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

Think you don't have enough space to grow vegetables?

There are some compact plants available now.

Also, if you want to kill weeds without pulling, you use a herbicide.

Today we're going to go over the basics.

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 today.

All right.

- Nice to be here!

- So, Dr. Natalie, we're talking about compact vegetables.

You brought a nice display-- - I did!

I brought a few samples.

- Of those compact vegetables.

- With us here today.

We give a lot of face time for tomatoes and peppers.

There are a lot of great options in compact tomatoes and peppers these days.

We have the baby snackers, we even have some beautiful, light, sweet peppers here, these are called Candy Cane.

Even the leaves, actually, are variegated, these may be one of my favorite plants in the trial this year.

And even compact eggplants, these are called a Hansel, there's also Gretel, but it's white, it matches the Patio Baby.

So we have lots of nice 18 to 24-inch plants that can go in raised beds, containers, very easily.

- Okay.

Now can we talk a little bit more about those tomatoes that you grew?

- Let's talk about those little tomatoes.

- Let's do that.

- So we really have some really cool options in the ranges of small-fruited tomatoes.

There are very compact 12, 18-inch plants.

I think we have a good picture of one that's called Little Bing, it's a determinate tomato that fruits heavily, it can bear really well for a short period of time, if you're looking for a little bit larger fruit and a little bit larger plant, Homeslice is also a nice compact plant.

And then there are even some dwarf indeterminate tomatoes.

- Are you gettin' this, Mr. D.?

- There's more indeterminate.

- Keeps on growing-- - And keeps on producing flowers-- - Still little but it gets bigger.

- Right, its leaves are just really close together.

And so we have some of those.

Now these are not gonna produce the fruit that you would expect out of a Brandywine, or one of our eight foot tall indeterminates, but they can produce over a longer period of time, produce nice Beefsteak-looking fruit, and perform well in a container.

- So that's the big one, they have to do better in a container, then.

I've not had any luck at all trying to grow regular tomatoes in a container, but the small, dwarf tomato ought to work better in a container.

- Yeah, and so you'll still need a pretty good soil volume to get 'em to perform well, but you don't have to do near as much work to string 'em up.

- What about soil for growing these tomatoes?

Does it matter?

- For the most part, my trials are actually in soil, so they can perform well in high-quality garden soil, but most of the time in containers, we'll think of well-drained, organic mix, a pro mix, mixed with some compost, or a little bit of pine bark chips and things like that to get a little bit larger particle size, pro mix, peat, can compact over the course of a season if you have it in a large container.

- Good stuff, now what about the peppers?

Let's talk about the peppers.

- So the peppers, I already mentioned a little bit about Candy Cane, variegated fruit and leaves.

Now that'll be available on the market next year.

And then we have some of the baby bells, so this is called Eros.

And then some of the other cool options that we have on the market are combination plants that are both ornamental and edible.

And so these are called Pretty and Sweet, so you can see, a nice, compact, bright small pepper, but they're also on a plant that has variegated color fruit, a nice, compact plant that could be great in a container.

We also have some hot peppers called Blackhawk, Black Pearl, they produce really small hot fruit with dark leaves, so there are a lot of options, not just for the back porch, for the front porch too.

- That's pretty good.

Now you have some, what, eggplant?

- Yeah.

These are Hansel, and they're paired with Gretel, these are about a two foot tall plant that produce these nice, small fruit.

Patio Baby's another example of an eggplant, I think we have a picture of it.

But it has a really small egg-shaped fruit, two or three inches, and it's ready for harvest, so these are, you know, productive over the course of a season, but very compact and good for containers.

- Wow.

So folks do really enjoy growing these plants, right?

- You can get a pretty good selection for your kitchen right there on the back porch.

- Now when are all these gonna be available, though, for folks to actually start planting and growing?

- So, Candy Cane's an example of one that'll be on the market in 2018, but Patio Baby actually won the All-American selections in 2015, so it's available on the market now.

Pretty and Sweet's a recent All-American selections winner, so most of these, the Little Bing, the Homeslice, most of those are on the market now.

So folks can order the seeds.

You may not be able to find 'em in a garden center, this may be a thing where you'll wanna start your own transplants.

- So these have been trialed throughout the state, or, how are you working on them?

- Yeah, so for some of our tomato and pepper plants, we have, I do trials in Knoxville, but also, we have several of these being trialed in demo gardens, Master Gardener demo gardens across the state.

So I grew a lot of transplants and shipped 'em out to those places so that they can give us feedback on what they're like across the state.

Just because it does well in Knoxville doesn't mean it'll do well in Memphis or-- - Exactly right.

Mr. D. knows about the different zones that we have here.

- And another one of the cool things that we're working on for, we've kind of pilot-tested it this year, but we're going a little bit bigger next year, will be a home garden variety trial.

So that we have the opportunity for people in their own backyards to try combinations of cultivars that we know perform relatively well, but we really wanna know what they do across Tennessee.

So we'll just send 'em matched sets of pairs of cultivars of any of the cucumber, zucchini, a lot of beans that they wanna try and they'll let us know at the end of the season how they do.

- Now tell me this, how did you go about choosing these cultivars though?

- Well, initially, these selections were made based on disease resistance, visual appeal, right-- - (Chris) Gotta look good.

- Yeah.

- They look like Christmas ornaments.

(laughing) - Can't ignore the visual appeal.

And how well they fit into spaces, so we're thinking about, do these work for raised beds, or are these better for a gardener that has a larger home garden plot, so those are the kinds of feedback that we're askin' from folks.

What do they look like, what do they taste like, how early did they fruit, and general aspects on yield.

We're not askin' everybody to send us back data sheets.

- So how has that feedback been though, have you gotten back some of that feedback already?

- Yeah, we've gotten back some of that feedback, and folks have been excited to give us their opinions, and so by the end of September, we'll be getting a lot of those notes back and from that, then we'll make the decision over what our cultivars are that we grow next year.

So we'll keep some of the same ones, things that performed well, but if we have some that didn't go over very well across Tennessee, we'll swap 'em out, and grow some things that people are more interested in.

So we want this to be dynamic, it changes through time to suit people's needs.

- Good deal.

I think we even have Mr. D. convinced now.

- He's gonna be a participant next year, I can tell.

I think he's gonna be an evaluator.

- I'm into edible landscaping, yeah.

I like being able to eat things I try to take care of.

- See there you go.

- Yeah.

We always want the payoff.

- They got one now.

Appreciate it, Dr. Natalie.

- Yeah, thanks.

- That's good stuff, good stuff.

[upbeat country music] - The annuals we had planted earlier this spring have not done well.

Now, the Salvia looks pretty good.

The petunias do not seem to like to be under irrigation.

It's pretty squishy wet here, and they don't like to be wet.

So, they have not done well.

The few marigolds that are left are doing pretty good on the sunnier side of the bed.

But, salvia likes this condition.

Petunias, not so much.

[upbeat country music] Alright, Mr. D., we talk a lot about herbicides, so let's give the folks herbicide basics, and some terms involved as well.

- That's right.

Let's just start out by saying, you know, all herbicides are pesticides, but not all pesticides are herbicides, right?

Okay, you know, all Volkswagens are cars, but not all cars are Volkswagens, right?

So herbicide is anything that'll kill a plant.

And there are several different herbicides out there.

We have pre-emergent herbicides that will actually prevent a weed from coming up, or when it comes up, it'll kill it and the process of it germinating and coming up, and then there are post-emergent herbicides and those are the herbicides that you apply to weeds or to plants to kill that are already up and growing.

A couple of examples of pre-emergent herbicides would be Prowl, pendimethalin, or Treflan, or they're examples of pre-emergent herbicides that you put out there early.

Usually earlier in the year.

And some of the pre-emergent herbicides, for lawns, you'll put out in the fall to take care of the winter weeds, things like that.

Post-emergent herbicides are the ones that, you know, you've got weeds growin' out there and you go out there and you try to kill 'em.

Glyphosate, Round-Up, is an example of a post-emergent herbicide, Poast, sethoxydim is another, and there are a lot of, probably more post-emergent herbicides than there are pre-emergent herbicides.

It's good to use both of 'em, to get the best results, if you use a combination of pre and post-emergent herbicide you'll probably do a better job.

There are contact herbicides that kill a plant when you spray it on there, Gramoxone is an example of a contact herbicide that, you know, you can cover half of a leaf, and spray half of it with Gramoxone, and that half of that leaf that you spray will die and the other half that you cover will not.

Then there are systemic herbicides, and these are herbicides that are taken up by the green tissue of the plant, and translocates throughout the plant and will kill the entire plant, glyphosate is an example of a systemic herbicide.

Trade names are Roundup, is a trade name, Poast is a trade name, and the active ingredient of Roundup is glyphosate, and the active ingredient of Poast is sethoxydim, and many times there are a lot of different trade names for one active ingredient.

Glyphosate, there are probably hundreds of products out there now that have glyphosate in them.

Same thing with sethoxydim, there are a lot of different, Vantage is another example of a trade name of sethoxydim.

Roundup is even, it's a Monsanto product, but now there's a Roundup that doesn't have glyphosate in it.

- For lawns, yeah.

- So you've gotta be careful, you gotta read the label, it's very important with any of the herbicides, you read the label.

There are different categories of toxicity with herbicides, and some of them are pretty toxic to humans, if you ingest them, some of them are toxic if you ingest them and they're not toxic dermally, some of 'em are toxic dermally, you get 'em on your skin and it can hurt you.

Again, the label will explain that.

Let me give you an idea of the difference in the toxicity levels, some of the herbicides here.

Here we are.

There are only a couple of highly toxic herbicides that are out there on the market, and I'm not sure that they're still on the market.

Vapam was a soil...

I'm trying to think of the term, it was a soil sterilant, for nematodes, that you put in the ground to basically control nematodes, and I'm not sure Vapam's still on the market.

The active ingredient is metham.

Sodium arsenate is another one that we used to use to control insects in cotton.

- (Natalie) Try to figure out what might be in that.

- I don't think that's on the market anymore.

But those are highly toxic herbicides.

And highly toxic herbicides on the label, will have a signal word.

There's signal words that very briefly describe how toxic a herbicide is.

And other pesticides also, but "Danger/Poison", with skull and crossbones, that is the most toxic of the herbicide, if you see that, lock it away somewhere.

And you probably can't buy it as a homeowner, unless you have a restricted-use permit.

- It's mostly been the issue of people happening upon something that was still in an old building or something, and that's when they need to be careful.

- If you see a skull and crossbones, just kinda stay away from it, it's probably not a pirate ship.

[laughing] There are moderately toxic herbicides, and the signal word for that is "Warning".

The difference between highly toxic and moderately toxic is the lethal dose of highly toxic herbicide or LD 50, is the lethal dose required to kill 50% of the animals in the population, it's probably mostly rats.

We don't check it with humans.

But highly toxic is less than 50.

And will kill half of the rats in the population.

If you've got 50 rats out there, this should kill 25 of those rats.

Moderately toxic herbicides, it's 50 to 500.

And examples of things that you and I are around everyday that have that level of toxicity are caffeine, and if you have that much caffeine, gasoline, kerosene.

Some herbicides are Avenge, Aquathol, some aquatic herbicides carry that much toxicity, which, to mammalian toxicity.

But mammalian toxicity is different from fish organisms.

So some of the things are more toxic to us than they are to aquatic organisms.

Slightly toxic herbicides, and there a lot more of those than there are of the highly toxics.

The LD 50 for them is 500 to 5,000 milligrams per kilograms body weight and signal word on the label would just be "Caution".

So be careful.

Probable lethal dose for a 150-pound person is 1 ounce to one pint or one pound, could, if you ingest it.

So, I mean, I try to avoid eating those most of the time.

[laughing] - Infrequent.

- But aspirin is something that carries that same lethal dose designation.

Table salt carries that same lethal designation.

But herbicides, Basagran, Command, 2,4-D, 2,4-DB, sethoxydim, Poast, we mentioned that.

Dicamba, carries that same level of toxicity.

Vinegar is another something on our tables that carries the same, it's acetic acid.

- Which often comes up when we talk about what are some potentially organic herbicides.

- Vinegar's the first thing that comes up.

- That's acetic acid, so yeah.

And then almost non-toxic herbicides, they carry and LD 50 of greater than 5,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Lethal dose of an almost non-toxic herbicide for a 150-pound person is more than 1 pint or 1 pound.

That's a pretty full meal.

- Yeah, that's a lot.

(laughs) - Roundup, glyphosate, Touchdown, Rodeo, are a couple of the products that have glyphosate in them, Arsenal, Chopper, Scepter, Pursuit.

There's just pages, Treflan, Princep.

So most of the herbicides that you can buy on the shelf fit within the almost non-toxic, most of 'em are in that category.

- 'Cause most of those contain 2,4-D for the most part, or dicamba, which would be your post-emerge herbicides.

- But one thing I wanna mention, in this last list I listed that are almost non-toxic, I kinda scanned over that, and I saw two herbicides in there that are restricted-use pesticides, which it's not because of their mammalian toxicity, it's because they will very easily go off-site, and get a rain right after you put it out, can kill desirable plants.

Lot of different herbicides out there, just read the label, that's the take-home point, read and follow the label.

- Thank you, Mr. D., that's good stuff.

Read and follow the label folks.

Appreciate that, Mr. D. [upbeat country music] - Looking at our blueberry here, looks like it kinda putting the brakes on, getting ready for wintertime.

Got a little weed here, a little tree that's trying to grow.

I'm gonna get that out of the way.

Not gonna really do anything to it at this point.

I am gonna prune the dead limbs out of...

It's got two or three dead limbs here.

I don't why they died, but we're gonna go on and get them out of the way.

[pruners snip] That's one.

Gonna do the same thing with this other limb over here.

[pruners snip] And then we have one, like a four-inch shoot here, and I'm not even gonna get it.

I'm gonna try to stay out of the green tissue.

Just take that off.

I did a pretty good job with that.

And I'm just gonna leave that alone.

If the leaves are starting to turn, change color, days are getting shorter.

We're getting closer to fall.

One thing you definitely do not want to do is apply fertilizer right now.

We don't want a flush of new growth, because, believe or not, in a few weeks we're probably gonna get a killing frost.

It's 90 degrees out here today.

We're probably gonna get a kiiling frost within three weeks, or so.

But, in the fall of the year, we don't do a lot with blueberries.

[upbeat country music] Alright, this is our Q & A session.

Dr. Natalie, you jump in and help us out, all right?

Here's our first viewer email, and these are some good questions, by the way.

Here's our first one.

"I have had overnight company several times "in my flower beds.

What animal did this?"

And this is from Ms. Katie.

So get a good look at that there, Mr. D. What animal do you think may have caused that?

- Hmm.

- Hmm.

- That is a good question.

Does she have a game camera?

[laughing] With something like that, I'd like to put a game camera up out there and see if you could figure out what it really is.

But the first thing that crossed my mind, because of the shape of the holes, and the neatness around it and all that, was an armadillo.

- (Natalie) And the size.

- And the size of it.

But squirrels will do the same thing, they're very curious and they're looking for stuff, and they can do the same thing.

I would, if it's an armadillo, you should have some other holes probably out in your yard.

Where they're, 'cause mostly they're looking for grubworms and earthworms and things like that, and so you should have other holes out in the dirt, or out in other areas of your yard.

If it's just there in your bed-- - (Natalie) Might think something else.

- Squirrel came swingin' by and thought that, remembered that he left a nut there last winter or something, [laughing] and is checkin' it out.

- He's comin' by to check it out.

- But really, to answer your question, I'm not sure.

But it's probably either a squirrel or armadillo.

- All right, so there you have it Miss Kathy, I hope that helps you out.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

Says, "Hello, Dr. Chris.

"Can you tell from these pictures what the problem is "with my three miniature crape myrtles?

This started happening in the last two weeks."

And this is from Eloise in Cookville.

So she has pictures there, crape myrtles.

Looks like to me, we definitely se e a lot of honeydew.

So the first thing that jumped in my mind, Crape Myrtle aphids, what you think?

- Yeah, and I would agree with that.

I mean, it's hard to really see any insects for certain, but looking at the honeydew, and the presence of insects on the leaves.

And one thing that I'm sure you'd wanna point out is the difference between the leaves and the stem.

- Right.

- Where we're seeing that insect feeding.

- If they were on the stems, I'm glad you mentioned that, they're on the stems, of course, crape myrtle bark scale.

Bark scale.

But these are on the leaves, which makes me think aphids.

- With a heavy presence of bark scale, you could see some of that honeydew on lower leaves.

- (Chris) You sure could.

- But we're seeing the insects themselves.

- (Chris) Actually on the leaves.

- Yeah.

- And you see the honeydew on the top, too.

- Right.

- Right.

And it's pretty well covered there in those pictures, so that's a problem.

- Yeah.

That looks like some pretty heavy feeding.

- Think that's a problem.

Get out the hose, you can knock 'em off with a stream of water.

Or you can use the insecticidal soaps, there's some oils you can use, horticultural oil, Neem oil is something else.

- Neem, extracts from Neem, the Azadirachta type products are all-- - Those work well.

- Soft.

- And then lastly, Mr. D.?

- Systemic insecticides.

- Systemic insecticides, right, imidacloprid comes to mind, as something that you could use for that, do read and follow the label.

- Right.

- I think all of those could work.

- Several paths, depending on your preference.

- That's right.

- 'Cause it looked like she had several, in that area, I think she said three miniatures.

- Yeah, looks like they're planted close together, so a drench could be effective.

- Yeah, 'cause it can get all three of 'em.

All right, so there you have it Ms. Eloise, we appreciate the question from Cookville, thank you much.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What is the best way to germinate and grow ginkgo trees from seed?"

And this is from Chuck right here in Memphis.

So look Doc, he wants to grow ginkgo trees, right?

- Patient, patient folks who are interested in growing trees from seed, and I must admit, I'm really more of a just, graft it and give me something a little bit larger.

- I'm all for going to the nursery and pickin' out what you want and goin' home and transplantin' it.

- Many of the ginkgos that we buy may actually well be grafted, 'cause for the most part we're trying to select male trees, because of the well, putrid, sometimes, scent of the female, with their seeds.

- Yeah, you'll definitely know if it's a female tree or not.

For sure.

- After a while.

- After a while, after a while, definitely right about that.

But, you know, I actually sat in a couple of propagation classes with some of the gardens.

If you wanna do it by seed, of course-- - (Natalie) Certainly possible.

- It's possible.

We're talking about warm stratification, cold stratification though.

So you'd have to of course, separate the seed from the fruit itself.

Put the seeds in a bag with some sphagnum moss, the sphagnum moss has to be moist, of course.

Ziploc bag, shake 'em up, room temperature, warm stratification, right?

sixty-eight, eighty degrees.

Then after a couple of weeks you put that in the bottom of your refrigerator where you keep your vegetables, for the most part.

There's your cold stratification.

So anywhere between, what, 30 and 40 degrees?

- Yeah.

I think a normal refrigerator would normally be appropriate.

- Right, and you have to do that for weeks and weeks.

- Simulating a-- - Winter.

- Fall and winter.

- Right, right, that's exactly what you're doing, and from there, you know, depending on who you talk to, or what publication you read it, like 10 to 12 weeks.

Then they germinate, you can either put 'em in the potting soil or you can put 'em outside.

There you have it.

But again, you have to be patient with that, Mr. Chuck.

- (Natalie) It's possible.

- It's possible, patience, but it is possible.

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

Thanks for bein' here today.

- Alright, it's been fun.

- Good stuff.

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, we've posted more information about herbicides and compact vegetables on familyplotgarden.com.

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]