that.

And keep in mind resistance is resistance.

Resistance is not proof.

But this publication will tell you what varieties that have proven that will work in Tennessee.

- So Mr. D, when do we plant fruit trees?

- Late winter, late February, early March is the best time in my opinion to put them in the ground.

- All right.

- That's an opinion I'd listened to.

- I would, too.

- Thank you much, Mr. D. Appreciate that.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - The SunPatiens have done very well in this bed, and we'd like to dig one of them up and keep it to see if we can get it to overwinter inside.

We're gonna try to get as much of the root system as we possibly can.

I'm just digging around it to start it and to see how close I can get to it.

I think I'm gonna need a bigger shovel to actually get down deep enough to pull it up.

And then it comes up quite nicely.

We've got a container here that we can fit it in, a little bit of dirt in there.

Try to get its roots so we can sit it in here.

Make sure we get some soil around it.

Make sure there's root soil around all the roots.

Get all the roots tucked in, and there we have it potted up.

Now we'll water it, and if the soil settles around it and goes down into the container some more, then we'll add a little bit of more soil, potting soil to it to keep the soil level up where it was originally in the ground.

We'll put it in a sunny window and hope we can keep it inside through the winter.

[upbeat country music] - All right, this is our Q and A segment.

Y'all ready?

- Yes.

- Oh, these are some great questions, y'all.

I can't wait.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"My flowering dogwood was doing well "until about two weeks ago.

"The bark is falling off at the bottom.

Is my tree dead, or can I save it?"

And this is Nick from Hinesville, Georgia.

So Joseph, is it dead?

Can it be saved?

- It's not dead yet.

I took a look at the picture that was sent in, and it's got damage around the trunk, all the way around the trunk.

We call that girdling.

- Probably girdled by a weed eater.

- Probably a weed eater, yeah.

It looks like it's in some type of contained box with a lot of weeds growing up, and it was probably hit by a weed eater, and it's probably not gonna come back.

Dogwoods can be kind of fickle.

They need just the right amount of everything, good soil, proper irrigation, not too much sun and a little bit of stress.

I mean, that's a lot of stress.

Insects, diseases are gonna get in there.

Boring insects are gonna get in there most likely, so it's gonna be hard to keep it going.

- It's gonna be tough.

What do you think about that, Joellen?

- Yeah, I mean, most trees of course have all their nutrients that are just under the bark going up, phloem and xylem, up and down.

When the bark is gone like that, they can't get nutrients.

That's probably why it was looking wilted and bad, because it just can't get the nutrients that it normally would get.

I don't see much help for it.

- Yeah, it's gonna be tough to come back from that.

It really is.

It also looked shallow rooted as well, so it's gonna be tough, Nick.

We appreciate the question and the picture, because you could definitely tell.

- It was a good picture.

- Yeah, it got girdled there.

We're thinking probably by a weed eater.

Weed eater blight is what we call that, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so good luck with that.

Sorry to tell you the news.

Appreciate that question.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Why do my hosta leaves become dry and brown in the summer?"

And this is Paula from Olive Branch, Mississippi.

She says, "They are planted in shade, "so one to two hours of sun per day, and she is careful not to overwater."

So what could the problem be, Joseph?

- It looks like it's just getting a little too much sun.

It's just getting sunburned, kind of burning up.

Again, probably needs to be in more direct shade, a little bit less sunlight, and keep on irrigating them.

Keep that irrigation going.

- All right, anything you want to add to that, Joellen?

- They look like mine.

[Chris laughing] I knew I planted mine in a place that was brighter and got more direct sun than the other areas and I knew it was gonna do that, but I still want it there, and it looks great the rest of the year except for the very end when it gets like that.

- I'm laughing because mine looks the same way.

I do have it in a spot where it gets a little bit too much sun, but I do enjoy them early spring until the summer hits and they look tattered and torn like in the picture.

I almost thought that was my picture.

- I mean, mine get the morning sun and they look the same.

- Yeah, yeah.

So it just needs to be in more shade.

- I think more shade will help it.

- More shade will help it.

Yeah, and of course Olive Branch, Mississippi, I mean, it's about as hot as we are.

For sure the sun is probably intense down in that area, like it is here as well.

So, there you have it, Ms. Paula.

Don't feel bad.

I think we've all done that.

Just a little bit more shade, it'll be fine.

Thank you for that question and for the picture.

We appreciate that.

All right, Joseph, Joellen, it's always fun.

Thank y'all much for being here.

- Thank you.

- All right.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to find out more about the plants Joellen planted or see all the other flowers she has planted in that bed, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]