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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Figs are popular.

Today, we're gonna talk about some common varieties.

Also, we're going to show how to make an arrangement with leaves and stems out of your yard.

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.

D. Mr.

D is a retired UT Extension agent, and Mary Heim will be joining me later.

Mr.

D, always fun to have you here.

- Glad to be here, glad to be here.

This is a little different crop.

Figs are different from any of the fruits that I'm familiar with.

- Okay.

- They are native to the Mediterranean region.

They like that type of temperature.

There are 2,000 species out there, and they grow in tree form, shrub form, and vine form.

In our areas, most of them are small trees or shrubs because of Mother Nature, tends to burn them back when the temperatures get down below 10 degrees.

There are basically two basic types of figs.

There are edible figs, which I'm familiar, we're familiar with as we see most of the time, and then there are caprifigs.

The caprifigs, we're not gonna spend a lot of time with because the fruit is dry and pithy and not- - Doesn't sound tasty.

- But the edible figs are the ones we're gonna spend time talking about.

- Okay.

- There are three types of edible figs, and the persistent or common fig is the main one that we're interested in.

They do not need pollination.

There's the Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Celeste, Brunswick, and Adriatic, and we're gonna talk more about them a little bit later.

And then there are Smyrna figs, or caducous figs.

Smyrna is another name for it, that need pollination to set crops.

And the examples of those are Marabout, Calimyrna or Sar1 Lop and Zidi.

- Zidi, okay.

- And I've never seen those growing.

I've never seen them growing around there.

The edible or common figs are the only ones I've seen, and that's all that I would recommend that anybody would grow.

- Okay.

- The other, there's an intermediate type of fig, or sometimes called San Pedro figs.

They set two crops, and even the common figs will set two crops sometimes.

The first crop earlier in the year, on last year's wood, on old wood.

That's called the breba crop, or the first crop.

And that crop requires pollination.

And the main crop later in the year, which we harvest in the fall, would be one that does not require pollination.

And it's really good because figs are really, really hard to pollinate.

They have a small opening in the top of the drupe-like plant or fruit that a pollinating wasp has to enter the opening and pollinate the flowers.

The fruit is like a bag that contains a bunch of flowers, and those flowers, the little flowers, become little drupelets that become the fruit that you eat.

So it's good that they don't have to be pollinated to make a good fruit.

- Yeah, right.

That's fascinating though, by the way.

- But let's talk about some of the more cold-hardy varieties that will grow in Zone 7 and potentially Zone 6 also.

Then there are other varieties, a lot more varieties, that do well further south.

LSU has developed a couple of varieties, LSU Purple and LSU Gold.

- LSU, yeah, gold.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

We know they'll do well down closer to the Gulf Coast, but we're not sure how well they'll do up here in the Mid-South.

But Chicago Hardy is a compact fig, has a dark fruit that's produced rather early.

Celeste is another variety, a compact form, brown to purple fruit, early producing, and it's reported to be hardy to zero, which is really good.

- That's pretty good.

- Brown Turkey, that's what I've got.

That's what I'm more familiar with.

Yellow to brown fruit, it's late producing, and it's winter hardy to around 10 degrees, which is why I lost the above-ground portion of the plant the last two years because we got more tea.

- Yeah, we did, we did.

- Up in my area.

Ronde de Bordeaux is an early fruit, heavy producer with good flavor, and it's cold-hardy also.

There's a Brooklyn White, which is a yellow fruit, early, also called honey fig, and it is cold-hardy.

- Okay.

- Green Ischia is a small dark green fruit with a reddish pulp, and it's also late maturing in the fall.

Marseilles is an early fruit that's yellow.

O'Rourke is an earlier fruit that's purple.

Petite Negri is a compact form, large fruit that's dark colored.

And then Little Ruby is a compact form with a red fruit.

So these are all varieties that I think will work in the Mid-South and even further north.

- Yeah, with some winter hardiness that we talked about.

- That's right, they're the most cold-hardy that I'm aware of.

- Right, right.

So when they do get nipped by the winter, right, how can we encourage them to come back, you know, from the roots?

- Okay, well, they have a massive root system.

The root system can go out three times the height of the plant, which enables them to pretty rapidly come back from the winter injury.

You'll have a lot of shoots probably that come out because of the massive root system.

You do need to prune back to four to six stems, your most vigorous stems, four to six of your most vigorous stems, leave those, and that will encourage the plant to get on bigger.

- Okay.

- My problem would be if it got taller, my winterizing structure may not work real well.

- Oh, yeah.

- So you know, you got to, we probably, if you're gonna try to protect them in the wintertime, you probably need to keep the plant rather close to the ground, rather compact.

And if that's the case, leave more shoots.

I said four to eight, four to six, maybe more shoots will keep it more compact.

And then you're encouraging the shrub type of growth, which is probably what we need.

- Okay, so let's talk about pH.

- pH.

Figs will grow with a pH from five to eight.

- Okay.

- They like 6 to 6.5.

That's what they prefer.

They like pretty much the same as a lot of the fruits that we have out there.

They like full sun, the more full sun.

Mine are not in full sun, but they get a lot of sun.

- They get a lot of sun?

Okay.

- Yeah.

- Well, since you mentioned that, let's talk about siting.

So how would you site your fig in a home garden?

- If there's any way possible, if you have a south-facing area with a brick wall that can absorb that southern sunlight, that would be the ideal place- - That sounds good.

- To put a fig, because the brick will absorb heat in the daytime, even in the winter, and it'll give off that heat all night long.

And that is the best location if you can come up with something like that.

- Yeah, no, that's good.

Any pests that we need to be concerned about?

- There are a few pests that attack figs.

There's a couple of fruit flies, syphili flies that can affect figs.

There's a rust.

There's a fig rust that's out there that can be devastating.

I've never seen any of those, even with Al Harris that had the commercial planting in the Millington area.

I don't remember him ever having to spray anything for diseases or insects that were out there.

So they're generally trouble-free, but there are some diseases and insects that can be a problem.

- Sure, I'm gonna get you out with this one.

- Yeah.

- How do you know when to pick figs?

- How do I know when to pick figs?

When they're ripe.

- They're ripe.

- You pick then when they're ripe.

They're soft and they come off easy, and yeah, and you're probably gonna, you know.

I'm gonna get out there and I'm gonna pick a few green ones.

You got to get some that- - You gotta test, right?

- To figure out when they're ripe.

- Right.

- And also, I need to get, I may have to beat the squirrels to mine too.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah.

- And the birds.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I had to do it as well.

- It gets a little soft, and the attachment point kind of begins to wilt a little bit, and you can tell.

- That's good.

All right, thank you, Mr.

D. That was good information, we appreciate that.

- Very good.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] - Let's talk a little bit about Virginia creeper.

Virginia creeper is a native perennial woody vine.

It has five leaflets.

Five leaflets, not three.

If it had three leaflets, it would be poison ivy.

So again, this has five leaflets, Virginia creeper.

It has beautiful fall foliage, as you can well see.

It has little adhesive discs on its tendrils, which allows it to stick to just about any surface.

It will develop a fruit, and of course the birds and the wildlife enjoy the fruit.

It grows in full sun and full shade.

Can be used as a groundcover as well.

But if you're having problem with Virginia creeper, here's what you do.

Just mow it, pull it, get your weed eater out and just knock it out that way.

No need to use any chemicals.

So again, Virginia creeper, five leaflets, not three.

[upbeat country music] All right, Ms.

Mary, we have some beautiful flowers on the table.

What are we gonna do?

- We're gonna talk about plants that you can grow, either houseplants or outside plants, that would supplement your flower arrangements.

These are things that I like to grow, and I had to learn this by trial and error because when I started doing flower arranging, when you go to like Kroger or something, they'll give you those little scrawny things that are the greenery, the fern, you know?

It's just not anything real great.

So these kind of plants you can use and make a green arrangement, totally green, or you could put them as a supplement to your flowers.

- Are they easy to grow?

- Yeah, most of them are shade plants, outside shade.

A lot of them are house plants that I always put outside in the summer, put them on the north porch.

- Okay.

- You want me to get started?

- Let's go ahead and get started.

- What I thought I'd do was take each one and then I'll place it in a, this is a container with wet foam.

You use wet foam for fresh flowers, and it's different from dry foam.

Wet foam, you soak, you get it wet, and then your flowers will stay fresh for a week or more.

I'm gonna start with an Alocasia.

This is a beautiful plant.

- A beautiful leaf, yeah.

- It's very interesting.

It's very strong and kinda upright and stubborn.

You can also cut these in a design.

Now, some of them I'm gonna face to the side.

I might do an L-shaped flower arrangement.

- So do you already have this in your mind when you're arranging flowers?

- No.

- Okay, so just, whatever it comes.

- Yeah, I just go with it.

This is an Aspidistra.

They come in many varieties.

Some of them are thin.

I like the speckled ones.

And it's a very straight flower.

And it would be a good line flower, meaning it sets your stage for the other things that'll go around it.

- Okay.

- So it's called like a line flower.

Another thing you can do with this is I have put a wire, taped it on the back.

I used, I think, it's probably a 10-gauge wire.

It's a little tough, but it bends very easily.

And I just taped it with some clear foil tape, and then you can bend it whichever way you want to.

If you want your arrangement to do something different or move in a different way, then you can do it like that.

- How about that?

- And you can also curl it and split it.

Here I've put the end of this, pulled it down and pierced it with the very end of the plant, and I cut it with a knife and split it up.

So now it looks like a whole different plant.

- Yeah, it looks totally different.

- Now this is, of course, it's a Caladium.

I like to kind of nest them inside each other, large to small.

And then you have a slight grouping of them, and they'll look good to add or just add them to your flower arrangement on the sides, let them hang down the side.

And actually, it's called breaking the lip of your container.

- Breaking the lip.

- Mm-hmm.

- Never heard that.

- This is your lip.

- Okay.

Breaking the lip.

- Mm-hmm.

And this is a Fatsia.

- Yeah.

- These are nice pressed or spray-painted different colors.

But if your flower will go down like this, then you're breaking the lip of it.

- Okay.

- I like these.

This is called leopard plant.

They come in variegated variety also, and they get very large.

Now, this is Equisetum.

It's a good line material also.

And what I have done with this one is inserted the wire down here, and then you can bend it 'cause the wire's in there.

You can bend it ever which way you want to and it will stay.

I put the wire down, then I use the clear tape again to- - Is it easy to get the wire through there?

- Yeah, it is.

- And just push it?

- Yeah, this has little resistance.

It's some, but it's certainly not like a bamboo.

You know?

- Okay.

- It's easy enough to do.

And you can have all kinds of shapes to it.

Do multiple ones, have some come and, you know, make a design out of that.

Of course, the mother-in-law's tongue.

- Ah, the mother-in-law's tongue, huh?

- Yeah, I like these because they can be very colorful and they're a good line plant also.

Of course, you put probably multiple ones, the stronger line you wanted.

This one is pretty thin.

- Okay.

- Solomon's seal.

- Yeah, I like that.

- It's great, and it bends and makes a nice flow to your design.

Certainly, you could put one on each side of your pot, of your flowers, your vase.

- I could tell you've done this a lot here 'cause you're just grabbing, you know, different foliage.

This can bend, this can do this.

- Yeah, you can get a feel for it after a while.

- Okay.

- Now, every yard should have some grasses, especially this time of year.

- Beautiful time of year.

- They are great to use in arrangements.

Usually group them.

This is zebra grass, fountain grass, and you could rubber band them together or wire them together and use them en masse.

- Look at that.

- Yeah.

You know, it just gives this lovely flow to it.

Another thing that I love is this papyrus.

- I love the leaves.

- Yeah, see, and when you pick them, they'll have various stages of opening up, and you could stage them that way in your arrangement.

- Gotcha.

- One.

- Your arrangement is really coming to life.

- Sometimes, it'll turn out really well, and that's all you need.

I don't even need the flowers.

And then you have a smaller one that's just opening up in the various colors of green.

- Okay.

- And green on green is pretty to me.

- It's good.

And while you're grabbing that, let's talk about your tools.

I mean, good sharp tools.

- Okay.

Yeah.

These are nice.

These are sharp.

Very sharp scissors.

And the stronger stems, you need a heavier- - Okay.

- Heavier one.

- All right.

- This is a form of Philodendron.

It's called Burgundy.

Look, has different color on each side.

- Look at the stem though.

Golly, okay.

- And so you could use one side and then the other side, and it makes a nice background for something.

We need some ferns, some kind of ferns.

Some of them condition better, which means you would cut your flowers, make a clean angular cut, put it in water.

Sometimes I put alum in there.

It's a spice for pickling.

- That works?

- Yeah, yeah.

Especially hydrangeas.

- Okay.

- It will really keep your hydrangeas.

- Didn't know that before.

All right.

- And I learned that from Rick Pudwell at the Botanic.

- Okay, yeah, you learn so much.

Yeah, just- - Yeah, just hanging around there.

Now, this is just an autumn fern.

It stays well.

It stays conditioned quite well.

And then the Kimberly Queen is those huge ones that you see on French porches, and it will last a long time.

Not all ferns are gonna stay fresh a long time, but some will.

I'm gonna make 'em lean that way.

- Ms.

Mary, while you're doing that, we do appreciate this flower arrangement demonstration.

This is nice.

- Thank you.

- It's really come to life though.

- Yeah.

- Don't you think?

- Yeah, it's a little jungle.

- It's a little jungle.

All from your yard.

- Yeah.

- From your garden.

- Yep.

- How about that?

Thank you much, I appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Wow, look at our oregano and how much it bloomed this year.

And now, all these blooms have turned into seed heads.

And you can see them, and if you just scrub this, that there's just lots of seeds here.

Well, that's really nice and I'll probably keep some of them, but we don't want that many seeds to come up in this garden.

So we're gonna cut these off at this time.

And what I'm going to do is take off the whole stalk down to the green plant 'cause the green plant will stay evergreen in the winter here in Zone 7.

So I just come in and cut them off at the place where they're coming out of the green.

[pruners snipping] There.

Now, it's a nice evergreen mound for the winter.

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

Y'all ready?

- We're ready.

- Oh, these are some interesting questions.

- Yes.

- Let's start with the first of your email, which is interesting.

"I have a pear tree that is loaded with undeveloped pears.

What's wrong?"

And this is Arthur.

So Mr.

D., what do you think is going on there?

- I don't think there's anything wrong.

That's a Bradford pear, and that's as good as they're gonna get.

They are really not an edible pear.

That's a pear that's ornamental.

- Yeah.

- Pear tree.

- Yeah, and unfortunately, the birds are gonna eat all of those pears, and then when they distribute them everywhere else, they're gonna be coming up wild pears everywhere and disturbing the natural area of that.

Drive down I-40.

And you can see in the spring when they're blooming, you can see where Bradford pears were because the birds have reseeded that whole area.

- They're blooming everywhere.

- And they're really changing the forest.

So you really, we don't need Bradford pears anymore.

- I mean, those pears are developed.

They're not undeveloped.

They're just little pears.

- Right.

- Little pears.

If you want eating pears, you need to cut that tree down and plant you a Kieffer.

Plant you a Kieffer and a Moonglow.

You need cross-pollination.

And I don't think a Bradford, Bradford might cross-pollinate a Kieffer.

- But we don't need the Bradford.

[Chris and Mike laughing] - Yeah, we don't need the Bradford right here.

[laughs] - Yeah.

- We don't need the Bradford.

- Yeah, that's what that is, that's a Bradford pear.

- Right, it's Bradford pear, Arthur.

Yeah, we appreciate the picture, yeah, which helps for clarification.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

But yeah, they are developed already.

- Yeah.

- But like you said, you know, the birds- - And the birds- - Disseminate those into the wild.

- Yep.

- And then we get a change of our natural environment, and that's not good.

- Very invasive, very invasive.

- Yeah, so thank you for that picture, Arthur.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What is this plant?"

And this is Rosie from Cleves, Ohio.

So Joellen, can we help Ms.

Rosie out?

What is that plant?

- That's some type of aster.

- Yeah.

- And I consider that type of aster a weed in my garden.

- Okay.

- So I would pull it up myself, because the flowers are not gonna give you a whole lot.

I mean, they're gonna be tall and thin.

You can see them starting to come up in the picture.

So the flower power versus the foliage is not that great.

So I would dig it up and put something there that's gonna be more ornamental for you.

- Right.

And obviously, that one has been there for a while.

- It's been there for a while.

- Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty robust, right?

With the stems coming up.

- It's an aster of some type.

- Yeah, some type of aster.

All right, Ms.

Rosie.

But we, you know?

- Yeah.

I don't know.

- Nature's way, right?

- That's right.

- Yeah, nature's way.

All right, Ms.

Rosie, we appreciate the question and the picture.

Thank you so much for that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Some of my tall phlox is showing abnormal leaf color "and general depression.

What do you think could be causing this?"

And this is Roger from Greenville, Tennessee.

So Joellen, you know a little bit about phlox, don't you?

- Yeah, I have phlox, and some of the foliage I recognize because it's August and it's September, and we've not had rain.

And so, yeah, with just my watering it, not as good as Mother Nature.

And yeah, if I miss watering it, it will kind of look like that.

Even though I start watering again, it takes a little while for the foliage to go, "Oh, yes, we can be green again."

[laughs] - At some point.

- So that I understand.

But one thing is, I just have one plant.

He's got like a whole section, and that makes me concerned that it's not enough air circulation.

It's environmental, that maybe he needs to thin those, that there's not so many around there so when, and because it could be, yellowing leaves could be a sign of not enough or too much water.

So maybe it's dry there and he's been watering a lot.

Well, there's not enough air movement around, so the leaves are yellowing.

But it's definitely environmental, looks like an environmental issue to me.

The one thing he doesn't have, it doesn't look like he have any diseases 'cause powdery mildew is very prevalent for it, but it doesn't look like he has that.

So it's just environmental conditions based on the end of summer and early beginning of fall.

- I can go with that.

- But thin those.

Thin them out, divide them, and give them to your friends and let everybody enjoy the phlox and put them out around your house more.

I mean, they're gorgeous when they bloom.

And they're blooming this time of year when there's not a whole lot still blooming.

- Yeah, yeah, I can definitely get with that.

But I did, if you notice on some of those leaves, the purple pigmentation, I did think about magnesium deficiency though, 'cause it actually shows up in the veins.

- Ah.

- The purplish color.

- Yeah.

- So that could be.

- Like said, they look like they've been there for a while.

They need to be divided, and yeah, you can get a nice complete fertilizer that has some magnesium in it that will help- - Will help that.

- Help clear that up.

- Yeah, but he had a lot of it.

It was just in that area.

- Yeah.

I think they need to be divided.

It's time for them to be divided.

- Okay.

All right, Roger, thank you for the question and thank you also for the picture.

- Good picture.

- We appreciate that.

It was a good picture.

All right, Joellen and Mr.

D, fun as always.

Thank y'all so much.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com.

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 figs, visit familyplotgarden.com.

Also, on our YouTube channel, @FamilyPlotGarden, we have a video where Mary shows how to turn a generic grocery store bouquet into a professional-looking flower arrangement.

Go check it out.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]