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

Tomato plants need support.

Today we are going to show you the Florida Weave method.

Also, it is hot nowadays and watering can be a chore.

Installing a drip irrigation system can save time.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Dr. Natalie Bumgarner.

Dr. Natalie is an Assistant Professor of Residential Consumer Horticulture, UT Extension and Ms. Melissa Kinnear will be joining us later, okay.

So Natalie, we're gonna talk about the Florida Weave method, right?

For staking up those tomatoes.

- Oh, yeah, the king of the garden, we gotta give him the throne.

- The king of the garden.

All right, so you're gonna walk us through how this actually works?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So there are a few critical supplies that you're gonna need.

And, we kinda have a good demonstration.

So you're gonna need some kind of stake and what we have here are T-posts, which are of course gonna be one of most your long-term, durable.

So for five bucks or something, you can get a T-post and the height that you're gonna select is gonna depend on whether you're growing determinate or indeterminate tomatoes.

- Okay.

- And so if you're growing an indeterminate tomato, then I'll probably go ahead and get a six or 6 1/2 foot posts so that you have a lot of vertical structure to bring those plants up on.

If you're growing a determinant tomato, then you don't need as much height.

- Okay, makes sense.

- Five, six feet may be fine.

- And can we talk about the difference between determinate and indeterminate for those?

- Oh, yes.

So indeterminate tomatoes continue to produce leaves and flowers from their primary growing point.

So, well, in most of our temperate climates, they are going to be annuals, right?

Of course, they can keep growing.

- Yes, they can keep growing.

- Be perennials in another climate.

Determinate tomatoes have a small genetic mutation, naturally occurring, that terminates that growing point with a set number of secondary branches.

And so determinate tomatoes will maintain a more compact habit but also bear over a more concentrated period of time.

So a lot of times they came into play when we're talking about commercial producers that would like to not pick the field 14 times like we might in our home garden.

However, for home gardeners, they're pretty handy.

- Okay, good.

- Yeah, so for those larger taller growing indeterminates, we'll want taller posts, for our more compact determinates, then most of the time, if you have a five-foot stake and you put about a foot of it in the ground, you should have plenty of vertical height.

This is an example of a wooden tomato stake.

So once again, this is about a five-foot stake and we'll wanna drive it about a foot into the ground, and so just cost difference, you may pay a dollar, dollar and a quarter.

Yeah, it's mostly a cost issue.

You can reuse these but I tend to buy them new for sanitation and because they'll break down-- - They'll break down.

- Who wants them to break off in the middle of the season?

- Yeah, okay, makes sense.

- So stakes and then twine, right?

So we talk about the Florida Weave, some people call it the California Weave.

[Chris laughs] Sometimes if I wanna be very geographically polite, I'll just say the stake-and-twine system.

So all kinds of different names.

- Stake-and-twine.

- Yeah, and so when it comes to twine, lots of times, I'll just use nylon twine.

- Okay.

- So we have less worry about it breaking down over the course of the season.

You can also use a natural twine and many times, it might hold up fine but just be aware of the fact that it might start to, with moisture and heat and, yeah.

The other reason that I like nylon is because it allows me to get just a little bit more tension because when I come around, I can tighten.

This is pretty tight.

Sometimes I will actually also use just regular baler twine so yeah.

- Really, okay.

- And now baler twine is gonna be a little bit thicker, diameter but it also works well and it's easy to handle.

So you can do the Florida Weave with as few as a couple tomatoes or hundreds and hundreds of feet long.

So it's a cool technique that can be really handy for home gardeners.

And really what we're doing, is just creating a basket for these plants to reside in.

And so I will often start my stake-and-twine or my weave on the day that I plant.

- Oh, okay.

- My trial plots actually have black plastic and so I wanna make sure that my plants are up off the ground from the very first.

But it's also helpful for gardeners just to get their plants training and growing in the right direction.

- Now, that makes sense.

- Yeah.

- It does, so, earlier the better?

- Yeah.

- Earlier the better, okay.

- And it's handy because weaves stay cleaner, right?

- Yeah.

[laughs] - So that can be a disease benefit as well.

And so, what we're really doing is just tying off and then we're just weaving this.

- So you get that tight, okay.

- Yes, as tight as you do it by hand.

And then we're just gonna weave so that our growing points are always between the two lines.

And so if we were in the field where we had several rows, all we do is just make one turn, keep my tension.

- Gotcha.

- Go on out the row.

Here is, of course, much simpler because all we have to do is turn and go back.

Or, for this example, I'm just gonna tie off right here.

But most of the time, we'll put these rows of twine 8 to 10 inches apart and so you can see that this bottom layer has both sides and we're keeping these leaves up off the ground, we're holding this plant upright and we're making sure that its growing points are always up.

And how often you have to twine?

- Alright, so that's gonna be my next question.

So yeah, how often would you have to do that?

- During the fastest growing part of the season, so in the first couple of months after the plants grow, this might be a weekly job.

- Oh my gosh, okay.

- But, once you get into the plants really spending more of their energy bearing, oftentimes that tapers off, especially for determinate tomatoes because for determinate tomatoes, they're gonna get up to the point where their main growing point terminates and they're not gonna have any more vertical growth.

And so, at that point in time, it may take, say only three or four layers of twine for your determinate tomatoes but most of the time for the indeterminates, I just keep adding-- - You have to keep adding-- - Until I run out of stake, usually.

And sometimes I'll even break the main growing point off late in the season so that it supports the plant in filling out the fruit that remain instead of continuing to grow up.

- Okay, so in your trials, so the Florida Weave method is the one that works the best for you?

- Yeah, that's what we use.

And what you saw me do today was just, have a piece of twine in my hand.

But if you're doing this on a larger scale, you can get these in little boxes.

They can have belt clips and you can have-- - That's for the serious tomato growers-- - Yes, special PVC pipes that allow you to, because, at this scale, you're just like, "Oh, you tied that up, that wasn't too strenuous, it's not too bad."

But if you have a whole bunch of these and you have to bend over and weaving around-- - Yeah, I can see that.

- So there's lots of ways that you can make this something that you just walk into.

You'll go pretty fast over time and so it's something that allows us to get our plants up off the ground, keep 'em dry, keep 'em clean.

And the other question that often comes up when we talk about Florida Weave is about pruning and sucker pruning.

And so, as you might guess, once you get those plants in that basket, we typically don't do a lot of sucker pruning because you can't really get to the main stem as well.

So lots of times with this system, I'll try to make sure that, determinate or indeterminate-- - So it doesn't matter, okay.

- Yeah, I'll try to remove the first couple of suckers at the lowest growing point right there.

- Gotcha.

- Now, this is larger than I would typically remove it.

I'd rather remove the suckers when they're small but that was just for demonstration.

So I'll remove a couple just so that I can make sure that the plant stays up of the ground because of course, this is the frustrating thing for we somewhat OCD vegetable people is once you get your first layer of twine on there, you don't want any suckers slipping out and getting around.

So taking off a couple of suckers allows you to kinda keep that neat.

And then, once you take a few of those off of the bottom, you're pretty much just letting 'em-- - You're ready to go with them, right?

- Go at that time, yeah.

- All right, Doc, we appreciate that demonstration, the Florida Weave method, I like that.

Thank you much.

- Yeah, absolutely.

[gentle country music] - This tomato plant is covered with aphids but don't fear and guess what I see here?

It's the larva of a lady beetle.

Yes, it's gonna take care of all these aphids for us.

Not only do we have the larva, we also have the adult and the eggs.

So again when these eggs hatch, they will take care of those aphids for us.

So before you pull out the pesticides, don't do it.

Always scout and look to see if you have beneficials.

Again we have a beneficial here, the lady beetle will eat many aphids.

So again, you don't have to worry about pulling out the pesticide, just let the beneficials do their work.

You will be happy to see those lady beetles when they're out there.

[gentle country music] Hi Ms. Melissa, drip irrigation.

- Oh, it is so exciting.

- I can tell you're already excited about it.

- I am so excited about this.

Drip irrigation is the process of putting water where you want it, when you want it and how much you want it.

So what we're gonna talk about today is how to take it basically from your house, from a pond, from anywhere you have a water source to getting it to your plants.

And so I wanna show you first, if you have a water source, we're gonna be coming off of a utility here at the gardens and we're not gonna be too concerned about a regulator because on our timer, we have a filter that has a little filter on it.

We have a timer, we're gonna regulate the water based on a little knob that we're gonna have on our hose.

So we're not gonna worry too much about that.

I would highly recommend a timer 'cause I hate going out at seven o'clock in the morning and trying to time my water.

But I highly recommend you can buy these timers, you can buy regulators, everything I'm showing you, you can get pretty much in any hardware store anywhere in the Mid-South.

- Is it relatively inexpensive or just depends on how much you're gonna buy?

- It is very inexpensive, cheaper than probably a garden hose.

- Oh, how about that, all right?

- Once you really get rolling with it but I would recommend a timer.

So first thing you gotta have is you gotta have your half-inch pipe.

Now, half-inch pipe is your main hose that you're gonna take off your garden hose and I wanna show you how easy it is to put this sucker together.

I have what's called a female fetter and you take this and you have a little, see the little knob there.

You're gonna push this into here, like this, and I love this because I can do it.

A lady can do this.

You put that in and then you twist it 'til it comes and wraps around it and so now that's nice and tight.

So that's put together.

- All right, and a lady did that.

- A lady did that, yeah.

It's on there tight, yeah.

- It sure is.

- So then you come back and you put it against your water source and see it's got all the, and there's even a washer in there.

So I don't have to care about the washer.

And then you put it on there like that and that takes care of the one end.

And then what I wanna do is I'm gonna thread this and what you have to think about, if you're gonna put this in your flower garden, your butterfly garden, you gotta think about how long do you need this half-inch hose.

You don't have to cover.

As you see, I made it long enough to go all the way to the end of this garden which is fine.

So now you gotta think about, okay, I gotta close that water off.

So, how do I do that?

There's three ways to close that water off.

If you think that you're gonna extend that water into another bed at one point in time, you have a connector like this.

You can put it on the same way where you turn it down, go over that little nozzle.

- Okay, just like the last one.

- Just like the last one.

The beauty of this is that it has a cap and it comes off.

So again, you could connect another hose to it or another half-inch pipe to it.

We're not gonna put that on this one.

You also have what's called an eighth, where you can just fold it over, like so and it'll fit there like that and then undo it.

But for this particular one, we're going to use our trusty wire tie.

- Gotta keep those handy, right?

- Oh, you gotta have your wire ties and once you get the wire tie on, and it's like any hose, once you get that bent, you're locked down.

I'm gonna hold this down 'cause you're going, how do you hold the black hose down, to keep it out of the way?

I'ma hold this down just a little bit.

All right, I've got my black piping in place.

Now I need to think about how do I get water to my plants?

We have three peppers here and we have three tomatoes.

Now we know with tomatoes, they really don't like water on their leaves.

- Yeah, it's pretty obvious right?

[Both laughs] - Peppers don't really care.

You got thousands of different kind of sprinkler heads that you can use and you got beaucoups of risers and these are called risers.

You can get 'em all whichaways.

I even have one here we're gonna actually attach to our flower garden.

That is a container bed riser and it puts the water specifically down.

Now, comes the fun part.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put my quarter-inch pipes in.

Now the way that is, is you have 'em, if you're gonna do this a lot, I would recommend getting a hole punch.

- Okay, that's a hole punch?

- It's a hole punch and it's gonna cut only a hole big enough to be a quarter inch.

I'm always kinda guessing where I might wanna put a hole.

So, I make a hole and I always have to kinda do it and then I kinda measure.

Well, that's not really where I wanna put it.

So I had this nifty little thing called a goof plug.

And so I take this tiny little goof plug and I put it-- - Plug it back.

- Just plug it back.

I get a little click and going [smacks lips], "No water's gonna come through that thing."

So I'm moving my hole over.

Make my hole, then I have these connectors.

These are, they got a hole through both of them.

I take the quarter-inch piping, put it through there and I'm gonna go to a tomato.

So the way this particular riser is, there's the hole where the water goes and the water comes out here.

So, come to this, put it down in there.

I put my, hear a little click, feel a little click.

And the nice thing about this is it's got an arrow, you can see-- - It let's you know which way it goes.

- Yeah, that's why I call it goofy.

And then you put right down here at the root of the plant and that water is only gonna go to the root of that plant.

- Okay.

- Now, you noticed I made that a lot longer.

What if I decide well, that plant died, it's not doing too well.

I need to move it, you can move these things.

So you don't really need a lotta half-inch pipe as much as you need your quarter-inch pipe.

Put that in there and then this head is called a bubbler head.

Well, it's kind of a bubbler sprayer depending on how much water you put to it.

The beauty of this is you can regulate it at the head, which I love 'cause depending on how much water you need and how far you need that water to go, you can change it here.

So again, take this and can you hand me one of those little connectors?

- This one?

- Yeah, one of those.

- I'm learning.

- All right, you put this together like that.

Now this one, the water comes up from the side.

Get the right end.

The nice thing about doing it on a hot day today is all this plastic PVC works beautifully 'cause it's hot enough and it works well.

Make another hole, punch it all the way through, push it in until it clicks and there you go.

There's some hard dirt there.

Now, this will eventually lay down once it gets settled.

You can have it behind, right up here against the wood so it's hidden.

So if you have a flower garden and you don't want all this black showing, you can put it up against the wood.

You can also lay mulch over it and it won't be seen.

- That would be a good idea.

- Now let me put in the rest of 'em 'cause I've got all sorts of other ones right here.

- All right, let's give it a shot, see if it works.

- All right, let's try it.

- All right.

[water sprinkling] Alright, I can see the water, hey.

- All right, that one's working.

- This one's working.

- All right, that's doing what it's supposed to.

That one's getting a little crazy but that's all right.

- 'Cause it can be adjusted, right?

- It can be adjusted, yep.

I haven't used this one in a while but you can see how all these tomato plants, it's all staying down by them.

This one's swirling like it's supposed to.

This one's bubbling like it's supposed to.

And all that water is staying right there underneath the tomatoes which is what we wanted.

You got an irrigation system.

- We got an irrigation system.

- You sure do, yep.

- We appreciate that, Ms. Melissa.

- You are more than welcome.

- Thank you much.

[gentle country music] - This maple tree has got some sucker growth along it and you want to cut this off because one thing is, it's unattractive but also it takes away the nutrients from the actual tree so we wanna get rid of them.

And what we'll do is we'll cut about a quarter of an inch from the trunk and simply cut them off.

Some are so small, I can just rub them off.

There, now, there's also a few, there's a limb here that is trying to cross this other limb so I'm going to get rid of it so it doesn't continue to rub up against the other limb.

This one is dead.

So I'll trim that off also and that's it for now.

We'll see how it grows and see what else needs to be trimmed next year.

[gentle country music] - All right, this is our Q and A segment.

You ready, Doc?

These are some great questions.

- Yeah, I've some good vegetable questions today.

- All right.

- This will be fun.

- I'm sure you like those vegetable questions, don't you?

- All right, so here's our first via email.

"Why are my tomatoes misshapen and cracking?"

And this is Joan from Memphis, Tennessee.

- Oh, yeah, one of your local viewers.

Well, there's probably several environmental conditions that could come into play there-- - Environmental, right?

- Yeah, so misshapen when I hear that I think cat facing and those are when we'll see some kind of seams on the bottoms of the fruit.

And so that can be cold temperatures when bloom occurred.

And that was actually the first thing I thought about that question.

Now the cracking could be from moisture differentials.

And we of course, we expect those but we've definitely had some of those too.

- We definitely had that.

So the cold temperatures we've had here in Memphis, Tennessee and of course, the moisture, right?

- Yeah.

- You've got a lot of it and then of course, it goes back dry again.

So yeah, so I think that's the cause of the problem, environmental.

- Yes.

- All right, so there you have it, Ms. Joan, we appreciate that question.

Here's our next via email.

This one's interesting.

"Three of my five azaleas have yellow leaves "on this year's new growth.

"The other two plants look great.

"On May 2nd, I tried sprinkling about half a cup "of iron sulfate around each of the three, "about 8 to 12 inches from the base "and watering that in "but I haven't really seen much improvement.

Do I need to add more or do something different?"

This is Gregory from Memphis, Tennessee.

So five azaleas, two are doing pretty good, they look great.

The other three, yellow leaves.

- Yeah, so when it's-- - Can pH be the issue maybe?

- Yeah, and when it's spotty like that, we also think, are there some areas of that bed that might be drained differently?

- Same thing.

So I thought about pH and I thought about drainage 'cause I know azaleas don't like wet feet.

So there could definitely be a difference but he tried the iron sulfate.

- Yeah, and so then you start to think about primary or secondary factors.

So if it's poor drainage and we start to have some root issues or even beginnings of root rot, then they're gonna be less able to take up some of those nutrients that you're trying to correct-- - Right.

Of potential deficiency.

- Right, 'Cause azaleas need iron of course, to lower pH.

So no, you're exactly right, though.

So I'm thinking your drainage might be a problem and yeah, your pH could be a problem as well.

- Yeah, combination.

- So Gregory yeah, a little soil testing may help just so we know what the pH is, just to be sure.

- Yeah.

- And build that area up if you do have poor drainage.

So it is always interesting when you have five but three are bad, two are good.

All right, so thank you for that question.

All right Doc, that was fun.

- Yeah, that was a good set of questions.

- Really good, thank you.

- Absolutely.

- 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.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]