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

I'm Chris Cooper.

We're getting toward the end of the growing season, and if you save some seeds now, you don't have to buy them next spring.

Also, garlic is a flavorful plant that you can grow over the 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 Celeste Scott.

Celeste is a UT Extension agent in Madison County, and Lucas Holman will be joining me later.

Good to see you, Celeste.

- Thank you.

- All right.

- It's a beautiful day.

- It's a beautiful day, we are out in the Family Plot Garden.

- Yes.

- So what are we gonna learn today?

- Well, I thought that we would take a little bit of time to talk about harvesting seed.

- Oh, goodie.

Okay.

- From our vegetable gardens, right?

We're getting late into the season, some of our plants are kind of passing their primes.

- Yes, yes.

- They're trying to hang on.

- They're trying.

- We've got a few more weeks until frost and so we thought that it might be fun just to talk a little bit about harvesting seed from vegetable plants, things to consider, and how to do that.

- All right, let's do it.

- Does that sound good?

- That sounds real good.

- Okay, so the first thing that I like to start with, talking about saving seeds for home gardeners in vegetable gardening-- - Vegetable gardening, okay.

- Is the fact that if you are growing plants that are hybrids, if you save seed from those, they're not going to come back true to type.

So if you are growing a Better Boy tomato, - Okay.

- That's a hybrid tomato.

- Okay, got it.

- Okay?

If you save seeds from that and replant them next year, it's not going to grow and retain all the same characteristics of that hybrid.

- That's good to know.

- Okay?

- Gotcha.

- So, you know, saving seeds is fun, but you need to do it with the right type of plants.

- Right, got it.

- So let's aim for, you know, heirloom-type plants, things that are open pollinated.

Stay away from our hybrid plants when we're harvesting seed for those.

- Okay, so what do we mean by open pollinated?

- Basically, open pollinated just means that it's okay if it gets pollen from other plants mixed into its genetics.

- Okay.

- Does that make sense?

- That makes sense.

- Okay.

And you can harvest those seeds and they will retain those characteristics of that plant.

Okay?

- Okay.

- So the next thing that I wanted to make sure that people knew is, if you're getting really serious about seed saving, you should only be growing one type of a certain plant so that you aren't mixing a lot of genetics, okay?

So you wouldn't wanna grow four different kinds of cucumbers in your garden where those pollens could be mixing with one another.

- Okay, makes sense.

- Or if you're going to, there's some techniques that we can use to isolate flowers, we can self-pollinate the flower, then put like sachet bags over that flower, note that you've already pollinated it and then you know that other insects aren't going to, you know, help with mixing pollen in the future.

So those are a few ways that we can keep our genetic streams clean.

Does that make sense?

- That makes sense.

That was good.

Good explanation.

- Or you can cage an entire plant.

I know some people - Oh my gosh.

- That will do that too, yeah.

- Really?

- Use like a fine, a wire mesh screen to exclude insects.

So there's lots of fun techniques and if you're wanting to know more about how to do that and collect seeds, one of the books that I reference quite often is called "Seed to Seed".

- "Seed to Seed".

- Yeah.

It's fun, I use it a lot, and so, there's lots of information out there on the internet obviously as well and that's just another resource available to people to use.

- Good.

But that just happens to be your favorite.

- Exactly, that's just my favorite.

- All right, good.

- So we've talked about types of plants, we've talked about keeping those genetic streams clean.

Now let's talk about what to look for in the fruits.

So I've decided that we'll separate, we'll talk about two different groups.

We'll talk about fruits that have, are in like wet, fleshy-type fruits.

And then we'll talk about those that are in dry out into like seed pods essentially.

- Good, okay.

- So let's just start out talking about this cucumber.

[both laughing] - Which is huge, by the way.

- This is a cucumber, believe me.

I promise.

So this is a overly ripe cucumber.

When we are harvesting in our vegetable gardens, you don't, you aren't looking for... You don't wanna harvest them in the stage where you would harvest them to eat, right You want them to be overripe.

That's gonna allow that fruit to mature.

It's gonna allow those seeds to continue to mature inside the fruit.

- Okay.

- Sometimes, the stages that we're harvesting vegetables at, the fruits aren't, the seeds aren't fully mature inside the fruit yet.

- Okay.

- So just to be on the safe side, let your fruits get overly mature and overly large.

- How about that?

Okay.

- So this is a huge cucumber.

- It is huge.

- And I just wanna show you in case you're not familiar with where the seeds are located inside a cucumber, obviously, - Got them laid out.

- They're here in the center.

- How 'bout that?

- So for these fleshy-type fruits, what you're gonna do is scoop out the seeds on the inside.

Obviously, you're gonna have a lot of other things.

You know, there's that gelatinous kind of material.

You're probably gonna have some of that flesh that gets scooped out with it as well and the best way to separate those is to put it into a jar with water and just shake that jar.

Just shake it, shake it, shake it, let it sit.

The viable seeds should sink to the bottom.

You can skim off any of the extra trash stuff that's at the top, pour out that water, put in clean water and do it again.

And continue to do that until your seeds are clean, you're satisfied that they're clean and then they need to be laid out and thoroughly dried quickly.

We don't want those seeds to allow to remain moist because that could induce germination.

And what we're trying to do is make sure that they have a very low moisture content for storage.

So you could dry 'em on a paper towel, but what would be even better is if it was laying on a breathable surface.

Think a wire mesh screen.

- Oh, okay.

- Have you ever seen those things you can lay out to put like your sweaters on to dry?

- Yes, yes.

- That are mesh?

- Like, that would be a perfect example 'cause you have airflow on the bottom, airflow on the top.

- Gotcha, gotcha.

- So that's the basic process for how you would treat these fleshy vegetables.

Now, some fleshy vegetables require fermentation to help those seeds be viable.

So let's think about a tomato when we're talking about natural fermentation.

If we were to allow a tomato to do its own thing, it's gonna drop this fruit and it's gonna rot right in place on the ground.

Those seeds as this fruit rots, this are undergoing fermentation inside this rotting fruit.

So that's happening naturally in nature.

Then those seeds that are in place, I know that folks have had tomatoes that just pop up from seed in the garden.

So what we're trying to mimic is what's happening naturally in nature, - Ah, I get it.

- But we're trying to do that in a controlled environment.

- Okay, I got you.

- So harvest your fruit after it started kind of rotting.

It shouldn't look pristine, like a slicing tomato, - Like that one does not look.

- Exactly.

And then we're gonna do a similar, we're gonna do a similar technique that we did with the cucumber.

This tomato doesn't have tons of seed.

It's a very fleshy-type tomato.

There's a few in there.

- There's a few.

- Yep, but you just go around and you'll scoop out those seeds into a jar with water and you'll just shake, shake, shake, shake and then, once you get all of the debris cleaned off, you're going to leave them in that water and allow them to ferment.

The amount of time that they need to ferment is different from fruit to fruit and some don't even require it.

So you know, you've gotta do your research on whatever the vegetable group family is that you're trying to deal with.

But just know that you can allow it to sit in that water in an airtight container.

That's the key.

It won't ferment if it's not an airtight container.

And just allow it to do its thing.

Once you've passed that period, you can drain the water off, lay 'em out, again, make sure they're thoroughly dried and then they'll be ready for storage.

- Okay.

Got it.

- Does that make sense?

- That makes sense.

This is good.

This is really good.

- Okay, so now we're gonna talk about some fruits and vegetables that might appear fleshy at first.

Right?

- Right?

- But if they're allowed to remain on the plant, they dry.

So this is actually what you want to do.

If you wanna harvest okra seed, you would not harvest the okra green and take it in and expect the seeds inside this okra to mature.

- Oh, look at that.

Okay.

- See these seeds, these seeds are much too green.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- Got it.

- And one way that you can test if a seed is too green or dry enough, is a smash test.

If you smash it and it actually smushes, it's too green.

- It's too green.

- It should shatter.

- Let me try one of those.

- Yeah, it should shatter if it has reached proper dryness.

- Okay.

Yeah, you're right.

- Or it may not smush at all.

- Yeah.

- And then you know you've reached a proper dry.

- Okay, gotcha.

- So just allow that pod to remain on the plant as long as possible until you see it start drying out like this and then you can see right here how this seam has already started to crack open.

That's called dehisce.

So that seed pod is naturally starting to open itself up, it wants to let its seeds out.

So you gotta keep an eye on it.

You wanna leave it out there long enough to dry, but not long enough to drop its seeds.

- Wow, I learned a new term, dehisce.

- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- Look at you.

Okay.

- And so look, we are just popping it open and you can see each one of these long corridors right here holds a row of seeds.

So that's kind of neat for okra.

But as we open it up- Oh no!

- Oh yeah, and they start to fall out a little bit.

- They start to fall out.

Maybe I can get a better picture here.

So we can see here...

Here, try to squash that okra seed.

That's hard.

- Oh yeah.

- There's no way that seed's not gonna smush, right?

- Yeah, that's hard.

- So we know that that has reached proper dryness.

It's gonna be super easy to separate and collect this seed.

And we know that that is the stage we need to do that at.

- Okay.

- Same principles apply to like, beans and peas.

- Okay, I can see that.

- That we just talked about with the okra.

Allow them to stay on the plant till those pods begin to get papery.

When you shake the plant, you should hear rattling and you know that it's ready.

- Okay, got it.

- Corn is the last one that we wanna talk about.

It's a little different.

It doesn't fall into either one of those categories, but still, if you've grown some corn that you're wanna harvest the seed for, we need to allow that to fully mature.

Right?

When we're harvesting corn to eat, it's juicy, moist.

- Yeah.

- We want these kernels to be very dry, wrinkly, almost.

- [laughing] Wrinkly.

- Try this, try to smash one of those.

- Oh.

- See if it'll... Ah, it won't smash.

- Ah, not even close.

- Yeah, even if you use your nail, mm, you're just not getting in there.

- Mm mm, not even close.

- So that's how you know that you've reached your proper harvest time for harvesting those seed corn.

- Okay, well thank you, Celeste.

- And so that kind of sums things up when we're talking about fleshy vegetables versus vegetables that dry down and can be stored and can be stored that way.

And hopefully, this'll get folks on their journey.

- I think this will.

All right, thank you much.

We appreciate that demonstration.

It's real good.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] Let's take a look at this corn kernel, which has been infected by a disease.

It's actually a fungus.

This is called corn smut.

The conditions that cause corn smut is gonna be poor soil fertility, it could be wet, rainy weather, it could be extreme heat.

Now, how do you combat corn smut?

Watch your fertility, is gonna be the one thing that you can do.

The second thing that you can do, resistant varieties.

So do your homework on those resistant varieties.

Make sure you get your soil tested, right?

You want to get that soil fertility up to where it needs to be to grow good, healthy corn.

So what I'm gonna do here is actually remove this corn plant, all right?

This corn kernel because it has the smut on it because you don't want the spores to spread by wind or rain to some of your other corn kernels that are in your corn plot.

[upbeat country music] All right, Lucas, let's talk a little bit about garlic 'cause I understand you really like garlic, don't you?

- Love it.

[laughing] - Uh huh.

How much do you love it?

- It's basically used as a condiment in my household now.

- Okay, so you do love it?

- Every night.

- Every night.

- Yeah.

- All right, well look, let's talk about some good garlic cultivars, okay?

- Tennessee is a great line because we can grow either softneck or hardneck cultivars and if we were kind of discussing the difference between the two, softneck cultivars of garlic need to be grown in Louisiana, Florida, Texas, some of the more warmer regions.

Now, hardneck need to be grown above kind of zone seven.

So Tennessee is basically right on the line for being able to grow both.

Some of my favorite ones that I've grown over the past few years, my favorite one is kind of pictured all over the table here is Purple Glazer.

It's a hardneck variety of garlic.

The only problem with hardneck varieties of garlic is that they don't last long in storage.

So a lot of the ones we get commercially at the store, they're all softneck because they'll last in storage upwards of a year.

hardneck cultivars of garlic will last only about five to six months, so by the time I get around to November, I'll usually, whatever's left over, put it back into the ground.

Some other ones that people really like around here are Chesnok Red, and one that I really like this year that's pretty warm whenever it's eaten raw is called Bogatyr.

- Bogatyr, hmm.

- So you'll see a lot of different heirlooms and a lot of different companies selling all sorts of different kinds and I would hate to take a guess at how many cultivars there are available today, but there are quite a few and Tennessee's blessed that we can grow any of them.

- Oh, so that's a good deal.

- Yep.

- Now let's tell the people, what's the difference though?

Hardneck and softneck.

Why do we call 'em hard or softnecks?

- All right, kind of showing right here.

Hardneck actually develops a flower.

So down the center of the bulb, you'll actually have a flower that'll pull up and twist.

Most people who are growing it break off that flower because it sends more energy to make a bigger bulb and we're growing garlic just for the bulb.

We don't, I'm not a huge fan of the flower to begin with.

- All right.

- We want more garlic.

- That's right.

- So the softneck cultivars don't develop a flower.

So you actually, if you cut 'em diagonally kind of across the bulb, you'll see that a hardneck has a long stem down the middle and all the ones that we get commercially at the store have no kind of stem down the center of the bulb so they don't develop a flower.

So that's the main difference between hardneck and softneck cultivars.

One develops a flower, which is the hardneck, and softneck does not develop it.

- Good stuff.

Good stuff.

- Yep.

- All right, now how do we properly plant these garlic, though?

- All right, this is one of those crops that's so easy to grow.

- Is it easy?

- Oh, wouldn't believe it.

- Oh, we like easy.

- I think more people need to grow it because whenever people ask me, "I wanna start a garden," they never ask me, "I wanna high maintenance garden, what can I grow?"

- You're right.

- They want low maintenance type things to grow.

- That's right.

- And I think at the top of the list is garlic.

- Okay.

- So if we're doing this, because really there's really not any pest diseases, - That's good.

- Nothing really eats it.

- That's good.

- It has rare diseases.

So really nothing bothers it to begin with.

If you really can't grow this, you probably shouldn't be gardening to begin with, actually.

- All right.

- The proper planting in Tennessee, we need to plant it about October to November.

Typically, and I'm actually near Nashville, I like to plant it about the first weekend of November.

So you'll actually see it develop kind of a green stem through winter, frost, snow, anything throughout the wintertime, and it will still do fine.

- Oh, that's good.

- So about the first weekend of November, the last weekend of October is an excellent time to plant garlic in Tennessee.

- pH range, does that matter much?

- It likes a little bit slightly acidic, so if you read some of the research on it, if you can get it 5.8 to 6.0, it'll do fine, actually.

But most Tennessee soils are very fine for growing garlic.

- Okay.

Now here's another question somebody may be thinking.

What about fertilizer or organic matter?

Compost or what would you recommend using?

- Anytime organic matter you can add to the soil is fantastic and I think it always helps out with aeration because what we're trying to do on this is we're trying to get root growth in the winter time.

So typically when someone asks me, "What do I need to fertilize it with?"

Most Tennessee soils have phosphorus and potassium already in it, but the only thing we need to add is nitrogen, but if we add too much nitrogen, we're gonna get beautiful foliage and no bulbs.

- No bulbs, right.

- So typically whenever someone asks me, it's usually about a half a pound per 100 square feet - Okay.

- Of just nitrogen.

So phosphorus and potassium are typically there, but a soil test is the best way to tell what you got in your ground to begin with.

- That's right.

- So that would be the best way.

And you do not fertilize after April because May and June is when we're focusing on bulbs.

If we fertilize with a lot of nitrogen, we're gonna get all this excess growth and we don't want that in May, we want bulb growth.

- There you go.

Okay.

All right, so how about harvesting?

- All right, what I do is I typically wait for the plant, the bottom few leaves to go brown.

When I have five or six still green leaves on the top, that's when I dig it up because each leaf represents a shell around the bulb.

- Ha ha, okay.

- And I want five to six shells around the bulb to last in storage.

So whenever I get five to six green leaves still on top of the the plant, I dig it and I hang it in an open air barn out of the sun to dry.

So I'll actually tie 'em in bunches together and throw 'em over the rafters in the barn and I want wind to get all the way around it.

I don't want that to be in sun.

We've had some people put it in their garage and garages get really hot.

It's best if you've got a back porch that's outta the sun to hang it on that back porch and it'll keep the vampires away too, if you have issues with that.

[both laughing] - That's right.

Hey, you can't talk about garlic without talking about vampires, right?

- That's exactly right.

Everybody mentions it.

- That's right.

So what about storage?

- Storage.

- Where can we store it?

- Once it actually gets cured, so this is one, once it's actually being cured inside my barn, I actually go through and I cut this off and I'll actually cut the roots off and I will hang it around my house in little bitty netted bags because it stores fine once it's actually dried.

Your goal is to get it dried before you bring it inside your house because a lot of people's houses are really humid and if you bring it inside the house, once it's been in the garden for a long time and it's still got some moisture in it, it can rot.

So we always tell people before you bring it inside your house, let it completely dry or cure and then it'll last until you want to plant it or eat it.

- Wow, so completely dry.

- It needs to be completely dry before you bring it inside because people, some people's houses are really humid, some are cooler than others, and it kind of varies in temperature and humidity.

So we always say, make sure this is completely dry and you can break some of the leaves to see if it's completely dry and then just cut the top off and throw it away and then I just think it's best to store it in little bitty netted bags.

Not in plastic.

- Not in plastic.

- Not in plastic.

Yeah.

- And why not in plastic?

- Because it'll rot.

- It'll rot.

Okay.

- Because if there's any moisture left in there, we want it to to not rot.

- Right.

That's right.

You're growing these perfect garlic, we don't want it to rot.

Right?

Because we want people to grow more garlic.

- That's right.

- Okay.

Now let's talk about some excellent resources for more there information about garlic.

- I actually got hooked up growing garlic whenever I was working in nursery in Cookville and there was an owner there named Jay Frankenfield, and he was really into garlic.

So when I worked there, oh, it's been years ago, he said, "You need to just start growing it," because I grew up in a household that was deprived of garlic.

My mother hated garlic growing up, so I never had it until I moved out on my own.

- Right, right.

- So when I moved out and discovered the flavors of garlic and really enjoyed it.

But the best book that I've found is actually put out by Timber Press.

This one's called "The Complete Book of Garlic".

And it's written by Ted Meredith.

But it goes through the sections of storage, cultivars, and it goes through kind of in the back section of all the different cultivars that he's been able to find and how they grow.

So it's probably 150 different cultivars in the back of this book and it's a really good picture and description of each one that's available and we're still discovering a lot of the heirloom varieties from some families whenever they come over to the US.

- So there are resources about garlic?

- Plenty of resources.

There's plenty of books and this is probably my favorite book so far.

- Okay.

Thank you, Lucas.

- Thank you.

- All right, appreciate that.

- Appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] - One of the techniques that I like to use for capturing seed before they reach full maturity in the garden and before the wind blows them where it will is to use little mesh sachets.

And essentially all you have to do is pop this over the seed head before it is fully matured, tighten it at the base, pull the draw string, tie it tightly, and you're good to go.

I like using these because they're breathable, it's okay if it rains on them, it's going to dry and then once that seed pod begins to open up naturally and it's at the proper time for harvest, we can just break that entire seed pod off the plant and bring it inside for separation.

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

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- All right, these are some great questions.

- Give 'em to us.

- All right.

She's ready to go.

All right.

So here's our first viewer email.

"I have a house surrounded by mountain laurel bushes.

"Can they be cut back?

"When is the time to do it?

"How far back can I go?

"They have gotten so big that I can't see anything from my porch anymore.

Thanks."

And this is Gil in Western North Carolina.

- Mm.

- So Celeste, yeah, they got real big.

He can't see from his porch anymore.

- Yes, I bet they're beautiful.

- We want him to see from his porch.

- I bet the plants are beautiful.

- Yeah, probably beautiful flowers too, as well.

- But I understand that it's not conducive to how he needs them to be behavin'.

So a couple tips, yes, you certainly can prune these mountain laurels.

The best time to prune our flowering woody shrubs is gonna be while they're dormant.

I realize that they, you don't have a spring bloom, so you may lose some of bloom that you had anticipated, right, since we're doing some pruning.

But if you're needing to do significant pruning, you know, to large established woody plants, dormant season would be a great time to do that to reduce the size.

We don't wanna take off anymore of about a third of the total, you know, canopy of that plant when you're drawing that back down.

And even if that's not enough, say that removing a third of that plant isn't enough to get it down below your porch, just do a third this year, let it regrow, and then let's do the same thing again next year and just work on it, right?

So that we're bringing that canopy down shortly instead of just rejuvenation pruning where you just chop the whole thing off.

That's super stressful.

- Yes, yes.

- Very, very stressful.

- Shock to plant to death, yeah, for the most part.

- And we don't wanna mess up a plant that's doing, already looking beautiful.

It's just a little big.

- Yeah, it's looking good.

All right, so we can prune those down.

So thank you, Gil.

We appreciate that.

All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"No matter what type of tomato plants that I buy, "I can't get them to grow fruit "bigger than three inches across.

"Is there anything I can do "to get some of my tomatoes to produce a larger fruit?

"Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks," and this is Willard.

All right, Willard, so we're gonna throw this to Celeste.

You have any suggestions for Willard?

- I do.

- 'Cause he wants to get 'em, you know, big.

- I was brainstorming this one.

So my first recommendation, he said no matter what kind he plants and I don't know what kind he's planting, but if he is planting indeterminate varieties of tomatoes, indeterminate varieties grow and grow and grow all the way until frost, so they could bear more crops of fruit than an indeterminate type tomato could.

Okay?

- Right.

- So if we're growing indeterminate vines, we need to, which produce suckers and have lots and lots and lots of fruit throughout the season, if we can do some suckering on that plant to reduce the number of blooms that are present at one time, you have the potential to make the fruits that you leave on the vine bigger.

Does that make sense?

- Yeah, that makes sense.

- So your plant gets to use those nutrients instead of giving this bloom a little and that bloom a little and this bloom a little.

It's gonna pick the ones that you leave.

And that's where it's dumping all the energy.

So that could be one technique for trying to get larger fruit.

A second technique I think would actually be paying more attention to the fertility that they're using.

So it could be in a deficit situation where they could be overdoing it.

So if we're over applying nitrogen, which is the first number in your three digit analysis of a fertilizer, then you're gonna get lots of vegetative growth and your plant might look great.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- You're like, "It looks beautiful, but I can't get big fruit."

That plant is focusing too much on vegetative production and it's, you know, not putting any energies towards fruit development.

Or if they are under fertilizing, you're just not getting growth.

So you don't have enough energy to support vegetative or fruit production on the plant and it's gonna put anything that, any of that energy that it's making for itself through photosynthesis, it's just gonna put into survival instead of actually making that fruit.

So I would say we just need to, you know, evaluate what the fertility program is, make sure that we're not overdoing nitrogen and that we've got a good phosphorus, which is your middle number.

That typically helps with fruiting and flowering.

So I think if we paid a little more attention to that, we might be able to get that fruit size up.

- I have nothing to say.

I think Celeste got it.

[both laughing] - Oh, I was like, what?

- That was good.

Yeah, so suckering is something that I thought about as well and fertility, right?

- Good.

- So I think that would work.

Maybe a little compost, you know?

- Oh, yeah.

- Maybe a little compost.

- Yes, compost is never bad.

- Compost is not a bad thing thing.

- No, it's not.

- So maybe that'll help as well, so thank you for that question, Mr. Willard.

We appreciate that.

All right, so Celeste.

- Yes.

- Fun as always.

- That's it already?

- That's it.

- Oh my goodness.

- Can you believe it?

- Good questions.

- All so good.

Thank you much.

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 find out more about collecting and saving the seed from your garden, 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]