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

I'm Chris Cooper.

A great-looking rose plant in   the spring starts in the fall.

Today, we're going   to look at what to do   to get your roses ready   for winter and spring.

Also, chrysanthemums are   everywhere in the fall.

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 Mr. Bill Dickerson.

Mr. Bill is our rose expert, and Joellen will be joining me later.

Hi, Mr. Bill.

Remember these roses?

- I do, I do.

They look good.

- They look good, so you did a good job.

- Thank you.

- So let's talk a little bit about fall rose care.

- Fall rose care.

Well, I'm gonna tidy this bush up a little bit.

This is an 'Iceberg' floribunda, and it's really done well.

Small blooms, a lot of blooms.

You wanna dead-head.

You don't cut floribundas back as much as you do, say, a hybrid tea, and I noticed that there's some leaf cutters.

See where the leaves are?

You get these little perfectly round holes, and it's just a leaf cutter which is a beneficial,   so you don't want to kill 'em.

You just just bear with them,   and they actually   line their nest   with this tender leaf foliage.

So they don't do any   damage, but other than that, the bush is in pretty good shape.

- I actually think that's pretty neat.

It's precision cutting.

- Oh, it is.

They can make just a perfectly round hole.

You gotta love Mother Nature.

Now, dead-heading-wise, the petals are gone, so on versus a hybrid tea, I'm gonna come right about here, and you prune high, and you take that off 'cause you don't want it to set rose hips.

I found a rose hip down- That's pretty small.

Where did I see?

- There's another one.

I'll pulled that off.

Well, that's a rose hip.

That sets and make seeds, and you wanna cut those off early fall.

Now in November, you leave 'em, and the plant'll go dormant, but if you leave 'em now, the plant thinks it's propagated, and it just dies down, so that's why you dead-head, and that's very important.

And so you go down to a five-leaf, you cut it off.

These are pretty much spent.

I'll just go down to a five-leaf and cut that off.

- Is it always five leaves?

- Typically, a five-leaf is gonna have a better chance to re-bloom.

Down here, you got one bloom and a lot of foliage.

You want the plant to get air.

So this is not productive.

I'm gonna come down here, go to a five-leaf, and take this large, and where you have this multi-canes, you're gonna get a big bloom of flowers.

And just to tidy up the bush, I'm gonna take this out.

It looks better.

It gets rid of- You only had one bloom on there, and so that'll actually do better, and you'll get a nice bloom instead of just one or two.

- So we're trying to get as many blooms as possible, right?

- Yeah, and that's the whole- We're kinda manipulating Mother Nature and getting it to bloom, and in the meantime, we're wanting to kinda shape the plant.

Now here, you had one bloom.

I'm gonna come down, cut it on the backside so that the next cane'll go the same way the leaves are facing.

- All right, gotcha.

- But it's pretty good, [shears snipping] and you don't have to do a whole lot.

Here's one that's bloomed.

I'm gonna leave the ones that's on here.

[shears snipping] - There you go.

There it goes.

- And if you make a mistake cutting, no big deal.

- No big deal.

[laughs] - They'll grow back.

And now, you'll get many more blooms like this, and that's kinda what you're shooting on.

You want a flush of blooms.

This is a very pretty.

It's pretty all year long.

Now, here's a cane that's coming up in blooms.

This is going in the middle.

See how it kinda opens the- - I sure did.

Opened it up quite a bit.

- You know, the old rule of thumb is to be able to put a bowl in the middle of the bush, but see, I've taken a lot of that out.

That's gonna let air bleed, and that that air flow is gonna knock down on the fungus so it doesn't have a place to hide.

- Get those leaves dried off.

- But the bush looks really good.

But on a floribunda, you prune lightly versus a hybrid tea, you go down a foot or better.

Next, I'm gonna put a little triple-13 fertilizer kinda around the outside of the bush.

Roses are heavy feeders.

[plastic scraping] - So obviously, it's not too late to do this then, right?

- No.

It used to be into September, but our growing season's a little longer now.

We'll have blooms for in Christmas a lot of times.

So after probably the end of November, no more nitrogen.

- No more nitrogen, gotcha.

- But this'll perk 'em up.

This bush has really done well.

- Good, okay.

- We've got a hybrid, then always throw this away.

You don't wanna leave it on the ground.

- Yeah, practice good sanitation, right?

- Now here, this has got some leaf burn from the heat   and it's got some black spot   which you use a fungicide   which is a preventative.

The first thing is always to cut some of the dead stuff out.

I'm gonna take this out, and it's not doing very well, but what color's that pith in the middle of the cane?

- That's white.

A creamy- - No, the middle is?

- Oh yeah, it's dark, I'm sorry.

I'm looking around it.

- Well, you got a little bit of live tissue.

So this is not doing very well because that cane's kinda dying, and a lot of times, you just have to keep cutting back to white pith.

Here, you have unproduction, there's no bloom shooting up.

You wanna kinda thin this bush out a little bit to let back to the airflow, which is very important.

See what we got here.

I'm gonna take this one out, [shears snipping] and you'll make a mistake every once in a while.

You'll cut the wrong cane, and you know what?

It's like a bad haircut.

- It'll grow back.

- And you see [indistinct], you have to move on.

Now, I noticed on the last cutting, went here.

Well, pruned here, the next cane in 40 days on a hybrid tea, 40, 45 days, the next cane's gonna grow this way.

Typically, you want it to grow out, and you can see there's a little node right here.

That's why, and you always wanna cut, and they did this properly.

You always wanna cut about a quarter of an inch right above that leaf node.

I want it to go this way, so I'm gonna come down.

Oh, what's that?

- Can you get it?

Those ones look tough!

There you go.

- See how white that was versus.

- Yeah, that dark.

- This one which is black in the middle.

So this is just run out of energy, and there's no life going to it.

So now, this next cane is gonna grow same way the leaf is.

This is a little thick, and here again, you're just opening up the bush a little bit, and then you won't have to use as much fungicide.

- So what do you think about the overall growth of this one though?

- Well, it's coming along well.

Now, mulch would help tremendously, fertilizer.

I noticed that you could see at the bottom, it's rocking a little bit.

I would add a little more soil around that, and then tap it in well right there, and that's why we wind-top in the fall.

Probably closer to December, January after the blooms.

You take a bush that's this tall and you bring it down 'cause on a windy day, it's doing this.

- Like rock.

- And it's when it rocks, it tears those young white feeder roots, so you're just losing nutrition.

This is not doing much.

I'm gonna cut this off.

[shears snipping] Take the little bit out of the middle.

[shears snipping] This is very small, so when you take this away, you're gonna get more energy going to the bigger cane, and what you want is it to grow up and be like this.

You got new growth here.

- That's good.

- There's a little bit of dead.

I'm gonna take that out, but there's new growth, and that's what you're looking for.

- Right?

Yeah, it looks good.

- And it'll take this big cane here, it'll take about, like I say, 40, 45 days to get a new cane similar to this, a bud, and then a bloom.

Any dead wood [shears snip] which you can see that that's dying out.

- Oh yeah, that's definitely.

- Get rid of that.

Here's a little small one.

[shears snipping] And you see brown.

- Yeah, I see it there.

- So, I'll just go down a little bit below that, and there's a little bit of brown in there, but then you'll get a new cane.

Then again, I'll add a little triple-13 around the drip line, clean your mess up.

You don't wanna leave those leaves on the ground because then they really get black spot, then they'll spread it.

The rain hits, and it bounces up.

And other than that, the bush is coming along for a young bush, and what you want is these big, healthy canes here.

That's gonna produce, and you'll have a lot better growth the next season.

- All right, Mr. Bill, we appreciate that fall rose care demonstration.

Look like you've done this a couple of times before, but thank you much, sir.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - I'm here thinking about some of the joys and challenges of growing in raised beds.

Now, when we get to the end of the summer, there's nothing better than a homegrown watermelon, and right here beside me, we have watermelon vines that are growing out and all around our raised beds.

In small-space gardening, one of the challenges with vining crops is having enough space for them, right?

To have enough sunlight and to have enough room for them to grow and root well.

There are a range of tools that we could use.

We could use a trellis to support our vining crops, but with a watermelon, when we get very large fruit, then we'd have to add additional support just for the fruit.

So one of the things that I wanted to point out is the fact that we now have newer watermelon cultivars coming on the market that can provide us with a much more compact plant.

'Short and Sweet' is an example of a cultivar that could work there, and they could be a great addition to our raised-bed gardens.

[upbeat country music] - Let's talk about chrysanthemums 'cause that time, it's almost near, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- September, perfect time to get chrysanthemums.

Now, they'll be showing up in all the stores and everywhere,   all different colors.

They have done an   excellent job of creating   all of these different   colors for us to have   beauty at our own house.

Decorate for fall decorations, everything, and this is one of the things you have to- If you see something in September blooming and it's beautiful and you wanna bring it home, that's great.

It'll last about two to three weeks depending on the weather.

The cooler it is, the longer the blooms will last, but that was an early-blooming mum.

There's early-, mid-, and late-blooming mums.

Well, I see them in the stores all the time.

I'm like yeah, when they get 'em in, they have early-blooming mums, there's mid-season-blooming mums, and there's late-season-blooming mums.

So, but it's just okay.

You can go find another one and replace it.

So that's the beauty of the long season of mums because we have those three different kinds.

Now, a lot of people ask will the mums last?

- Will they last?

That's gonna be the question.

- Because chrysanthemums are perennial, and they all came from perennial mums, but they've been hybridized so much, and the florist trade has really taken on mums, and there are a lot of florist mums in the trade.

I mean, you can get a flower arrangement from any place, and they've got mums in them.

So those are grown for different reasons, and they were all perennial at one time, and they probably still are in certain places.

Now, the garden mums you get at the store, they can be perennial, but they're usually zones two to nine, somewhere in there.

So those people can usually keep them if they have the right spot, and that's the problem, finding the right spot.

Now, I have kept 'em before, and they'll stay for a few years, but then something will happen, and some of 'em will go.

A lot of people I know will have them, but they are usually in raised areas that are well-drained 'cause they don't like to have wet roots at all, and that's kind of the trouble in the Mid-South area that we have because it's so wet around here.

In the winter- - It's that time of the year.

- Rainy season for us, So that's the key is to keep them well-drained in the wintertime, and then most likely, they will come back.

One thing to not do, if you are going to try to make them perennial in your yard, please, when they die in the cool of the frosts that come, leave the foliage there because that's gonna protect the crown, and you you're really supposed to leave the dead foliage.

Sometimes in some places further north from here, they even suggest putting straw around the crown in amongst the stems of the chrysanthemum for protection or some mulch of some kind that's loose, and then in the spring, you can remove all of that, and then that should come back up again, and you should fertilize them in the spring.

- What would you use to fertilize them?

- A complete fertilizer, any kind of complete fertilizer.

You can do a long-lasting one or one that doesn't last long.

Sometimes they'll fertilize them again in the end of June.

Now, some people say, "Well, mine are starting to bloom."

Yeah, what happens is they'll start to bloom maybe in July.

- Oh really?

- Or August.

- In the heat?

- In the heat, but if you don't prune them before that, if you go ahead and start letting them bloom, just go ahead and let them bloom, they may bloom again in the fall when it gets cooler 'cause some of them are actually bred to bloom twice like that, so you never know.

But if you only want the nice fall flush of bloom, then you should cut them before the 4th of July.

- Cut 'em before.

- Yeah, cut 'em back before the 4th of July, and then when they come back out, they'll have time, and then they'll bloom in the fall just once.

So, they are perennial, but sometimes around here especially, it's kind of tricky to keep them, but well-drained soils is key.

- Fertilize.

- Fertilize in the spring and sometimes again in July, end of July, and they'll get a nice flush of blooms in the fall.

- So how much are we cutting back?

- Just enough to cut off the top where the blooms are trying to form, just the tips, and most of these are bred to be nice and bushy like they are, so you really don't have to do a whole lot.

Mine just naturally grow   bushy just like they were   when I got them   the year before.

Just tip off all of the blooms where the blooms would be, and that will cause them to stop and regrow again, and then bloom later in the fall.

- Any pest problems we need to know about or fungal issues?

- No, I've never seen fungal problems with them, but that doesn't mean they won't get some, but bugs sometimes do chew on the leaves, and a lot of times, I've seen that it might actually be a caterpillar of some kind, and so Bt would help that, but you just look at them often, but chrysanthemums, the chemical pyrethrin comes from chrysanthemums, so really not a whole lot bothers them.

- Of course, Mr. D. mentions that all the time, right.

Yeah, so they shouldn't have any problems with insect pests.

- No, they really don't have.

I've never had any on mine.

They're real good, and they're easy to grow.

Like I said, you take a chance.

Buy the beautiful ones that you want in the fall, try to save them, put them in a nice, well-drained area, mulch 'em up in the winter, see if they'll come back for you.

- And I guess full sun?

- They love full sun.

I'd say at least four to six hours of sun a day would be good for them 'cause I've had them on one side of the house, and my mother has them on one side of the house, and it doesn't get sun all day long, but part of the day.

- Actually, I have another question for you.

So when you're out picking mums for your home, do you look for the ones that have all of the blooms on them, that are open or closed or what?

- That's a good point, yes.

No, I like to buy them with lots of buds on them.

I wanna be able to see the color like some of them are breaking and some of them are blooming so I know what it's gonna look like, but I like to buy lots of buds 'cause I know it'll last in the landscape a lot longer.

- I've often wondered that 'cause of course, when you see 'em at the big box store or some other place, they're full of blooms and some are not, just have a little buds on 'em, so if you get the early ones, Mr. D., there's some more coming behind that one.

- There is, there's a lot.

- Then, there's some more coming behind that one.

- That's right.

- Gotcha.

- 'Cause they are beautiful.

- Gorgeous.

- Especially during the fall, you can decorate with 'em.

I actually try to have some out in the yard.

I do like 'em, but I didn't know about the early, middle, and the late.

That was new to me, so I hope the folks got that.

Well thank you, Joellen.

That was good.

- You're welcome.

- Appreciate that.

[gentle country music] - I was looking at this bush and I noticed a cane borer, and a cane borer will bore into the cane after you've cut it off and pruned,   and it may go down   a quarter of an inch.

It may go down down   a half am inch.

it may go down 10 inches.

That's why we tell people to use Elmer's exterior glue.

That hardens it off, and they can't bore through it.

So what I'm gonna do is cut that out because there's no nutrients going through that cane.

You go as close to this as you can, [can cracking] and you cut it off.

Well, when you look and see, there's a little white there which is a little bit of life and energy, but most of this is gone.

There's a little bit of a hole left, so that cane borer pretty much got [can cracking] all of this, and this is just a dead cane that's not doing well.

That looks severe, but when you cut this off, there's a good chance that you're going to get a basal break which is a new, healthy cane like this, and that's what you want is new, vibrant, healthy canes that you're gonna get some life out of.

[gentle country music] - All right, Mr. Bill, here's our Q&A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

We'll start with the first viewer email.

"For perennial   flowering shrubs,   "do you treat for insects   or fungus only when needed,   or should I treat   preventatively with a systemic,   and this is Brad   from Virginia.

What do you think about that one?

- Some.

[laughs] - This is an interesting question.

- Some are more susceptible to powdery mildew or blight or something like that.

Systemic is always good, and it's a preventative, so if you know this particular plant is gonna be susceptible to something say in May or June, go and spray it the month before, and you can't go wrong with that.

- Cause the thing with the systemic is this.

You're gonna get a long residual, so some of those are, what, 12, 13 months.

- And you're good for.

- I mean, you're good.

- And then insecticides for the insects, I just spray as needed.

- So the imidacloprid would be, of course, a systemic.

- Or Merit.

- Right.

- Imidacloprid.

- So imidacloprid, and again, we're talking about that 12, 13-month residual.

So, if you go ahead and treat now so you won't have to treat again for another year or so, - But if you have something that's not insect- or disease-prone, just leave it alone.

- And then we do know that fungicides are what?

Preventative in nature.

- Yes.

- So you can pretty much do those as a preventative measure.

It's gonna be a lot of spraying.

You have to read and follow the label with that.

- Even tomatoes, before I figured out the thing about blight, once they have blight, it's a preventative, it doesn't cure what you got.

That's the hardest part to get people to- If you've already got it, well, you might as well pull the leaves off and spray something, but it's a preventative.

- It's only gonna be effective on the new growth.

- Correct.

- So that's the thing about that.

So again, using the systemics are fine.

Of course, we leave that to the homeowner, but you'll get a longer residual.

Some of your contact insecticides you're gonna have to reapply over and over again because it has a short residual.

- And usually, it has to hit the insect to kill 'em, and of they're not there, it's just a wasted chemical.

- That's right, that's right.

All right, Brad, so I hope that answers your question, which was a good question.

- It was.

- All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have a crape myrtle on the   western-facing side of my house   "that the top-most part of   seems to have died back.

"I've noticed this on a lot   of crape myrtles around   "and have just procrastinated   looking into the cause.

"What is causing this,   and can't I prune?

"Do you have any advice on   how far down to prune to   so it'll recover the nicest   way possible for the tree?"

And this is Jill from   Arlington, Tennessee.

So again, the crape myrtle, dead tops.

This is what I'm thinking.

So you remember the freeze from November.

Then we had a frost in March.

So the crape myrtles didn't have a chance to harden before the freeze in November, then guess what happens in March?

Here comes a frost, right, as it's growing.

- A late frost, a late frost!

- As the plant is starting to take up photosynthates and starting to grow, he comes the frost, so it kinda burns the top off, right?

So yeah, that's what caused it, but can she prune?

Yes, yes.

- You can always prune, and you gotta figure cut the dead out.

That's always the easy, quick start.

Cut the dead out, and then you just gotta figure out how big that new growth, what do you want it to look like?

I've got one at my house that was 30 foot tall, so I set there and figured out if I cut it to six foot, it's gonna bloom up to six foot 'cause in the spring and the fall, the cardinals would eat the seeds.

So I just look out the door and see that, but always cut the dead out.

I tell people we had seven days of below freezing, and then we had that late frost.

Almost every question how come my this didn't look like this, how come?

Here we go.

- It's late frost.

- It was really hard here in Memphis, really hard.

- Really tough.

- I mean, it killed a lot of stuff.

My theme was wait and see if it comes back.

Bend it to see if it's alive.

If it snaps off, it's dead.

Cut it back till it bends, or you can take your pruners or knife and scratch off to see if it's green.

- That's pretty much what I told people as well.

So you can cut it all the way back 'til you get to green tissue, and then, just see what happens.

- If you don't like it, cut it again.

[laughs] - Cut it again.

Yeah, I have four crape myrtles at home, and they're pretty much the same thing.

So yeah, just a little tip die-back.

Just prune it out to the green tissue.

It's fine, it'll be just fine.

So thank you for that question, Ms. Jill.

Appreciate that.

Mr. Bill, that was good, that was good.

- It was, enjoyed it.

- That's fun.

Thank you much.

- Thank you.

- 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 learn more about taking care of roses or chrysanthemums, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

While you're there, ask us your garden questions.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]