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

Microgreens are all the rage in high end restaurants.

Today we're gonna talk about growing them.

Also, mice and rats would love to call your house home.

We'll talk about getting rid of them inside and keeping them outside.

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

- (female narrator) 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, Natalie is the Residential Consumer Horticultural Specialist for UT Extension and Mr.

D is here today.

- Glad to be here.

- Thanks for joining us.

Alright, Natalie, microgreens, okay, they're all the rage now, so, what are they?

- Yeah so, what's the deal, right?

Well, they are a great way to add both color and flavor and a little bit of novelty to all sorts of dishes, they can be used as a garnish on top of soups and salads or they can be used as an entire salad all to themselves.

- Okay, yeah, I see a couple folks on the set, you know, watching there, pretty closely there.

They may be pretty tasty.

- They are, they're a little bit dangerous to transport around the state, it's hard to keep them intact.

- Okay, now what crops can be grown as microgreens?

- Pretty much anything that has an edible leaf and stem.

So some of the most common are cool season crops in the cabbage and broccoli family, so brassicas, I have cabbage, I have broccoli in here, there are a lot of herbs that are also commonly grown, some of the highest value microgreens, that commercial growers grow are basil.

So, that's one of the most common.

Cilantro, some of the other herbs and a lot of leafy crops like lettuce, I have amaranth here, so, really a range.

Even root crops.

- (Mr.

D. Pigweeds?

- Yeah, I knew you were gonna say pigweeds when you said amaranth [laughs].

- We eat it early though before we spread any seeds, cousin of red root pigweed, right there.

- That's right [laughs].

So what media are you growing them in?

- I think the simplest way for beginners to grow is to use a soil-less germination mix.

So one of the great things about it is, of course, it's sterile, so it's very fine and it holds moisture, it drains well and one of the best things about it is a lot of time, if you buy it, it'll have a slight fertilizer charge in it and for a one to two week crop like we can grow microgreens in such a short period of time, that may be all the fertilizer that we need.

- (Chris) One to two weeks?

- Yeah, these, everything here is one week old.

These are seeded a week ago today.

- (Chris) That's pretty good.

- Yeah, so they grow pretty quickly.

- That's a pretty good stand too.

Now where could we grow these, I mean, can you grow them in your house, outside, what do you think?

- So, they are, of course, they are vegetable crops, so they do need a pretty good level of light, but not as high a light level as a mature crop would or a fruiting crop, so we can grow these in sheltered porches, we don't want bright outdoor sun because they dry out so quickly and they can desiccate, but, bright indoor spaces, I've grown them in the summertime in my living room that gets good light from the patio door.

Home greenhouses, so once we get into winter and the natural light levels are lower, we might need a little big extra light, but even a small fluorescent light over these guys in your house can grow them pretty well in the fall to wintertime.

- So, let's talk about basic care.

- Yeah, so basic care, we will direct seed these and a lot of the small seeded crops like turnip, mustard, cabbage and kale, we don't even need to cover, we'll just sprinkle along the top of the media and moisten very well and they'll be up in just one to three days, most of those, quick germinating crops and indoor, a regular house temperatures in that 60 to 75 degree range will help most of those and those are cool season crops, right, so they germinate relatively rapidly and then once we get them germinated, we'll generally water them from the bottom, so that helps us lower the risk of plant disease.

These are seeded pretty closely, so the dryer we can keep the stems, the healthier we can keep the plants and if we have a fertilizer charge in our media, once daily, once every couple of days, watering from the bottom is our main care.

We need good air movement so that we can keep them healthy and grown well and good light but, generally, 10 days to 2 weeks, we are to a harvest-able stage for a lot of these crops.

- Wow, I think Mr.

D can handle that, huh?

- I could.

- A week to 10 days, pretty good.

Now Natalie, can you tell us, I mean, what you have here, the specific plants here?

- Yes, so a lot of these are in the brassica family.

Over here we have turnips, which are milder, often times eaten as a microgreen, then when you sometimes have in a root crop, we have mustard, lettuce, which can provide a good range of color, not one of your strongest flavored crops, kale, red cabbage, which of course is beautiful for it's colors.

Some of the kind of sharper flavors, a little big more zest might be arugula, we have right here, cress is also one that we'll use in just small quantities.

Basil, you can see the basil is one of our slowest growing crops, which I mentioned it was a higher value, so that's kind of why basil expensive, it's one of the slowest growing crops and this is amaranth, which is actually a warm season crop, many of these are cool season crops, basil being a warm season crop and amaranth.

This is cilanro, one of my favorite ones.

- (Chris) Yeah, I was gonna ask you which one did you like?

- Yeah, as a microgreen, it is a little bit slower germinating, some that I don't have that are really common are some of the larger seeded crops like peas, pea tendrils are excellent, but you know, we'll need to grow them at a little big larger space, a little bit more media then we have here.

Beets and chard can be great, they provide beautiful color.

Rainbow swiss chard can really be a beautiful microgreen.

- Yeah, I like the color of the chard.

- Yeah.

- How about that, so how do you know when they're ready though?

- Well, we can really eat them whenever we ourselves are ready.

- (Chris) Oh, we're ready [laughs].

- Yeah, so it's really a lot about how large we want the plant to be, right, if you're growing them to sell, you wanna get them a little bit bigger than this.

These are what we call cotyledons, so these are seed leaves.

We don't have true leaves, that's why you may not be able to look at these and recognize them.

If we had true leaves, the cabbage and the broccoli and the kale and the basil, everything would look more familiar to you, but these are seed leaves and we can certainly eat them at this size, but oftentimes we'll let them grow just a little bit larger so we'll have slightly more weight and then we'll harvest those with true leaves on them.

- Now, how would you harvest them and store them?

- We'll just harvest them with a clean pair of kitchen shears and it's really a by-hand job, so we'll just carefully separate them and harvest as close to the media source as we can without picking up any particulates on our scissors.

I really don't like to store them for a long time.

If you're growing them in your home, you can just harvest as you need them.

- (Mr.

D.)

Store 'em right there.

- Yeah, right, we're storing them up right, we're storing them alive.

They can certainly be washed and dried well and put in a plastic container and stored for a few days in your refrigerator, but, I just let them grow until I was ready to eat them.

- So, when we're ready, we go ahead and get started, right?

- It is, it's a self-service buffet, right here.

- Alright, well Natalie, we appreciate that, thanks much.

- Thanks a lot.

[upbeat country music] - Rhizome.

- Rhizome, alrighty yeah.

That's a botanical term that is referring to a modified stem.

I know it, rhizome is a stem ya'll.

It's growing underground.

It's a stem, it's not a root.

- (Mr.

D.)

Not a root.

- Not a root.

That's a sweet potato, a sweet potato's a root.

[laughs] But a rhizome is a modified stem that grows underground from which roots arise, or nodes, and you know.

An iris has a rhizome.

A lot of our plants have, yeah Johnson grass-- - (Chris) Bermuda grass.

- All have rhizomes.

So it's kinda interesting that people think it's a root, but it's really not.

You know, botanically correct, it is a underground stem.

[gentle country music] Alright, Mr.

D, let's get rid of those rodents.

I see we have a table full of traps here.

- We have an assortment, it's almost mind-boggling, the options that you have where mice are concerned.

What I would prefer happen is that the not come in, where you don't have to use any of these and you can use hardware cloth to prevent that from happening, but, you know, mice, it's hard to believe but mice, the bones in a mouse's skull are moveable and they the ability to get through any hole that's larger than a quarter of an inch and this a quarter inch hardware cloth, so if you have a quarter inch hardware cloth, that will prevent a mouse from getting in there.

I've got an example of a quarter inch hole.

Now they can't get through that quarter inch hole, but if it's any larger than the quarter inch hole that we have over here, then they can get through that.

Rats, even a big ole rat, they also, they're a rodent and their skull bones are moveable and they can get through a hole that's larger than one half inch, so, you know, you need to use solid aluminum or solid steel or something that is a quarter inch or smaller, where hardware cloth is concerned, if you're gonna try to use the exclusion method.

Now, sometimes if you're using the exclusion method, you may be trapping them inside your house, so if that's the case, you still gotta go with this, you've gotta use the options that we have here.

There are several, we'll talk about traps first.

There's several traps around.

Somebody once said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world beat a path to your door.

I don't know whether that happened to Mr.

Victor, but this is a Victor mousetrap and it's been around for a hundred years, if I understand and I don't know, how many did you say had been sold?

- (Chris) One billion.

- One billion of these have been sold and I'm gonna try to set one here without mashing my fingers, but I am gonna put my glasses on.

- Ah yeah, do that.

- Will you hold this for me?

(laughter) - (Natalie) I'll jump right in there and help you out.

- Yeah, so I'm probably going to get, no, okay, and the way this trap works, you apply bait and, you know, my whole life, we only had one kind of bait that we used, cheese.

I'm not sure mice like cheese, put a little piece, just a little bitty piece of cheese or a little bitty piece of peanut butter or something like that, right there and when Mr.

Mouse comes along and touches it, [mousetrap snaps] so long Mr.

Mouse.

There are improved varieties.

I hesitate to say improved, maybe they're not improved, I mean, that does the trick, I'm pretty sure, but there are other mousetraps out there.

These are plastic.

This one, I guess they get in there, they go around a bun of corners and you can actually see them in there because, you know, and they're looking out, trying to get out.

So, I guess that's a, actually this is a bait station.

You put bait in here, the mice go in there and eat it, so they can leave, they can leave.

I guess they can see the bait and so that would make them want to get in there and they can leave.

They'll eat and leave.

I like using bait stations.

This is a larger bait station right here.

This is really large enough, you can see it's plenty large, even rats could get in there without any problem, that's probably at least a two inch hole and it's got, basically they can run all the way through there.

Off to the side, I've got bait, right here, they'll go in here, they'll eat the bait and then they can leave.

The reason I like the bait stations is because some of these poisons that are anti-coagulants or that will make the rodents thirsty, they're nice enough to eat your poison and then they leave and go get a drink of water and die away from you.

With this critter, you're gonna have to deal with him and if you use a trap that actually catches them, I encourage you to check your traps once a day at least because you don't wanna leave them, you don't wanna do the once a week thing because you'll know, I mean the good thing is you'll know that you've caught something, you can smell 'em.

This is another example of one, this is a single use trap, I'm not really sure how it works.

Let me see if I can, I don't know how to trigger it, but apparently when you catch one, you just dispose of that.

I don't think there's any way to get the mouse out of there.

- (Chris) No, it doesn't look like it.

- Yeah, so that's another type.

This one, I understand, is a humane type mousetrap, get it open here, probably better to put my glasses back on so I can get it put back together.

You can see, it's got a ramp, a little ramp that the little mouse come and they'll walk up this ramp and then apparently it'll go back up and it'll hold like, a whole family of mice, three or four mice in there and the directions say, "Take the mice "at least two miles away and then release them."

You know, I've got a couple of other ideas about that, if you have anybody that has a cat, you know, or a pet snake or something like that, that will pretty well guarantee that they march two miles back to your house and be back to your house before you get there.

[laughter] But, I mean, all kinds of traps here.

This is a type of poison or toxicant, rodenticide, I think is the proper term to use.

It's kind of a little cake.

I like the stations, the bait stations, I mean, to get into this bait station right here, I got a key.

You have to have a key to get in there, so you don't have to worry about kids or your pets getting into it.

I like the bait stations because they're a little bit more secure and I don't think a child would pick this up and eat it, but I caught my daughter eating dog food one time, and so, you never know.

- Yeah, the color makes it attractive for kids.

- And this right here, the Havoc is what I have inside this bait station and actually, my granddaughter brought one of these little packets into my wife, I had one out in the garage and she brought one in and said, "Can I eat this?"

And these type of packets, I'm not sure are available for homeowners, I purchased this in a bucket at a co-op.

I've got a pretty large bucket of these.

I use quite a few of these and put them in my attic and under my house and things like that, but now I don't, I try to put them where Lilah can get to them.

- Mr.

D, is there gonna be a danger to other animals, you know, with these poisons around?

- I don't think so, I think the dose, the lethal dose that kills a rat or mice is probably too small to kill pets.

I wouldn't, if you have pets and if these critters go out and die out in the yard, I wouldn't let your pets eat them.

If your pets eat squirrels and rabbits and things like that, and I'm not sure that they would, but I do know these products are toxic to dogs and cats.

I don't think they will eat the bait, but they may chew on a critter that's dying, you know, in the process, but I don't think there's enough of a dose to be a problem and I say that because as stringent and strong as the EPA is, I don't think they would allow us to have them on the market if that was a danger.

- Okay, we definitely appreciate that and looking at that snap trap, voles, you can get some voles with that too.

- You're right, you're right, this works for voles.

- How about that, there you have it.

Thank you Mr.

D, appreciate that.

[gentle country music] - Let's do a little bit of germination testing for some of our seeds.

This packet was packed for five years ago, but we have some very straightforward and easy ways that we can test and see what the viability of these seeds packets are.

So, I'm simply going to lay out a few seeds.

Ten is nice because the mathematics are easy when we do some germination testing.

So now we have 10 seeds, simply laid out on a piece of paper towel.

Then we'll fold it gently so theyll stay in place, and then wet it down.

[spray bottle spraying] You can slip this wetted packet into a small plastic bag.

Leave it in a nice warm place.

Cucumbers would like at least 70, 75, even up to 80 degrees for good germination, and then we can come back in a few days and test it.

It's been a week, let's come back and see what our germination test was on our cucumber seeds from 2013.

We'll gently open the package and peel back our paper towel to be able to make a count.

We have one, two, three seeds that haven't germinated, so that's about 70% germination, which would be what we'd expect from seeds that were a few years old.

We're now free to plant the rest of that packet, seed just a little bit heavier than we normally would, and if we're careful, we might even be able to use these that are just germinated right here on this paper towel.

[upbeat country music] Alright, this is our Q and A session.

Natalie, you jump in there and help us out, alright?

- Alright.

- So, here's our first viewer email.

"My summer squash formed very small fruit "that fell off the plant.

What caused that?"

Natalie, what do you think, since you know a little bit about vegetables here.

- Well, I'd say they're probably dealing with a pollination issue and so, with squash what we need is a male flower and a female flower and for pollen to get from the male flower to the female flower, which is where we're gonna produce that fruit and so, if they're really dry and then falling off, then, maybe there just wasn't an insect population enough to achieve that pollination.

It may have been stress or some other issue going on there.

- Wow, Mr.

D?

- Sometimes, do they put the female flowers on before the male flowers come on and so you lose some of those?

- Well, I mean, I guess it would be possible, lots of times what we'll see is plants will produce male flowers before we see female flowers and a lot of times the questions that you get would be, I have flowers, but I don't have any fruit, but if they're seeing the fruit partially form and then dropping.

- Pollination.

- Yep.

- Okay, and usually with the female flower, you can tell it's a female flower because you can see the little fruit right behind it.

- (Natalie) Look underneath of it, right?

- (Chris) Just right behind it, there's some-- - The ovary, which will be the fruit, yeah, right there behind the flower.

- Okay, does heat have anything to do with that, you think?

'Cause it's been a pretty hot summer.

- It could and you know, with a lot of stress, anytime we have heat we could have water stress and things like that, so, it could be a complicating factor.

- Okay, alright, here's our next viewer email.

"What type of grass is this?

"Also, when you feed your lawn, "do you also feed your weeds?"

I like that, and this is from Luke.

So, he wanted to know, what kind of grass this was and feeding your lawn.

Do you also feed those weeds?

What do you think about that one, Mr.

D?

Do you feed the weeds?

- I'll answer the part about feeding the weeds.

You can actually, you can identify.

- I can identify it.

- Is it crab grass?

- It's crab grass, it's crab grass and lespedeza was also in it.

- (Natalie) Yeah, it was mixed in there.

- It was mixed in there, that's right.

- So you got a good legume in there with the grass.

So, you gotta couple of weeds out there, but yes, when you use a weed and feed, you are fertilizing your weeds as much as you're fertilizing your desirable grass, which is why I don't normally recommend using a weed and feed.

I recommend using a herbicide to kill the weeds.

- (Natalie) Managing your weeds.

- Yeah, managing the weeds first and then feeding your desired species is what I recommend.

- I'm the same with that.

If you grow a good healthy stand of grass, you don't have to worry about weeds as much, 'cause weeds, of course, are going to be competing for the same thing that your turf grasses are, that they need to grow.

So, what, space, light, nutrients, water.

- Just outnumber them with good things, with the good grass if you can.

- Alright, yeah, that was crabgrass and lespedeza, so you need to get the crabgrass under control for sure and there's some products out there that you could use to do that, that you can get at the big box stores and that should do it, that should get it.

Alright, so here's our viewer email.

"How do you take care of a ficus tree?

"I bought one last month and all the leaves have fallen off of it," and this is from Danny.

- Common complaint.

- (Laughing) Yeah, I'm laughing because, yeah, I've been to numerous office buildings where I've seen ficus trees and of course, you've seen leaves all over the place.

Here's the thing about them, they're real sensitive.

So you can't move them around a lot.

- Light would be my first question, probably.

- Yeah, light, so if you have high light or if you have high temperatures, you know what that leads to, that means you have to water more and most people are not watering enough and then, guess what?

If they're watering, they're watering too much.

So, if you have conditions that are too dark and you have lower temperatures, then you don't have to water as much, but again, people water too much and something else I noticed too though, if you have a ficus tree sitting under a vent.

- Yes, air movement.

I mean, with real warm temperatures, probably the air conditioning has been running a lot.

I mean, it could be, it could be drafts, cold air movement or sometimes even just the change.

Purchase a new plant, right, it's been outdoors in a garden center or something with bright light and you bring it inside and it's adjusting and it'll drop some leaves as it adjusts.

- That's usually what I see, yeah, it usually goes from one light condition to the other, so it's usually high light to low light, because yeah, most of the times, you're gonna be buying them at a nursery maybe and it's been exposed to a lot of light and then you take it inside or whatever and guess what.

The light conditions are not the same, so the tree's trying to say, hey, what's going on here, I need to compensate so, off goes the leaves.

But it's usually that, the light conditions, or too much water is what I see, but they are sensitive, they don't like to be moved a lot.

Alright, Danny, I hope that helps you out.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"I am planting greens in my fall garden for the first time.

"Are there any pests or diseases "I should be concerned about?"

And this is from Carol.

So, we'll start with our vegetable person here.

What do you think about that one, Natalie?

- Well, I mean, certainly there are, I mean, I think cabbage worms maybe come to mind, there's some of those leaf eaters, a lot of the greens that we eat are gonna be brassica crops.

You know, in that family, so we can keep an eye on those, protect them, sometimes even row covers can be a great way to protect our fall crops.

- (Chris) Okay, I didn't think about that.

- But I think sometimes maybe even before we get to the pest and disease question, we think about how we get those established well, keeping them watered in and getting those plants transitioning well in the heat of the summer.

Planting our fall crops, taking good care of them early on is sometimes one of the most important steps.

- (Chris) I would agree with that.

- And if you do get an infestation with caterpillars or flea beetles or something like that, the Redbook will tell you how to take care of them.

- I think that's pretty good.

For the first time, so you're happy to know that she's actually considering growing greens in her fall garden.

- Some lettuce and kale, a great way to go into October and November.

- Alright, so you hear it, from Natalie herself, it's a great way to do that.

Alright, Natalie, Mr.

D., we're out of time.

- Alright, okay, thanks for having us.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or a 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.

You can find Extension publications about the things we talked about on FamilyPlotGarden.com.

While you are there, take a look at the gardening calendar or ask us your gardening question.

Thanks for watching, I'm Chris Cooper.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]