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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Two weeks ago, we showed how to lay plastic sheet mulch.

Today we are planting vegetables in that mulch.

Also, we are planting a container herb garden.

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 Peter Richards.

Peter is our local gardener.

- Hey!

- Thanks for being with us, Peter.

- Oh, thanks.

- All right, so what are we about to do?

- Yeah, so we've put down these mulches.

- Yeah?

- And now we have to plant our plants.

Now, a lot of times it's easiest to plant your plants after you put the mulch down, 'cause then you don't have to fit the mulch around the plant.

So that's what we did here, especially with these sheet mulches, which is what we're gonna be planting in today.

- Okay.

- You wanna make sure you put the mulch down first and then plant through it.

- Right.

- So all six of these sections of our garden are gonna be planted the same.

So we're gonna put the same plants in each sheet so we can kinda compare how the mulches do.

- Okay.

- So what we're gonna have is we're gonna have, we have three rows.

We're gonna have one row of flowers.

- Okay.

- Okay?

We're gonna have one row that is a tomato and two pepper plants.

And we're gonna have one row that is some beans and watermelon.

- Got it.

- And so we just go ahead and start planting, I guess.

- Okay, let's go ahead and do it.

- So, on this particular section, this is gonna be our flowers, So we're not gonna worry about that.

We're gonna plant those another time.

- Got it, okay.

- So, let's do our tomatoes and, excuse me, yeah, our tomatoes and peppers first.

And for this kind of mulch, [Chris chuckling] - Ah!

- the easiest way to do it is to just cut a little cross.

- Yeah.

- So, I do have irrigation in here, irrigation lines.

So there's one of my lines right there.

I wanna make sure that I'm close to the line, but I don't cut the line.

- Yeah, we don't wanna do that.

- Yeah, that wouldn't be good.

So it's pretty easy.

All I do is I just make a little cross here.

And now I have the soil exposed.

- Okay, so just wide enough to put the plant material in there.

- Yeah, just wide enough to put the plant material in there.

We have Better Bush tomatoes that we're gonna plant.

- Better Bush.

- These are determinate.

Meaning that they will grow to a certain size, pretty much stop growing, and then put on all of their fruit at once.

- Okay.

- The reason why we're doing this is 'cause we do have a limited space here.

- Yeah.

- And honestly, I didn't wanna build six tomato trellises.

- Right, I got you 'cause you definitely need 'em - Yeah.

- For indeterminates.

- Yep, so we chose the determinate.

- Okay.

- So it's nicely rooted.

- Yeah, good root system.

- Yep!

So I'm just gonna go ahead and... - So we don't have to plan 'em too deep, right?

- Nope, just plan them at the depth that it was in the nursery.

Although these are tomatoes so I am gonna plant it a little deeper.

- Okay.

Just a little bit, okay.

- Because all the little hairs on the side of a tomato plant can be roots if they're underground.

So, I'm just gonna go ahead and plant that a little deeper than it was in the pot.

- Okay, and we got that right next to your... - Yep, and our irrigation line is right here.

- Okay.

- So that should get lots of water.

- Good.

That's right there.

- Then we'll just... - Again with the cross.

- Yep, just a cross right there.

And once you've started it, if you need it a little bigger you can just go ahead and kinda stretch it a little bit.

- And it does stretch.

- Yep.

- There's some give.

- And so with these though, I do want to plant them at container depth for the peppers.

So once again, really nice roots.

I'm just gonna kinda tease those up just a little bit.

And plant that right there.

- Yeah, that's good.

- So that's a bell pepper.

- Yeah, let's make sure we get this nutsedge out of there.

- Oh yes, that's good.

- Yeah.

- Because, yeah, nutsedge will take advantage of any open spot you have and this area does have a lot of nutsedge.

Okay, so those are plants that came in pots.

We're also gonna plant beans and watermelons.

- Got it, and we're gonna do that on this side.

- And we're gonna do that over there.

- So let me grab the seed packets here.

And I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna plant the watermelon here so that it can run - Yeah.

- Into our walkways and kinda use this space as opposed to running out onto the grass.

- 'Cause this is gonna sprawl.

- Yeah, so here's our irrigation line right here.

And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do this a little different.

I'm just gonna cut a slit right here.

- Okay, all right.

- And then I grab my trowel here and we're gonna go ahead and- - So, you gonna mound it up a little bit?

- I'm not really gonna mound it that much.

What I'm gonna do is I just basically did a trench.

- Okay.

- Once these come up and we've chosen our plants, go ahead and put one of the staples that's holding the plastic down right there, to just kinda keep this from, you know, opening up more and letting more weeds grow.

- Okay, I got it.

- So we'll do that.

- Makes sense.

- Okay, now, we got string beans.

Yes, so these are pole beans.

- Okay.

- And this is going to... We're gonna go ahead and plant two rows.

So here's our irrigation line right here.

And we're gonna plant two rows and they're gonna be kinda longer because, you know, beans, you need a lot of plants.

- Peter, as you're doing that, the sun has popped out and you can definitely feel the heat coming off of this plastic.

- Yes, part of our experiment here is I'm really curious to know how these plants do with such a dark surface that they're growing in.

Because I could easily see that possibly some of these plants are gonna die from the heat.

- From the heat.

- But we'll find out.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's why we're doing this experiment.

And I'm doing 'em about two inches apart.

- About two inches, all right.

- Four inches is what they'll grow at.

So that gives me some options when it comes to thinning.

So this is the landscape fabric.

- Right.

- It's like, it's kinda has the texture of a light tarp.

It does let the light through.

Or excuse me, not the light through.

It does let some water through There's another option.

With this, you can use a torch and just burn holes in the sheet.

Now, one of the other advantages of using the torch is that because this is woven when you cut it, it likes to fray.

- Yeah.

- If you burn it, it's not gonna fray, - No fray.

- Because it melts the edge.

- Got it.

- What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take this, - Oh!

- and there we go, burned a hole - Look at that, easy.

- in the plastic, yeah.

- Okay.

- It's really easy.

Now, in a minute I'll show you how to do it with a knife too because not everybody has a blowtorch.

- Right, got it in there.

- Put the tomato in.

- Yeah, there you go.

- The other nice thing about the blowtorch is if you know exactly where your stuff's gonna be, you can just go through and go burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn.

- Yeah, quick and easy.

- Yeah, it's easy.

- Yeah.

- For this next one though, same thing as the other one, we're just gonna cut an X.

- And that was the frays you're talking about.

- Yeah, so if you notice, it's really frayed here.

- Yeah, it sure is.

- You could, if you wanted to, you could get a lighter or something like that and melt the edges, kinda like you would a rope, just to keep the fray from coming out.

I'm gonna go ahead and just tuck this under here, but yeah, this is... - Yeah, it's a lot.

- Yep.

- Ah yeah, right next to the line, good.

- Yep, so it should get lots of good water.

[torch blowing] - Awesome.

- I will say ouch, it is a little warm still.

[Chris laughs] But not terrible.

- Not terrible.

- So now let's go over and do our beans and our watermelons.

I'm gonna go ahead and use torch again.

[torch blowing] Okay, so there we go.

Notice no fraying at all.

So we're gonna trench here.

So we'll put our five seeds in here.

That's one, two, three, - Wow!

- Four, five.

- I almost can't see those.

- Yeah, no, they're the same colors as the soil, for sure.

Okay?

So there's those.

- Okay.

- Now, I'm going to...where's my line?

Here's my line.

So I'm gonna take my drip line.

I'm gonna put it right there.

Okay, so now let's do the beans.

We're gonna cut this hole instead of burning it.

Let's see here.

Where is our, there is our tube right there.

- Yep.

- Yep, so we're gonna do one right here.

[tarp ripping] - Yeah.

- And we'll do another one right here.

Okay.

- All right.

- So one of the things is if you are good enough, I'm not, to cut right down the line, the fraying is minimal.

You do have some here and it will likely continue to fray through the summer.

You know, this will probably become totally threadbare by the end of it, but that's okay.

- With the heat.

- Yeah, that's fine.

Okay.

There we go.

So now we have our test plant in synthetic mulch here.

Let's actually, since we can, let's go ahead and drag our irrigation hose right between those two.

- Yeah, okay.

- Okay, so all we need to do now is we're gonna need to water.

- Okay.

- And then just take care of any weeds that do come up.

There will be a couple, - There will be some.

- But this should keep down most of the weeds.

- Okay, we shall see.

Thank you, Peter, for that demonstration.

- Thank you.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] Let's talk a little bit about phototoxicity.

This is insecticidal soap.

You should not use this product on a bright, sunny days.

It will tell you so on the label, which is why we always say read and follow the label.

You should also not use pesticides when the temperatures are above 85 degrees.

That will be on the label as well.

If you do so, that will cause burning of the leaf tissue and also cause death of the plant.

So again, always read and follow the label.

[upbeat country music] All right, Joellen.

Container planting.

- Yes.

- So you're gonna get us started.

- Yes, I am.

- I'm sure you know all about planting these containers, don't you?

- Yes, I've planted many over the years.

- I know you have.

[Joellen laughs] So how do we get started?

- Well, I am gonna add some soil moist crystals to our container.

This will help in keeping the plants with water throughout the summer when it's hot.

And I've used them for many years.

- Okay.

- They do a great job.

What's very interesting, kids actually love these because look how small they are.

- Wow, they are.

- They're very small.

And then when you add water, they get to be like this.

- That's a pretty good size.

- And this is the whole idea.

When you water your container, the water absorbs in these crystals and they expand like this and adds extra water in the flower bed for your plants to use between waterings.

- Okay.

- So it really does help keep your plants healthy in between waterings and make you not have to water the bed so much.

- Okay, smart, I like that.

- So we're gonna incorporate these within the first six inches of this container, 'cause we don't need to go all the way down 'cause the roots don't go around six or so inches.

- Okay.

- And that's where the majority of the roots are gonna be so that's where we wanna put these crystals.

- Okay.

- So we'll put, sprinkle them in first.

- And they just go right there on top.

- Well, we're gonna start off with 'em on top, and then we will incorporate them in.

- Okay.

- And by the way, this was about a tablespoon of crystals in four cups of water.

- Wow.

- So they go a long way.

- Wow, have you always used these?

- I've always used them.

- Okay.

- And these will stay in the ground.

You will have to replace them, but they should last about five years.

- Okay.

- So anyway, but then we're gonna take them and we don't want 'em on top.

We wanna incorporate them in the bed.

- And while you do that, Joellen, so what happens if you don't hydrate 'em first?

- Well, if you don't hydrate them first and you water them, I've had people think, "Oh, a little goes a long way."

[Chris laughs] And actually, the crystals, once they got wet, came up and poured out of the top of the plant without the pot and were pour in, just stood on the surface and that wasn't gonna do any good to the bed.

- Okay.

- Now, since we're adding herbs, we're gonna add some herbs that are perennial and one that's a biennial, which will have to be replaced.

And they will stay evergreen all winter and summer long.

- Oh good.

- And in fact, to have a little bit of structure to the garden, we're going to plant a rosemary in the center for some height.

- Okay.

And while you do that, Joellen, so let's let the folks know what do we mean by perennial and biennial?

- Perennials will come back every year.

- Okay.

- Biennials live for two years and then they die.

- Okay.

- And you have to replace them.

- Okay.

- And that's what our parsley is we'll be planting.

Parsley is a biennial.

- All right, getting the gloves ready.

Gotta have the gloves.

- Got my gloves.

I always wear gloves.

And I'm gonna pull this gently out of the pot, and you'll see it's a little bit rootbound, but not bad.

If you wanna leave this in, you can or you can take it out.

It doesn't matter.

We only have one plant in here.

We're gonna rough up these roots a little bit, spread 'em out.

And we're gonna plant it just at the soil surface.

We don't want to bury it.

- Ah-ha, okay.

So let the roots get out.

- Let the roots get out, but just plant it at the soil surface.

And next we will plant the parsley.

We have two of them here.

These are little rootbound too.

We'll work on them a little bit.

- Oh yeah.

- Just separate the roots just a little bit, want them to go out and not around like the bottom of the container.

- So Joellen, for our viewers, if they're in the store and they're looking for, you know, some plant material.

They're looking for the white roots, right?

- White roots, yes.

- Okay, cool.

- And we're gonna plant these together like they're one big plant.

- Huh, okay.

- And next we're gonna plant the other herb which is a chive.

- Okay.

- And you can keep cutting on these and it'll keep growing out.

Sometimes, but these are supposed to be perennial so that you shouldn't have to replace them, but if you do need to, you can.

- Okay.

And again, nice, white fibrous roots.

- Nice, this one, these aren't rootbound or anything.

They can just plant those just like that.

So they're very, very nice.

And again, we'll plant them together and these will keep growing outward.

So this will get bigger as they stay in here just like the rosemary will.

Since you're gonna be trimming on your rosemary, you can actually shape it into a nice tree, conical shape if you want.

- Okay.

- 'Cause you're gonna be trimming on it to use your herbs in your cooking.

- Yeah, it smells good too, man.

- Now, a lot of times [Chris laughs] I always use marigolds.

One thing, they're very cheery, they're very pretty.

[Chris laughs] - Cheery.

- I think they're really good plant to have in your garden.

And it works just the same way with herbs.

Now, there's not a whole lot that disturbs these herbs.

Now the parsley, there's some caterpillars that like the parsley, but they become butterflies.

So I kinda let them have that and because the parsley will come back from it.

It does not kill your parsley.

- Okay.

- It just defoliates it and then it'll come back.

- Okay.

- But when you have a six pack like this, a lot of times the roots will be all be together.

So you want to squeeze the container on all sides and gently lift the plant out, trying to keep all the root ball intact.

- Yeah, right.

- Just like this.

There we go.

There's one, and these are nicely rooted.

There's not too many roots.

It's not too rootbound, it has just got enough roots, very good.

But the marigolds act, there's a lot of bugs that don't like the smell of marigolds.

So I kind of like to use them with the herbs just to make sure all the bad bugs don't like to get on the plants.

- Okay, so it's the smell.

- It's the smell of them.

They have a little smell to them that the rest of the, some bugs just don't like.

And then we will plant these again just at the soil surface.

You don't want to bury them.

- Yeah, those are right at the surface, okay.

- Yeah, we don't wanna bury them.

- That's a good lesson.

I see a lot of people making that mistake.

- Yeah, well a lot of people bury things too deep.

- Yeah, it's too deep.

- I'd rather have it a little bit high than too deep.

And see we've got plenty of soil in here.

And next, besides these, to make a little bit of color, so we've got green and we've got yellow, we'll just add some red.

And because all of these plants like it on the dry side, we are gonna put a red as vinca, - Okay.

- 'Cause vinca also likes it on the dry side again.

- Okay, yeah.

- Nicely rooted, not too much.

Very, very nice.

We'll plant that to there.

And these will all grow up and grow together.

And then you'll be able to harvest all of your rosemary, your chives, and your parsley all through the growing season.

And the good thing about this is it stays all winter long.

- Okay.

- So in the fall when you start changing out your seasonal color, you can also change out these seasonal color, but leave your herbs in so you can continue to use them.

- Okay, good idea.

- And I like to set things out first to see how evenly spaced it is in the bed.

And then we plant again.

Watch the crown.

The crown of plants, you wanna plant them at the soil surface and not below it.

Once you've loosened up the soil and put those soil crystals in the bed, you can almost don't even need a trowel.

You can just plant these with your hands.

- Right, yeah.

- It's all nice and loose.

Now you can put this container, you actually could use this on your front porch if you wanted to.

You have two of them in the match.

You don't have to have a barrel.

It can be any kind of container that you wish, but it'll do well as long as you have about four to six hours of sun a day.

Because these vegetables need, - Four to six, okay.

- All of this stuff like lots of sun.

Now if you have a shady place, there's very few herbs that like a lot of shade, but there might be a few out there.

But everything, usually herbs wise, likes to have sun.

So we were expecting this to having at least four to six hours of sun a day.

- And it will get that.

And Joellen, we appreciate that demonstration.

We can't wait to see what this is gonna look like throughout the growing season.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - When you're pruning a tree, you wanna stay on the ground.

And so that's why we have pole saws.

Pole saws are really neat because there is a saw so you can get the larger branches.

There's also a cutter so you can get smaller branches.

I'm gonna show you some of the places you might use that.

So we're gonna start out with a couple of small branches.

So here's a branch that's about a half inch in diameter.

So I'm just gonna hook the clippers on it and just pull the rope, and it cuts.

Okay, let's try this branch.

Okay, that one's a little bit too big for the pruners so we're gonna flip around and we'll just use the saw here.

[saw scratching] Sometimes when you're using a pole saw you can't quite cut exactly where you want to because there's a tree crotch in the way or a branch.

But you can get pretty close and you can make that cut without having to leave the ground.

Pole saws often come with a telescoping feature that lets you make 'em longer or shorter.

This one can go out to about 12-feet, others can go longer.

But, if you need to cut a branch on your tree, don't get a ladder.

That's dangerous, you could fall.

Instead, get a pole saw.

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

Y'all ready?

- Yes, sir.

- These are some great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Can I cut back my small-tree-sized Loropetalum without killing it?"

And this is Michael on YouTube.

So can Michael do that?

- Yeah, yeah, Michael.

Go for it.

Get those pruners out - Go for it.

- and just start hacking away on that thing.

Now, but seriously, Loropetalums respond well to rejuvenation pruning.

- Yeah.

- So even if it is, you know, small-tree-size and you really need to take that thing down to restructure its form or just to literally rejuvenate new life into that plant, you can certainly do that.

- Yeah.

- Now, the best time to do severe pruning is in what we call late winter.

- Yeah.

- So here we're looking at, you know, February would be ideal.

We've missed that window at this point in time for us right now in this time of the year.

So, I would probably suggest that they not do that right now.

- Sure.

- 'Cause juices are already flowing, saps are flowing.

It has likely begun or is already fully leafed out at this point.

So, just keep those things in mind.

I mean, if they just have to because it's an access issue or impeding an entry to a facility or something like that, we do what we have to do.

You know, go ahead - Sure, sure.

- Cut it back - Yeah.

- And make sure that we're keeping it watered well throughout this summer.

But in an ideal situation, those heavy rejuvenation prunings will be done in late winter.

- Late winter, yeah.

And I've actually done this to mine at home.

It can handle it.

- How quick did it come back?

- Pretty quick.

- Yeah.

- Pretty quick, and this is also a good time to cut back any damaged, diseased, crossing, you know, branches.

And I always cut above a bud.

You know, the direction that I want the branches to go, right?

- Yes.

- So, that works.

So yeah, you could do that.

You could do that, Michael.

- Go for it.

- Go for it!

- Be brave.

It's scary, but be brave.

[Chris laughs] - "Be brave," she says.

All right, thank you for that question.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"How do you get rid of celandine?"

And this is Judith from Selden, New York.

She said, "it has taken over her garden and is popping up in the lawn."

So Peter, can we help out Ms. Judith?

- Yes, we can.

- Okay.

- There are a couple things you can do.

"Celadeen" or celadine depending, is a invasive weed.

It does like to take over.

Natively it likes to live along the margins of the forest especially in moist areas.

So probably having a little less moisture would help there.

- Okay.

- Probably won't make it go away though.

It is a spring ephemeral.

So it'll pop up, when you get to the heat of summer, it goes away.

- Okay.

- The problem that it has though is, in the forest at least, is that it goes in and it kind of crowds out all of the other ephemerals - Right.

- Where it takes over.

It spreads by everything you can imagine.

[Chris laughs] So seeds, bulblets, roots, and so it can be really hard to get rid of.

So if you have a small area of it, - Okay?

- You can dig it up.

- Dig it up.

- But you have to make sure you get all of the little bulblets.

- Please do.

- Otherwise it'll be back and I'm sure it'll have a vengeance.

- I'm sure it will.

- And so you gotta do that.

Now, if it's a big area, that's a lot of work.

- Yeah.

- So probably the easiest way to take care of it is to spray a non-selective herbicide.

You can use glyphosate when it is first coming up in the spring.

And when it's actively growing, that will help take care of it.

You probably will have to do multiple applications over multiple years.

- I'm sure you will.

- But eventually, you can win.

Now, in this case, it's in her garden, in her lawn.

So you can't just go spraying glyphosate everywhere.

- Yeah, you gotta be careful.

- And so what I would do is I would use the wipe technique.

Just take glyphosate, put it on a, you know, you can just dip a paintbrush right in the concentrate, or you can put it on a sponge, wearing gloves.

- Yeah.

- And just kind of touch all of your celandine and come back a week later.

Anything that doesn't look like it's dying, just go through it again.

Just do that over and over and over again.

When you get to the end of the spring, it'll all die 'cause the heat comes.

Next year, do the same thing.

You'll probably be able to, after a few years, get control over that and get rid of it.

- Yeah, hopefully so.

Celeste, Peter, that was fun.

- Yay!

- That was fun.

Thank you much.

- Thanks.

- 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.

If you want to learn more about planting, growing and harvesting vegetables and herbs, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

We have hundreds of videos to help you out.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [light music]