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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Daylilies are beautiful, but every few years they get crowded and need to be divided.

Also, there are many herbicides on the markets.

We're going to talk generally about the different kinds.

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 is Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and Mr. D will be joining me later.

Alright, Joellen.

What are we about to do today?

- We are going to divide a daylily today.

- Okay.

- And can you believe this is the landscape that we planted five years ago?

- It's been five years.

- It's been five years.

And you know, it was a really poor site.

It holds a lot of water.

This particular daylily, a lot of daylilies can stand both dry and wet conditions, and this is a wet condition, and this happens to be the Stella d'Oro daylily.

It's a little smaller daylily, and it has grown.

This one has gotten large enough that we want to divide it, so we're going to do that today.

The techniques that we're going to show you today are the same for any perennials that you want to divide.

You can use these same techniques wherever you do it, and this is spring, and we've decided to divide it in the spring.

Spring is a good time to divide.

Also late fall.

Fall is a good time to divide perennials, but spring is another good time, and that's why we're doing that now.

I'm gonna give you this shovel.

- I'll take that.

- We got this nice mulch here.

I'm gonna take my digging fork and I'm going to scrape away the mulch so we can try to save it and put it back.

- Okay.

- We got earthworms already.

- Oh, we sure do.

That's good.

So as you're doing that Joellen, what do you think about the performance of the other plants that we have in this area, since it's been five years?

- It's been five years.

You know, everything is doing well, and even the Canna is doing excellent.

The one plant that supposedly liked a wet soil area, that has not done well.

In fact, they've all disappeared, even after we replanted them were the plumbagos.

- Plumbago, that's right.

I remember that.

- That's the only thing this is missing, but it did not like this condition.

I guess it was just too wet for it.

- All right, but the daylilies did.

- Daylilies did great.

Now what you're gonna do is we're gonna stay away from it just a bit, but get close enough, and you're going to dig down and go all the way around the plant.

- All right.

There may be some tree roots here from this sweetbay.

- Oh, you know what?

That's true.

A little bit further in next to the plant.

- What do you think?

- Yeah, there we go.

- All right.

- See if it will come up out of the ground.

- There it goes.

- There we go.

- Yeah, there it is.

- There, it came up out of the ground, and you notice that we didn't get 100% of all the roots.

- Ah, but look at those roots, though.

- We got a good amount of them.

This front part here, there's not too many.

A lot of dirt, so we'll get rid of that, and there's a root of the Magnolia.

We don't need that.

Now you can do several things with this.

We have a lot of roots here, and so we've got a lot of starts.

Every time you see one of these stalks coming up out of the ground, we could divide it enough that each one of these we could plant somewhere, but we don't want to disturb the root system that much, and we only want it to be in half, so we're gonna divide it in half today.

Could divide it more.

And I like to use a digging fork for this because you disturb the roots less.

You could use a shovel.

Shovel is okay, but you'll cut more roots that way.

The digging fork takes less roots with it.

And I like to kind of help myself by figuring out where half is for this plant.

- Looks like half.

- Then I put this down.

- Ah, is it coming apart?

Yeah, there it goes.

- And then they come apart.

- Yeah, there it goes.

- And we disturbed a lot less roots that way.

Now we didn't get all of them.

This one, we cut that one, one out of the whole thing.

I think we did really good.

- Great job, how about that?

- I think we did really good.

So what we'll do is we'll plant half of this back in this hole, and then we'll transplant this somewhere else.

Now you could divide it again if you wanted to, but we don't want to make them that small, 'cause we're trying to mimic what's already planted here.

So this is where this came from.

Make sure you get the soil levels correct.

- Don't want it too deep, right?

- Don't want it too deep.

You put your soil back in it.

Make sure we get it all buried in, and that looks good.

- Looks good.

- It's where it was.

So now we'll take the mulch and put it back around the plant, and there we go.

It's been transplanted.

- Wow, like nobody's ever been there.

- Like no one's been there, yes.

That's exactly how it should be.

And now we have another one to plant somewhere else, and there is a bare spot over in front of that Spiraea, so I think we will plant it there.

Again, we have this nice mulch, so we want to make sure we move the mulch out of the way.

There, and since I have the digging fork, ooh, let's see about roots.

- Is it hard?

Ah, it's the tree roots.

- The tree roots.

- From the sweetbay.

And worms.

- And worms, which is good.

- Oh yeah.

- Nice roots in here.

I don't know, you're gonna have to see if you can dig a hole big enough to plant this.

You probably can get through the tree roots with that shovel.

Yeah, just put the dirt right over here.

You would just cut the roots.

We can either cut them with the shovel if they're small enough, or we can get the pruners out and cut them.

We'll get our transplant, and make sure it is deep enough for it.

Only have a few inches here.

Want to make sure we have it the same level as the soil.

So since we do, then we will fill the dirt in around it.

All right, I think we covered up all the roots.

- Yeah, looks good.

- And we need to put our mulch back over this area.

And again, it looks like we were never here, which is the way I like things to look.

Now we could have just, instead of using the pruning fork, 'cause a lot of times people don't have the digging forks, so you could have just cut that in half with the shovel.

Again, you probably would have disturbed more of the plants and cut some of them off, but that would have been okay, 'cause there's plenty here.

But either way it works.

And now we have a whole new plant in a whole other place.

- Now we know how to divide daylilies.

How about that?

And some of our other perennials.

- Same principle.

- Same principle applies.

Good deal.

Thank you much.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - We were gonna prune this shrub because it's a little tall.

We realized that the reason why there are so many branches here is because we had cut this branch several years ago, so we broke what we call the apical dominance of that particular stem.

The apical dominance of this original stem was inhibiting the others around it to not grow as vigorously.

So what happens when you cut the apical dominance, other branches break and try to become that apical dominant branch.

It looks like this one here has won, 'cause it's taller than all of the others, but that's what happens when you cut branches and you take away the apical dominance.

That's how you can fill in a shrub, by cutting that, and look, we got five stems from one cut that was just a single stem before.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Mr. D. We talk a lot about herbicides, so let's give the folks herbicide basics and some terms that are involved as well.

- That's right.

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

All Volkswagens are cars, but not all cars are Volkswagens.

So a 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 in the process of it germinating and coming up.

And then there are post-emergent herbicides, and those are the herbicides that you'll 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, pendimethaline or Treflan.

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 and things like that.

Post-emergent herbicides are the ones that you got weeds growing out there and you go out there and you try to kill them.

Glyphosate, Roundup is an example of a post-emergent herbicide.

Poast, sethoxydim is another.

There are a lot of, there are probably more post-emergent herbicides out there than there are pre-emergent herbicides.

It's good to use both of them to get the best results.

If you use a combination of pre and post-emergent herbicides, 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.

You can cover half of a leaf and spray half of it with gramoxone, and that half of the leaf that you spray will die and the other half that you covered 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.

The active ingredient of Poast is sethoxydim.

Many times there are a lot of different trade names for one active ingredient.

I mean, glyphosate, there are probably hundreds of products out there that have glyphosate in them.

Same thing with sethoxydim.

Advantage is another example of a trade name of sethoxydim.

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

- Yeah, for lawns.

- So you've gotta be careful.

You've gotta read the label.

It's very important with any of the herbicides to 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 them are toxic dermally.

You get them 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 of 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 basically to control nematodes, and I'm not sure if VAPAM is still on the market.

The active ingredient is metam.

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

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 are signal words that very briefly describe how toxic a herbicide is, and other pesticides also, but danger/poison with skull and cross bones, that is the most toxic of the herbicides.

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 would mostly just be the issue of people happening upon something that was still in an old building or something, and that's where they need to be careful.

- If you see a skull and cross bones, you just kind of stay away from it.

It's probably not a pirate ship.

- No, no.

- 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 a highly toxic herbicide or LD-50, it's a lethal dose required to kill fifty percent of the animals in the population.

It's probably mostly rats.

We don't check it with humans.

Highly toxic is less than 50 will kill half of the rats in the population.

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

Moderately toxic herbicides, it's 50 to 500.

Examples of things that you and I are around every day that have that level of toxicity are caffeine, if you have that much caffeine, gasoline, kerosene.

Some herbicides are Avenge, Aquathol.

Some aquatic herbicides carry that much toxicity, to mammalian toxicity, but mammalian toxicity is different from fish organisms.

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

Slightly toxic herbicides, and there are a lot more of those than there are of the highly toxics, the LD-50 for them is 500 to 5,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, and signal word on the label will just be caution, so be careful.

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

I try to avoid eating it.

- Infrequent.

- But an 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, mentioned that.

Dicamba carries that same level of toxicity.

Vinegar is another something on our tables that carries that same.

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

- Vinegar is the first thing that comes up.

- That's acetic acid.

Then almost non-toxic herbicides, they carry LD-50 of greater than 5,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, lethal dose of almost nontoxic herbicide for a 150 pound person is more than one pint or one pound.

That's a pretty full meal.

- That's a lot.

- Roundup, glyphosate, Touchdown, Rodeo are a couple other products have glyphosate in them.

Arsenal, Chopper, Scepter, Pursuit.

There's this page of Treflan, Princep.

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

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

- But one thing I want to mention in this last list that I listed that were almost non-toxic, I kind of scanned over that, and I saw two herbicides in there that are restricted use pesticides, but it's not because of their mammalian toxicity.

It's because they will very easily go offsite if you get rain right after you put it out and kill desirable plants.

But a 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. [gentle country music] - This shrub has gotten a little tall, so we're gonna cut it back just a little bit.

This is a little tall here.

I want to want to bring it back down to a manageable size so that it's not as tall as the lower branches of this tree that it's next to.

We're gonna cut some of these down, 'cause they're a little tall.

I'm gonna be cutting this back to a point of growth which could be a bud that's gonna break above this leaf.

And since this leaf is pointing this way and we want to fill in this area, we're gonna cut just above, about a quarter inch above this bud that's gonna break in the direction that this leaf is growing, so that way it will fill in the plant in this area.

So now this Florida anise looks a little more in control and the size that we need to be under these trees.

[gentle country music] - All right Joellen, here's our Q and A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- Good questions we have here.

All right, let's get to the first viewer email.

"I have had a problem with invasive double daylilies.

"They show up in my daylily beds and with an orange root "go under a neighboring daylily, crowding it out.

"I found I had lost a prize daylily before I knew it.

How do I control these unwanted daylilies?"

And this is Lillian in Knoxville.

So the old invasive double daylilies.

How do you get rid of that?

- I feel her pain.

I have had the same problem.

They look double and they're beautiful and you think oh, this'll be nice, and then all of a sudden it just takes over.

One thing that's good about them, they usually have larger foliage and they're a bigger plant and there's less of them.

There'll only be a single one, whereas most of the other daylilies are more clump-forming.

So hopefully you can tell the difference between when they're young and just coming up in the growing season, and then you can dig and get rid of the double daylilies.

If not, you might have to dig the whole clump up and separate them, and you'll probably still be able to tell the difference between the two, because I'm sure that the actual daylilies that she likes are more clump-forming and have a different size foliage than the other.

- So ID is real important here.

- ID is very important.

- Wow, okay.

- But yeah, that's what I did, I dug it up.

I just kept digging it up and digging it up.

You could put some kind of glyphosate on it if you wanted to, but I just kept digging it up.

It eventually got rid of them, but it took a while.

- Do they have an extensive root system?

- Well, they keep running.

They tend to run.

They clump in big, huge, running areas.

But the other daylilies tend to stay more concentrated in one small area, so they're easier to identify and then keep the others out.

- All right, Ms. Lillian.

Identification's gonna be key, and just dig them out.

Don't worry about using anything, just dig them out.

- I just found it easier to dig them up.

- Okay.

- Get rid of the root system.

- Get rid of the root system.

All right.

Got a little work ahead of you, all right?

Get rid of the root system.

Here's our next viewer email.

"This grass comes up every spring.

"We pull it up and it comes back and spreads.

We need to know what it is and how to get rid of it."

And this is Charles from Somerville, Tennessee.

Good old Somerville.

All right, Mr. Charles.

Guess what?

Joellen knows what that is.

What is that?

- It's called Poa annua.

- Annual bluegrass, and you had a story about that, right?

- When I grew up in Illinois, we didn't have a whole lot of it in our bluegrass yard.

But when it did come up, we didn't like the seed heads, and of course a teenager, what do you have to do?

Because you know, there was no internet back then.

Dating myself.

Anyway, I would sit outside as a teenager and I would just pull them up by hand.

The problem is I didn't understand that they have lots of seeds.

They are actually considered one of the most difficult weeds for lawn care companies to control.

- It is a winter annual grassy weed here.

Grows in clumps.

With all of the moisture that we've been having here lately, Mr. Charles, they're easy to dig up.

But when you dig them up, I would have a bag ready so the seeds, you can capture the seeds in the bag, 'cause if not, it'll come back in the fall when you get lower soil temperatures.

Difficult to control.

- Very difficult to control.

- Pre-emergents, put them down according to the label.

You're gonna have to do that early fall.

Dimension, something that contains dithiopyr, which is the active ingredient, but post-emergent herbicides.

- It almost never.

- It's not many.

- Not many that work on it.

- It's not gonna be many, so you're gonna have to either spot spray with something that contains glyphosate, or Image has some activity on Poa annua.

Read and follow the label on that.

But here culturally, let's go to that.

So here's the thing about Poa annua.

It likes areas that are poorly drained and compact soils, so what does that tell you?

Soil aeration would help out, fertilizer according to the soil test, make sure you're mowing at the right height because it's gonna grow where there's space, and that should help you out.

- Hopefully.

- Hopefully.

- There's a lot of seeds in the ground, so that's why pre-emergents would really help to control it.

- But that's gonna be a cycle.

- It is, it's gonna take a while.

- It's gonna take a while, Mr. Charles.

But at present time, the moist grounds, they're easy to come up.

- They are.

- Just make sure you capture those seeds.

- I used to have fun digging them up, I mean, just pulling them up.

They pulled easy.

- Mr. Charles, Joellen might be for hire.

Who knows?

She might come over and do that for you.

All right, so thank you for that question, Mr. Charles.

All right Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- 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.

For more information about daylilies or herbicides, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

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Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]