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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Want to get a headstart on   those vegetables or flowers?

Build a small, temporary,   high-tunnel greenhouse   with some PVC pipe and   a sheet of plastic.

Also, ferns are a beautiful   addition to the landscape,   especially in the shady areas.

Today we're going to show   you how to propagate them.

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] - Hi, welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Peter Richards.

Peter is our local gardener, and Kim Rucker will be joining me later.

Hi, Peter.

What are we gonna do today?

- We're gonna build a small, high-tunnel greenhouse.

- I like building stuff.

- Yeah.

- All right.

- Now, high-tunnel greenhouses,   you see 'em out in fields.

- Mm-hm.

- And they're really big.

You know, they can   be 30 feet wide,   and you can build   one that big.

They're very inexpensive.

- Okay.

- Very simple to build.

I've seen people report that you build a thousand foot, high-tunnel greenhouse with five guys in one day.

- Oh my goodness.

That's easy.

- So, they're really easy.

- Yeah, that's easy.

- Yeah, that's good.

And so I took that and I modified a little bit in my garden to give me a small greenhouse.

- Okay.

- That I can start things in, or I've grown lettuce over the winter, keep things a little warmer that can't quite handle the hard freezes.

And so-- - But has it worked for you?

- It has; it's worked really well.

In fact, my son really likes celery.

- Okay [both laughing] - And so he planted, he planted some celery.

He'd eaten it all and then planted the root.

- Okay.

- And it did fine.

Last year, last winter, when I had the greenhouse.

This winter, I didn't put the greenhouse on, and it hasn't been terribly, terribly cold yet, and the celery's dead.

- Okay, celery's dead.

- So, yes, it worked.

- So it worked.

[laughs] - It kept it alive.

So what we're gonna do is, we're gonna build here a 5-foot by 10-foot, high-tunnel greenhouse.

- Okay.

- And all it takes is, it takes a couple of PVC pipes, some U bolts, a sheet of plastic, and just the couple other little things.

- Right, and two of us?

- And two of us, yeah, and we'll get it done here in a couple minutes.

- All right.

- So, first thing we need to do is we have to measure out the space.

- Okay.

- Now, first I wanna say, though, that typical PVC pipe that you buy at the big box store is 10 feet long.

- Okay.

You can get 'em 20 feet long if you go to a plumbing supply store.

- Okay.

- Which could be useful if you wanna make one that's even wider.

So if you do math.

[both laughing] - Math, yay.

- Yes.

You know that the   circumference of a circle   is the diameter of   that circle times pi,   so 3.14.

- Right.

- So, in this case   we have 10-foot pipe.

We need to go roughly,   half a circle.

- Okay.

- From one side of the   ground of the other.

But, because we have such a   small, high-tunnel greenhouse,   if we build it like that, what   we're gonna end up with is, right against the plastic on both sides,   there's not enough   height to plant plants.

So what we're gonna do is,   we're gonna make it   about five feet wide,   and what that's gonna do is,   that's gonna force the tunnel   to have more vertical sides, so you can grow closer to the edges.

- Got it.

Got it, okay.

- So just keep that in mind.

- Okay.

- So, let's go ahead, and, if you want grab one of these.

I've taken these, these are gonna be our stakes, and we'll see how we use 'em in a minute, but it's just, it's a piece of PVC pipe.

These are one inch pipe, and the half inch pipe we're gonna use over the top fits nicely inside this to hold it, so we're just gonna use 'em for stakes to mark our size.

So let's see here, let's... Where are we?

Go ahead and back up some more.

- Okay.

- And, whoop, right there.

- Right there?

- Okay, yep.

Go ahead and stick the, stick the stake; it doesn't have to go in a long way.

It's just enough that it stays.

- Okay, - That's good.

- All right.

- Okay.

Here, grab another one.

And let's measure, [tape measure crinkling] about five feet over here.

- Five feet over, okay.

- That's good.

- All right.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- And if you wanted to, you could really work on making this perfectly square.

[Chris laughs] But you don't really need to.

So, the other thing we're gonna do here is, let's go ahead and measure this way again.

Whoops.

[tape measure crinkles] - Okay, then we'll stop?

- Okay, just lay it down right here.

- Okay, all right.

- And we got 10 feet, and we're gonna put, so we have four hoops on this, so we're gonna have two in the middle, so we have to do 10 divided by 3, which is about three and a third.

- Ooh, yeah.

- So one, two.

Yeah, one, two, three, and a third is roughly here or so, if you wanna do three and a third that way, okay.

- There seems good for me.

- These eight pipes that we cut   came out of a   single 10 foot piece   of one inch PVC.

- Okay.

- And so I'm just gonna go over here and just eyeball these other two.

- Gonna eye it, okay.

- Yeah, doesn't have to be perfect.

And you can go ahead and do that one.

- All right, okay.

- Okay Now, we're gonna pound these into the ground.

- Ah.

- And we wanna make sure they stay vertical, because, if they're slightly out, it's gonna make the PVC bend out.

If they're slightly in the PVC is gonna- - Got it.

- The pipe is gonna go in, so we wanna make sure they're pretty vertical.

So I'm gonna use, I have a sledgehammer, but if I hit this pipe, there's a good chance I'm gonna break the pipe.

So, if I just put a piece of wood on top of it, it makes it so that I don't break the pipe.

[hammering] - Not goin' in as straight.

- It didn't go in as straight as I had hoped, but... Just a... - This is good solid ground.

- Coax it little bit more.

That's good.

[hammering] Like runnin' away on me.

There we go.

Okay, so that is, [tape measure crinkling] our foundation.

- Okay.

- So now, if you wanna grab the end of that, and let's go over here, and go ahead and slip your end in there.

- Right.

Right.

- Okay.

And then I'm just gonna take this end and bend it down like this.

- Yay, all right, all right.

- There we go.

- So we gotta do that a few more times here.

- It works.

- And when you're bending it, you don't don't wanna, like, grab here and pull.

- Yeah.

- You kind of wanna push it to create the bend.

Otherwise you'll kind of pull your pipe out weird.

So now, each of these is, by itself, is pretty wobbly.

- Yeah.

[chuckles] - So, you know, you're gonna have wind, and so you need a little bit more strength, so what we're gonna do is put this across, and we're gonna actually put it underneath, here.

- Okay.

- And bring it right up over.

Okay, if you could hold that for just a second here.

- Yeah, I can.

- And I have, to keep from punching holes in the plastic, I have little half inch PVC caps, so you just put that on.

You wanna stick that on that side.

- Okay.

- And once again, no glue or anything, it's just there to keep it from putting a hole in the plastic.

And then now I've got These U bolts.

- Ah.

- Cause this is what we're gonna use to hold this cross piece to the... And I'm gonna start over here, so I make sure I don't run outta space.

- Yeah.

- But it just goes on like that, and put the bolts on.

- There you go.

- Or the nuts rather.

Then I need to tighten it down enough that it's tight.

If you had a very large high-tunnel greenhouse, you know, if you had one that was 10 or 15 feet wide, you would probably want to have another couple of these just to hold it together.

- Okay.

- But, because ours is small, we only need one.

And I'm gonna come back and use a tool on that, but let's just get the rest in place, so that we know they fit.

[metal clinking] So yeah, it's very forgiving construction.

[Chris chuckles] You can fudge it a few inches one way or the other, and it doesn't matter.

And once this is all together with plastic on it and all that stuff, it's actually pretty wind-resistant.

And then you wanna tighten it, cause this is like, if you see, I can move it.

- Yeah.

- So we're gonna tighten it with a wrench.

Now, you don't wanna over-tighten it, because it's strong enough that you could actually crush the pipe.

It's about one turn past finger tight.

Now we've got plastic sheet here.

It needs to be long as long as the greenhouse, and then it has to get to the ground over there, plus probably a couple feet.

Let's do about that.

Okay.

[plastic rustling] Now let's go ahead and spread it out over the top.

- There we go.

[plastic rustling] - Now, there's two ways to secure this to the ground, 'cause it's gonna blow away, if wind can get under it, so you have to make sure that it is... See, right now it's trying to go.

- Yeah, it's tryin' to move, yeah.

- So we can take this two-by-four, and we're gonna just put it up against here, and roll it.

[plastic crinkling] About like that.

That'll hold it well.

Now another way you can do it is,   because this is a   ground level greenhouse,   you can kind of dig   a little trench,   put it in, and cover   it up with dirt,   and that'll hold it as well.

And then it ends here, [plastic rustling] all you do is just kind of gather it up, and stick a cinder block on it.

- All right.

- This is 6 mil plastic sheeting, which means it's 6/1000 of inch thick, but it can be a little pricey.

But you can go for thinner, but this will last longer.

- Okay.

- So you can get half mil plastic sheeting, which I don't recommend.

It'll just get shredded quickly.

But this 6 mil plastic sheeting, I have used sheeting like this for two seasons.

- Okay.

- Before it starts to break down in the sun.

If you really wanna be serious about this, greenhouse suppliers have 6 mil plastic sheeting that is actually UV resistant, so it'll stand up for more like five or six years in the sun.

- Right.

- And you know, it'll be cold at night, but, because you are inside this where it has gotten warm during the day, it won't get below freezing.

- Okay.

- If you're in a very cold environment, where you're worried that this actually will get below freezing, you can take a whole bunch of old milk jugs and fill 'em with water and put 'em in.

And you don't have to fill 'em with hot water or anything like that, you just leave them in.

- You just fill 'em, okay.

- And what happens is, during the day they warm up, they absorb the heat, and at night they radiate the heat back out again.

- Nice, nice.

- And it'll help keep your greenhouse a little warm, a little warmer.

- Nice.

- The other thing you have to be careful of is, on a day like today, where maybe it's 55 degrees, it might get up to 100 degrees inside - It may, uh-huh.

- So you may need to come out, and you can just take the cinder blocks off the back, fold the back up a little bit, so you get some wind flow through there.

- Yeah, let it breathe a little bit.

- Yeah, and that'll keep it from getting really hot.

- Yeah, sure will.

- And then, you know, you could do something like this.

And if you planted, you know, you could plant your vegetables or your flowers the way you want 'em.

When it's all done, like when it gets warm enough you don't need it anymore, you can take it apart.

Pull the stakes out.

Go put it in your garage for next year.

And they just continue growing exactly where they are.

- How about that?

And yeah, just two people.

Pretty easy.

- Yeah, yeah.

Two people and, what it take us ten, fifteen minutes to do it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think folks can handle that.

- Yeah.

- Well thank you much, Peter.

Appreciate that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, if you can grow celery, they can grow everything else, right?

[laughs] - Exactly.

- Yeah.

[upbeat country music] - This is mouse-ear chickweed.

It is a winter annual weed.

It reproduces by seed, likes soils that are high in nitrogen.

And here's another valuable thing about chickweed to most.

It is edible, so you can definitely eat mouse ear chickweed.

If you wanna get rid of it, if it's moist, you can easily just pull it up.

Or you can just use a broad-leaf weed herbicide.

Please read and follow the label.

[upbeat guitar music] You'll be talking about ferns right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

What exactly will you be doing?

- Thank you for having me.

- Oh sure.

- I'm going to do a fern propagation demonstration.

- Okay.

- On how to get more ferns from your existing plants.

Ferns are very ancient plants.

They are vascular plants,   so they do have roots,   and they do pull up   their nutrients and water   through a vascular system.

- Okay.

- Which they're the first   in the evolutionary chain   that do that.

- Wow.

- So, but they do not have   flowering parts or cones,   so they're evolutionary,   less advanced.

They do have two basic forms of the plant.

You have the sporophyte, which is this, is what you see out in the woods.

- Okay.

- And it's spore-bearing, which is what sporophyte means.

And then you have the gametophyte, which is in here.

And if you can see, it's the little green mossy looking.

It's not moss, but that is the gametophyte generation.

- Wow.

- And so in order to propagate these, you can either divide 'em by splitting them.

Wait 'til the crown splits or some are rhizome, have rhizomes.

- Sure.

- So you can split out the rhizomes.

But what we're gonna do is take the spores and propagate that way.

So these are some immature spores on this plant.

And the reason I know they're immature is because they're green.

- Okay.

- Generally what   you want to look for   are either black   or brown spores,   and this usually   is gonna happen mid summer, late summer.

- Okay.

- So that's when you collect, and you can collect 'em and store 'em for a little while.

What we do to collect 'em is, you will cut off this piece, the frond, when it's ready, and then this is kind of what it looks like, it dries.

And what you can do is take off the individual little leaflets, or pinnae, and I put 'em into an envelope and close it up and leave them in that way for a couple of days.

And then I just kind of flick it like this, and the spores dry, the sori on the back, the little caps dry out, and then they dehisce and the spores come out.

And so, what you will get down in the very bottom of the envelope, and it's very fine.

- It's very fine.

- Which is good, because they're wind-borne, and so, in order in the wild, in the wild.

[chuckles] In nature to get 'em, they have to hit the wind and then land in a spot that's optimal for the growing conditions.

What we will do once you get your fern, labeling, labeling.

- Labeling's so important.

- If you want to know what they are, because, on these, my labels are gone.

So, what I've done here is just put a number one, several places on here, and then I'll have notes that I take that have the actual name written down, maybe the date that I started 'em, and possibly where I collected 'em.

You know, Dixon Gardens or whatever.

So, and then what you're gonna do, so you can use any kind of, basically, clear container that has a lid.

And what we will use is a sterile mix, and I'm using seeding mix, which is just peat ground very fine, with a little bit of vermiculite in it.

It is sterile though.

You don't want to use garden soil unless you sterilize it.

- Right.

- You can do that by bakin' it in the oven, and I don't recommend it, cause it really stinks.

[Chris laughs] It's easier just to go buy seed mix.

- Okay.

- You can get at it at any nursery, big box stores.

- Okay.

- And so you put just a thin layer down in the bottom like this.

And then, what you do- And it also has no fertilizer in it.

You do not want a fertilizer.

- No fertilizer.

- So no fertilizer.

And then you take- - Vermiculite.

- This is horticultural grade vermiculite.

- Okay.

- So you take a little bit of this.

And vermiculite, one of the properties, and why we're using it is because it retains moisture.

- Preserves it, right.

- So once the germination process of the spore starts, you don't want it to stop.

- Okay.

And so, what I do is just really sprinkle it to one side, like that, so you kind of have half and half.

So, then what I'm going to do is you take distilled water, again, because it has, it's been sterilized, basically, and I will moisten it.

And this is good also for people to see, because, once the water hits the vermiculite, it kind of jumps.

- Right, it jumps.

- It's really kind of cool.

So, but I'll just, yeah.

- See how she does it.

You just kind of mist it a little bit.

[water squirting] Once you get this going, you put the lid on and you just can, you don't have to keep misting it, unless it really dries out.

But the lid on it, the condensation will just keep it moist.

- So you don't have to put that much water, just as long as it gets a little moisture?

- Just a little moisture in there.

And what I kind of do is make sure that you can kind of see where the moisture is showing up, cause it gets darker.

- Okay.

- So then what you do is, you just take your little spores.

I'm gonna pull the other pieces out that have the sori on 'em.

And then you will... [envelope crinkling] - Wow, look at that.

- Basically, I take it and just drop it in there like this.

And like I said, it's a very fine dust, and the only way you really know you got it is it's gone out of here.

[envelope scuffing] - Man, you can barely see it.

- Yeah.

Also, if you're really wanting to keep certain species or cultivars separate, I suggest doing 'em one at a time, because they are very fine, and they will blow, and I've done, in the wind, and so you'll get cross-contamination.

- Okay.

- So do one set, and then get rid of those, and then do your next ferns.

So then you just put the lid on it.

Close it up like this, [lid snaps] and put it in a window or a well lit room.

You want it warm, but you don't want direct sunlight on it.

- Okay.

- And what you should see, even within a, you know, short amount of time, are condensation droplets on top of, on the lid.

And then that's the way it stays moist.

- Gotcha, gotcha.

- Okay.

The next thing you need to do is go away on vacation for like two weeks.

- Two weeks.

- Because, at least before you check on it, because the first thing that people say is, "Oh, mine didn't work.

"I just came back and there's all this green stuff growin' all over it."

- Oh.

- That's what you want.

- That's it.

Right, that's it.

- That's what you want.

So, like I showed you before, the green stuff there is the actual, the next stage of the plant.

So this is a sporophyte.

Those are the gametophytes.

And it's actually this little   flat heart shaped disc,   and then underneath   are the gametes,   the male and female.

- Okay.

- And they get together,   and, the next thing you know,   you've got little   ferns, like this.

So, the next thing you would do is to move them up.

And I usually just, because they're still so small, I would just move them, again, into- - Where?

- Germinating mix.

I don't usually put plants that I'm gonna put out in the garden in perlite, you know, in a mix that has perlite.

- Sure.

And then once that grows on and you've got, you know, your plant is more established, then I would maybe put it in a bark-based mix and grow it on a little bit before you plant it.

But you do have to be patient, like I said.

- Wow.

- 'Cause these were started about a year ago.

- Wow, wow.

- So it takes about a year to get 'em to this point.

And it's different for different ferns, but that's your basic.

Once you get 'em up like this, you can start slowly.

You know, you can take the lid off to check 'em, and then you can kind of pull the lid like this.

You want to gradually expose the new little fern to dry air.

- Okay.

- So you may need to pull the lid off, and then mist it a little bit, and then gradually, maybe over a week to two weeks, you can open it up more.

- Open it up a little more?

- And it gets used to being out in the bright sunlight.

- Okay.

- And that's fern propagation.

- That's fern propagation.

- Yes.

[chuckles] - Thank you Ms. Kim.

We appreciate that demonstration, all right?

[gentle country music] - When you buy plants at the store, you get a lot of these little tags, and they have really good information on 'em, but it's really easy to lose 'em.

So here's an idea for how to keep track of them through the growing season, so you can go back and reference them.

So, the first thing you do is you just have a little hole punch, and you can just punch a hole through each tag.

[hole punch clicking] And then, once you have a hole in them, you can go ahead and take a ring.

You could take a key ring.

This is a binder clip, or even a paper clip, and you could just put them all on this ring.

And now, you have them all in one place and organized, so that, when you want to go back and reference what you planted and what it was like, there it all is.

[gentle country music] - So here's our Q&A segment.

Y'all ready?

- Yeah.

- These are great questions, can't wait.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

I like this one.

"I'm thinking about requesting a garden plot "at the Shelby Farms Community Garden, "because my home vegetable growing area is small.

"I won't be able to check on it every day.

"Can you recommend   some vegetables   "to plant in a   community garden   that are easy to grow   and low maintenance?"

And this is Jill from   Germantown, Tennessee.

So Peter, easy to grow and low maintenance.

- Yeah, good.

- Vegetables.

So what do you have in mind?

[chuckles] - Well, if we're- - But still.

- Yeah, well, most vegetables, and most things you can grow in the garden, if you go every three or four days, that's often enough.

The things that you need to, the reason why you need to go more frequently is because how long is it gonna take the bug or the disease to really blow up in your garden.

- All right.

- Right.

- And also how long, how often do you have to check it so that you can harvest it before all of it goes over the hill.

- Okay, good points.

- And so those are the two things I'd look at.

But if you go every three days, you can pretty much do any vegetable, because you could, just keep in mind, you know for instance, on a tomato, you might wanna pick it before it's at the peak of redness because, when you come back in three days, it might be too red, and you'd have to throw it away.

So you might wanna pick a little early and a little smaller for some things.

But number one, vegetable I'd say is peppers.

- Peppers, yes.

- Because very little disease problems.

- Yes.

- Bug problems, anything like that.

And also there's a huge harvest window on those, 'cause you can harvest 'em from green all the way through red, and sometimes that's several weeks long.

Now let's see, bush beans would probably be good, because bush beans come out all at once.

So, rather than pole beans that kind of have their harvest spread out over a long time, you do bush beans where you can harvest it all, and you pretty much have it all at that point.

You don't have to worry about it again.

Onions, carrots, lettuce, pumpkin, if you have space.

- Okay.

- Pumpkin has a huge harvest window, because you can, months long.

- Okay, that's good.

- I would avoid though, I'd avoid watermelon and cantaloupe.

- Okay.

- Just because it has that narrow harvest window.

- Okay.

- So you know watermelon, when it's done, you better pick it, or it's going to go, it's gonna start fermenting inside pretty quick.

- Okay.

- So I'd avoid those.

But that's, that's what I think.

- Oh, that's some pretty good choices, yeah.

'Cause you threw in some warm-season veggies, you know, your leafy greens would be something to grow.

Then he mentioned some warm season vegetables as well.

- And something else.

My mom did this once.

We had a community garden growing up.

- Okay.

- And we had a problem where we had some large animals, namely humans, that would take our stuff.

- No.

[laughs] - So what she did is, she went out, she went out and she took flour and spread it around, like she was dusting for insects, and then put up a sign that says "Danger."

- Oh gosh.

[laughing] - Danger, like, "Dangerous pesticide," or something like that.

Nobody touched it.

- Nobody touched it.

I wonder why.

laughing] Yeah, I wonder why.

- Yeah, it's fine, just flour, just wash it off.

[laughs] - That's just smart, Mom.

- Pretty smart.

- Pretty smart, very smart, yeah.

- Don't give folks too many ideas.

Yeah, they might like that one.

That's pretty good.

- Yeah, I might try that myself.

[laughs] - That is pretty good.

So yeah Ms. Jill, yeah.

I hope you get that garden plot.

And yeah, guess what?

You can come to the Extension Office here in Shelby County, and we have publications for you.

- We have publications on how to grow vegetables and how long it take, normally, before the harvest.

- Right.

- The harvest period.

- I call it the ultimate cheat sheet.

- Yeah we had that a long time.

- Yeah so come see us.

- Yes, keep a date when you plantin' and the date when it's harvest, and you got it right there.

- That'll do it.

Come see us Ms. Jill.

We would be happy to give you that publication.

So thank you much for that question.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

I like this one too.

"I am not a dig-in-the-ground kind of girl, "but really want to grow my own veggies.

"What foods can I grow inside,   and what do I   need to do to it?"

This is Audrey from   Cordova, Tennessee.

All right Peter, she don't wanna dig in the ground.

She wants to grow indoors.

So what foods can she grow inside, and what does she need to do?

- Well, it's really hard to grow anything indoors that's a vegetable.

[laughing] Anything that has a fruit is out.

You're not gonna get enough light.

- Okay, okay.

- I would say, if you want, if you're- If it's going to be indoors, indoors, you have to do it inside.

- Okay, it' indoors, right?

- You'll need to be in a sunny window.

You can probably grow spinach and lettuce.

Leafy greens.

- Mm-hm.

- Possibly some herbs, and you can probably make that work in a window.

- Yeah.

- I would recommend though, if you're wanting to grow, you know, tomatoes, peppers, things like that, get a couple of containers, and just put them right outside your back door.

- Okay, okay, that's a good idea for anything.

- That way you don't have to, you don't have to go far.

It's not like you have to dig in the ground.

- Sure.

- But you can just, you know, grow, have a, I don't know, three, four, five gallon container, put a pepper in it, and now you have peppers.

So that's the way I'd go.

- I do like that.

I do like that, you know.

And of course, yeah, you can grow a lot of herbs indoors, cilantro comes to mind, dill, parsley, basil, which you can grow.

- Basil can grow inside, yeah.

- You know, inside, south-facing window.

It does need, you know, a lot of sunlight.

- Yeah.

- Just, yeah, leafies, leafy greens.

- Yeah, leafy greens.

- You can do it, probably do inside on the window sill.

- Ah, that'll be good, Audrey.

So good luck to you.

Thank you for the question.

All right, Peter, Booker, that was fun.

Thank you much.

- I really enjoy it, thanks.

- 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.

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Today we show how to build a high-tunnel greenhouse in a ground level garden.

At familyplotgarden.com, we have instructions for building one in a raised bed.

We also have lots of videos about planting all sorts of vegetables.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]