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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Ornamental grasses give movement and beauty to the winter garden, but before spring they need to be cut down.

Today we'll show you how.

Also we will talk about different kinds of mulch.

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 Joellen Dimond.

Joellen's Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis.

And Jim Crowder will be joining me later.

All right, Joellen.

We're here on the grounds of the University of Memphis.

Your playground, right?

- Yes.

- So today we're gonna talk about cutting back ornamental grasses.

- Yes.

- My first question to you is, what kind of grass is this?

- Oh, this is a beautiful landscape grass called Adagio.

And this is a great time of year to cut grasses, because look, they're all dead.

And they're starting to break up in the wind.

So we wanna get the foliage off of them before it starts greening up.

And you wanna make sure that you wear gloves for this, because if you take one of these grass blades and pull against it, it's gonna cut your finger.

'Cause they're very sharp and all of the grasses are like that.

There are different levels of cutting on smaller grasses.

You can tie 'em up with a bungee cord and cut 'em down by hand.

But for these large grasses, we're gonna use these head shears.

These happen to be gas.

They've got a guard on them.

And please follow all of the rules and regulations.

- Yes, please.

- For using power equipment with these.

Because these are old and established, they're much larger, so we're gonna cut with those first.

And I would like to introduce Sheila and Gerald.

They're gonna come in, and demonstrate how we cut these grasses.

This is very old.

It started out as a three gallon co ntainer and it has grown over the years.

This place was planted in the early '90s.

So this is fairly old grass.

The first thing they're gonna do is they're gonna take off a little bit at a time.

'Cause you never know when you're gonna come into green tissue.

But we've had some cold weather, the tissue is probably pretty much gone.

There won't be any green growing up in the plant.

We taper the edges 'cause when the new growth comes out, you won't see the old stalks coming out.

They'll be inside the plant so you won't see them.

You take off a little bit at a time, 'cause you can always take more off, but you can't put stuff back.

So we're trying to shape it, taking it down so that it's tapered at the edges, and a little bit taller in the middle.

We will leave the old growth.

So it'll decompose throughout the year and it'll help add structure to the new growing grass and keep it nice and round like it is.

- All right, Gerald.

That's a good job, man.

- It's a good job.

- That's a good job.

So, Joellen, I'm gonna ask you this though.

So how do you determine how low you want this to be cut back?

- Well, we wanna put it at an angle here, because when the grass comes back out, because it's a big grass, this is all one ornamental grass.

The center older stalks will hold up the new growth.

So it'll make it nice and round.

And when we cut it closer down here at the edge, that's because you won't see the dead stalks then when the new growth comes out.

- Okay.

- That's a great job.

- It all works.

- It all works.

- Thank you all.

- You're welcome.

- So now we're gonna look at some smaller ones?

- Now we're gonna go look at some smaller grasses and show you how to cut those with the bungee cord and some hand shears.

- Hand shears.

All right.

All right, Joellen.

So who do we have here?

- This is Heavy Metal, but it's small.

It's only been planted about a year and a half.

So this is what we can do when you have smaller grasses and not very many of them.

You can either tie them up.

I like to use a bungee cord.

- How about that?

Can you get around?

You want me to pull it?

All right.

There we go.

Hey.

- And that just holds it for you.

And I never cut clear to the ground.

Always leave a little bit of space.

- Oh, it makes it a lot easier when you hold it together like that.

- Mm-hmm.

- Just a little more.

Hey.

There we go.

All comes out in one piece.

- Yes in one piece, it's easier to dispose of this way.

- How about that?

So just a couple of questions.

So the first one is, why do we prune them?

- Well, they would just come back out and it would look terrible with half dead, half alive grass.

It'll look much better and all green if we have to take this down.

Just like any perennial in a perennial garden.

It's a perennial plant.

So we take off the dead every spring.

- Okay.

And when is the best time to do that?

- Late winter, early spring.

Some nice weather comes out.

- Nice day today.

- It feels good to be outside.

Everybody wants to get outside in the spring or in the winter.

Late winter then, that's the time to do it.

- That's the time to do it, and look at that.

All comes out together.

- All comes out in one piece.

- So that works.

All right.

So look, somebody's probably wondering, do I need to fertilize?

I mean, what do I need to do to make sure we get good healthy growth?

- Well for one thing, I wouldn't fertilize anything that didn't have a soil test, and it really needs it.

But if you fertilize it at all, it would be after it starts greening up and it's warm enough outside.

- And it's warm enough outside.

All right.

Thank you Joellen.

I appreciate that demonstration.

Heavy Metal.

Right?

- Heavy metal.

- Heavy metal.

All right.

[upbeat country music] - Well this is a skip laurel, Schipkaensis laurel, and it's got winter damage on it.

The leaves are hanging on it.

It is okay to leave the leaves hanging on it.

When the new leaves emerge, they'll push the old ones off at that time.

And I know we've gotten some weather and it's been damaged a little bit.

And we'll scrape it with a little bit of another handy dandy way to keep your pruners, always have something to do with them, to scrape away the bark of some of these and reveal green inside.

So that you know that it's live inside.

Another clue that it's still alive is the fact that it has green stems on a lot of the tips of all of the branches.

Skip laurel was found in the Shipka Pass in 4,000 feet in Bulgaria in 1889.

So it will survive in zones five through eight.

So it got hit by some cold, but it will survive.

- Mr. Jim, we love having you on the show.

- Thank you very much.

- Let's talk mulch, 'cause this is about time to start doing it right?

- Well, it is, it's time to start thinking about it.

The first thing we wanna talk about is what mulch does for you.

And the bad things about it.

The first thing it does, and most people want, it's decorative, plus it helps keep weeds down.

That's the number one thing.

But it also causes weeds in some cases.

And many times I get calls from people who have just gotten bulk mulch and they say, "They brought me nut grass."

Well, they really didn't.

Some weed seeds need sun to germinate.

Some doesn't.

The ones that need the sun, if you cover 'em with mulch, obviously they're not gonna come up.

They're not able to push their way through the mulch.

But things like nut grass, they need to be covered.

There's nut grass seed everywhere.

And so the first time you cover it with mulch, it comes up like hair on a cat's back, and the mulch company gets blamed.

But the fact is the vast majority of the seed was already there.

- Sure, sure.

- The other thing it does, it helps retain moisture and it helps moderate our soil temperature.

Here we live in an area we call the transition zone, where our soil freezes and thaws quite often.

And that's really not good for plants that don't like that.

And so many plants that we grow here are not native to that type of soil, things like hydrangeas.

If it warms up early, the buds swell, you have issues with it.

So by having mulch, it helps keep that from changing temperatures quite as rapidly.

So that's the good things.

The other bad thing is that when you put mulch down, you think in a year, "Well, it's gone.

I need to do it again. "

Well, it's not gone.

It's still there, but it's decomposed into mulch dust.

And if you keep adding it year over year, you get this very fine particle material that will actually slow the drying and slow your air movement through to your soil.

And you'll see things like azaleas begin to suffer.

The leaves will get smaller.

They'll mimic an iron deficiency because they're staying too wet, which locks up the iron and so the plants can't get it.

So you get these issues by covering them, and letting that stuff continue to decompose year after year.

So when you feel that need to mulch, get it all out, rake it down to the ground, save that, put it in your compost pile.

Use it to plant with, it's good organic matter.

You just don't want that really fine particles building up on top of your soil.

- Whew.

That's good stuff.

- All right.

Let's talk about the types.

The first ones we wanna talk about are the ones that are typically free, leaves and pine needles.

All right.

Are they acidic?

The fact is, no, they're absolutely not.

That's another one of those garden myths that's out there.

When pine needles fall from the tree, there is a little bit of acidity, but within just a few weeks that's gone.

With oak leaves, they're a little more acidic, but your soil pH is extremely stable.

It's hard to change that pH.

You can put six inches of oak leaves on there and it isn't gonna phase it, because it's such a little impact.

And very shortly you're gonna see the pH rise anyway.

We found that when we add oak leaves to a compost pile over about 45 days, we see the pH actually rise.

So don't worry about it.

You got 'em.

Use them.

Now the downside of using, letting the leaves fall and continue to lay there, we see voles get up underneath that a lot and use that as a run.

So it's better if you can chop 'em up into little pieces like this.

And just put a half an inch to an inch or so, makes a good mulch.

- You can chop those up with the lawnmower or something.

- Yeah, in fact, I just bought a blower that inhales it and chops them up.

- Oh, nice.

- And puts them in a trashcan.

If I can get that thing to spread 'em, I'm head on with those.

[all laugh] Those are great.

- Flip the switch.

- Yeah.

Just blow 'em back out.

All right.

Let's talk about some of the ones you're gonna find if you go to your garden centers.

These two are pine.

This first one over here is what we used to call pine mulch.

Now they call it nuggets, okay?

The nuggets we used to sell were two and three inches across, but you just don't see that much anymore.

So this is what you're gonna get if you buy a bag of pine.

This is what's called shredded pine and shredded pine's a little better because it mats down.

It doesn't float as bad as these do if you have a wash issue.

Now it's loaded with, guess what, lime.

It will actually raise your pH some.

So that's the reason for years we've told people if you're gonna to use pine, use it to plant with, use hardwood on top.

So it actually can change your pH a little bit.

But it's inexpensive, easy to come by, it's a good mulch.

It's better than nothing anyway.

Okay this is what they sell here locally as hardwood mulch.

Hardwood mulch is basically everything that landscapers have brought into the mulch yards and they have smashed up with a hammer and then put into a bag and sell it to you.

There's no telling what stuff is in here.

There's wood as well as bark.

So you've got cellulose in there.

And then people think, "Well, I'll get termites in there."

- Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

- The fact is, we seldom see termites actually get into mulch.

Where we see it is if they let mulch get up against either wood that's used as a border or a siding on a house that stays wet, then we see the termites get into that because it's covered.

But we actually don't see them get into this very often.

So hardwood is a good one.

This is what, if you order from a mulch company, you're gonna get one that's real stringy, a lot more like this.

And that's 'cause they've run it through a hammer mill two or three times.

And all it is is just the local trees and stuff that landscapers or the city has brought them and they chop 'em up.

- Lemme ask you this though, because somebody actually posed this question to me.

So what if somebody has diseased trees?

- That's an issue.

- Crape myrtle bark scale on their crape myrtles and they drug it out and the city picks it up.

- Well that's possible.

They typically compost this stuff.

So they're running water through it constantly to turn it, to get it to age as quickly as possible.

But things like many, many diseases in a compost pile, at 150 degrees, they're not gonna be destroyed.

So there is that possibility that you could get it, but it's minimal really.

The main thing we see with the bulk hardwood is it's not ready yet.

If you'll see some where it's been laid down, if it smells like whiskey barrels, or if you see water run out of it that's brown, that's tannic acid that's not old enough.

And it will plummet your pH get it down to where when you plant pansies in it, they'll bleach out almost and turn white.

So you wanna make sure that it's good and done, which typically takes at least six months for it to age to get there.

- Wow.

Okay.

Good stuff.

All right.

- This one right here is cedar mulch.

This one, they say it's got some insect repellent quantities, but I don't believe it 'cause it doesn't smell like cedar.

Of course what we sell as cedar really isn't a cedar, it's juniper but, the red cedar around here it's just Juniperus virginiana.

It's not a true cedar.

And if you brought real cedar in, most of that's on the West Coast, you couldn't afford it, by the time you bag it and get it over here.

So anyway, but cedar's a good mulch.

It lasts longer than either one of these.

And it's a bit more pricey, so that's good.

The cypress and you'll see one around here called Cypress blend and that's this one.

This is what I use in most of my beds.

It lasts a good long time and it matures to a real pretty gray color.

So it's again, a little more pricey, but it's an excellent mulch.

Now you've got sometimes where mulch is not practical.

You get to some areas of the country where you have something called artillery fungus, where the fungus grows in the mulch and when it releases its packet of spores, it throws it up on the house and it's like super glue.

You can't get that stuff off.

So instead of using organic matter, we use rock in places like that.

And this makes a good one.

How many houses have you been by where you see where there's no shrubs and the house is brown up about this far from splash.

So if you'll take landscape fabric and put down and put this on top of it, you'll eliminate that brown there and make a better looking house.

And then that's the two other things we want to talk about, is landscape fabric versus plastic.

All right, if you're using plastic, it really should only be used in a vegetable garden, where you're going to amend that soil basically every year.

It's very hot under there, which helps the microbes and gets the soil warmer sooner.

Keeps the weeds down.

But if you left it there year after year, your soil would sour underneath there and you wouldn't be able to grow.

So if you're taking it up each year, tilling it, adding lime if you need to, and putting organic matter in there, covering it back up, it will do a good job for you.

You just don't wanna leave it there all the time.

Don't use it in flower beds or any place like that where you've got to have good air movement year after year after year.

That's where you want to use landscape fabric.

You get good air movement through it.

Most weed seeds won't come through.

It doesn't stop Bermuda from encroaching on it.

But we have chemicals for that to get rid of it.

But it's very good at keeping the maintenance down in a bed.

Now the one downside is if you're like me, and you're planting stuff all the time, you gotta cut little X's in it, fold it back, fix the soil right there and plant it back.

So it can be a little more work.

But if you're one of those who just minimal garden work, don't want to do a whole lot of stuff, make your life a lot easier.

- What about newspaper?

A lot of people like to put down newspaper and things like that in their vegetable gardens.

- Well, to me it does work.

It helps hold moisture, not the most attractive thing that I've ever seen, and that's part of why I garden.

I enjoy the beauty of it.

I don't go out there to read the comics.

- Wow.

Good stuff man.

- Thank you very much.

- We appreciate that Mr. Jim.

- I love mulch and dirt.

- We see, we see.

We can tell.

Thank you much.

- Yes, sir.

[upbeat country music] - It's late winter and it's time to look at your trees and do some corrective pruning.

Look for crossing branches like this one here that is rubbing up against this other branch, rubbing the bark off of it so we wanna eliminate that.

We're also looking at internal branches that are coming into the plant.

We'd rather them go out to the outside.

So we'll eliminate those.

And we'll look for water shoots like this one that's growing right up in the tree, crossing all sorts of branches.

And continue looking throughout the tree.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

Joellen, here's our Q&A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

- Yes.

- All right.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Every year my magic lilies co me up early, then freeze off.

"I don't get any blooms.

What can I do to prevent this?"

And this is Jim.

Ah, so he doesn't get any blooms.

- Yes.

- Because when they come up they freeze.

- Yeah, well you know what, it's real easy 'cause they're low to the ground anyway.

It'd be easy if he knows there's gonna be freezing temperatures to go out there and just simply cover them with either plastic or some frost cloth.

And that will prevent them from getting nixed by the cold and then they'll get blooms.

It'll then have enough energy then to form the blooms down in the bulb.

- So we're saying cover.

- Cover up when there's cold temperatures.

- Right.

Watch the weather, see if that helps you out.

- Definitely.

- Get out there, get 'em covered.

- That's right.

- And that should help.

- Mm-hmm.

- All right.

Thank you, Jim.

We appreciate that question.

Here's our next viewer email.

Oh, I know somebody who likes this one.

This question is directed to Joellen Dimond.

How about that?

"I planted a flame grass plant in my square foot "butterfly garden this past spring.

"It did great and grew so big that I transplanted it "mid-summer into a big pot.

"We are in Zone 5B and I know this flame grass "is not a perennial for my zone.

"I thought I would cut it down and have my husband "put it in the garage for the winter and see if it makes it.

"Should I water it once before I put it in the garage?

"Or should I keep watering it periodically in the garage?

Thank you."

And this is Bunny from Kiwani, Illinois.

So Ms. Bunny, I'm gonna step out of the way here.

This is for Joellen Dimond, so Joellen, have at it.

- Well, great idea.

I don't know what the scientific name for her flame grass is, but when I looked up flame grass, it's zones four through nine.

So it should be perennial in her area.

So if her grass gets big enough, I would do an experiment and and cut it in half, and leave part of it outside and see if it comes back, and then keep the other, 'cause you wanna make sure you save it.

So that would be good.

But yeah, usually when I am digging something up, and putting it inside the garage, I pot it up and water it at that time, when it gets cold out.

Then when I put it in the garage, I don't do much to it because think about it, it's a perennial grass, it's dormant.

You don't want it to dry, dry out, but it doesn't dry out that much because it's not taking up any moisture when it's dormant like that.

So I would still check it and just make sure it's not dry.

But I only would water it if it was really dry.

- Okay.

What about on sunny days?

Would you take it outside maybe?

- Well, you could, but it's a perennial grass.

It's actually dormant, so it's not really gonna... Now if it was a tropical plant, those I bring outside when it's nice, 'cause it's still green and alive.

- Gotcha.

Okay.

- But for a dormant plant, just keeping it warm enough in the garage so it doesn't freeze is what she's looking for.

- Okay and just check.

- Just check it.

- Just check it if it needs watering.

Okay.

All right.

Ms. Bunny, there you have it.

She says "Check it."

Check it just to make sure.

- That's right.

- All right.

A little finger?

- Little finger, yeah.

She could use a moisture meter if she wants to.

Either way.

- Either way.

All right.

Well thank you for that question, Ms. Bunny.

All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Last year, our sweet potatoes were badly riddled "by wire worms.

"The local Extension Office advised us to turn the soil "several times during cold weather to kill them.

"Besides turning the soil, "is there any other way to kill them?

"Or perhaps something in addition to turning the soil?

We garden organically."

And this is Karen from Jasper, Georgia.

So the key thing here, garden organically.

And we are happy, the fact that they went to the Extension Office.

- That's very good.

- They give good information.

So that is real good.

- And it's good that she's turning the soil, because the wire worms have a two to three year growth period and most of it's underground.

So when you constantly are turning it up, they come to the surface and birds then eat 'em.

So that's the whole purpose of that.

Deleting the population in the soil.

- And we can see why she was told that.

- Yes.

- For that reason.

Okay.

Right.

But is there anything else that she can do besides turning the soil?

- Well, I hope she's rotating her crops.

- Crop rotation's gonna be so important.

- Don't plant anything there that those wire worms want to eat.

Don't plant root-growing vegetables in that area.

Go with something that just needs roots, like beans or something like that.

- I would definitely do the crop rotation.

You don't wanna plant sweet potatoes in that same ground every year.

You know what else I'm gonna say right?

Resistant varieties.

- Oh gosh.

Yes.

- Let's look for resistant varieties.

Something else we need to do.

Hey, we gotta control the weeds right?

- Yes, definitely.

- Do that.

You gotta practice good sanitation.

Something else I just thought about when you're talking, how about a late planting of those sweet potatoes, 'cause those wire worms which become click beetles, they actually like cooler soils.

So if you can wait longer into the season, the soil warms up a little bit and they actually go deeper.

So they're not gonna be that effective as far as as eating on those sweet potatoes.

So those are some things I would consider.

- And she could also put in some beneficial nematodes that might be a little bit trickier, but they will eat the wire worm in the ground.

- Sure, sure.

So that may help some.

- That may help some.

- Yeah.

But again, yeah, garden organically.

So those are pretty much gonna be your cultural options, crop rotation.

Practice good sanitation, getting those weeds up out of there.

And then I would consider planting later in the season.

- When it warms up.

- When the soil warms up a little bit.

And your Extension Office could help you with that information as well.

- Sure can.

- All right.

So thank you, Karen.

We appreciate that.

All right, Joellen.

It's fun as always.

Thank you much.

- Yes, it is.

- 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 growing ornamental grasses or how to use mulch in the 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]