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

I'm Chris Cooper.

When you think of summer flowers, you usually think of annuals.

Today we're going to talk about some woody perennials with summer color.

Also we'll be canning fresh peaches.

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 Celeste Scott.

Celeste is a UT Extension Agent in Madison County.

And Ms. Juanita Jones will be joining me later.

Alright Celeste.

- Hey.

- We're going to talk about woody perennials with summer interests.

- Yes, sir, we've got plenty to talk about.

- Yes, let's talk about those because I'm very interested in this.

- Good, well, so just starting off, I feel like spring flowering shrubs always steal the show, right?

That's what so many people focus on.

That's the beginning of our growing seasons, right?

Things are starting to pop, colors are coming out.

And then I feel like once we get into summertime, sometimes we kind of, you know, we get a little tired, a little lax in our planting.

And I just want to make sure that folks know that there are plenty of perennial woody-type plants that will come back year after year, that will provide some color to our summer landscape.

- No, that'd be good because again, when we think of summer, we thinking about the heat, right?

- Yes.

- Think about how hot it is.

- And having to water.

- Yeah, having to water, right, right.

- So, you know, so often we associate annuals, you know, annual color with providing that pop of color in the summertime, but they require so much water.

And once you get a perennial or, you know, woody-type plant established, they do not quite require quite as much attention.

- That sounds good to me.

Alright, so let's get with the first one.

- Okay, so the first one that I going to talk about today is abelia and we're kind of starting on the small scale, right, and then we're going to work our way up to larger plants.

So abelia can be so versatile.

You know, there are some older cultivars, Canyon Creek is one that many people are probably familiar with.

It really has a beautiful, we'll call it a semi-evergreen foliage so it's not going to hold that foliage potentially depending on where you are, you know, in the United States, all season long.

But also has a really beautiful bloom right in summertime, we're talking kind of late summertime.

So it's starting to set blooms about mid-summer and then we're talking full bloom by late summer.

And abelias are also nice because they can be grown in a wider range of zones, so we're looking at five to nine.

And then if you need even more variation, they've got newer cultivars out that are more compact.

So we're looking at things like Rose Creek would be an example, Edward Goucher is a really nice compact cultivar that you might want to use in a landscape-type situation.

And then one of my favorites is what we call glossy abelia and it has a darker, shiny leaf.

It is actually considered more evergreen than are the other semi-evergreen cultivars and it has huge blooms on it that are fragrant.

And so that is one of my favorites.

It's not a compact version, but lots of, lots of options with abelia.

- Okay.

- The next one I kind of wanted to highlight is the butterfly bush, so Buddleja, yeah, many of you might be familiar with that.

And I really love butterfly bush, but sometimes again, depending on what zone we're in, it can be a struggle.

And so this is where cultivar selection is going to be really important.

So overall Buddlejas can be grown successfully in zones five through nine, but some require specifically like zone seven or above.

So we just have to be really careful when we're picking those cultivars that we're researching the zones that they're appropriate for and making sure that we're picking ones that are going to do well in our areas.

And why some of those require at least a zone seven is because if we get a hard winter, sometimes even in zone seven, we can have some die back of that above ground portion of the plant, but the roots aren't killed.

- Gotcha.

- So, you know, you may see some twigginess from year to year.

We have lots of great cultivars, you know, of course, some of our older tried and trues, you know, we would call them would be Black Knight that has the really big dark purple panicle-type blooms.

Purple Prince and Royal Red have both been around quite a while, it gives you some variation in color bloom options.

But they've been coming out with newer hybrids again that are more compact.

That's the keyword we're going to see, everyone wants a compact plant in the landscape.

So we've got lots more to choose out there.

Blue Chip, Miss Ruby.

- Those are real cool names.

- Yeah, aren't those, those are cute.

And so, and there's a whole bunch more, but those are just two that come to mind.

And then this is kind of a neat thing that I wanted to throw in there.

There is another hybrid, it's called Orange Scepter but it is not compact.

They have bred this one particularly for its unique color.

It has orange blooms.

- How about that.

- And they are over a foot long, the panicle blooms so that's kind of a unique thing to look for there.

So some really cool things going on with butterfly bushes.

Now we're moving up kind of a step in size as far as stature of the plants.

And of course we have to highlight hydrangea paniculata.

We can't have a discussion on woody plants without talking about a hydrangea of some sort.

They are many of our first loves when it comes to blooming shrubs.

And I'm going to say that this one has the most versatile growth range.

So we're looking at zones three to nine, USDA zones three to nine.

- Wow, three, okay.

- So this covers practically the entire United States, except for some of those subtropic and tropic areas.

They are, you know, beautiful.

Again, they're starting their blooms in summer.

Many of those, we're talking like around, you know, July or so are starting their blooms.

One of my personal favorites is called Phantom.

And the bloom on this can be, I mean, bigger than my head.

[Celeste laughs] - Oh wow, how about that.

- Like as large as a basketball in some situations and they can get so large that occasionally they might need a little extra support, but if we don't do a lot of pruning and we leave some of that woody structure to kind of strengthen from year to year, that can help hold up those heavier bloom heads.

But you know, there are many others to choose from.

Limelight's been around forever.

- Yeah, know about Limelight.

- Gotta to have limelight.

- Yeah, gotta to have that.

- Vanilla Strawberry is something kind of new on the market and I've added it to my garden and it's doing well.

But I will mention if you see any of these panicle-type hydrangeas that are marketed for color change in the pink and red zones, you're going to have better color change in our northern USDA zones than you do in the more humid areas.

So here in zone seven where I live, I don't get a lot of pink coloration on those blooms.

So just keep that in mind.

And then again, compact options, Little Lime, which still in itself doesn't really get that little.

It's still like a five-foot, you know, shrub.

But if we want to get even on further down from there, we're looking at like Bobo or Baby Lace.

Those are excellent options for compact paniculatas.

So now we'll kind of move on.

We'll talk about Rose of Sharon or Hibiscus syriacus.

- Reminds me of my grandmother, she had a garden full of those.

- I know, they are a wonderful pass along plant.

I mean, they're hardy, I feel like you can't kill them and they want to live and they want to procreate.

[both laugh] So if you have one, you might end up having some babies popping up around them either from re-seeding or suckering from the roots.

- Suckering would be mine at home, yes.

- But the good thing is through some of these newer cultivars, they have bred for sterility.

So you may occasionally see some suckers pop up, but you're not gonna have as much re-seeding, you know, popping up all around the area.

That's really nice and it has a really graceful kind of vase form, you know?

A lot of folks are like, well, I just know what to do with it because it's got such a strange form.

- I like it.

- I like it too.

I mean, there are all types of situations where you need something that's narrow down at the base, but to fill a larger space at the top.

- It kind of goes up and over, yeah, I like it.

- And its covered in blooms, so many different color options, anything from lavender to dark pink, hot pink, there's even like some whites that have dark pink or red centers.

One of my personal favorites is called Blue Chiffon.

- Blue Chiffon.

- Yes, and it in certain light literally looks blue and it's very rare to find a plant that has a blue bloom on it.

So lots of, lots of options.

- God, that was a good list, Celeste.

- Thanks.

- Good stuff.

We can tell you really like those flowers, those woody perennials.

- And we could talk it about it for more, but I think maybe we need to stop there.

[laughs] - Okay, good, well, thank you, Celeste.

Real good information, appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - Japanese beetles are here and here's their damage.

And as you can see here, they pretty much chewed this Canna leaf in this area right here.

They attack over 300 species of plants.

They have chewing mouth parts.

Again, they're big eaters.

So how do you control the Japanese beetles?

A couple of things you could do here.

One, I would get a bucket of warm, soapy water and just knock them in.

Or I will use something like horticultural oil or neem oil.

Now there are some other products that you can use, but those products are what I consider to be heavy pesticides like bifenthrin.

So if you want to protect those pollinators that are out there, I would use the oils or just get you a bucket of warm, soapy water and just knock them in.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Ms. Juanita, we have some beautiful, tasty peaches here.

- Yes we do.

- What are you about to do with those?

- I'm about to can these peaches up for use later on when we get done with the season.

The season is usually over, oh, about 1st of September, middle of September, along in there.

So these can be enjoyed year round and you get your local product all year from the canning.

- From the canning, all right, sounds good, okay.

- Alright.

- Alright, so you want to demonstrate- - Yes.

- How we put those peaches up?

- Okay.

- Peaches from Jones Orchard.

- Alright, the first thing we do, Chris, is to get our jars and make sure the jars are nice and clean and sterilized.

- Okay.

- Now I have taken the liberty to go ahead and fill these, and I'm going to show you what I do with the peaches and how I cut them and all of that, is that okay?

- That's just fine.

- Okay.

- That works for me.

- Now these peaches have been washed and we want to start out with, of course, clean fruit.

Everything has to be very clean so that you don't get any spoilage or anything out of the ordinary in your fruit.

And that's one thing that you want to be very careful about.

Okay, now I've peeled this one.

So this jar I've done quarters and this jar I've done halves.

And I just want you to see the difference, for the quarters I just cut them like that and put them in the jar.

And then when I do the halves, I turn these upside down and put them down one on top of the other.

- You've probably done this a million times.

- I'd done, yeah, I've done it a few times.

- Okay.

[Juanita laughs] - I can see that.

- Okay, then after we do that, we put some, this is called a simple syrup and the way we do the simple syrup, I've done a medium syrup here.

And I use four cups of water and three cups of sugar and I put it on the stove and let it come to a boil.

You don't want to put it in when it's grainy or anything like that with the sugar.

And so you fill this and you want to make sure that you have the syrup over the top of your product.

That way you don't get the air.

The air will cause discoloration.

It won't affect the nutrient value or anything it just, it's the aesthetics of it.

So you want to make sure that it's, that you're, it's over the top.

- Now why do we put the syrup over the peaches anyway?

- To give it flavor and to, I don't know how you could can peaches without it.

[laughs] It's just a plain peach in there.

I don't think it would give it enough liquid to keep it from turning dark, I believe.

- Right, just in case somebody asks.

- Oh, okay, well we want to answer questions.

- That's right.

- So after you get the air bubbles out, you want to make sure you get as much of the air bubbles out that you possibly can, then your syrup sometimes will look diminished.

So if that happens, you will need to add some more to make sure that you have plenty of syrup.

And one of the most important things that you'll ever do in canning and this is across the board, any kind of canning or any kind of canning that you do, you want to make sure that these rims are clean, no product, nothing on there of any description so that it interferes with the sealing process.

Now the sealing process comes from this rubberized around here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So what we want to do is to make sure that this seal is all intact on top of the jar and this kind of curls down a little bit so that you get a good tight seal.

So we put this on here and then we'll put the band on.

- Not too tight, right?

- Not too tight.

You just do it kind of where you can feel some resistance.

Yeah, and then after that's done, it's ready to go in the water bath.

Now in case we have somebody, Chris, and you might not know yourself what a water bath is.

- Okay.

- Okay, water bath you just get a a big pot and you put enough water in so that when you put your jars in, your product in, you make sure that it comes an inch or two over the top.

- Over the top, okay.

- Now you want to make sure that it's over the top and not halfway up or anything else, because you want to make sure you get plenty of heat to get the sealing process, all the way in.

So then we'll do that, we'll put these in the canner.

Here we go, this goes in the water bath.

And you will notice that the water will not be up very far when you first start, but once you get the jars in, it brings the water up so that it will come over the top.

Now, if you put too much water in to begin with, and you put these jars in, what's going to happen?

It's going to come out the top.

- Right.

- It's going to overflow for you.

So we put this in here and what we do, Chris, we let it come to a boil.

- Okay.

- Let it come to a good boil and then we turn it down just to simmer and we cook it.

After it starts to boil, you start your timer for 25 minutes.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So we're ready to look at it and see if it's, see when it's going to boil, we're going to turn it up and it comes to a boil.

- Special delivery.

- Okay.

So you're our big He-Man today.

Let's put it on this, on this one, because this has more padding on there.

Chris, thank you for doing that for me.

- Oh, no problem.

- This doesn't have to come off the stove right now, but since we needed it over here for you people to look at, I got Chris to put it over here for me.

So we're gonna lift this up like this, and you will notice this is something very important that I want you to understand is the sealing part of this.

When you first take it up, you're going to have, see how the top is puffed up like this?

- Yes ma'am, I can see that.

- That is not sealed yet.

And once it cools down and it creates a vacuum in there, it will make a seal.

So here we go.

That's what they look like when you first take them out.

Now, if you'll this notice, this liquid is a little bit more clear than this one right here.

It's a different variety of peach.

And also this will be a little more like that once it sits for a while.

One thing that I wanted to mention also about the sealing on home canned food, it's very important that when you open a jar of something, any kind of, any kind of, well, commercially canned either, if the top is puffed up or if you have any bubbles or if you have any discoloration, I'm not talking about around the air bubbles.

- Okay.

- But discoloration of the total product or something like that, throw it away.

Do not use it.

Botulism, especially on like green beans or something that's not acidified when you get away from the acidified foods, the botulism is more prevalent.

And I don't want to frighten anybody about home canned foods, but that is something that you need to be aware of.

And I've eaten home canned foods all my life.

And if you want to say I'm 80 years old, that's fine too.

[both laugh] - I'll let you say that.

- And I've never, I've never been sick off of it, but I would suggest that also, if you have something like that's not acidified and you have the discoloration and you have the tops popped up like that, throw the whole thing away, jar and all.

- Yeah, because we don't anybody to get sick.

- No, we don't want anybody to get sick.

- We definitely don't want that.

- And home canned foods are perfectly safe if you follow the simple guidelines.

And what you've seen today has been a very, very simple process and it's very safe.

This has been an acidified food.

And like I said on the front end, that's the reason we did not pressure these.

When you have fruit and you have the acid already, then botulism doesn't grow in that.

So the reason you do the pressure is to bring the temperature up enough so that it kills any of the spores or anything in that.

So this is perfectly safe to do it like this.

- Ms. Juanita, we appreciate that demonstration.

Thank you, ma'am.

- Oh, my pleasure.

- Okay.

[upbeat country music] - Tomato cages are actually not that good for tomatoes.

But, they're great for a lot of other things in the garden.

Usually you can find two different sizes of tomato cages.

You got a big tomato cage and a little tomato cage.

Now, I'm going to use this big tomato cage on a tomato just because it is a determinate tomato.

If you have an indeterminate tomato tomato cages just don't work.

The tomatoes get way too big.

I wanna make sure I push it in far enough so that the tomato will grow up into the cage.

That might take a little bit of work here.

That's probably good.

And so, it'll come up and fill out.

Now, I'm going to go ahead and use my favorite use for tomato cages is to put 'em on peppers.

Peppers can be kinda fragile and blow over sometimes, but with the tomato cage it reinforces it so it's not gonna do that.

So, we'll use these smaller cages on the peppers.

Then, something else you can use tomato cages for is for vegetables that climb.

So, you can use it for beans, cucumbers, anything like that.

I'm gonna use them on these green beans here.

Now, these are pretty big.

So, I'm going to not probably push it in quite as far as I would otherwise.

But, I'll put one right there.

And I got another cage, I'll put it right here.

There.

Now the beans have something to climb.

So, those are some things you can do with tomato cages.

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

You ready?

- Yes, yes.

- These are great questions.

- Yes.

- Right, so let's start with the very first viewer email.

"I have found this growing in my yard.

"I am pretty sure it is a weed.

"I've pulled it out and have gotten poked by the thorns "and my skin itches after.

"Can you help me identify this?

Thank you."

This is Sheree in Southaven, Mississippi.

Well, Celeste can you help her with the identification?

- I think we can.

- Ah, I think you can.

- So this is we say wild blackberry, possibly.

- I think so.

- Mm-hmm, I'm thinking that's what we're looking at there.

- So what I looked at first was pretty much the leaves.

It has the pinnate venation, right?

So that lets me know that's it's in the bramble family.

So then it has thorns.

- Yes, and I know this all too well because we, my family recently went and picked wild blackberries.

So I can tell you with confidence that that picture was a blackberry.

- It's a blackberry.

So would you encourage Sheree to keep it?

- Well, I mean yes, she could definitely.

You know, wild blackberries tend to have much smaller fruit on them than some of our newer varieties that we have out there on the market and also they're very thorny.

And so there's newer blackberries that are available that are thornless.

- Thornless, yes.

- And have bigger berries.

So just depends on what direction she wants to go.

I'll leave that up to her.

- Okay, we'll leave that to you Sheree, but yeah, thornless, bigger fruit, sounds good to me.

Thank you for the question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"Last year I planted zucchini and cucumbers "in large containers.

"This spring an odd weed began to grow in each pot.

"I left it alone to see what it would do and now it's actually pretty."

[Celeste laughs] "Can you tell me what this is?"

And this is Lynn from Dresden, Ohio.

So she let it grow and now it's pretty.

I tell folks all the time, they're wildflowers, right?

Nature's wildflower.

So what about that ID?

You know what that is?

- Mm, mullein?

- Uh-huh.

Oh, I think that is.

And I actually, I see it all the time.

I live across from a wooded area so it kind of grows, you know, in that area.

They're pretty though.

- They are pretty and we kind of joked about them last year with COVID and we're calling them the toilet paper plant.

- Ah, yeah.

[both laugh] I remember you saying that.

- Yeah, they're soft and fuzzy, you know, and could be used for a multitude of things.

But no, yeah, they really can grow into an attractive plant and eventually will bloom if you leave them there.

- Yeah, it's a biennial.

Yeah, it pretty much blooms in the second year.

Yeah, beautiful yellow flowers I think they are?

- On like a big tall stalk.

- Yeah, big tall stalk.

Yeah, so it's pretty nice.

I like the little fuzzy, you know, the wooly hairs on the leaves I think are pretty cool.

So thank you, Lynn.

How about that?

She actually thinks they're pretty.

- Yeah.

- That's pretty good.

Alright, so here's our next viewer email.

"A white fungus has sprung up overnight "under my chestnut tree.

"This is the first year I've seen this and the tree "is healthy now and heavily in blossom.

"Is the fungus something that will damage the root system "of the tree?

If so, is there a treatment?"

This is Jamie.

Now we talked about this a little bit, right?

I happened upon some pictures a while back and actually saw this.

So this is the coral mushroom.

- Oh, good, I've never seen it.

I've never seen it before.

- Coral mushroom, right?

It's in the Ramaria species of mushroom, right?

So it can grow on decaying wood.

- Okay, so just taking advantage of the situation, you would see it a lot in understories, wooded areas.

- Wooded areas, yeah.

- That makes sense.

- It makes sense.

- To me, and the reason why coral is because it actually looks like coral reef.

- Reef, yeah, it does.

- It has like the little, you know, spiky crown-like tips on it so that's why they call it the coral mushroom.

- So would that make you think since she's finding this coming up underneath her tree, could this be an indication that she's got some kind of root issue, maybe a root rot happening potentially?

- Yeah, I think that's possible.

Anytime I hear, you know, or see mushrooms, I think about, you know, living on decaying, organic material, dying wood.

So I think that's possible.

- Yeah.

- So what I would do, how about a certified arborist to come out and assess the plant's health?

- That would be excellent idea, yeah.

Because the fungus itself isn't causing any sickness to the tree, it's just taking advantage of the situation.

So that's kind of your visual indicator.

I think that would be good next steps for that situation.

- It could be, yeah.

But there could be some other things that are going on, you know, with the tree as well.

It could be planted too deep or could it be something else?

But yeah, anytime I see mushrooms, that's what I think about, first thing that comes to my mind.

- Yeah, and those were really neat, a neat new type of mushroom to see so I was glad to see that picture.

- Yeah, coral mushrooms, yeah.

The things you happen upon when you're just on the web, right?

Thank you for that question, Jamie.

Alright, Celeste, that was fun.

- It was fun.

I always love question and answer.

- Yeah, thank so much.

Thank you so much, appreciate that.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

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

Or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for joining us.

If you want to find out more about all the shrubs Celeste talked about, go to familyplotgarden.com.

We also have information on lots of other plants for your garden.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]