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

I'm Chris Cooper.

It's great to bite   into a homegrown apple.

Today, we're going to   talk about the varieties   that work best in different   areas of the country.

Also, planting   bulbs in the fall   will give you beautiful   flowers 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 Mr. D. - Howdy.

- And Lee Sammons will be joining me later.

All right, Mr. D., you know all about those apple tree varieties, don't you?

[laughs] - I do not know.

Nobody knows all about- - Nobody knows all of 'em?

- The apple tree varieties.

There's a lot of 'em out there, I know that.

Simple fact, there's 7,000 apple varieties out there, over 7,000.

There's lots of apple varieties.

There are new ones being created every day.

They're crossing them and there are a lotta choices, a lotta choices.

And when you make a decision about what varieties you want, I would encourage you to contact your local Extension office.

- Right.

- Or talk with, if you have any successful apple growers around you, talk with them, because I would encourage you to try to find one that's got some disease resistance.

You'll be happier   if you can find one-   - Right, right.

- That's resistant to   cedar apple rust.

You'll be happier if   you find a variety   that has some resistance   to fire blight-   - Yes.

- And some of the other   diseases out there,   and that'll make your   life a lot easier.

No matter what varieties you get, you're gonna need to follow a spray schedule, home orchard spray schedule.

- I'm sure you can get with the Extension- - The local Extension office?

- Right.

- And get whatever's recommended- - Spray guide.

- For your area.

I'm gonna tell you what it's probably gonna be.

I'll tell you what it is for here in Tennessee.

You know, it's basically, just at bud swell,   an oil with Captan,   the fungicide.

Captan is the fungicide   that's gonna be mentioned.

It's what we recommend in Tennessee.

Now, maybe some of the newer varieties, or newer fungicides out there have labeled for apple, but in our home orchard spray guide, it's still Captan.

- Still Captan.

- And if you have a history   of fire blight during bloom,   early, mid, late bloom,   probably three applications   of streptomycin   or Agri-Strep 17 or something,   that's to combat   the fire blight.

After bloom, start   with a cover spray   seven to ten days after   that last bloom spray,   spray with Captan   plus malathion.

And so do not use an   insecticide during bloom.

You don't want to take   out your honeybees.

But then every two weeks,   if your spray doesn't   get washed off,   [Chris laughs]   go with that   Captan plus malathion,   and that's pretty simple.

You can mix it yourself,   or you can find it   in home orchard spray,   a commercial spray.

Be careful, do not use the home orchard spray that has carbaryl in it.

- Right, right.

- Because carbaryl can cause apples to thin, and sometimes they'll thin 'em all.

Apples are a little different from peaches.

You know, they need a certain amount of cool weather.

They need a certain number of chill hours.

- Right.

- And let's talk a little bit about that.

Down in the Gulf Coast area where I spent my time, four hundred and fifty chill hours was about the number of hours.

And chill hours, a   simple way of putting it   is pretty much the number   of hours below 45 degrees,   minus the number of   hours above 60 degrees   that you have   in the wintertime.

And so you have a lot of above 60-degree weather down in the southern, down south.

- Yeah, without a doubt.

- And so that's why you get down to like 450 chill hours.

I've got a chill hours map that I pulled up   from Penn State.

- That's a nice map there.

- Which is a pretty well,   say in the Orlando area,   it's got zero chill hours.

And you get up to, you know,   up, northern pier, northern   part of the panhandle,   South Georgia, South Mississipp   has only 2 to 400 hours.

And then when it goes on   up and you get up into   the Great Lakes area,   fourteen hundred chill hours.

- Fourteen hundred.

- And with peaches, they will,   for each variety, it will tell   you the chill hours required   for that variety of peaches.

With apples, you don't   see that so much.

Some of them do have the chill hours.

Most of them will simply say they will grow in the USDA zone 6, 5, 8, or whatever.

And so you need to be familiar with the USDA zones, growing zones, and then just select your apples based upon that.

- So what happens if you try to grow an apple in the wrong chilling zone?

- There are several things that could happen.

The worst thing that could happen is it could die.

If it doesn't get enough chill hours, the apple tree just won't survive.

If it's too low of chill hours, it will bud out early and it'll freeze.

The freeze will kill it.

If it's got, requires too many chilling hours, it will never fruit.

It will never, you know, you got to have, those hours have to be met before it will fruit.

And so it just won't do well.

At the best, it won't do well.

At the worst scenario, it will die.

- It will die.

- Yeah, yep, yep.

- Hm, so it's important to make sure that you're- - It's important to make sure- - Growing in the right chilling requirement zone.

- And that's pretty much true of anything you plant in your landscape.

You want something that is adapted to that climate.

- Would agree.

- And you may have a plant that will grow for a few years, and we talk about them every once in a while.

One thing in this area that I see a lot is some of the white pines are beautiful trees that are planted, but they're offsite.

And they may grow several years.

They may grow 15 years and then they die.

And, you know, and same thing could happen with an apple tree that's offsite.

It could, if it's close, especially if some years it gets what it needs and some years it doesn't, you know, it may hang on for a while.

You may actually get a crop every once in a while.

But then, it's just not gonna do well.

It's not gonna be dependable.

- Let's talk a little bit about the state Extension zones.

- Yeah, the states, when they recommend varieties of apples, well, actually vegetables, anything else that they will many times break down.

The state of Tennessee is usually West, Middle and East Tennessee varieties, they think that'll do well.

And sometimes that's based more on temperature, I mean, more on the elevation than it is temperature.

But I know down in Alabama, when I was down there, it was North, Middle, Central and Southern Alabama had basically three zones.

Georgia, they break   their state up   into like five zones, you know.

And it's important   that you talk   with your Extension services-   - Yes, very.

- Your local Extension service to determine how you're set up, if you're gonna use the state zone designations on the varieties that you plant, but, if you, I looked at Georgia, I looked at Oregon and Iowa, and there were a few varieties that just kinda showed up everywhere.

- Okay.

- And I'm gonna mention those.

And, but some of these do not have some of the resistance that I mentioned before.

For example, Golden Delicious will grow pretty much from Oregon to Central Alabama, Central Georgia, and the Delicious apples, Golden and Red Delicious, in high altitude areas, they'll have those prominent lobes on the end of the apple.

But when you get into lower elevation areas, they're just as round as a pumpkin, you know.

They're very round.

They lose those lobes.

- Right.

- That's basically dependent upon the elevations that they're grown in.

But Golden Delicious is a really good pollinator.

It grows in a lot of places, but it is highly susceptible to cedar apple rust.

And it has some susceptibility to fire blight also.

You're gonna want to spray,   but these varieties,   I mentioned Golden Delicious.

Red Delicious is   also on that list.

Jonagold, Gala, Fuji   and Granny Smith,   those varieties grow pretty   much all over the country.

- And those are   familiar varieties.

- Yeah, and you'll see these in the grocery store, when you go in the grocery store, just about anywhere, you'll see those varieties.

And I spent 12 years down on the Gulf Coast, and there, a lot of the apple varieties that do well in most of the country, don't do well in extreme southern areas, some of the, you know, tropical or subtropical areas.

And when I started, I pulled up a Florida publication, and brought back some old memories, some of the varieties, because of varieties of apples that do well in South Florida and, you know, South Alabama down on the Gulf Coast, and I say South Florida, even the panhandle of Florida, and southern part of Texas, and places like Southern California even,   would be Ein Shemer,   Elah, Maayan,   Michal, and I   don't know whether [Chris laughs]   I'm pronouncing these   right or not, Shlomit,   they're all Israeli.

They're from Israel, public varieties, And they do well in the extreme south.

In the northern part of Florida, the panhandle of Florida and Southern Georgia, and Southern Alabama, and some specific places like that,   Anna, Dorsett Golden   and TropicSweet   would probably work for you.

Now, all of these varieties   that I just mentioned,   don't try to grow   'em up north, okay?

- Yeah [laughs], don't do that.

Don't try to grow 'em much further north than the areas that I mentioned.

Let me talk about some of the, I talked about pretty in-depth about some of the varieties that grow in the extreme south.

Let me go back a little bit further north.

I wanna talk about the northwest a little bit, some of the varieties that are in addition to the varieties that I said would grow pretty much everywhere, and then we'll come down into like the central, the heartland, in Iowa.

We'll look at some of the varieties there, okay?

But in looking at Oregon, let's go up in the northwest.

In addition to the apples that I mentioned, Granny Smith, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Jonagold and Gala,   Lodi, Earligold, Akane,   Gravenstein, Elstar,   Empire and Newtown,   and Braeburn are varieties   that will work up there,   in those higher elevation, you know, colder climates.

- Right.

- Let's, looking at Iowa, a lotta varieties will work in Iowa.

And I noticed some of these look very familiar to me.

[Chris laughs] And I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna read all of these.

- You have a lot there.

- Yeah, I've got a lot of 'em,   but State Fair, I've   heard of that variety.

McIntosh is an old variety,   and my uncle used to   grow those in an orchard,   up in Newbern, Tennessee.

Cortland, Freedom, Honeygold,   Jonafree and Jonathan,   I'm sure Jonafree is an   offspring of Jonathan.

- Right.

- Jonalicious, also   Spartan, Empire, Honeycrisp.

- Honeycrisp, yeah.

- That's a very good apple,   a very tasty apple.

Jonagold, Mutsu, those are varieties that will work in Iowa.

So you can grow apples in most of the country.

And they are a lot less trouble to grow than peaches.

- Yeah, definitely that.

- They're more trouble to grow than blueberries.

[Chris laughs] So, so- - Well, less than the peaches.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And we'll have that information, of course, on our website.

We definitely want people to go there and, you know, see where they are and see what they can grow, for sure.

So we thank you for that good information Mr. D. That's pretty in depth in growing apples, right?

- Lots and lots of choices.

- Lots of choices, thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - From time to time, I'm asked to go out and look at possible injury from herbicides.

And when you have sycamore trees, and the potential damage is from dicamba, then it's pretty easy to tell whether or not the sycamores got a whiff of dicamba.

This one got a light whiff.

When you see the cupping of the leaves like this, that is a good sign that this tree got a little whiff of dicamba.

Another indicator is when you look at the turf grass, and you see there are absolutely no broad leaf weeds out there.

Now the good news is, it's not gonna hurt this tree.

I mean, if the damage shows, that's an indicator that the product was used and it got a whiff of it, but this tree will be fine.

It'll come back.

It'll leaf our next year, and it'll be fine.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Mr. Lee.

- Hi Chris, this is fall season, the time we wanna be thinking about planting our spring bulbs.

- Okay, so what do we need to do to prepare our beds for those bulbs?

- Okay, if you've got a bed, you want to loosen up, till it some, so that the bees, or plant the bulbs.

There are several different ways that you can plant the bulbs.

There's several different tools.

All of them work better if the ground has been tilled or loosened.

- Okay, now what are some of the tools that we need to use?

- Today, we have several different tools that you can use.

We have a hand trowel, if the soil is loose, that you can pry out the soil and thin it.

A lotta stores sell this type of bulb planter, that was old fashioned from state park.

[Chris laughs] It's very hard to dig a hole if you don't have really loose soil.

So if you have three or four bulbs, that might be fine.

If you're planting 100, 200 bulbs, that's pretty hard work.

- It's gonna be hard.

- Hard work.

- Okay.

- Other tool we have today is one that has a drill that goes onto your regular portable drill, that you can use in the yard.

And that's very easy to drill a hole in loose soil.

- Okay, I've actually used that before.

- Yeah, everybody needs this.

- Okay, all right, now what kind of bulbs will you be planting for us today?

- We're gonna be planting some tulip bulbs today, and I also have some narcissus that we can, daffodils that we can plant today.

- Okay, now, when is the best time to plant?

- The best time to plant   is in late November   and first of December.

You want the soil   temperature to drop down   to about 55, 50 degrees.

- Okay.

- And usually that's when   the leaves have already turned,   and they're starting to fall   and past peak color   of the season.

- All right, so you want to demonstrate for us- - All right, I'll show you.

- How you put the bulbs in the ground?

- A tulip bulb has a top that we wanna make sure that that's up, and the roots on the bottom.

The reason we plant in the fall is because the roots'll be growing in the wintertime.

Okay, you want to plant 'em.

Here, I dug a hole.

We're planting a multiple group of tulips, so that we'll have a nice cluster in our landscape.

It just won't be one individual planting in a row.

- Now, how deep do we need to plant those?

- You want 'em about five inches deep- - Five inches deep, okay.

- When you plant, okay?

And once you have planted the tulips, you wanna make sure that you pull the soil back over, and make sure that you water it well.

- Okay, so we don't have to add a, you know, any- - You don't have to add any nutrients.

Most of our tulips, our bulbs, are not heavy feeders.

So if you haven't done a soil test, then you can do that, make sure where your nutrient level is.

- Okay, all right, so next you're demonstrating using a drill?

- Yes, we can use a drill.

[drill buzzes] And what that does, it just augers down into the soil.

Makes a nice hole for you.

And it comes out, and then you have a nice hole to plant your daffodil bulb in.

And it's the right depth, and just cover it over.

So, makes it really easy to plant.

- Now, how deep was that?

- That was about five inches deep.

- That's five inches deep.

- Five inches deep.

- Gotcha.

- So, that's the way you would plant 'em in the fall, but it makes it a lot easier if the soil is tilled up.

- Sure.

- With this type of planter, you can plant in soil that has not been tilled.

[drill buzzes] You can go down into your yard, in a hard bed.

So if you're wanting to naturalize a lot of bulbs, then this would be the tool that you'd want to use.

- Okay, okay, all right, so you just wanna use a plain old trowel, though.

- You want that tiller or shovel, and loosen it up.

[both laughing] - You wanna loosen up, right- - Right.

so you can get the bulbs in it.

- You want the soil loose.

'Cause this will not cut through hard soil, unless the bed's been loosened up.

- Okay, and just demonstrate that for us, though.

Just use that, since we have it tilled up.

- If the soil is loose, then what you wanna do is twist and turn.

It has, and it'll pull all the soil out.

- I got you, right.

- And then you have a nice hole to put it in.

And this is about five inches deep, so that's what you want to plant it.

Then you just knock your soil back out.

- Okay, yeah, I can see that being pretty tough if the ground is not tilled.

- Yeah, if the ground's not loose, then this is really a hard tool to use.

- Okay, now can you explain to us about actually storing those bulbs, though?

What's the best way to do that?

- Right, you may be purchasing the bulbs earlier than first of November.

So you want to put the bulbs in some type of refrigeration, about like your refrigerator, thirty-eight to fifty degrees, keep 'em cool for about eight weeks, before you plant the tulips.

Make sure you don't have any type of fruit in there, because the ethylene gas will kill the flower bud in the tulip bulbs.

- Okay, all right, so once you do that, then.

- You're good to go.

- Pull 'em out, and you're good to go.

- Pull 'em out and good to go, and soil is cold.

Plant 'em and forget about 'em.

- Okay, so the bulbs have to have some type of chilling required.

- They have to have chilling requirement, so that, to be able to bloom properly.

- All right.

- If you don't do that, and then we have a warm winter, then they don't bloom well.

- Okay, well Lee, we appreciate that demonstration with the bulbs.

- Glad to help.

- Thank you much.

[gentle country music] - While inspecting the blackberries one last time, I found something that kinda caught me a little bit by surprise, but it shouldn't have, a very opportunistic pest, a bagworm.

This is how bagworms overwinter.

The female will attach this bag to, normally it's a branch of a tree that they're gonna feed on.

But if you happen to run across a bagworm like this, especially if it's on a plant that you've had problems with bagworms before, remove it, take it off, because that female has filled this bag with eggs.

That is how they overwinter.

They overwinter as eggs in a bag.

So this needs to be destroyed.

I don't mean, you don't need to throw it down, because it can overwinter.

This is a very tough cocoon, and it can overwinter on the ground.

You need to burn it, or you need to put it in a grocery bag, a Walmart bag, triple tie it and put it in the garbage and get rid of it.

[gentle country music] - Alright Mr. D., it's our Q&A segment.

We have some great questions here.

- Yes we do.

- You ready, man?

- I'm ready.

- All right, here's our first viewer email.

"My peaches get about the size of a golf ball, "and never get any bigger or ripen.

"They only stay hard.

Why do my peaches stay small   and hard, and never ripen?"

This is Bill on YouTube.

And we know you like   to talk about peaches.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

- But they stay small.

- One of my favorite subjects.

- They never ripen.

- I wish Bill had sent us some pictures.

- That would have been nice, yeah.

- Because there's several things that can cause that.

Well, the first thing comes to my mind is a peach tree will put on eighty to ninety percent more fruit than it needs to.

- Okay.

- And if you don't thin those peaches- - I knew you were gonna say it.

- If you don't thin those peaches and you leave all of the fruit on there, that's what's gonna happen.

Because they will get, they'll stay small.

They won't ripen, and that's what's gonna happen.

So if you've done everything right, [Chris laughs] and you've taken care of the tree, and you've done everything right except thin it, that's the problem that you'll have.

- Mm-hm, I would agree with that.

- Yeah, another thing that can cause that is if you haven't done everything right, and you've had problems and you've had, you know, maybe borers that get into a tree and it's died back and it's come back from the rootstock, and you have rootstock that's grown up and become a tree, that can be what that fruit's supposed to look like on that rootstock.

- So I knew you were gonna mention those.

I know you well.

- And one of the best ways to thin a crop, without pulling a peach off, is pruning.

When you prune and you take a lot of that out, you are actually doing some thinning, but then after you do that, before that fruit gets, before the pit hardens, so before the fruit gets much bigger than a quarter size, you need to have thinned them out.

If you wait and thin 'em after the pit hardens, it's too late.

- Yeah.

- The fruit's still gonna be small and hard, so.

- All right, I knew it.

- I wish we had pictures.

I wish we had pictures, Bill.

Send us some and let us know.

Give us some feedback on that.

Let us know which one of those you think it might be now?

- Right, that's good Mr. D., yeah.

I knew you were goin' mention those things.

How about that?

So there you have it, Mr. Bill.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have a Honeycrisp apple   tree that has fire blight.

"Should I cut the tree   down to the main stem?

"Most of the tree is diseased.

Thank you,"   Natalie from YouTube.

So yeah, we're talking   about an apple tree   that has fire blight, but does it need to be cut down to the main stem?

And again, it would have been nice to had a picture.

- Right, right, I would probably not, not this year, not this year.

I would probably make sure, I would go in there in the late winter, and I'd try to prune out all the, as much of the diseased wood as you can.

And just to prune it pretty hard.

And then I would, after I get through doing that, I'd dip my pruning shears- - Yes.

- In a mixture of Clorox and water, before I go to another tree- - Sterilize 'em.

- That's not infected.

And then I would use   the streptomycin,   Agristrep during bloom.

I would do that.

I've had really, really   good luck with that.

And I know some folks haven't, but I personally have had really, really good luck using the streptomycin for fire blight control.

And I have some apples, and one pair that is very, very susceptible to that disease.

And, but I'd give that a try.

- I would too.

- One more year, because I mean, Honeycrisp, that's a good apple.

- It's a great apple.

- It's a good eating apple.

- It's a great apple.

- And I would also, if you're not doing it already, I would make sure I follow a regular spray schedule on that, because insects like 'em too.

- Yeah, right.

- Got a lotta sugar in 'em, so.

- Pretty much my suggestions as well.

I would prune it out, you know, the diseased limbs first.

- Give that a try, and- - And see what happens.

- And then if that fails, if it doesn't work and it's completely, you know, overrun with fire blight next year, then you might want to consider replacing it with a variety that has some resistance.

- Right, resistant variety.

- Yeah.

- Great, there you have it, Natalie.

Thank you for the question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"How do I know   when quince-apples   are ready to be picked?"

It's Jenny on YouTube.

Have you had a   quince-apple before?

- I have not.

- You have not.

- I have seen quince.

I've seen the trees,   and kinda familiar   with them a little bit,   but I have not eaten   one of the apples.

And after doing a   little bit of research, I guess I understood why.

You know, most, oh, by the way,   you can tell when they're   ready to be picked   when they're bright,   golden yellow.

- Yes.

- They'll be really   bright, golden yellow.

- Yes, yes.

- That's when they're ready.

- Seen that, they're ready.

- That's when they're mature.

It's when they're ready to be picked.

But I think you might want to look at some of the recipes and put 'em in, [Chris laughs] cook and jellies and jams and stuff like that might be a little bit better than trying to eat one fresh off the tree, because I don't think they taste quite as good as a regular apple, but- - But when they do turn that bright yellow color, you could smell it too.

They have a nice sweet fragrance.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's when you know they're ready to go.

- But have you eaten 'em?

- Oh yeah.

- Do you like 'em?

- Ah, not so much.

[Mr. D. Laughs] - Yeah, I guess it depends- - We try it, you know, just to see.

But yeah, you're exactly right.

Bright yellow, and easy to, of course, they just pop right off the limb itself.

- Mm-hm, yeah.

- Yeah, but, eh.

- Yep.

- It's not an apple or a peach, but you know [laughs].

- Yeah, it's a fruit.

- It's a fruit.

- It is good for you.

It's high in vitamin C and you know, it's a, you know, what's it say?

"Vitamin C, fiber, antioxidants, "calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium and copper."

- It's gotta be good then.

- It's good for you.

- It's definitely good.

- Yeah.

- All right, Jenny, there you have it.

We thank you for that question.

Mr. D., that was fun.

Thank you much.

- Yep.

- Thank you much.

Remember, we love   to hear from you.

Send us a email or letter.

The email address is   familyplot@wkno.org,   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 learn more about growing, pruning, or caring for apples, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

While you're there, ask us your gardening question.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]