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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Bats scare some, but they eat lots of harmful insects.

Also, it's important to get your lawn mower ready for winter.

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 Mary Schmidt.

Mary's the Backyard Wildlife Center Curator at Lichterman Nature Center.

And Mr. Booker T. Lee will be joining me later.

Hi Mary, it's always good to have you here.

- Great to be back.

- All right, so you gonna talk about bats today.

- I'm gonna talk about bats.

So bats are really misunderstood mammals.

They get a bad rap.

So we're gonna try to dispel some myths and learn a little bit more about bats and maybe appreciate them a little bit more.

- Yeah, let's see if we can appreciate 'em a little bit more.

- Okay.

- All right.

- So they belong to the order of Chiroptera which is kind of cool.

It means hand wing.

So if you look at a bat wing, it's not like a bird wing, it's more like a hand with thin skin stretched around it.

So that's how they get their name.

There's over 1400 different species around the world.

Only three of them are what we call vampire bats.

None of those are found in the United States.

So we don't- - But they actually do exist?

- They do, there's three.

One mainly feeds on like cattle, and the other two specialize in birds.

But we don't have to worry about those in the United States.

We don't have those around here.

Almost all the bats we have here are insect eaters.

They're our only flying mammal too, so that makes them really unique.

Flying squirrels have the name flying, but they're actually gliders.

So bat's unique that they're our only flying mammal.

- Okay, how about that.

- Yeah.

- Pretty neat.

So far so good, I'm intrigued.

- But I wanna talk about a couple myths because there's a lot of myths out about bats.

One of the first ones is that bats are blind, right?

- Yes, I've heard that.

- Yeah.

They're not blind.

They actually have pretty good vision, but sometimes because of the way they hunt with echolocation, it can seem that they're flying after nothing.

Or sometimes you can trick them to fly after a rock because they see it as a big insect.

So they're not blind.

Another myth out there is that they like to fly in your hair.

I don't know why that- - I've never heard that one.

- I don't know if they like to get tangled in hair, but I think that probably started from somebody leaving a cave at the same time bats were trying to leave, but they don't like to be in people's hair.

Unless it's full of bugs?

[laughing] - Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- And then the last one is about rabies.

Now it's important to remember that just about any mammal can carry rabies.

Bats can be a source of rabies, but it's really less than 1% that can carry rabies.

Best thing you can do, if you see a bat on the ground, to leave it alone.

- Okay, wow, how about that?

So yeah, we dispelling those myths.

All right.

Good job.

All right, so now we're gonna talk about the benefits?

- Yeah.

So there's even more benefits than just eating insects, right?

So a bat can eat about half of its body weight in insects a night.

So that's a huge amount of in sects that they're taking out.

And that can reduce our use of pesticides and help keep the cost of certain crops low when they're destroying some of these harmful pests that are getting on them.

The other one is pollination.

Especially the further south you go, some plants are pollinated by bats, including the Agave plant.

- Uh-oh.

- Do you know what that's?

- Tequila.

- That's right, yes.

- Yeah, that's right.

- If you like tequila, you should thank bats.

They're the primary pollinator of the Agave plant.

So that's a good one.

And then this is really unique too.

Now it's not so much here in North America, but in the rainforest, when tracks of land are clear cut, it's hard for seeds to get back there and get reestablished.

But for fruit-eating bats, they're one of the primary seed dispersers to help new or clear cut tracks of land, start to get some new plants on them too.

So lots of benefits no matter where you are in the world that bats have.

- Wow.

Didn't know that.

- Yeah.

- How about that?

- Pretty interesting.

- So there you go folks, Tequila.

How about that?

Thank a bat for that.

So what are some of the challenges that the bats have to face?

- Yeah, so they're definitely facing a couple challenges.

One is just the myths that we talked about.

People don't fully understand them.

Another big one is habitat destruction.

And then also there's some diseases like white-nose syndrome.

- I've heard of that.

- Yeah, it can be up to like 95% fatal in some colonies.

So it's pretty serious.

It can draw bats out of hibernation when they don't have enough fat stores, things like that.

And then lastly, invasive species, right?

So when we introduce invasive species, pollinators aren't attracted to that.

That's the food source for our bats.

So that kind of, you know, connection between the two we're missing when we use the invasive plants.

- How about that.

Okay.

Yeah, those are real challenges for those bats.

All right.

So how can we help 'em?

- Okay.

So the first thing is we can provide some habitat for them.

There are some bats that we utilize bat boxes and depending on where you are, you can look and see what would be the right type of bat box for your area.

And those can be used in the winter and the summertime, sometimes even by different bats.

So providing some additional habitat for them.

Planting native plants, like we talked about, to attract their food source.

And then helping to dispel some of the myths that we were talking about too.

- So in the bat boxes, I mean, how high do they have to be up on some of the structures?

- Yeah so- - On trees.

- Yeah.

So probably about 12 to 15 feet.

And one of the important things that a lot of people forget about when putting up bat boxes is make sure to put a predator guard on the bottom.

Raccoons can climb.

And they can, you know, yeah take a couple bats every night.

So it's important to put a predator guard up there too, if you're gonna put up some housing.

- Okay.

And something else about bats I've heard before.

So they actually, they hang upside down?

They sleep upside down?

- Yeah.

- Is that right?

- Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Wow.

It's interesting to me.

- It is.

Yeah.

One other thing I was gonna mention too, there are caves that are closing right now because of white-nose syndrome.

And so it's important for pe ople not to enter those caves so that they're not spreading white-nose syndrome from one colony to another.

- Okay.

Wow.

How about that?

And of course, I'm sure you probably heard about bat guano.

- Mm-hmm.

Supposed to be pretty high in nitrogen.

I know a lot of people that use that as a nitrogen source in their gardens.

- Yeah.

That's another benefit of bats is the guano that they produce can be a great fertilizer.

- Ah, that's pretty good, so bats are good.

And can you tell us a little bit about what you have here?

- Yeah.

So one of the things about bats is people are, don't realize how small most of our bats are.

So this is just a representation of one of our bats here in North America.

But they can get really large.

They can vary in size from just a few inches to something over six feet.

A group of bats called flying foxes, which can get wingspans over six feet.

Here's a nice example of the skeleton and you can see what I was talking about with the wing.

That kind of looks like an extent hand with fingers extended.

- That's pretty impressive.

Wow.

So I hope we dispelled all those myths about bats and let folks know the bats are actually beneficial.

Now do they eat more than just mosquitoes though, 'cause we always get that question.

- Right.

So definitely they're gonna be going for larger insects too.

That's a little bit more of a payoff.

So a lot of those nighttime flying insects, those are the same ones that the bats are going after as well.

- Okay.

And I know you mentioned, you know, pollinating the Agave plant, but also bananas, I've heard?

- Yeah, giant cacti, they can help pollinate.

And there's some other nut trees that they can have a role in pollinating as well.

- What about mangoes, I've heard that before, is that?

- Yeah, they can.

- They can, okay.

- So they're not, with the Agave, they're one of the primary pollinators.

But they can definitely pollinate other plants as well.

- Okay.

So how about that?

Thank you Mary.

Appreciate that good information about those bats, and hopefully again we can dispel those myths, right?

- Absolutely.

- Thank you much.

Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - We have a birdhouse here tied by pieces of rope.

If you look here, the rope is actually cutting into the tree.

Now this could be very dangerous to the tree because it can weaken the tree and leave it susceptible to fungal diseases, bacterial diseases or insect pests.

So what we're gonna do here is we are going to loosen the rope.

We're gonna tie it back, and we're gonna make it just a little looser this time.

And I'm sure the tree would definitely appreciate it.

You can see here how much this rope has been cutting into the trunk of this tree.

If you're gonna decide to tie a birdhouse to a tree using a rope, make sure you check it every year just to make sure you're not weakening the tree.

Hi Booker, we're talking about lawn mowers, we're talking about putting them up in storage for the winter, which I can't wait for 'cause I want to go dormant too.

- I can't wait to get mine put up for the winter months 'cause I hate to bring it back outside again though.

But then in the springtime we don't store it right?

We go out there and start it up.

It won't make it.

You just keep pulling and pulling, pulling.

You wonder what's wrong.

You didn't store it right.

- Well that happened to me.

- Me too.

Right now I'm gonna start this up right now.

Make sure, make sure it's ready to go.

It needs to be put up.

[lawn mower starting] Ready to go.

- All right.

- And a lot of times, Dr. Chris, a lot of times we don't clean our air filter out on our mower, like a filter on there.

They get real clogged up sometimes.

Get a lot of dust, especially you been cutting in the early spring, when you got that first cutting, it get real dirty.

And need to take this outta here.

- That's dirty.

- That's dirty, that's dirty, that dirt, that's it.

Now, you can dust it off and put it back in there.

But I just goin' try and gimme a new one in there.

That's what I'm gon' do right now.

So I'm kinda winterizing mine right now.

- Now you'll get an early start.

- Early start with this filter in there.

Now I got a brand new filter fit right in there.

Gotta put the bolt back in there and tighten it up.

Then I'm ready to go that for the springtime.

And another thing that I want to check, my spark plug.

A lot of times the spark plug in here, just the spark plug here, you might wanna check to make sure you get a new spark plug put in there.

You can take it out and look at it and see how it look on the end of it.

- Okay.

- And what you wanna do is take the spark plug with you to the store 'cause they're all different sizes of spark plugs you gon' put in there.

So you wanna make sure you take it with you where they can fit you with the right spark plug.

So you gonna take your spark plug out right here, take the cord off there, then take it with you and put you another one back in there.

Then you know you got that taken care for, the all that taken care of.

And the next thing you wanna do is make sure that you change the oil.

- Oh yeah.

- You change the oil in there so now you... Now a lot of times, lot of mowers you can turn this upside down and change the oil.

But then some mowers you change on the bottom.

I'ma lean all the way over and show that.

And then it got a plug under there.

You take the plug off.

Mine change from the top.

You can take the plug off here, and change that oil in that lawn mower.

And while you got upside down like this here, you ready to change the oil, letting the oil out.

You might want to change your blade, you know and sharpen your blade.

I sharpened my blade the other day, and it real good.

And you got a screw here.

You can take the blade off there and sharpen it while you're winterizing it for the winter.

Go on and get the blade sharp.

- How often do we need to get our blade sharpened?

- I sharpen mine at least twice during the cutting season.

You know, make sure I have a good blade.

But at the end of the year now when sharpening again, when I get started again, I'm ready to go.

Now while you got it upside down, you see all that dirt up under there?

All that junk in there when the grass, a lot of time we cut our grass when it wet.

And that'll stick beside the lawn mower up under there and that can rot the frame out.

You don't want do that.

So you going clean that off real good, then get you a wire brush so you can brush it down real good.

Then you do a water hose and wash it out there.

And sometimes you might wanna get you a little oil and rub up under here.

Prevent that from rusting.

A lot of time- - That's a good idea.

- A lot of time we cut our grass when it wet.

And we shouldn't do that.

That make it stick to the top in there.

So while you got the oil changed, all the oil drainin' outta there.

So you got some oil here.

Know how much oil to put in there.

They tell how much oil to put it in there your lawn mower.

Put this in there, then don't wait 'til the spring.

Gotta put the oil in there now.

You know, already drained outta there because what can happen, you forget.

And you go out there and start the lawn mower up, and it will run for a while and next thing know it's like boop boop boop.

- Just go out.

- Go out, so change the oil.

Put the oil back in there that you take outta there.

Then you know that ready to go.

And so in there you got your mower ready.

- So Booker, for your oil, for your spark plug, your air filter, you just go to a regular hardware store or somewhere like that?

- Regular hardware store would get that.

And sometimes I go to the place you bought the mower at.

'Cause they'll know more about the mower there 'cause they sold you the mower and tell you that.

And on your oil, change your oil, Dr. Cooper, normally you need to change your oil about every 25 hours.

You know you can keep a count how you cutting your grass.

In 25 hours, you might wanna change that oil.

You know, like mine, I cut mine twice a week knowing- - So you change yours a lot.

- That's eight times a month.

Almost eight hours ago.

Take me about an hour, an hour and a half for me to mow my yard.

So yeah, you might wanna change your oil when you cut 25 hours, you know that.

Well I cut 25 hours, I need to take that oil outta there.

'Cause your mower lasts a lot longer when you change the oil.

That's the life of the engine, the oil change in there.

So we already know we need to change that oil in there.

Do that in there.

Then the next thing that you wanna do now is get you a gas stabilizer.

You know you want when on that last cutting, when you ready to cut, you wanna run all your gas almost out of there, and run you a gas stabilizer, put some gas stabilizer there by reading the label, how much to put in there.

And run that through your mower.

And then you want to run it for at least five minutes.

Get that all through your system and let it run outta gas.

Then you ready to store it for the winter.

If you don't, you do leave some gas in there over the winter month.

Might sound strange but about every, about once a month, take it outta the garage and go out there and start it up.

'Cause you wanna keep that gas, you wanna keep that gas circulating, keep that gas moving in there.

If not, you can have that gas kind of go, you got ethanol in there, sometimes it kind of expand then it won't start in springtime.

So you need to start up every, at least once a month.

And keep that gas beginning to circulate through that lawn mower.

And stuff in there, so that's a good thing.

- I mean, is it a good thing to store it with gas in it or do we just need to- - Make sure you run, it good to run it outta there if you can.

- Run it out if you can.

- Don't have no gas in there.

So I do the same thing in there.

- So run it out.

- Run it out.

Then in the springtime, be hard to start in there.

So then you might want to run all the other out there then store it up then.

Then when you're ready to start again in springtime you put some new fresh gas in there, all your line is clear and everything is clean, and your mower's ready to go, ready to work again.

But then like, the only thing you might wanna do during that time is change your air filter 'cause it get real dusty sometime out there.

And another thing you might wanna change your oil, you do more than 25 hours of cutting.

Keep that in there.

Then you sharpen your blade depending on how you want to keep that blade sharp.

So get that mower ready for the wintertime and store it up.

Put it somewhere in your garage that you know, put it somewhere in your garage somewhere in a place that it won't be in your way, but that you can need it to start it if you left some gas in there.

- Okay.

And when you clean it up you just use water, right?

- I just use water running off in there.

And sometimes if I got blades with some bolts on there, I might put little oil on a little rag or something and rub those bolts in there real good to make sure you keep them from rusting out.

- So some WD-40 or something like that.

- It be real good.

You know about that then.

But store that mower in a good safe place then cleaned up for the winter months and you mower ready to go in the springtime and you ready to start cutting again and stuff in there.

- So you're ready to go for two cuttings a week, right?

- Two cutting a week.

[laughing] Get the blade sharp.

But that's how you winterize your lawn mower for the winter there and everything and store it real good, the most important thing.

- All right, well Booker, we definitely appreciate that information.

Now we got our lawn mowers ready for the spring.

- You ready for the spring, yes.

- Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - So we're out here in the square foot garden, and it's gonna frost tonight.

In fact, it's gonna freeze pretty hard.

We're gonna get down, it's supposed to get down to about 27 degrees tonight.

And so we're gonna try and cover the square foot garden here and see if we can keep it surviving because we know beyond that we have at least a week of good weather.

And I recruited Chris Cooper to help me.

- Hey, ready to help.

[laughing] So one of the great things about this is that we have these fences here.

And so what we're gonna do is we're just going to put some two by fours from the fence down to the far side.

So that'll support our, the weight of our cover and hopefully keep the plants from getting crushed.

- Hopefully.

- Okay.

Now we can't just put plastic over this 'cause plastic is really good at, at building up heat during the day.

And we're gonna probably leave this on for a couple days 'cause it's gonna get cold for a few nights in a row.

But also plastic doesn't really insulate.

So what we're gonna do is we have some drop cloths that we're going to put over the plants and then on top of that, we're gonna put plastic.

Okay, so we got this great painter's drop cloth here that happens to have a hole in almost exactly the right place to put over this pole.

- I think it's on your side.

- There it is right there.

- Yeah.

[cloth rustling] - So... - There you go.

- Put the pole through there, make sure we cover up the eggplant.

Now we have some smaller drop clothes that we'll just kind of use to fill in here.

And it's important when you are doing this that you're covering goes all the way to the ground.

'Cause you're trying to capture the ground heat and keep it in with the plants.

And I got, I have some twine here.

And so what we can do is we can just cut a little piece of twine and rather than having to put a hole in the tarp, we just go ahead and tie a corner here.

And then I can take that and tie it to our trellis.

Okay, now that we're done with putting the fabric over it, we're gonna go back over it and put a piece of plastic over it.

Because that'll really hold the air in.

- Got it.

Got it?

- Can I get some more?

So we have two pieces of plastic here.

We're gonna put one on above the post that we have for the eggplant, and we're go nna put the other one on below so that way we don't have to put a hole in our plastic.

[plastic rustling] Now that we've got the plastic on and fabric on, we just gotta hold it all down with blocks.

So we're just gonna go around the backside here with blocks.

And they're just out here now with Chris if you want to just grab some, put 'em on at corners or where plastic comes together, things like that.

So we got it all wrapped up.

We've got the layer of fabric, the layer of plastic.

Hopefully it'll stay nice and warm.

- That's good.

So I did notice that there was a bucket under here.

So what's the big tub for?

- Right.

So I don't know if you noticed, but I turned on the irrigation system right before we started so that the ground can get nice and wet.

- Okay.

- Then we're also going to fill up that tub with water.

And it's just gonna sit there.

It's kind of nice 'cause we have the overhang 'cause of the way we built the trellis.

Let me go turn the hose on.

The reason for that is, is that water is a really, really good holder of heat.

And so even though the water's not warm, you wouldn't wanna take a bath in it, but it still can release a lot of heat during the night, which will help keep the plants nice and warm.

- And that's what we want.

- Yeah, there's another benefit to that.

And that is, is that if it gets warm in here during the day, which it might do.

- Which it might.

- That will help absorb the heat as well, which actually then benefits you at night.

So the water can be used to absorb the heat during the day, keep it cooler, release the heat at night, keep it warmer.

- That's good.

- So let's go ahead and put this down and put blocks on it.

- Seal it in, right?

- Yep.

Now we'll come back in a couple days after the cold nights are over and see how we've done.

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

Y'all ready?

- Ready.

- Ready.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"I'm thinking about planting a citrus or a persimmon "in a front bed, but my lawn is nearby, "and I want to start using pre-emergent herbicides there.

"I'm just not sure if I'm going to be too close "to the fruit trees.

"How big is the root zone for a fruit tree?

And do I need to keep pr e-emergents out of that area?"

And this is Gigachud on YouTube.

So we're gonna ask Mr. Booker T. Lee first about that, using a pre-emerge around the fruit trees.

It's a good question.

- Yeah.

It should be okay though, a pre-emergent herbicide 'cause probably gonna come in a granular fertilizer.

You're not putting a seed out there, nothing like that.

You're putting a plant out there.

You know, it should be okay.

And but I'd just be very careful still, read the label on there just to make sure, but the roots should be, they don't spread a whole lot for persimmon trees in there, but it should be okay.

But I just read the label just to make sure on that.

And then long you're not planting a seed in there and the pre-emeregent normally keep the seed from germinating.

But I probably would still try to keep away from the root zone.

We mention from the base of the tree real close.

- Right.

I think I would try to do that as well.

Anything you wanted to add to that, Mary?

- I was just gonna add, I hope they're looking into the native persimmon tree.

- Hey, look at you.

- That I know it's becoming really popular.

It's picking up some speed, but it's a native, one of the largest fruit trees in North America.

- How about that?

Wow.

Gigachud, how about that?

You learn something new every day on The Family Plot.

I tell you, that's pretty good.

Yeah, I would be careful about using it around your fruit trees.

And do know this.

So when we're talking about like the drip zone, so it's usually one and a half times the distance from the trunk to the outermost branches.

So I mean, the roots can get out there pretty far.

So I would read and follow the label like Mr. Booker said.

You probably have to get that watered in.

But yeah, if you want to keep it away from the fruit trees, good for you.

Good for you.

Just be careful with that, all right?

Appreciate that.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"I live next to a pond, and we used to hear frog songs, "but now we don't hear them anymore.

Why not?"

And this is Betty from Memphis, Tennessee.

So Ms. Betty, we have Mary here with us today, and she's gonna to tell us why we don't hear those frog songs anymore.

- Yeah, and unfortunately, it's becoming more prevalent that we're not hearing so many frogs.

And it's actually for all amphibians.

So frogs, toads, salamanders.

And the reason is that they are struggling right now with things like habitat destruction.

But more importantly, especially because the pond's still there, it probably has to do with pesticides because these animals can absorb things through their skin.

And so they're environmental indicators that something is going on in that habitat.

So something's happening, whether that's runoff getting into the pond, whether it's pesticides getting, killing off the food sources for these animals.

I think it's around a third of amphibians right now are in danger of extinction.

So it's a big issue.

But there are some things that we can do to help amphibian populations.

We can plant native, I'm a big proponent of planting native to attract our native pollinators, reduce our use of pesticides, especially near waterways.

And if you can, you know, you can put in your own pond that you have control over, that's not, say a neighboring pond that could have runoff or something like that in it.

- Wow.

That's good stuff, Mary.

But pretty unfortunate.

- When I lived in the country with my granddad, we'd hear them all the time, making that noise.

I never thought about that.

I never thought, that's good information.

- Yeah, that's real good, appreciate that.

Yeah, Mary, so there ya' have it, Ms. Betty.

Oh yeah, we've got a lot of work to do, right?

Change that habitat, you know, for our amphibians.

So yeah, thank you for that perspective, Mary.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Why are my cosmos not blooming?

"I planted them from seed on April the 26th "and it is now September 10th, "and they have little to no blooms on them.

"They're about five feet tall now.

"I've done nothing to them except water the seeds "when I planted them.

Any idea why they are not blooming?"

And this is Marguerite from Belfast, Tennessee.

So yeah, thanks for the picture.

It's a good picture.

So it is in a, in an area where it looks like it gets full sun.

Okay.

My thing is this, she says she just watered it.

So no fertilizer, anything like that because cosmos, if you think about it, they're native to Mexico.

They're drought-tolerant plants.

She has done nothing but water.

So I think it could be too much water, and you have to make sure that your soils are well drained.

- That what the picture looked, could be a lot of water.

- 'Cause I was, you know, looking, you know, around the area looking at some of the weeds growing up.

And some of those weeds that I saw like a lot of moisture.

So that's, you know, that's something that came to my mind.

And Mary, I don't know if you saw anything else.

- Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

So if you can adjust that drainage issue or pick a different spot next year.

- I'd pick a different spot next year.

Yeah, that sounds good.

So again, that's what we're thinking is maybe be, you know, just too much water.

'Cause again, cosmos don't need nutrient-rich soils, you know, they can grow in just about any soil for the most part.

But yeah, too much water could be an issue.

Too much fertilizer could be an issue.

But here I think it's too much water.

Poor drainage.

I think that may be.

So Ms. Marguerite, thank you for that question.

Appreciate you much.

All right, so Mr. Booker, Mary it's fun.

- It was a great day.

- Thank you much.

- I enjoyed it.

- Remember we love to hear from you.

Send us an 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 watching.

If you want to learn more about anything we talked about today, including bats or getting your lawn mower ready for winter, just 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]