- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid- South, I'm Chris Cooper.

Usually we talk about tasty vegetables, but today we're going to talk about the bugs that think you are tasty.

Also, pineapple lily is an exotic plant that's easy to grow.

Today we're going to learn all about it.

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 Dr. Natalie Bumgarner.

Dr. Bumgarner is a Residential and Consumer Horticulture Specialist with UT Extension.

And Mr. D is here.

- Hello.

- Thanks for joining us.

- Glad to be here.

- All right, Mr. D. Chiggers, ticks, and mosquitoes, all right.

You already itching?

- Yeah, itching and scratching.

- We're gonna have to make sure that Dr. Natalie pays attention as well, 'cause I know you like to hike, and camp, and things like that, so you might little-- - Little woodland creatures that like to tag along.

- Little creatures, right.

All right.

- You know, the best thing I can say is deet.

You know, insect repellent, use deet.

There's been studies comparing the different concentrations of deet, which are more effective, and one I saw had 15% was the most effective.

You can get the deep woods, or the, some of them that are 50% active ingredient.

I don't really think that's necessary, you know.

The weaker formulations will do just as good a job.

But you do want at least 15% deet.

Use that.

Also, permanone, some of the pyrethrins that are okay for use on your equipment, your boots, your clothes, not on your skin.

You don't put those on your skin, but that, I really, as a turkey hunter I really like to see a tick crawl onto my pants leg and die.

(laughing) I enjoy it while I'm sitting there waiting on the turkey to come to me, I enjoy seeing that tick crawl up on my pant leg and he just kind of roll over, and all eight of his little legs kick.

But, you know, in a yard situation, and I go to Redbook.

Redbook 2017, and we have some really, really good information, some of the same insecticides do a good job of, in a landscape situation in your home, will help take care of them even though, I know a tick is not an insect.

I'm not sure that a chigger is.

- (Chris) I don't know about the chigger, that's a good question.

- I know that a mosquito is an insect, so.

Fortunately insecticides work on all of these.

Now you know, an immature tick only has six legs.

So you can, to say that all ticks, an adult tick has eight legs.

But just because it has six legs, it's immature, it's not an insect.

It's still not an insect, right.

But I'm looking at ticks, and I'm looking at chiggers, and.

I wonder, mosquitoes may have something.

What I'm looking for is to see if the same insecticide will take care of 'em, and of course they will, will not.

I do see that for ticks and chiggers it's pretty much the same thing.

And you can treat your yard with a labeled insecticide every four to six weeks as needed, and if you have problems, I do, I live out in the woods, and so I have problems with chiggers and ticks.

- (Chris) Oh, chiggers are tough, man.

- I don't treat my yard, I use the insect repellents.

But if, you know, you were having a party and you wanted to treat your yard you could.

Cyfluthrin and beta-cyfluthrin are insecticides that are labeled for use to control chiggers.

Ticks, bifenthrin, beta-cyfluthrin, permethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, there are a few more that are labeled to put out in your yard to control ticks and chiggers.

Some of the comments about that, and I'll go to mosquitoes a little bit later, but some of the comments, you know.

For chiggers they mow your lawn regularly, that goes without saying.

Remove weeds and brambles from fence rows.

And it stresses that you use commercial repellents around your ankles and waist for personal protection because they, you know, they'll get in where they, you're exposed.

Apply deet repellent to your skin, and the insecticide permanone to your shoes, cuffs.

And you can apply these to your socks and things like that before you put 'em on, and wait, but you need to wait at least two hours before you put them on to allow the, allow it to dry.

It needs to dry.

On the ticks, that was about chiggers.

Ticks.

It basically, mow the lawn and control weeds, you know.

And.

If you lower the moisture in the grass microclimate, allow sunlight to penetrate which tends to cause ticks to dry out, so.

And you know, I live in the woods, so that's why I have ticks.

- Habitat modification.

- Yeah, exactly, my goodness.

Again, same exact, same instructions about deet, apply deet to skin and the insecticide to your shoes and things like that.

- For the tick?

- For ticks and chiggers you pretty much treat the same way.

- And I tell you what, there's been more news stories about ticks this summer, you know.

- Well they can be dangerous, you know, there are several diseases that they carry.

- An increasing number, we're seeing some new incidences.

- And probably, part of that is probably because the diagnosis is probably better now than it, because I've, I have friends who've had problems and years later they said well that had to be a tick bite.

That's why I was sick for so long, had all those problems.

And, so yeah.

You need to try to keep 'em from getting you.

They sure like to feed on us.

- They definitely do, and our own Carol Reese, you know, some years ago had a tick bite.

- Right.

- Mm-hm.

- She have spotted fever?

- She had spotted fever.

- Rocky mountain spotted fever - She sure did, she sure did.

- Mosquitoes, they are insects, and...

They, you know, they like to stay in shrubbery, and they generally will come out, you know, late in the day or early in the morning.

They are kinda, I guess, corpuscular in nature, but they'll come out at any time if they're hungry I think.

- Yeah, I would agree with that.

- But there is, if you have water, standing water, pools or ponds, or anything like that there is a Bacillus thuringiensis, a Bt that you can put in there that will feed on mosquito larvae, and I would, you know, encourage you to do that, because it doesn't hurt any beneficial insects, and doesn't create problems.

I think Mosquito Bits is one of the trade names, Mosquito Dunks is another trade name for Bt.

Methoprene, also is a insect growth regulator type thing that will prevent 'em from molting and prevent 'em from maturing.

But that's in standing water.

If you have standing water that you don't need, don't do that.

- Why have standing water?

In many instances, in the backyard.

- People with horses, for example, you have horse troughs.

You know, if you're out there taking care of those horses every day, you know, you don't need a big horse trough, just have enough for 'em to drink water so that you can pour it out and give 'em fresh water every day, you know.

And pour it out every day, because it takes, I think what, three days for the life cycle.

- Yes, it's three days.

It's three days.

- Something like that.

If you don't let water stand over three days you shouldn't have that problem.

But, the pyrethrin sprays for outside your buildings, they're available as an aerosol or a fogger.

Resmethrin, you can, malathion.

I'm not sure what the municipal governments are using now.

For years they used malathion.

It's what they, when the truck would drive around.

And I don't know whether they still use that or not, but again, works well to control mosquitoes.

You can apply those types of things, malathion, permethrin, and other pyrethroids can be applied to vegetation on the perimeter of your property.

And that will kill the adults.

The adults feed on nectar during the day, and then, I don't know, and then they get bloodthirsty later in the day.

(laughing) - And then they come out.

And most of those pretty much hang around plant material.

In the foliage of plants, the underside.

Especially the ones that are in the shade.

You know there's-- - Good protection.

- Yeah, mm-hm.

- Yeah.

I'm flipping down through here, unclog gutters, you know, gutters can hold water so make sure your gutters are unclogged.

Empty birdbaths.

Don't just leave that water there for long.

The birds like fresh water too, just like the horses do.

And you know, a lot of common sense, but a lot of deet, a lot of insect repellent, and, and continue to go outside, enjoy the outdoors.

You know, the fresh air is still better outside than inside.

- We want you to enjoy the great outdoors, but do be careful.

- It's worth the hassle.

- Right, thank you Mr. D. Appreciate that, good stuff.

[upbeat country music] - This is a really fun plant called Tiger Eyes sumac, and it just has such a vibrant color in the garden with this chartreuse foliage, these beautiful cut leaves, and the newest growth has red stems, and they actually have kind of a velvet texture to them.

So, just a really neat plant.

Now, I will caution you, it spreads underground and forms colonies.

So, you need to plant this in a place where it's gonna have a lot of room to naturalize and really be the star of the show.

Tiger Eyes sumac.

[upbeat country music] Alright doc, pineapple lily.

And I will confess, I don't know much about pineapple lily.

Mr. D., you know anything about that?

- I'm looking for the pineapple.

[laughing] - Well, we have a few pictures.

You look at this, you're like, well the lily, I can see the lily.

- Lily, I can see that.

- What do you mean about the pineapple?

But the first time you see a picture of the flower, it will completely make sense.

- It will, okay I got you.

- So this is just a small seedling, but when we have a mature plant we'll actually have, you know, the nice bloom stem come up, and flowers will just bloom on that stem with a little top knot of, actually it's bracts, you know, modified leaves, and it will look like a little flowering pineapple, yeah, so.

- That might help us out, Mr. D. A little bit, right?

- When it's blooming it's fairly self-explanatory.

- Could you come back then?

- Yeah.

[laughing] Well I mean, we have some great ones in the flower bed, they were just a little bit hard for me to dig up in front of my house, but I brought some pictures.

So we have some good images you can kinda see what this looks like in full bloom.

- All right, well tell us a little bit about the pineapple lily.

- So this is Eucomis, which is the genus name, and these are actually a bulb, obviously they're in the, they're in the lily family, you know, related there, and they're actually native to South Africa, you know.

So they are from, you know, some of the, some of the various regions down there, and there are several species, 10 or 12 of them.

And so the cool thing about what we have now is this opportunity in horticulture, is that they can grow in many parts of our, you know, kind of listening and growing area, right.

So they're labeled as Zone 7, you guys are quite safely Zone 7 here, yeah, with protection in Zone 6, but coming from different areas in South Africa, we have the opportunity to bring in some of those different species, cross breed, and maybe get a little bit better winter hardiness, get a little bit better, you know, summer durability, and so, so they, they're something that can perform pretty well in a range of soil conditions.

I have 'em in my suburban front yard with all the top soil pretty much scraped away, right.

So as with many things we say it's not necessarily, doesn't take fabulous soil quality, but we need good drainage.

You could kill them with winter moisture, would be the best way to wipe them out, if you know, if that was your goal.

But you introduced them as easy to grow, and so of course as a horticulturist you always twitch a little bit every time we declare anything easy, because we know that we ourselves and certainly others are capable of wiping out anything, but so far these have been pretty low maintenance and consistent in the flower beds.

I work with a local gardener in Knoxville, and so, this is where some of these cross breeds are coming from, and so this is actually a cross of a couple of different species, and so we're kind of evaluating seedlings, looking at flower shape, and color, and lots of the variability.

One of the fun things about working with a plant that is, I mean, it's in trade, you can go out and buy Sparkling Burgundy and different kinds of Eucomis, but it's not, it's not a hydrangea, right, it's not a petunia that we've been growing for, for a very long time, and so there's still opportunity to make crosses and see different types of things, and so that's one of the things we're excited about with sharing with gardeners in Tennessee, some of the opportunities for gains there.

- What about shade tolerance?

- Which is another one of the interesting things that we are, you know, we're looking at, and hoping to gather information as more people are growing it across Tennessee.

So in most of our gardens in Knoxville we tend to grow it in the full sun, you know, it can handle quite a bit of sun, but as we think about moving westward, warmer conditions.

You know, we may get to the point where we say, well, you know, if you're growing in Memphis a little bit of shade is certainly fine, you think about a little bit of afternoon shade.

And so we're interested in performance across shade, we want to do some trials to kinda see what it does under different levels of shade, but also the fact that we may have some plants that really performance well with a little bit more sun.

And what about the leaf color?

This, we see a little bit of purple on here, but sometimes the coloration both on our stems, and our leaves, the depth of that color can vary depending upon the sunlight that we give them.

There are some well-known cultivars that are completely purple in their leaves.

And lots of times when we think about purple leaf trees, lots of different things, how vibrant that color is can depend on light levels, so there are lots of opportunities to learn in different geographical areas how these, how these perform.

- Okay, what zone is Knoxville?

- Um, well, and most of the time we would think of ourselves in that seven range, we have water, we have urban areas, so we really haven't had trouble with winter survival, but when we think about some of the other ranges that, you know, of the folks that, you know, of the folks that I work with, well how does it do on the plateau, right.

We may freeze out on the Cumberland plateau, but maybe even be warmer than ideal in some parts of the western part of the state.

So we're still evaluating a lot of the performance and how we can vary the species to perform best.

Cool things about the flowers, they have a long flower life.

And they can actually be used as a cut flower.

So, you know, when we drop the petals, the ovaries actually stay present, and lots of times they'll be purple and pretty as, you know, as the plant ages.

Really start to look kind of pineapple like as we start to see that seed set, so long vase life.

And some interesting opportunities there for a tropical looking plant that can survive in, in most of the climates that we work with here in Tennessee.

- Do you like that, Mr. D.?

- Yeah, does it taste like a pineapple?

[laughing] - Well you know, I don't think that I've eaten any.

But some of the interesting genetic variability has a lot to do with plant height, so some of the cultivars that are available on the market can be very compact, really deep, ruffled leaves.

Can be great container plants.

- (Chris) I was gonna ask you about that.

- It, whether you wanna protect them a little bit during the winter, you know, if we're in colder climates, or if you just rather have a compact container plant, there are some opportunities for a lot of range in sizes.

You know, shape, color.

Stem color, flower color.

- Very attractive looking.

How long before you can get a bloom though?

- Well, it kind of depends on if you started from division or from seed.

So this is actually a seedling, and, you know, it will not be blooming this year.

But sometimes if we divide we may be able to get a late bloom that year that we divide, and those are some of the things that we're thinking about as we make evaluations for some of our crops as well.

You know this, how fast does it clump?

How quick can we get divisions, and how, how fast can we get to a bloom?

And some, every once in a while, might even see a re-bloomer in fall.

- That's pretty cool.

Another question though, what about pest problems, disease problems?

- So far we really haven't had a lot of insect damage.

Some of the other things that we haven't seen a lot of issues with so far are deer damage.

You know, that's one of those things that we never make broad statements about deer resistance, we say general things like, um, seems to not be highly attractive to deer feeding.

- Deer won't eat it?

- Right.

- Don't say that, don't say that.

- Right, we never say that, but.

But we have been growing these in areas where, you know, there are certainly deer populations, and this hasn't been one of their, one of their early hits, right.

Yeah, so.

- If you wanna check that out, plant 'em out at AgriCenter, because we've got plenty of deer.

- Plenty of deer.

That's right.

- Yeah.

- Plenty of, plenty of evaluation spots that we can.

- Out by Chris' office.

- Yep, plenty of deer, no problem with that.

Well Dr. Natalie, we thank you much.

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

- Appreciate that.

Learned a little bit about that pineapple lily, Mr. D. That was pretty good.

- Tropical plant as an opportunity for us.

- All right, there you have it.

Thank you doc, I appreciate that.

[gentle country music] - If you have an oscillator sprinkler that has a port that gets stopped up like you see here, there's a trick to getting this cleaned out.

So, I'm gonna shut the water off, and not all sprinklers have this, but the better quality ones do.

On the end of the arch here is a piece that unscrews.

Once you unscrew that, then there's this little tip on the very end to clean out the port.

So, what you wanna do is turn the water back on.

And the reason you wanna do that, hold your finger over the end and you can see which ones are stopped up.

Take your little device here and poke it in the hole.

That forces the trash to come out the end, so you gotta have the water on so the trash comes out.

Still got one stopped up.

Alright, looks like we're free.

I'm gonna turn it off, screw this back on.

You wanna hold on to the bar when you're screwing it back in, otherwise you might strip the gear here.

Now that we got it clean, let's turn it on and see what it looks like.

And yeah, all clean.

So, easy way to clean it out using that.

Again, not all brands of sprinklers have that, but the better quality ones do.

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

Doc, you help us out, okay?

- Absolutely.

- All right.

Here's our first viewer email.

"How do you root roses from clippings?"

And this is from Ms. Kathleen.

So, what do you think about that one?

- Well, um.

- Well.

- First, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give my university disclaimer, okay.

First thing is we wanna make sure that we're not rooting cuttings that are protected, patented varieties.

There are some things that technically we should not root, and a lot of our hybrid teas and things like that would fall in that category.

- Good disclaimer.

- You might go to jail.

- Definitely don't want to do that.

Now since that's been said and done.

- How do you do it?

- How do you do it?

- Yeah, so then we get into, we have an opportunity to do hardwood or softwood cuttings, and this time of year we could actually do softwood cuttings, after the bloom has died.

Actually take this year's growth, a little bit of rooting powder, and actually, you know, root that 8, 10, 12 inch cutting in, you know, peat moss-- - Yeah, peat moss or something like that works.

I actually have a little experience with this, I've actually done this before.

You know, 'cause I have a lot of roses at home, you have six to eight inch stem.

I usually look for two or three buds though, okay.

Clean off those bottom leaves.

Actually, they can root in water.

But you could use a rooting hormone, okay, just dip the bottom in, 45 degree angle cut though really helps to expose surface area.

- Surface area.

- Right, so yeah, just you know, dip that in some rooting hormone, okay.

You can put that in potting soil, or you can put it directly into the ground.

- If it's someplace where you can really manage closely.

- Right, you can, you know, control it the best you can.

- Make sure that it doesn't dry out-- - Right, because you don't want it to dry out, is the biggest thing, or you know, I used, I think it was one-to-one peat to perlite.

You know, something like that.

What, four to six weeks?

Had roots.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"We have five Japanese holly plants in our backyard.

"One has a number of branches that have died "since it was planted.

"This is the second one in the same spot to do this.

"Another plant three feet away, just fine.

What could be causing this?"

And this is from Ms. Margie in Germantown.

So.

Mr. D., let's think about this for a second as you look at the pictures there.

Five plants in the backyard, right.

But the second one in the same spot has died again.

- Do they have a dog?

- Oh.

- A male dog.

Or does.

Frequent visitors, could that cause that?

- (Chris) Possibly.

- Either that, or, there's a problem with the soil in that one spot.

- (Chris) You think so?

Maybe.

- I think about maybe drainage.

- I, drainage is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Yeah.

Boxwood.

Holly shrubs.

Do not like wet feet.

All right, so drainage could be a issue.

So that's the first thing I thought about, phytophthora root rot, okay.

If you have bad drainage, a lot of water just kind of standing around.

The second thing, 'cause you know, we get a lot of questions about boxwoods of course, you know, at the office.

It could be decline, boxwood decline.

And that's, the decline is actually a combination of a lot of different cultural practices, right.

So it could be drainage issues, it could be improper pH.

It could be compact soils, but guess what else it could be?

It could be too much mulch.

Or it could be planted too deep, one I just thought about.

So it could be a combination of all of those, which actually leads to boxwood decline, because you get a piece of stem here, you get a branch here, a branch here, and all of a sudden everything's gone.

- Yeah, when you look at that multiple areas in the plant showing, showing some death and decline.

- So that's why, you know, it could be decline.

And then, you know, we would really have to get a piece of it to really see it under microscope.

There is volutella blight.

But you would know that, because you would have those pink spore masses on those leaves.

I've seen that, you know, before in this area, but.

Again, we would need a piece of that to actually see it, but I think it may have something to do with drainage.

That's what I think.

And would that be the case, you just need to build that area up.

Because again, boxwoods do not like wet feet.

All right Ms. Margie, hope that helps you out.

Now here's our next viewer email.

"What is this on my hydrangea?"

And this is from Mr. Bill right here in Memphis.

Good picture, good picture.

We've seen that, of course.

I mean, you see it on your, pretty much your big leaf hydrangea types, your oak leaf hydrangeas for sure.

Cercospora.

- Yeah, I mean that's definitely the first thing, when we see kind of a, that reddish perimeter a little bit around that definitely makes us think cercospora.

But in some ways, the more important question is okay, treat or not to treat?

- This time of the year, I mean, of course you're gonna see it.

Look, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

It looks bad aesthetically, right.

It's not gonna kill the plant, you know.

Just kinda decrease the vigor a little bit, but.

This time of the year I wouldn't be too concerned about it.

- We're gonna lose those leaves before too-- - Yeah, before too long, anyway.

Right.

And then if you catch some of those leaves when they're young and maturing, I mean, you could just pull those leaves off, you know.

But do practice good sanitation, I mean, 'cause they do contain spores, which is spread by wind and rain, right.

- Yes, so leaving those leaves on the ground could then potentially increase your chances for the future.

- Definitely it could.

All right, so Mr. D., Dr. Natalie, we're out of time.

It's been fun.

- Yeah, it's been fun.

- All right.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us a email or a 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.

If you want more information on blood-sucking bugs or the pineapple lily, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have links to Extension publications on each topic.

I'm Chris Cooper, be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]