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

I'm Chris Cooper.

We don't tend to do much gardening around the holidays, but plants play a major part in the celebrations.

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.

Kelly.

Dr.

Kelly is a retired horticulture professor.

Doc, always good to have you here.

- Thank you, good to be here, as always.

- As always, right.

- As always, yeah, ready to go.

- So I'm looking forward to this.

Here's my history lesson, all right?

So let's talk a little bit about Christmas plant history.

- Okay, well, throughout the ages, you know, man has been fascinated with plants and have used flowers, herbs, and plants in so many different ways.

Throughout that, they have become interwoven into our lives and have become symbols for our fears, our superstitions, our emotions, and even our expressions.

So the legendary and religious and legendary symbolism of plants have been passed down through the ages, and we even use a lot of those today in accordance with our age-old symbolism, especially during our religious holidays.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

So first thing I think I need to point out is in the early Christian era, the Christian monks were so wise, they were so smart, because what they did to convert the pagans, and when I say pagans, the connotation is anybody that wasn't a Christian back then, you know, we're talking about the Romans, the Druids, the Norse, the Celts, you know, all those groups of people throughout Europe.

And so the Christian monks were going out trying to convert these pagans into the Christian religion.

And so what they did, of course, they had very amazing religions that they used a lot of these rituals and used a lot of plants and symbolism of plants throughout all of these pagan rituals and religions.

So the monks, being smart fellows they were, just said, "Well, we're not gonna change this.

"We're just gonna incorporate a lot of this stuff "into the Christian religion and just give it a Christian meaning."

And then that way the pagans would be, "Oh, okay, I can believe in that, you know, "'cause it's not so different than what we believe, or did believe."

So it was kind of interesting.

Throughout history they did that.

And for example, what they did is the Roman winter solstice celebration, called the Saturnalia.

Yeah, it was, and a lot of these ancient groups had celebrations during the winter solstice, which as you know is right in the middle of December usually and it's the shortest day of the year and before days start getting longer.

And the ancient peoples would celebrate this as a beginning of the spring and as a renewal and as a way, and they would give gifts.

The Romans actually gave gifts and it always fell around December, you know, when they figured out what the calendar actually was.

[laughing] So what they did is so many of these rituals, the Christian monks said, "Well, okay, we'll just sort of use these."

And two of the things that were part of the Roman Saturnalia was holly and the wreath.

And the way they did it was during that celebration, of course, Saturnalia was a celebration of the god Saturn.

So they were like celebrating the harvest, celebrating, you know, the days getting longer and the coming of spring and they would have all this feasting and decorating of their homes.

And one of the things they used was they would make a holly wreath, according to the sources I read that supposedly know or, you know, think they know.

Anyway, we assume.

So the wreaths were used during this celebration as to a gift giving.

So they think that maybe a lot of our gift giving traditions comes from the ancient celebration of Saturnalia and in particular, the making of wreaths and decorating the home.

So that's interesting.

And in Christianity, of course, holly and any kind of evergreen is symbolic of everlasting life because they're evergreens.

They never die, supposedly.

And so that's symbolic.

The Christian monks spoke, said, "Well, this is a symbol of the everlasting life you will have if you convert to Christianity."

So, and they were also, a lot of the evergreens have red berries, particularly holly, which was used as symbolic of Christ's blood that he shed on the cross.

And the prickliness was, of course, was for the crown of thorns.

So, oh, and the circular wreath was, of course, everlasting life, another way that they looked at it.

So that's how they incorporated all of that.

And that's why when we think about this, we think we never think about really where all this really came from.

You know, so it's interesting to go back and see the origins of this and how the monks were so smart to give all these meanings to these things and how we just kept carrying them on all through the generations.

But it's also thought that during the early Christian period that they would hang these wreaths out outside their home to as a cover for their new religion to avoid persecution by Nero, who was, you know, one of the early, well, the main emperor in the early days of Christianity that persecuted the Christians.

So they think that maybe the Christians would put this as a cover to say, "Well, we're celebrating Saturnalia, we're not Christians."

And then they would go on about their Christian business.

So yeah, so that was, so as more pagans were converted, that tradition just became a tradition, was to hang the wreath out at Christmas.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

So not so much to avoid being burned at the stake, you know, or whatever, fed to the lions, but anyway, and Christmas trees kind of have the same story.

They were used during the Roman festival of Saturnalia.

They would decorate a tree outside their homes and they would use metal objects that would reflect the light and be really very pretty.

And that was symbolic as they were honoring their god, Saturn, or actually it says that Roman actually had a family, they would have a family god that they would, or patron god that they would honor in this way during this time.

And the Germanic tribes, you know, also decorated a tree during the winter solstice and they did it with candles and fruit.

And it was a celebration of coming together and being a family love and, you know, honoring their god, Odin.

So it's no wonder that we use the Christmas tree at Christmas in a Christian way to bring the family together for the decorating and, you know, the love and peace and joy associated with Christmas.

So I thought that was very, very interesting, you know, how the Christmas tree sort of got started.

So, yeah, yeah.

And mistletoe is another one.

You know, the Druids, if you know anything about mistletoe, you know, it was associated with the Druids.

They kind of held it sacred.

And a lot of the other pagan religions did too.

And you can, when you know how weird that plant is, you can see how that was fascinating to them.

Here you have this parasitic thing that just springs forth from nowhere on the branches of these oak trees or other deciduous trees.

You cut it off, it comes right back.

So, of course, it was a symbol of everlasting kind of, you know, you couldn't kill the stuff.

So it was also a sacred plant for the Romans for their god, Saturn.

And they would perform these fertility rites under the sprigs of mistletoe.

Well, see, the monks were kind of like, well, we're gonna tone this down and it's just gonna be a kissing kind of thing going on.

- That's where that came from.

- Well, actually, it's kind of misty how that all got started.

But, and I got reading more about it.

And the first, one of the first times it was ever mentioned in literature was in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, where he actually said something about kissing under the mistletoe, which is kind of interesting.

So anyway, it all boils down to, you know, it was incorporated into our Christmas tradition as a way to, you know, be with your loved one and showing that your faithfulness or whatever.

For the Druids, it symbolized joy and peace.

- Okay.

- So, and also they thought that if there were these tribes that were fighting each other, if they met under a mistletoe tree, that they would throw down their arms and have peace for one day.

I don't know why it had to be one day.

They just got up and started fighting the next day.

So I don't know, that's kind of weird.

But anyway, so it's no wonder that it was incorporated into our Christian traditions of peace and love and joy, using hanging the mistletoe and the birth of the Christ child, so.

But ivy's another one that in Celtic religions, it was used to protect the home against evil spirits.

- Ivy.

- Yeah, especially fairies.

Fairies were really evil.

I always thought of fairies as being kind of fun, like Tinkerbell.

- Yeah, right.

- But apparently, you know, they were evil things.

They'd get in your house and just do all these horrible things.

So this ivy would capture 'em, kind of like flypaper.

And seriously, seriously.

So anyway, and it's also, the Celts thought it symbolized resilience because it'll grow anywhere.

It's hard to kill, as we know.

And it's a, it's clinginess, like it clings to things, was used by the Christian monks to symbolize how we cling to Christ, you know, to believe in Christ and cling to his teachings.

So that's how, and ivy was used also by the Druids as a, it's kind of a fidelity thing and faithfulness and love.

And so they used that, is why we use ivy a lot in wedding, you know, decorations and things, 'cause it symbolizes clinging to husband and wife, you know, that kind of stuff.

- Got it, okay.

- All that mushy stuff.

[laughing] So let's move on now to some other interesting things.

You know, we use like rosemary, sage, and thyme in a lot of our holiday cooking, right?

But I bet a lot of us don't know what they really symbolize in the language of plants.

So I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about that.

Who doesn't like sage in their Thanksgiving dressing, right?

Or even Christmas dressing, whenever.

You make dressing, you gotta have sage, right?

But did you know, Chris, that it symbolizes wisdom, strength, long life, and endurance.

So another good reason to blow up your belly - I need more of that.

- On dressing.

That's why you can eat more dressing, y'all.

The thing to take away from that is eat more dressing.

So hopefully you'll get some of this wisdom and strength and endurance, yeah.

And also, I think, too, when it's Thanksgiving, you wanna be thankful for the traits you do possess and those of your family.

So if you do possess any of these traits, you can be thankful for that, from eating sage.

- I did not know that.

- Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the sage of wisdom, you know, like a sage.

Somebody who's very smart is called a sage sometimes, so that's how that came from.

Okay, rosemary is used a lot in breads and stews and different things.

So it's one of the Christmas legends that is so very interesting to me is that when Jesus and Mary were going from, I think, Nazareth to Bethlehem, late in her pregnancy with the Christ child, and they were going because of Caesar Augustus and the census and doing all that registering for the census, so the legend says that she became very tired, of course, as you do when you're heavy with a baby, so they stopped and rested under a rosemary bush.

She takes off her blue cloak, and to get more comfortable, and throws it over the rosemary bush, and henceforth, from that day, the white-blooming rosemary now blooms this beautiful sort of sky blue color, which is honoring the Virgin Mary is the color of her cloak.

Also, another legend states that rosemary will only grow 6 feet tall and only lives 33 years.

And that's the age and height of Christ before he was crucified.

So interesting, Christian legends.

Yeah, there's another one, let's see.

I got one more I wanna talk about if we have time.

- This is good.

- And that's thyme.

- That's thyme, right.

- Yeah, we have time for thyme, right?

- Of course we do.

- We do.

So it has a long history of use in culinary and spiritual practices, and it symbolizes courage and purification.

- Okay.

- So I'm thinking that is a good herb to have during our holiday feasting.

So what it does is it gives you courage to avoid the sin of gluttony, you know what I'm saying?

Now this is my thinking, because I really wanna overeat during the holidays.

I'm not like most people who say, "No, that's enough."

I'm like, "Ah."

So it gives you courage to avoid the sin of gluttony during the holidays.

Anyway, and another thing that might even help with that idea is the ancient Egyptians used it in the mummification process.

So you eat thyme and be mummified.

[laughing] This is kinda interesting.

So the Christian part of that is, and the Christmas part of that is, that thyme, it was legendarily thought of as one of the herbs that was used in the manger, you know, for Christ child to lay on, symbolizing purity and the humble birth of the Christ child.

So do we have time to talk about another plant?

- Real quick.

- Okay, all right, the poinsettia.

Okay, I did my PhD doctorate thesis, or dissertation, whatever you call it, on poinsettias, and the best part was killing them darn things.

Yeah, yeah, I had about 1,000 of 'em, but anyway, the poinsettia has an interesting history as our, associated with Christmas.

And there is a legend that comes from Mexico, because that's its native habitat.

It blooms at Christmas down there anyway, naturally, which it all got started, they think, from this Christian Mexican legend of a little girl called Pepita, who wanted to give a gift to the Christ child.

Well, she didn't have anything, so her cousin said, "Oh, it's okay, "you just give it with love, and it will be anything.

You can give anything."

So she just picked a bouquet of weeds, and laid it at the nativity scene, and it miraculously, excuse me, turned into the beautiful poinsettia flowers.

So for that reason, the Spanish missionaries called it the Flor de la Noche Buena, which is the flower of the holy night.

- Holy night.

- So that's how it all kinda got started as the Christmas flower, so they say.

And of course, when an American, first ambassador to Mexico, Mr.

Poinsett went down there, and he sees these things growing, and he's just enthralled, and he managed to get cuttings before they threw him out of Mexico, because he wanted to buy Texas from 'em for a million dollars and that insulted 'em, so they kicked him out, but he comes back with his poinsettia cuttings.

And they just kinda started from there, and Paul Ecke in California is the one that really made it into a very much symbol of Christmas.

He gave the flowers to The Tonight Show and some other TV shows as backdrops and it just, for the Christmas colors and all, so it just kinda blew up from there, and it is the number one selling potted plant in America today.

- Number one?

- Yep, yep, number one.

- How 'bout that?

- So there you go.

- And you were killin' it this whole time.

- I did, I did.

- How 'bout that?

- I did, I did.

I was just tired of 'em.

- Just tired of 'em.

- I mean, I had thousands of 'em suckers to look after in those greenhouses at Mississippi State, and I had to do all these measurements and all this mess for my dissertation.

I tortured 'em, I put 'em in, it was like a, what was it, shipping.

I did a shipping study on 'em.

- Look at you, Doc.

- Yeah, so I put 'em in closets and threw 'em around the back of big trucks.

- And you made it through.

- Yeah.

- That was so good, though.

- Oh, thank you.

- Thank you so much, learned so much.

We need to eat more sage, right?

- We definitely do, and we need to eat the thyme to get some courage to quit eating so much, yeah, exactly.

- Thank you, Doc, that was so interesting.

Thank you so much, that was fun, thank you.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - So here in the South, it can be challenging to have a really productive cool-season garden because you actually have to get the majority of those plants started in late summer when the temperatures are still really high.

But if we can plan ahead, we can actually have a really productive stand of some of our leafy crops.

What we have here is romaine lettuce.

This has already been harvested once and has come back.

It is less cold tolerant, so when we get into freezing temperatures, if you wanna sustain those, they'll need to be covered.

But if you look behind us here, we have some kale growing, and kale as well as spinach is one of the cold-hardiest crops that we can grow here for cool-season annuals.

Redbor kale would be one of the most cold-tolerant, and you may even be able to grow that up into some northern areas of the United States.

And also, they tend to develop a better taste once they have a few hard frosts on the leaves, so that's another unique thing.

They really love that cold weather, and actually taste better when they get some frost on 'em.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q&A segment, y'all ready?

- Yeah, buddy.

- All right.

Great questions here.

Here's our first viewer email.

"We have terrible eyesores in our front yard.

"We have been told we can't plant anything "within three feet of the utility box.

"It looks awful.

Suggestions?"

Zo from Germantown, Tennessee.

So any suggestions, Dr.

Kelly?

And that was a good picture.

- Oh yeah, it was.

- I appreciate that picture.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I enjoy the picture, and I thought she was gonna talk about the fire hydrant right in the foreground, you know?

But I looked at the back, she's got this big, she does have a big ol' utility box sitting right there in her front yard, right there by her flower beds, or pretty close.

So I think you can use evergreen shrubs, obviously, 'cause you wanna hide it year-round, and something that you could keep maintained to not get really close to the unit, because it does need air flow around, 'cause like I was saying earlier, we just had a new unit put in, and that was one of the things our guy said.

He said, "Be sure and keep it two feet around "the whole unit to not obstruct the air flow where it brings air in and out."

- That actually makes sense to me.

- Yeah, so you could use these dwarf yaupons, dwarf hollies, any kind of little dwarf evergreen that you could use, nandinas even, sorta.

But you can also do a nice little lattice fence, or some kind of little fence, but again, it does have to have air flow through it.

And you can't obstruct a guy getting to it to do the maintenance work.

So the fence actually needs to be out far enough that a person could get around that unit to do any maintenance that needs to be done.

But I like the little fence idea myself, yeah.

- The decorative barrier?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then plant some flowers or something in front of that, you know, for seasonal color or something.

- And I've seen that, of course, around AC units and such.

- Yeah, lattice fence, paneling, or some of the nice little picket kind of stuff, just depending on the architecture and the look that you're going for.

- Okay, Peter?

- Yeah, I was thinking, 'cause there's actually an electrical box in our neighborhood that they've planted ornamental grasses in front of it.

- Oh, yeah.

- To kind of block the view.

They're a little close, but my suggestion would be, if you're gonna plant it pretty close to the unit, you know, you don't wanna actually touch it because you need the airflow.

But plant something that you are not afraid to cut down at a moment's notice.

Because when they come in and they wanna service the box, they gotta get to it.

And so I'm thinking, you know, if you plant ornamental grasses, if you plant, let's say, cannas, something like that, you can just go in and, "Oh, we need to get that, okay, whack."

And then they come back.

And so they can do their job without it there, and they'll grow back, 'cause they don't need to come often, but when they come, they need to get there, and they need to get there now.

So, you know, something that you can just cut down and it pops right back up again.

- Yeah, I think all of those will work.

Yeah, 'cause it look like it may be full sun.

- Yeah, it kinda looks that way.

- So I think something like that will definitely help.

I know my mom's neighbor has the same issue.

So she actually planted Purple Pixie Loropetalum, the dwarf ones, right, and daylilies.

- Oh, nice.

- Right, and it looks- - Nice combination.

- Yeah, it's very nice.

- Yep, you never know, there's a big box behind it.

- So it does work, so thank you for that question, Zo.

We appreciate that, hope that helped you out, all right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"My redbud tree looks like it is dead.

"No leaves, no blooms, but has new tree "growing from the bottom.

"Can I let the new tree grow?"

What do you think about that, Dr.

Kelly?

Can you let the new tree grow?

- I'd say sure, you can do whatever you want.

[laughing] - You can let that thing grow.

- You can let that thing grow.

Now, you know, and I saw the picture.

See, I'm not sure, though, that you're just gonna be true to what that tree was originally.

You know, you just don't know sometimes.

He would know, like if he had like a forest pansy or one of the ones that have different colors and leaves and stuff.

You know, these leaves were green, so I don't know.

He can let it grow, and of course, it will probably be an all right redbud, but if you wanted to go back to what you originally had, you're probably just gonna have to go to the nursery and buy it, buy something, you know.

And it looked like it was a container-type redbud, so it may be one of kind of the dwarf ones, and I bet this one that's coming back is probably not gonna be, 'cause it may have been grafted.

You know, they graft a lot of these ornamental trees, so the rootstock is gonna be a big redbud.

Might be, so you know, that's something to think about, but for right now, I'd say sure, let it grow.

- Let it grow.

- Let it grow.

- Yeah, my only thought is is that, you know, if you want a tree there soon, you're gonna have many years of growth before you get back to what you had.

It might be better to just go- - Go buy one, yeah.

- Go buy one, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Just buy it.

- Then you know what you have, and it's already a big tree.

- But you don't have the mystery, though.

- You don't have the mystery.

- You're wondering what that thing's gonna do.

- That's true, that's true.

- You don't have the mystery.

- No mystery.

- But going back to the point about the dead, no leaves, no blooms, yeah, the old scratch test.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Let's see if there's any green tissue in there.

If there's not any green tissue, just start cuttin' 'til you get to it.

- Just cut it off, yeah.

- Get to it.

- Cut it back down.

- Yep, that'd be the case, right?

- Yep.

- Yeah.

- All right, so thank you for that question.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Are there any squirrel resistant or deterrent plants that I can put in my yard and around the house?"

And this is Carolyn from Bartlett, Tennessee.

So what do you think about that, Peter?

- Well, squirrels can be a huge problem.

And are there plants that you can plant that are gonna chase the squirrels away?

No, you can't do that.

Now, if you have squirrels eating your plants, there's some plants you can replace them with that the squirrels like less.

- Okay, like less.

- So some of the common, basically, it's any of them that have strong odors.

They don't really like smelly plants.

- Like herbs.

- Like herbs, exactly.

So yeah, for instance, garlic and onions, they don't like that or things in that family.

Marigolds, mint, hyacinth, they don't like those 'cause they smell.

- Yeah, got it.

- The other thing is plants in the daffodil family are poisonous, so they're not gonna eat them.

But some other plants that they don't really like, fountain grass, lavender, juniper, or lamb's ear.

So you can try those.

But yeah, there's no way to chase 'em off.

- Yeah, a good dog.

- They're gonna be there.

Yeah, that's good, yeah.

- A good dog, yeah.

- A good dog will work.

- A good dog.

- It's not a plant, but it works good.

- Yeah.

- It works good.

- No, that's true.

Well, another thing that I wanted to comment on, I know she's talking about resistant or deterrent plants, but the problem that a lot of people have with squirrels is they dig in their potted plants.

You know, like on the deck or on the patio.

They dig down into, and I have that happen all the time.

We have squirrels bad.

And this is what I do just in case that she has potted plants and they're getting in those as well.

She can put over across the top of the soil if she has a source of pine cones.

And I've done that in my houseplants to keep the cat out of 'em.

- Okay.

- You know, you put pine cones all over the top of the soil and they're kind of prickly, so they're not gonna dig there.

Or you could use our sweetgum balls.

- Ah, okay.

- From the sweetgum tree that are littering the yard.

Those are great to put over the tops of houseplants if you have a house cat or to keep squirrels out of your potted plants.

That's about the only thing.

- That's good.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that before.

- Okay, all right.

- I thought of that myself.

- You thought of that yourself?

- I did.

[laughing] - Sweetgum balls.

- That's probably on the internet by now, though.

- It probably is, right?

[laughing] Yeah, that's actually pretty good.

All right, Ms.

Kelly, we hope that helps you out there.

You have a lot of different options here, all right?

Try some.

They might just work for you.

So Peter, Dr.

Kelly, that was fun.

- Yeah.

- That was fun.

Thank y'all much.

- Some good ones.

[Chris laughing] - 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.

At familyplotgarden.com, we have literally thousands of videos to help you in your garden.

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

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]