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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Armadillos like to eat bugs, but in a process that can tear up your yard, we're going to show how to trap them.

Also, everyone loves seeing butterflies in the garden.

Today, we're going to talk about monarchs.

That's just the head 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, howdy.

- And Mary Schmidt will be joining me later.

All right, Mr. D., I see we have a trap here.

- We have a trap.

- What are we trying to trap.

- Armadillos.

- Armadillos, all right.

- Fortunately, armadillos aren't the smartest critter in the world.

You don't even have to bait an armadillo trap, you just need to be where they are.

- Okay.

- And you need to understand a little bit about their habits and they tend to go along barriers until they find grub worms.

That's what they're looking for.

And when they find grub worms, they start going crazy and they will aerate your lawn- - Oh, they would tear it up.

- more than you wanted aerated.

- I know that- from experience.

- and I guarantee that.

- One thing we've learned is because armadillos aren't that smart, if you attach wings to a regular trap, they will go along and they'll bump one of the wings and they'll go the other direction, bump the other wing and getting just kinda keep going back and forth and they'll go on in the trap.

So you really don't even have to use bait.

If you wanna use bait, a rotten fruit is one of the things that might work, not because they like fruit, because they like the maggots and the worms that are in that rotten fruit.

And so you could use rotten fruit if you wanted to.

I don't think it's really necessary.

- Yeah, so no bait, okay.

- But we've got the wings here ready to go and you can use either 1-by-4 or 1-by-6 and six feet long is as long enough.

I'm gonna drill a couple of holes in them so that I can use wire or cable tie to attach them to the trap.

- Okay, gotcha.

[drill whirring] How 'bout that?

- There you go.

Oh, I think that worked.

[drill whirring] There you go.

- There you are.

- Yeah.

- Now, that actually looked like, it looks like we measured it and got the exact same measurements right there, correct?

- Man, that worked just perfect.

- All right.

Let's set these aside just a little bit.

I'll let you, let's hang on to those.

And we're gonna set it up first over by a fence and it's good to, you know, armadillos tend to go along barriers.

So if you have a fence where they're creating damage, set it up close to the fence, or a line of shrubs or a ditch or something like that would be good.

And then, but if they're just out there in your yard and they're doing quite a bit of damages, we know you probably got grub worms, then just set it up and we'll use both wings.

So I'm gonna ahead and set it up right over here, something like this.

And I'm gonna actually use the fence as one of my wings.

- Okay.

- And I'll hang it right there.

So let me go ahead, let me have one of those boards and I'm gonna set it up something like that right there.

And on this side, I think I'm just gonna wire it on.

This is a pretty good piece of wire.

I think I've got pliers right there.

- Look at that.

Got it.

- You don't have to be... You don't have to be do anything fancy there.

Okay, now let me do one more.

- Got it.

How about that?

- Yup.

That's that.

- That's what I said.

- You don't have to.

I mean, they're not gonna, they're not good at untying stuff, I don't think.

The way you set these traps, they've got a mechanism here to keep this from coming back.

You have to lift that mechanism, then let this slide back, and go down and grab the door, continue sliding it out of the way.

Need to make sure that that will close to catching a little bit on there.

Let me come back out a little bit.

I wanna make sure that the wire is not gonna impede the door shutting.

- Look at that.

- And see that.

We'll test it to make sure it'll work.

[trap door slams] Voila, it'll work.

- So what happens, you catch the armadillo, then what?

- You need to check with your local authorities, check with local wildlife folks.

In a lot of areas, it's illegal to transport wild animals.

So what'd you check and see what you can't do.

And if you can't transport them, and it's not a good idea to transport them anyway because you're giving your problems to somebody else.

So, just do what, you know, man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, you know what I mean, and figure out some way to dispatch them.

- All right.

And if you've got one, you probably have three more because they have, armadillos have one litter per year.

They are from one egg.

They're identical quadruplets, either they'll have four males or four females.

- Okay, how about that?

- So if you get one- - You got some more.

- You might have two or three more unless they get taken out on the highway.

- And when are they most active?

- From twilight until just after sunrise, during the summertime, during the wintertime they're active during the daytime.

- During the daytime, how about that, okay.

- Okay, I wanna pull it up and I'm gonna move it over here and attach the other wing and show you kinda how it looks when you have it set up outside.

We'll use zip ties on the other side.

It might work a little bit better.

We've already got our holes drilled.

- There it goes.

- That out of the way.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah.

That really works better than the wire because- - A whole lot better.

- these are out of the way even though I don't think that's gonna be a problem here.

We'll raise this again.

I'm wearing gloves not so much to keep from injuring me, but just, I guess it's a habit of mine to always wear gloves when I'm dealing with any kinda traps to maybe mitigate the human scent a little bit, but I'm gonna actually open this up a little bit more.

So there you are.

- That is it.

- You have an armadillo trap that's set up.

- We're gonna make sure it works now.

- Let's make sure it works.

- Yep, make sure it works.

[trap door slams] - There it goes.

- Got him.

- How about that.

Yeah.

- It's a good sound to hear if you have the windows up at night and you hear that noise, you know you caught your critter.

- Mr. D., appreciate that demonstration.

That was pretty good, man.

- Good deal.

- I like that, thank you much.

[upbeat country music] What we have here is a nice thick stand of doveweed.

Yes, doveweed.

As you can see here, it has really taken over the Bermuda in this area.

Doveweed is a summer weed, it's a summer annual weed.

It actually grows by stolons.

Doveweed produces a purple flower, as you can see here.

It is not a grass weed, though.

It is different, it's related to some of your lilies.

How do you control doveweed?

There's a couple of ways.

Culturally, a thick stand of Bermuda would definitely crowd out this doveweed.

For a post-emergent, you have to use a three-way herbicide 'cause again, this is more of a broadleaf weed instead of a grass weed.

So something that contains 2,4-D. Dicamba will work as well.

So again, doveweed, which is a late summer weed.

[upbeat country music] Alright, Mary, so monarchs.

Can you give us a little brief life history of the monarchs?

- Sure.

Monarchs are a large butterfly that people see often in their gardens and it's really charismatic and colorful, and it has a unique life history too.

It's a migrating butterfly, which there's a few that migrate, but what's really interesting about the monarch is it only migrates to Mexico every fourth generation and that super generation, as we call it, lives maybe four to six months, where most of the ones that we see are only living a few weeks.

So it's a really unique butterfly that unfortunately is in decline in the Eastern United States.

So what's really important, and I think we'll talk about it in just a minute is how to attract them to your own backyard.

- Okay, why the decline though?

- Well, the decline is for a couple of different reasons.

One of it is a loss of overwintering habitat in central Mexico due to some illegal logging, which we can't do a lot about that, but what we can do is we're losing a lot of what the caterpillars eat, which is milkweed.

And so we've lost a lot of that habitat and also weather can really affect monarchs too.

And so cold winters in Mexico, and then during migration can affect them too.

So those are the main reasons why the population has declined.

- Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the life cycle.

- Okay, so the life cycle is pretty unique.

One monarch butterfly can lay about two to three hundred eggs, and what's really amazing about that too, is they only lay one egg per leaf.

So just one monarch needs a lot of milkweeds to lay the eggs.

A few days after they lay the eggs, they hatch and turn into a caterpillar.

And that caterpillar, over about a two-weeks' time, is going to grow about 2000 times its original size and how they do that is they're gonna be just eating away at milkweed.

And so they go through about five stages or five instars, which is the stage in between their molts and they're just eating, eating, eating, and getting bigger.

And then after about two weeks, they're going to form what we call a J-shape.

So they're gonna find either the underside of a leaf or maybe even a pot or under the eaves of your house, and they're going to form a chrysalis.

And so a chrysalis is a little bit different than a cocoon.

A cocoon is what a moth forms and a chrysalis is what a butterfly forms.

- How about that?

That's so neat.

- So, yeah, so this is a newly formed chrysalis just formed over the last couple of days.

This is a monarch chrysalis.

And what happens is they undergo a number of changes inside of this chrysalis.

And after about 9 to 14 days, they're going to emerge as the adult butterfly.

- Nine to fourteen days.

- Nine to fourteen days.

So the whole process from a egg to adult butterfly usually takes about a month.

So this is a really unique chrysalis too, as we were talking about earlier, most of the chrysalis are really camouflaged.

So they're gonna be brown or look like a crinkled up leaf.

Whereas the monarch is a little bit different, it's this bright green, it's got some gold accent on it.

And just really, to me, it looks like a really nice piece of jewelry.

- Yeah, it does, it sure does.

- So they're just undergoing some changes inside there and turning into a butterfly.

- Okay.

Wow, into a beautiful butterfly at that.

- Yeah.

Another really unique thing about the monarch is that you can actually tell the males from the females.

And a lot of butterflies there's not much of a difference, but in monarchs you can tell the difference between the males and the females.

And so males are going to have two scent pouches, which are here and here.

The females do not have those scent pouches so it's pretty neat, you can tell the difference between the males and the females just by those two black spots there.

- And that's it?

- That's it.

- Wow, okay.

- Yeah, both gonna be about the same size, both visit the same types of flowers, but just those two scent pouches are the difference.

- Oh, okay.

So how do we attract these wonderful butterflies?

- Okay, I love talking about this because we've lost so much habitat.

What we can do is we can plant things to attract them in our own backyards.

The number one thing you wanna plant, if you wanna attract monarchs is milkweed.

And milkweed gets its name because if you pull a leaf off, it has kinda a milky sap that comes out.

And that's actually really important for the caterpillar because it contains a toxin that makes the caterpillar tastes really bad to predators like birds.

And so that's what the monarch caterpillars are eating.

And so we have a variety of different milkweeds here in the Mid-South that do really well.

This one here, that the caterpillar's on is common milkweed.

And if you've got the space, this is a great one.

It not only serves as a plant that the caterpillars eat, but the adult butterflies will also visit the plant whenever it's blooming.

So common milkweed, it does get kind of tall.

It can get about five to six feet, but it does get a nice ball, pinkish purple bloom on it.

Another one, this is a non-native plant, but a lot of people like this one, it's a tropical milkweed.

It grows really fast and it blooms throughout the summer.

The one thing you may wanna do is clip off the flowers in maybe late September, October, and that will keep the monarchs moving south during their migration.

We also have a swamp milkweed, our rose milkweed, green antelope horn milkweed, butterfly weed, this is one that's has the bright orange flowers, it's more low growing maybe about two feet.

- Pretty colors, my goodness.

- Yeah.

- That's UT orange.

- Oh, yeah, UT orange, there you go.

- In addition to the milkweeds, the milkweeds are gonna attract the females to lay their eggs, as well as a nectar source.

You wanna look at some nectar sources, especially fall-blooming ones that are gonna get monarchs as they're migrating south.

And so some things as they're first getting to Memphis things like coreopsis, mistflower, yarrow, pickerelweed, if you have a pond or a water feature.

Those are great spring-blooming ones.

And then in the fall you wanna look at things like blazing star, beebalm, buttonbush, those are all going to be nectar sources.

- Goldenrod.

- Yeah, goldenrod, - Goldenrod.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And the benefit to planting those two is you're not going to just attract monarchs, but you're gonna attract a variety of different butterflies as well.

- Okay, wow, so growing conditions, full sun?

- Yeah, most milkweeds are gonna be full sun.

So if you've got a nice sunny spot, some of them do okay in pots, I've grown the tropical in pots before, but a lot of them do great in the ground and they're going to come back year after year.

- Sure, so how many generations again?

- Well, there's about four to five generations.

It starts with the first generation that is migrating from Mexico to maybe the Texas coast.

And then each subsequent generation moves a little bit further north until they get about to the Canadian border, which is the northern limit of milkweed.

That fourth or fifth generation is a super generation, and that generation is going to migrate all the way down to central Mexico, passing through Memphis.

Usually we peak in late September early October.

- All right, well, we appreciate that information again, but I do like the super generation.

I think that's pretty neat.

Thanks again, Mary.

Appreciate that, yeah.

- Thank you.

[gentle country music] - Okay, I'm gonna do something that I don't normally do.

I'm gonna pull out my pruning shears in early September, not an ideal time to prune, but you're gonna understand why I'm not afraid to do that with this blackberry.

It looks a little rough right now because of the floricanes have already died.

So anytime is okay to prune when you're removing dead tissue, but I'm not gonna do anything to the primacanes until late winter.

And I'm gonna be very careful as I remove the floricanes because I don't wanna damage any of this young tender tissue.

And that's really easy to do if you just cut the floricane at the bottom and you try to drag it out of the trellis.

I'm gonna take it out in pieces so that I don't damage any of my young tender foliage.

There is one other thing you can do pretty much any time, got these long shoots, help support them a little bit, kinda direct them in the direction that you want them to go, and that might make them survive the winter winds a little bit better.

Just gonna kinda thread them through here.

You can actually tie them up if you like, but that's pretty much all I wanna do with my blackberries this time of the year.

[gentle country music] - All right.

Mr. D., it's the Q and A segment, are you ready?

- I'm ready.

- Great questions, great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Hello, Dr. Chris.

"I live in southeast Louisiana in Zone 9.

"I planted a passionfruit vine "almost three years ago from seed.

"This year is the first year it produced flowers, "but still no fruit.

"What am I doing wrong?

"I regularly fertilize once a month.

"Do I need to plant two different plants together "to help pollinate each other?

Please help," Mr. James from New Orleans, Louisiana.

All right, so a couple of things here for me about the passionfruit vine, I know a little bit about that, right?

Depends on the variety.

There are some varieties that are self-fertile, okay?

- Exactly.

- So if you don't have that, then you have the ones that are not self-fertile, which will need help with pollination.

- Right.

- Right, so poor pollination or lack of pollinators would be the issue.

- That's probably the issue here.

When you've got the pretty flowers like that and no fruit, - Pretty flowers.

- then that tells you.

- That tells you everything you need to know.

And I tell you something else too, that he did mention that I would say, don't do.

Regularly fertilize once a month.

It's gonna be too much.

- You're probably pushing it a little bit too much.

- That's gonna be pushing too much.

And yeah, we don't know where he's fertilizing with, but if it has any nitrogen in it, that's gonna be a bit much.

- That could be a problem too.

- That's gonna be a problem.

- But I think you got it on the first one.

Now I pulled up a publication from Florida about passion fruit.

And it's, - You gonna back me up?

- I'm gonna back you up, yeah, I'm gonna back you up.

Pollination is essential for fruit production.

There are some of the varieties that are self-fruitful, but yeah, purple passion fruit flowers are self-fruitful.

So if you pull that up, you noticed that is not purple.

While many purple yellow hybrids, they are may not be probably aren't.

And then the yellow ones are definitely not, that had some yellow in it.

And they do require pollen from a compatible vine that is genetically different.

So don't get another one just like that.

- Right.

- You need to get one that's different.

- A cross-pollination?

Yeah, get to some pollinators, yeah.

Plant you some plants that the bees like, and maybe the bees can come by and do that.

If not, you have to do it yourself.

- Yeah, even carpenter bees.

This says, will do the trick, but hand pollination with a clean cotton glove or a paintbrush, yeah.

Labor-intensive.

- Yeah, from the anther to the stigma.

So there you have it.

So thank you, Mr. James.

We appreciate that question and a beautiful picture.

- Oh yeah.

- Thank you much.

- That's pretty.

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

Mr. D., I know you'll liked this one.

"Do you have any advice on keeping squirrels from eating all my peaches?"

Callie in Bowie, Maryland.

So do you have any advice for Ms. Callie here?

- We look Bowie, Maryland up, okay.

- Yep, we looked it up.

- And we noticed that you're in a suburban area that probably doesn't allow shooting, but my first, I mean, I even have a note down here the 12 year old with a 20-gauge, you know, that's the best thing, the best thing out there for squirrels.

And now that I understand you're in a suburban area, like, you know, like we're here in Memphis, Tennessee, it's kinda like that too.

That complicates things a little bit.

There are some really, really good pellet guns out there.

You might wanna check with your local authorities first and find out whether or not you can discharge a firearm in your area.

If you can, shooting them was a good way to do it.

It's one of the best ways.

And if you can shoot them with a shotgun, that's really good, 'cause it's hard to miss.

Then I probably wouldn't use a rifle unless I'm in a completely rural area, 22 rifle or something like that.

But a 20-gauge shotgun with a light load ammo is most excellent.

Now, if you can't do that, I've tried the pellet gun, but I would also do some trapping.

You can take one of your peaches and put in a trap at the base of the tree and see if you have a lazy squirrel that would rather go in a trap and get it.

- Is there anything else you can bait the trap with outside of peaches?

- Oh yeah, nuts.

- Nuts.

- They might prefer pecan or, you know, they really liked that, but I don't know, peaches hard to beat, you know, even squirrel might prefer a peach over a pecan, but it's so tough.

- So tough.

- You can try, you can get the sticky stuff that you can paint on the trunk of a tree.

You know, you might wanna try that, but your options are limited if you can't trap them and get rid of them.

- It's gonna be literally the Jack.

- Jack Russell, if you got a dog-- - Jack Russell.

- that you could kinda put your dog right out there, tether it out under the tree till the peaches get ripe.

You know, I say a Jack Russell, may wanna get you a rottweiler, but a Jack Russell will do the trick.

They'll take care of the squirrel.

But, you know, that's a tough one.

- It's always tough isn't it.

- That's a tough one, and it's not only tough for peaches, it's tough for them, you know, pears and apples and things like, you know.

Squirrels are, yeah.

And it doesn't take them long to get them all, you know, they get a taste of them and they go tell their neighbors I think, and they come in there and they harvest them.

- They'll come and get them.

- Sometimes they may just take a bite out of one-- - And just drop it.

- A grab another one, yeah.

- Oh, that is so tough.

So it's gotta be tough.

- I feel your pain.

- Yeah, it has gotta be tough.

So thank you for the question.

Mr. D., fun as always.

Thank you, sir.

- Yep.

- 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 the time for today.

Thanks for joining us.

If you want to learn more about controlling critters in your garden or learn how to attract monarch butterflies, 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]