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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Xeriscaping is a big word, but it means gardening with minimal water.

Today we're going to talk about it.

Also, not much is better than toast with strawberry jam from your own garden.

Today, we are making strawberry freezer jam.

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 Jessie Munson.

Jessie is the Plant Activities Coordinator at Lichterman Nature Center, and Cathy Faust will be joining me later.

Hi, Jessie.

- Hi.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you.

I'm really happy to be here.

- Oh, I could tell, I could tell.

So we're gonna talk about xeriscaping, right?

- That's right.

- All right.

- So it's dry landscaping.

- Okay.

- Basically it's, and you mentioned it before, it's gardening in a way that you have to use little or no irrigation.

- Okay, okay.

- So we're trying to conserve water.

- Good, something we don't have to worry too much about down this way.

- Well, it's interesting.

It's something I didn't think much about.

It's been a common practice in the southwest for 20 or 30 years, maybe more, because they have so little rain.

But here in Memphis, although it's raining a lot right now, we get these spring rains, but in the summer, we might go weeks and weeks with no rain and people are out there watering and... - You're right.

- And we do have a lot of water here now, but you don't know in 20 years, those aquifers might be getting low.

- That's a good point.

So how do we go about, you know, understanding what xeriscaping is though?

- Well, so any kind of planting, or any sort of gardening you can do that will require no water, other than what is provided from nature.

So actually my yard is, I was thinking about it today, and I have done a lot of xeriscaping without even realizing it, because I plant a lot of natives.

I don't water any of my flower beds, - Really?

- Right, so once it's established, I don't water anymore, And they do really great, because they're acclimated for our climate here.

And our natives are well suited for going a month or 2 in the summer with just 90 or a hundred degrees and no water.

So in that sense, I'm doing xeriscaping already.

But you can go even farther with your xeriscaping.

And one of the key features that you see a lot, that I think is very cool, is a lot of gravel, a lot of boulders or rocks, different colors of rocks.

Sometimes you see people stacking rocks.

- I've seen that, yeah.

- To make little sculptures, like metal sculptures.

And then the plants are almost your accent within that.

And you have very little maintenance.

And because you're adding in some natives, instead of maybe turf grass, you're actually gonna increase your biodiversity.

- How about that?

Little maintenance, I think people like that.

- Very little maintenance.

- Yeah,.

I think that's a good thing.

- It's very cool.

- So what kind of plants did you incorporate into your xeriscaping garden?

- Okay, so I brought some great plants.

Anything that's drought tolerant.

So there's a lot of plants on planet Earth that would work well.

But, of course, I'm always pushing natives.

And we do have some really great drought-tolerant natives.

So I brought some, I brought...

I'm gonna start with my very most favorite one.

This one is called Rattlesnake Master.

I mean, with a name like that.

- Yeah, that's a cool name.

- That's really awesome.

And I actually, you'll have to show this here.

I'm gonna send you a selfie of me and my Rattlesnake Master at home.

- Okay.

- It's as tall as me, so... That's why I took the selfie, so...

It gets this really great sort of spiky ball at the top.

And even though it's not a bright-colored bloom, the bees and the butterflies flock to this thing when it's blooming.

And you can see it is sort of a desert-type plant.

It's got these spikes, and it's a little bit like a yucca.

- Yeah, she does look that one.

- And it's just a really great native plant that a lot of people don't know much about.

- Wow, and it attracts pollinators.

- Oh my gosh, it's actually been, it's on a list of top pollinators along with things like mountain mint.

- Wow.

I didn't know that.

- And some other things, yeah.

Let's see, then we have, of course, Rudbeckia.

There's a lot of Rudbeckias that work really well with no water.

As you can see, you'll, you'll see them coming up around the city in cracks of sidewalks.

This is a Rudbeckia laciniata, cutleaf coneflower.

- That's nice.

- Let's see, here's one of our only native salvias, Salvia lyrata.

And this is a native, or a natural occurring, sort of, I don't know what you would call it, like a nativar, cultivar, that you can find in nature.

It's this purple-leafed version.

- Ah, it's pretty.

- Yeah, it's really, it adds a lot... Actually, if you want to keep it lower, you can cut off the stalks, and it still adds a lot with the color of the leaves.

But it does get a purple bloom too that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds as well.

- So it's also a pollinator.

- So that's, yep, one of our only native salvias.

We've got, this is a very cool one called- - It's different.

- Jewels of Opar... - Jewels of Opar?

- Sounds very tropical and like from a fantasy land, but it's native to Memphis and the Mid-South.

It's semi-succulent.

So any sort of succulent stores water in its leaves, which makes it a perfect candidate for drought.

- Look at that though.

- Yeah, and it gets these really amazing, teeny tiny pink blooms.

And another fun thing for kids, or for grownups, if you're me, once these little, once the flowers turn into the seed, it's like almost a little berry.

And it will turn, it will dry up, and you can squish it, and the seeds will just fall out.

And then you can spread the seeds wherever you want.

- How about that, okay.

- Yeah, that's a really great one.

- That's interesting.

- Of course, the prickly pear.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Our only native cactus.

- Only native?

- Only native cactus.

A lot of people just don't even know we have a native cactus, right.

It gets an amazing yellow bloom.

These pads are edible, and after it blooms, you get a fruit on it, and that is also edible.

- So it's edible?

- So I think it's actually categorized as a shrub also, because they can get so massive.

I mean, they don't grow fast, so it's not like you have to worry about it taking over.

But they can create quite a bit of height interest in your xeriscaping.

Yeah, like that one.

- So all of these plants that we're talking about are native to our area though - To the Mid-South-- - To the Mid-South.

- I've also got a primrose up here to add some color.

- Yeah, I like primrose, - And this is the showy evening primrose.

And it actually attracts, there's a moth that it attracts, and it's called a green banded day sphinx.

- That sounds cool.

- Yeah, it's really amazing, yeah.

And so the, it's called an evening primrose because it opens generally in the evening.

So of course, it attracts, instead of butterflies, it attracts moths.

- Yeah, that's cool.

- But it's usually still blooming in the morning for you to enjoy with your morning coffee as you're looking at your xeriscape.

Over here, oh, watch out for the cactus.

- Yeah, watch the cactus.

- Vines aren't something you'd probably think of in xeriscaping.

But this is virgin's bower, it's a native Clematis.

So it has a lot of really cool names.

You know, we talk about using botanic names, because the common names can get confusing.

Here's some of the names for this thing: smoke on a rope, devil's darning needles, devil's hair, love vine, traveller's joy, wild hops, and woodbine.

It gets a, a nice white, sort of like a smoke cloud little flower on it.

It's similar to, I mean, it's a Clematis.

There's so many great things to do here.

And you can reduce your water bill.

Save the planet.

Not have to water, save time.

- That's pretty good.

- So, yeah.

- Let me ask you this quickly though, so how do you prepare the soil, you know, for some of these plants that we're talking about?

- Well, because these are all natives, I personally wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything to my soil.

- Okay, so no amendments, or anything like that?

- I wouldn't, now I also know that my soil is, it's probably fine, but you know, you may wanna add a little fertilizer once in a while.

You can actually mix in some gravel or sand for some of these plants.

But the great thing about these plants is they really don't care what kind of soil they're in.

- So what kind of soil?

Yeah.

- They, they don't seem to care.

They're very low maintenance.

- I think we like low maintenance.

I think that's good.

- Yeah.

- So again, zero-scaping is what I'm gonna call it, right?

- That's fine.

- So using minimal water.

- Minimal water.

- How about that?

- Or just what nature provides.

- Oh, what nature provides.

- Yeah.

- Well, thank you for providing these plants, Jessie, that was good.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Thank you much, all right, appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] Ah, so there's a fungus here.

As you can see, these mushrooms are exploding up through the mulch.

No worry, mushrooms love to feed on decaying organic material, as you can see here from the mulch.

It has been raining intensely here for about two weeks.

Mushrooms, fungal spores, love moisture.

So again, they're growing, exploding up through this mulch.

Here's one that's trying to come up here.

Now, it's a little baby one.

So the mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of the fungus itself.

The fungal spores actually love wet conditions.

They will grow because of those wet conditions.

So these mushrooms are not harmful to your plants.

They're just fine.

These are not gonna be a huge problem.

So what you can do is you can actually pick 'em off by hand, or you can just grab a rake and just kinda rake 'em out.

Once it dries out, they'll pretty much start to shrivel up and go away.

So again, mushroom fungus exploding up through the mulch.

Pretty neat, huh?

[upbeat country music] I love strawberries.

Strawberries are my favorite.

I can't wait to taste them.

- Okay.

- Ms. Cathy, you know that.

- Well, we'll go ahead and get started, Chris.

As you know, we get a lot of calls around this time of year.

"I wanna make strawberry jam, "but I don't wanna use the water bath.

I just wanna can them, put them in the freezer."

So we did a little bit of research.

All of these recipes call for a tremendous amount of sugar.

And we're trying to cut down on our sugar.

So I purchased this low sugar pectin, and we're gonna make about less than two pints this morning.

But you wanna use your freshest strawberries possible.

And the farmer's market is open.

So you can get your fresh, beautiful strawberries at the farmer's market-- - Or you can grow your own strawberries, which we've done here.

- Yes, you can.

Yes, that you sure have.

And go ahead and stem them.

And then craft, mash them in a single layer using a potato masher.

Now, some people say, "Well, why can't you just put it in a blender?"

I'm afraid that if you puree the strawberries, it's like baby food.

So we say that you just mash them with the potato masher, and we're gonna put them in this small pot.

Now, I know you're thinking she's not making very much jam.

This is going to be less than two pints, but that's okay, because I just wanted to demonstrate to this, demonstrate quickly how this works.

So we're gonna turn up our heat, and two, one and a third cups of berries.

That's what we have.

One and a third cups of berries.

And according to the pectin instructions about one and a half tablespoons of low sugar pectin.

- And what does the pectin do, Ms. Cathy?

- Oh, this is what causes the strawberry jam to gel.

- To Gel, okay.

- And sugar is also important in causing the strawberry jam to gel.

So we're gonna stir this.

We're gonna stir it constantly for about one minute.

And it's gonna take a little while for this to stir up.

But we're gonna stir this until it comes to a rolling boil for one minute.

Now, let me tell you a little bit, I did some experimenting.

The other day, I tried a recipe that said, "No boil strawberry jam".

And I said, "Okay, that sounds easy".

I ladled it into the jars, put it into the refrigerator, and the next day it looked like sugar.

It just, it was, and the recipe did call for a lot of sugar.

And I thought, I'm going to save this jam.

So I poured everything back into the pot, and I let the strawberries cook down for about one minute, put it back in the jars, and it's beautiful.

It's really, really pretty.

- What difference that made then.

- It made a huge difference.

And this was using about five cups of sugar to three cups of strawberries.

- Wow.

- Wow.

- Five cups of sugar?

- So you see... We have so many people with diabetes.

And I don't wanna tell them to go for this.

Then this, which is what we'll be sampling in a little bit.

This is our low sugar pectin.

And you see the difference between the two.

You can tell this is a much deeper red.

And then this looks a little bit lighter.

And we used, I think it was about five cups of sugar to three cups of berries for this.

So we've got our sugar.

We need to add our sugar after this comes to a rolling boil.

But let's talk about some of the advantages in doing strawberry freezer jam.

One advantage is it can be ready right away.

And you know, whenever- - That's good.

- We're using the hot water, the water bath method, you have to seal the jars.

If we're gonna put these in the refrigerator or the freezer, you don't have to worry so much about the lids sealing.

Although we are heating the jars to 180 degrees so that they will seal.

It's also, like we said, the berries seem to be fresher.

They're a brighter color, easy to do.

However, if we don't process this in a hot water bath, we're gonna have to put them in the refrigerator for no longer than three weeks.

So you've got to hurry up and eat it.

Or you can put it in the freezer for up to three months.

Some people say...

Okay, now this is, well, let's time it for one minute.

Gotta time it for one minute.

Can you help me with that, Chris?

I can barely see it.

- I think so.

- So, we're gonna let this boil for one minute.

The disadvantage here is who has that much freezer space?

[Chris chuckles] You know, you hate to, to open your freezer and say, see 24 cans of strawberry jam.

What I have done with my previous batches, I gave it away immediately.

I just gave it away to friends and family.

- Yeah, I like strawberries, but yeah, that's a lot, yeah, 24 jars.

- You need a whole lot of room.

So let's just go ahead and get this to cook down for one minute.

- Got about 30 seconds.

- It says stir constantly, you don't want it to stick.

- All right.

- Okay, now if I were at home, I could adjust the heat a little bit better, and it would be a hard rolling boil.

But we're, in the interest of time, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna go to the next step where we add one half cup of sugar.

So I've got one and a third cups of berries, one half cup of sugar.

That still sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

- It does.

- But that's okay, because otherwise we would have a whole lot more than that.

- And it's smelling good, already.

- Oh, I love the way it smells.

- Smell that.

- Goodness.

- Makes the kitchen smell really good.

But you know what else we're gonna add to it?

Jelly and jam has a tendency to foam up- - Butter.

- So I'm gonna add like maybe a half of a teaspoon.

- Wow, that's a little bit of butter.

- Just a tiny bit.

And this should cut down on the foaming.

Because you don't wanna have a jar of foam in your jam.

Okay, would you say it's come to another hard boil, and I think it's boiling?

Let's go ahead and start timing it at one minute.

- We have five.

- Okay, it's looking good.

- All right.

- Good, thank you.

- Oh, yeah, that's coming to a good boil.

- Yeah, that's coming to a good boil.

Excuse me, Tanya.

Now, we're gonna take out our jars.

Now remember, we said we had to heat our jars, because if we don't, and you put that hot product in a cold jar, it will crack the jar.

We're just gonna spoon this in.

- Oh, Tanya, doesn't that smell good?

- It does smell really good.

- It's boiling away.

And we wanna leave about one half inch of head space.

If you go on YouTube, people use no head space, or they might use an inch and a half.

And we wanna go ahead and use our bubbler, get those air bubbles out.

Now we have our lids that have been heated to 180 degrees.

We're gonna lift this off.

Oh wait, I've gotta wipe this first.

Yeah, you have to wipe your lid.

See, you don't want any residue on the lid.

Okay, and you put your lid on.

- This is a real good lesson here.

[Tanya and Cathy chuckling] - And then you just screw this on fingertip tight - Fingertip?

- Yeah, fingertip tight.

And we've got jam.

- Oh, wow, that didn't seem hard at all.

- Okay, and you see, it looks like the fruit has come to the top of the jar.

So we're gonna let this stand at room temperature until it's cool enough for us to put it in the refrigerator.

And like we said, you can keep it in the refrigerator for three weeks, or your freezer up to three months.

Now, many of the publications I've read have said you can keep it in the freezer up to one year.

I don't think you can do that for the low-sugar jam.

Maybe you, you know, if we had a lot of sugar in this, but I would not use it for this jam.

But since we have got some angel food cake.

- Oh... - And I know someone had a birthday recently.

[everyone laugh] - Ah, well, that's right on time.

- We're gonna have some birthday cake.

- Tanya didn't know that was gonna happen today, did she?

- Did you know it was her birthday?

- I did, I sure did.

- Okay, you get the first piece, 'cause you're the birthday girl.

- Okay, thank you, and strawberry is my favorite.

- See, there you go, I love strawberries.

- Oh, I'm so glad, okay.

- Absolutely love strawberries.

- We have this.

- I can eat strawberries anytime of the year.

- Let that cool, because it's very, very hot.

- Thank you so much.

- You are quite welcome.

- Happy birthday, Tanya, what a surprise for you today.

- I mean, Facebook is wonderful.

[Tanya and Chris laugh] - Yeah.

Keep up with everything.

- It's really good.

We keep up with our friends.

Okay, Chris, I'll cut a slice for you.

- Oh, Mr. D's gonna be so jealous.

- Oh... - Yeah.

Thank you for that demonstration.

- Oh, you're quite welcome, it was so easy.

- Easy, it was quick, Tanya, thank you.

- I may even have to try to make some in my kitchen.

- Okay.

- There you have it.

Thank you again, Ms. Cathy.

- You're quite welcome, Chris.

- We appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - It is been three weeks since Joellen planted the zucchini here, and it's time to pull the straw up around them.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is, I look at it, is I'm gonna thin them a little bit because there's a few too many here.

So we want to take it down to about one every foot or so.

And then, I'm going to go ahead and just pull the straw up.

Now it looks like I'm burying them, but that's fine.

They'll continue to grow up and out of the straw.

Now we have, as Joellen said we would, we have a few little sprouts here of wheat, so we can just go ahead and pull that out.

It comes out really easily, 'cause it's not well attached to the ground.

But we'll just continue to have to do that.

I have more right here, so I'm just gonna continue to work down the row.

There, now the zucchini is mulched with straw.

As it gets a little bit taller, I might come back and put a little bit more on.

But that shades the ground.

There were a lot of little sprouts of weeds down there, that hopefully that'll shade out, and they'll all die.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q and A segment, y'all ready?

- Ready.

- Ready.

- Oh, these are some great questions.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"Is there a natural way to control aphids on Tuscan kale?"

And this is Mary from Bronx, New York.

So what do you think about that, Mary?

- Well, I think with any, so aphids are getting on, there's a variety of plants aphids can get on.

Some of them are very specific to the plants.

But with aphids, you can squish them.

- You squish 'em.

- You can get stream, powerful water stream.

- Yeah, I'm with that.

- Spray 'em off.

Those are two really easy ways, but it takes a little bit of effort to stay on top of 'em that way.

- It's gonna take a little effort, it definitely is.

But she's heard about using lime or sprinkling a flour and baking soda mixture.

Yeah, sometimes they work, but they will change the pH of the soil.

So that could be an issue, you know what I mean?

- They're gonna take it either way, right, so... - Especially the baking soda.

- The thing that I like to use when it comes to natural pest control, especially for aphids, is I mix up neem oil.

And so it's a one and a half teaspoons neem oil, half a teaspoon, some kind of soap like Castile or Dawn.

And a quart of water.

- So a little surfactant.

- Yes.

- Okay, gotcha.

- And that does, you know, it's not gonna gonna get every single one, but it's a natural way, and you don't have to feel bad about ingesting, you know, you're gonna wanna eat your kale.

- Sure.

- So.. You won't hurt yourself or your friends.

- Right, no, I'm with that, yeah, so yeah, neem oil we know works, you know?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Insecticidal soap, you know, something else that you can use as well.

- I was just gonna say, I would be really cautious about using lime and baking soda.

- Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, I definitely wouldn't do that, yeah.

And anytime you're gonna be using any type of pesticides, read and follow the label, you know, on that, but natural, yeah, get the water hose out, You know, knock 'em off.

Or, I don't know if I can squish 'em.

[guests laughing] We'll let Mary squish 'em, I don't know about that one.

All right, so thank you for that question, Mary, we appreciate that.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Do I need to prune this azalea bush?

"And will trimming an azalea affect its blooms the next season?"

And this is Darlene.

Beautiful, beautiful azalea shrub, don't you think so?

- Oh, beautiful.

I mean, that is a, a great, looks like a really old shrub too.

It's in great condition.

- Yeah, definitely old.

Yeah, it's 30-years-old bush.

- Wow.

So I think if you are seeing issues with your azaleas, like sections of dead wood, stuff like that, or if you're getting poor air circulation, then you definitely wanna think about trimming it.

Or if you want it to have a certain shape.

What do you think?

- Yeah, I agree.

Those are really the only reasons to prune or trim back your azalea.

But if it's in good condition and you like the shape, leave it.

- Yeah, leave it, yeah.

- I don't think there's any reason for her to trim that one.

- You don't think there's any reason?

Yeah, it is most beautiful.

- Beautiful.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

But going back to the pruning techniques and practices, of course after they finished blooming, you can of course, you know, prune it back then.

But that's the heading, if you wanna reduce the size, and then of course you can get in there and kind of thin out, you know, those leggy branches and things like that for air circulation and such.

But for this azalea, Ms. Darlene, I think it's beautiful.

- Yeah.

- I agree.

- I would just leave it and enjoy it.

I would do that, so good job.

That's pretty good for a 30-year-old azaleas bush.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

- That is nice, so thank you for the picture and question, Ms. Darlene.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Should lilacs be deadheaded?"

And this is Patrice from Cumberland, Maryland.

So we'll start with you, Mary.

What do you think about that?

Should lilacs be deadheaded?

- Well, I don't think there's necessarily a reason to deadhead them.

But if you are going to deadhead them, there are certain times that you wanna deadhead them as well.

- For sure.

- That's right.

Yep, two to three weeks after your flowers have faded.

Because lilacs bloom on old wood.

But I was just reading that there are species of birds that will actually eat lilac seeds throughout the winter.

So it can be a source of food for different animals in the winter, if you don't mind the way they look, so... - So if you don't mind, just leave it?

- I would leave it.

- You would leave it?

Okay, but they can be deadheaded if you wanna do that?

- They can be.

- They can be.

- And there's, there's a lot of people that think that if you deadhead your blooms, the next season will be bigger and better.

But there's no research that promotes that.

And actually, lilacs have sort of a biennial blooming pattern.

So every other year they bloom bigger.

So there might be like, you might prune one year and think that's why, but they actually are on a cycle, whether you deadhead or not.

- Right, and of course, when you're deadhead, you're just moving that energy to producing new buds, you know, for the next year, so... - And there is a species of lilac that will rebloom the same year.

I think it's called Bloomerang, which is very, I love it.

- Oh, Bloomerang.

- So those you would wanna deadhead that, but most don't.

- All right, so most don't.

So there you have it, Ms. Patrice, hope that helps you out.

And if you can, yeah, leave them there for the seeds for the birds.

Think that'll be good.

All right, so Jessie, Mary, thank you much.

It's been fun.

- [Both] 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 more information about xeriscaping or anything else we talked about today, 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]