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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Need a perennial with large green leaves?

Try a hosta; today we'll look at some varieties and how to take care of them.

Also, it's time to start planting.

We're going to talk about how to get your soil ready; 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 Jim Crowder.

Jim, is a horticulturist at The Memphis Botanic Garden, and Mr D. is here with us.

- Howdy.

- Thanks for joining us.

- Glad to do it.

- Mr. Jim, we're glad to have you here today.

- Thank you.

- We have a lot of hostas on the table.

Can you tell us a little bit about hostas?

- By jingy, I can, yes I can, okay?

Well, first thing: hostas prefer shade, all of them prefer shade.

There are some that are quite sun-tolerant, but even by the end of August, even those look a little ratty, so to have your best-looking hostas, shade is always the best option, and the nice thing about them is they'll tolerate extremely dry shade, right up on the trunk of an old tree, and they'll make their own space and come back year after year where a lot of plants just won't take the competition from the tree, so they're great plants for dry shady areas, lotta good plants to go with 'em, but there's so much variation in them too, you know, with either veriegated yellow or variegated white, whether the yellow's in the center or on the edge, the height, the flower color, some are purple, some are white, there's one called Aphrodite that's double white that's very fragrant, so there's a wide range of options with them, and so we brought a few here just to give people an idea.

We'll start maybe with the minis maybe here on the corner.

Minis are what it says, very, very tiny hostas, and most of them don't get very big at all.

Now, they're not used a lot in the garden unless you've got really a little centerpiece where you wanna have it or a fairy garden or something like that.

They're really used more for containers.

They'll take abuse; you can leave 'em in there all winter long, not water them, and they're fine as they can be.

- (Chris) They'll still come right back?

- They'll come right back, and they'll come back thicker the next year, so and most people overlook that in container plants if you'll use two or three perennials, even combinations of hostas, all you gotta add's a couple a annuals, and you got season-long color, you know, with the foliage and the hostas, so it's really a great plant to complement your patio set, patio plantings or in the garden, you know, if you've got a really dark area, some, like this one we've got right here, Designer Genes, this is so, so bright yellow, and that's Designer Genes, G-E-N-E-S. Now this was one of the first that actually had a red petiole which you can see right here maybe on the side, and flower arrangers like this a lot because it really stands out with the yellow and the red, so it's a great hosta.

Another one here, this is probably my favorite blue, this is Hadspen Blue, as it matures, it will be a steel blue and holds that color all the way 'til fall, absolutely magnificent and it multiplies rapidly.

This one is one of my favorites, High Society with a yellow variegation in the center.

It's also an excellent, holds that color, doesn't fade in heat, it's really really a good one.

This one's been real popular the last couple years, Remember Me because also it changes a little color and becomes a little lighter as the season progresses, but it's a stunning, stunning hosta.

And then you have all the ones that are different, okay?

Like, this one right here, this one was Hosta of the Year a couple years ago: Curly Fries.

It first comes out in the season, brilliant yellow and then greens up as the season progresses, so it's really a very neat hosta, okay/ It's good for the front of the garden, and of course you use the taller ones in the back.

And this is one right here that I like, Ivory Coast, for a tall one to have some darker colors in front of it.

It really stands out and lightens up your shady areas.

And this one right here, this is the mamma jamma of hostas.

This one is Empress Wu, it gets very large.

I've seen these in pictures up to four feet tall and that's just the foliage, that's not the flower.

They'll be eight feet wide and have leaves on 'em that are 15, 16 inches across, so it's a huge hosta, and this year, I haven't been able to get any, there's a variegated one called, are you ready, Wu Hoo, so you know they name these things, so that they're attractive to women and some to men, you know, I had to have Komodo Dragon, I had to have Captain Kirk, okay, yeah, that's a hosta.

I had to have Jurassic Park, you know, but there are so many of them that have names that, you know, you could care less what they look like, you just want 'em because of their names, so these are great, great perennials that come back year after year.

- How many varieties are there?

- Oh gosh, probably 4,000 or better, you know?

- Wow.

- That is a lot.

- At the Botanic Garden Plant Sale, we'll have 208 varieties and maybe more by the time the plant sale gets here, but we've got all shapes, sizes, colors, and the really neat thing is so many of them will sport additional ones, I've got right now, some Francees which is normally a very light white edge around it.

It's sporting solid white leaves, so hopefully it will have some green in it to support that, but, you know, my luck it won't, it'll fold, but it's really, really cool to see these unique color patterns come out.

One time I had a Sagae which looks very much like this that turned out solid yellow and it was great and one that was even half yellow, half green, you know, it did that for the first four or five leaves and then it would get out of it and did that every year, so kinda unique to watch it.

- Okay now, we're talkin' about hostas of course, let's talk about voles because any time you talk about hostas, people think about voles, okay.

- That's right, you know, they will pick out your most expensive hosta and then work right down the price list, you know.

They like to tunnel under mulch or they like to follow mole runs, okay, so that's one of the first things you wanna do, avoid mulch, okay, that way, they don't like to get out in the open, so if you'll avoid that-- - Okay, what about any other diseases that we need to know about with hostas?

- Well, there are a few diseases that hit them.

There was one that came out a few years ago, Virus X, and it manifests itself differently in different hostas.

Some would, you wouldn't know it even had it.

Some it would cause them to be very corrugated, some they would get streaks or ripples in them.

And so it varied from each one, but it was only moved by man, basically.

If you got the disease on your cutters cutting off, you could pass it to another one.

It did not appear to be spread by insects, and the nice thing was, you dig it up, throw it away, you can plant another one back in there because it doesn't seem to move back into the roots in any way, so... - (Chris) That's good news!

- Yeah, in fact, there were half a dozen new cultivars entered that actually were just Virus X mutations of old ones, so once they figured that out, then they weren't cultivars anymore, so yeah, pretty cool things, and one thing you can also do is some hostas, like, and this is one right here, doesn't like to produce pups, little ones off the edge, and you can see, these right here are already doin' it to my right, so what you can do is when the pip comes up early in the spring and you just see it, take a razor blade and make an x in it, cut through that basal plate that you'll see right there near the ground level, and you'll get one to come off of each of those, so you can get four pips instead of one.

That's called rossizing, and it's a real good way to thicken a hosta quicker that's not cooperating.

- Okay, so razor blade, make an x.

- Make an x in through the bud just like you're cutting straight down into it, yeah.

- Okay, now will these hostas be available to the public?

- By jingy, I'm glad you asked that.

Okay, yes, all of these are grown by our volunteers at the Memphis Botanic Garden, we have created a little volunteer nursery over there that's 100% run and done by volunteers, and every dollar that's spent there goes back to education, so it's great.

This year, we'll have over 700 varieties of plants and about 18,000 perennials, so been a lot of natives.

- Alright, Mr. Jim, we appreciate that good information.

- Thank you very much, Chris.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] Hardiness.

- Hardiness.

- Always a good one.

- Well, that's what we are, right?

We're pretty hardy, yep.

Well, when you think about plants and you use the term hardiness, what you're referring to typically is cold hardiness.

You know, the hardiness of that pl ant to cold temperatures.

And, our plant zones, our USDA plant zones, are based on that cold hardiness, you know, for we're in what?

What are we here in Memphis?

We're zone seven?

- Yeah, seven.

- Aren't we seven?

So that's what?

- Some might say 7b.

- Yeah, so that means we can only grow plants that, supposedly, that were only hardy from 0 to 10 degrees.

That's as low as they can take, that single digit's in there is all they would stand.

And you know, we're always pushing the limit on that.

So, you know, that's what it is.

It's the hardiness of the plant to withstand cold temperatures.

And as you know, we can grow things down here they can't grow up north.

Well, you know, obviously because we have warmer winters.

And then, if you think about another hardiness, you know there's another zone map that is a heat zone map.

And I know you're familiar with that, Chris, but it's based on- Basically it's the United States rated on how many days above 86 degrees does that region have.

And I think Jackson, Mississippi has like four months.

[everyone laughs] - Memphis is not too far behind.

- No, and you go up to Seattle and they have maybe two weeks, you know.

So, and it's mainly that kind of hardiness mainly has an impact on our herbaceous plants.

Like hostas, and things like that, really just do wonderfully well in Seattle, Washington, and get nearly as big as half this table.

And down here, the heat, they struggle, you know, they really just don't.

So that's a heat hardiness.

[upbeat country music] - All right Mr. D., let's talk a little bit about soil prep, so where do you wanna start with that?

- Ah, the best place to start with soil prep is by getting a soil test, that's the best thing, you know, don't guess, soil test.

And the best time to do that is now if you haven't already done it; it's always best to do it in the fall if you're under ideal conditions.

And the main reason that you wanna do it early is because you're gonna get a recommendation on lime probably if your soils tend to be slightly acidic in our neck of the woods, and most garden vegetables need a relatively high pH between 6 and 6.5, and it takes lime a couple of months, two, three months to bring the soil pH down.

Now, with that being said, if you haven't done that, go on and lets do a soil test now and then you go on and plant your garden, and it's best to put lime out now than to not put it out at all if your soil needs it.

Now, the only time I've seen cases where you did not need lime, you know, once every three years, two or three years, is if you scatter your garden ashes regularly, you know, ashes from your fire place or from your fire pit out in your garden spot.

But, you need to remove vegetation from where you're gonna plant your garden, and you can do that with a tiller, you can do it with, you know, chemicals if you want to or a hoe or somethin' like that, you need to remove any unwanted vegetation and get in there and till the soil, do not do that when it's wet.

And, you know, if your soil has a fairly high level of clay and if you can pick up a wad of it and squeeze it and water comes out of it, you don't need to be out there working yet, you know, give it a little bit of time, let it dry off.

Because those clods, when they form, if you work the soil when it's too wet, they will stay with you throughout the growing season, and you know, they don't just dissolve, unfortunately, and it interferes with the seed-to-soil contact and root-soil contact, so make sure your soil is dry enough to work, you know, when you get out there and work it, till it, work it up.

If you want to try to garden a little bit earlier than normal, you can throw ridges up in the fall, six to eight inches tall, you know, or pull ridges up with a rake, you can do all these with hand tools, and that will allow the soil to dry out a little bit quicker, and it will get a little bit warmer in the springtime, you know, if you're gardening on ridges, you can do that.

You know, back in the old days, we would go in there with a break and plow and break it, and then we would disc it, and then we would drag a harrow across it, and then lay out the rows, and you know, put seed in the ground, and all of those things could be spread out over months, you could break it in the fall, you know, disc it in the spring, or you could do all of that at once, so there's a lot of different ways to prepare your soil.

The soils that we have in this area, here in the Mid-South, for the most part, tend to be pretty good soils.

We do have some soils that make be a little high in clay content, if you have a sharky, gumbo, bless your heart, you do need to amend that with organic matter, maybe some sand, things like that, but if you have a silt loam, and you can look at there's a soil survey in every county, in every state of the Union, and you can go and you can, if you don't know what type of soil you have, you may think you know what type soil you have, but if you go look at your soil survey, you'll be able to determine exactly the name and, you know, what type of soil you have.

But, a lot of people in this area automatically assume they have too much clay in their soil.

Clay is a very valuable component of the soil; it helps the water-holding capacity of the soil, so you need some clay.

- (Chris) Helps hold nutrients.

- And the only place that we have really, really the sharky soils and the gumbos really are in the river bottoms, and if you happen to have a house that was built on a river bottom, then you may have a very very heavy clay soil, but most of the soils are silt loams, you know, wind-deposited loess-type soils, and they're just ideal for growing things, and if you don't believe that, look at the size of the trees that you have growing around your yards and in the neighborhood and things like that.

- Right, I actually heard Mr. Jim mention that before in one of your talks, I mean, you have to have a little clay in your soil, right?

- Yeah, clay is good.

The main thing is you wanna grow plants that enjoy that, you know, there are a lot of plants that don't like that thing that we sell in the nurseries, and so a lot of people fail with plants just because it needs to be up elevated, needs a much sandier soil, drain much faster, percolation rate through our clay is very slow, and when you dig a hole and particularly if you over-improve it by putting lots of what you think is good stuff in there, you know, it just becomes a soup bowl of water, and then the plant just drowns basically.

- (Chris) Good point.

- Yeah, and you need to be careful about, many times in our landscaping and things like that, we might interfere with drainage, you need natural drainage, and if you have somehow set your, you know, using beds or by setting up berms and things like that so that you hold water, then that's not a good thing, so you need to allow the water, don't allow water to stand basically, if you can help it, and if you do have water standing where your garden is, then I would ditch it or try to, you know, fix some way to get that water on off there, so it doesn't stand.

A lot of plants don't like wet feet.

- [laughs] Or plant rice!

- Yep, plant rice, rice does okay, yeah, but a lot of plants, most plants don't like wet feet.

Cyprus trees do fine and rice.

- Right, and definitely a lot of your vegetables don't like wet feet either.

- They do not like wet feet, they do not, but if you do all that, soil test.

Now, if you haven't soil tested, then you can put, I hate to do rules of thumb, but there is a rule of thumb if you want to put a garden, and you can garden now.

I mean, you could have been gardening all winter, you know, there are cool season vegetables, I grow onions and radishes and things like that, you know, this is not too early to start gardening right now, however there are a lot of vegetables that you don't wanna put out until after the average date of the last killing frost.

And you know, that's gettin' close.

It won't be long and it's gonna be time to go with everything, but a rule of thumb in the absence of a soil test, use two to three pounds of 6-12-12 fertilizer or its equivalent per 100 square feet of garden area, you know, if you haven't done soil testing, and you're wanting to garden pretty quickly, you can put that out there, broadcasted evenly over the soil surface, incorporated into the top six inches of the soil, and you'll be okay, but get a soil test.

And that way, you'll know whether or not you did too much or not enough.

- All right, well, we appreciate that, Mr. D, always soil test, all right, thank you much.

[gentle country music] - I have just seeded this tray with snapdragon seeds, which are very, very tiny.

And, one of the ways I keep the little seed, 'cause it's close to the surface, from drying out is to put a little bit of vermiculite sprinkled over the top of the cell.

And, I just take it like this.

I don't the vermiculite under my fingernails, so I wear gloves.

But I just sprinkle on the top over the seed, and the seed is really just sitting right on the surface.

So, this also helps it get good contact with the soil.

And once I do this on the whole seed tray, I will put warm water on the tray and let the water soak up.

The vermiculite swells up and retains that moisture to keep that seed from drying out.

[gentle country music] - All right, this is a Q & A segment.

Mr. Jim, you jump in there with us, all right?

- I got it, let's go.

- All right, here's our first viewer email: "How do you remove black sooty mold from crape myrtle bark?"

And this is from Kim via YouTube.

- Well, the best thing to do if it bothers you is just go out there with a soft brush, a little soapy water like Dawn detergent, and just scrub it off.

You can use, I know people that have used pressure sprayers if you put the pressure way down, not destroy the bark, you can do that.

The sooty mold's telling you that you've got a problem.

You gotta address that problem, and then the sooty mold will go away, you've either got crape myrtle bark scale or some other type scale or ap hids in the top of that tree, the honeydew is dripping down, and the sooty mold's growing on it, so fix the insect problem, you won't have the sooty mold problem.

- Good point.

- Treat the problem, not the symptom.

- Right.

- All right, here's the next, it's actually a letter, all right, open this up for you.

"What herbs can I plant that would come back every spring?"

And this is from Kay, Andersonville.

You have any suggestions for Ms. Kay?

- Well, okay, a lot is gonna depend on her soil and soil conditions and drainage.

Rosemary, many of the lavenders are hearty perennials in theory, but, particularly around here, our warm summer nights, our slow drainage, our slow drainage during the winter, does a lot of these plants in, so I wouldn't plant 100 of them hoping to have them all come back, you know.

If you do your proper soil prep, I like to mix a little bark in it, pine bark, because it's got calcium in it, tends to raise your pH, helps keep the soil separated, so you get good drainage through it, have plenty of air.

And if they come back, hey that's great, but one of the nice things about herbs is they're very inexpensive, they grow rapidly, so even if you plant a whole new bed of different herbs each year, you're not talking about a lot of money, and you'll get fresher herbs, won't have a woody old plant that you've got to do pruning on, you know, if it were me, I'd grow my own fresh ones or harvest them at Kroger, one of the two.

- [laughing] All right, one of the two.

So what are you talking about, chives, oregano, thyme?

- All those things, yeah, basil, you know.

Basil you'll want to watch 'cause it doesn't like cool temperatures, it's not gonna come back, but you know, you can plant 'em every year, you know, that's the neat thing.

Now mint, you can plant it once and you're not gonna have a problem 'cause it's gonna come back with a vengeance, all over the neighborhood, so... [laughs] - What about rosemary, I mean depending on the winter?

- Rosemary, yeah, it depends on how...

I think you'll have better luck growing them in containers than you will in the ground, yeah.

- All right, but definitely good drainage, the bark, puttin' bark... - I love pine bark, you know, it's one of the best... You know, Mother Nature lets all these trees and stuff fall to the ground and you're like, oh gee, what a good plan you know, so that's what I try to use.

- All right, makes sense.

So, hope that helps you out Ms. Kay.

Here's our next via email: "I have some daffodils "growing all over a hill by an old house.

"How do daffodils get scattered naturally?

Are their bulbs dug up and moved by animals?"

And this is from Ms. Elizabeth from Byhalia, Mississippi, so how do they get scattered na turally is the first question and then are the bulbs dug up and moved by animals?

Interesting question.

- I'm pretty sure your dog's not transplanting them, okay?

Typically, they come up from seed, okay, as they produce seed over the years, those will flow different areas.

At some point, there was an old homestead there, and they planted a few bulbs, okay, and then they just begin to multiply, they'll multiply there in the clump, but usually pile on top of each other, but they'll increase that way, and usually you'll have seed that will flow away and they'll pop up elsewhere, so that's primarily the way they spread.

- I go along with that, and one thing that may take place from time to time is if some cultivation goes on in areas close to home sites because I've seen, like, it scatters down a road or down a field and I wonder if a bulb got hung on a disc or breaking flower, some man mechanically could have moved some of those bulbs accidentally down through there, but for the most part, I'd say seed.

- And your dog is not doin' it, right?

- I'm pretty sure he's not digging them up and transplanting them.

- Yeah, I don't think squirrels dig 'em up and move 'em.

- I did have a Labrador one time that if I put a little bacon grease on the ground, he'd dig a hole for me, but you know, haven't been able to get him to plant anything yet.

- He can't plant anything?

[laughs] - He's looking for the rest of that hog.

- All right, so there you have it, Ms. Elizabeth.

All right, here's our next viewer email: "Can you tell me what this bush is?"

- (Jim) Yes, I can.

- (Chris) I betcha Mr. Jim knows what that is.

- That's Quince, yep, got little thorns all over it, beautiful plant, early spring, flowers before the leaves come out usually, one of the prettiest ones, there's a variety called Toyo Nishiki that blooms white, pink, and red on the same plant.

I have one in my yard, and people stop to ask me what it is because it's really stunning, but there are some new doubles that are dwarves that have no thorns and oranges and reds and whites, they're just spectacular plants.

Some of them product the apple for the quince jelly, okay.

Most of the newer varieties are not fruit-producing, but there are still some out there.

It's a great plant, you know, particularly, it's got so many thorns on it that I say this is one of the plants, I have a list of plants you plant under your daughter's window, this is one of them.

- [laughing] Oh, this is one with the thorns.

- Surrounded by barberry.

- How 'bout that, but you know, the plant produces a lot of stems as well, right?

- It does, it does, and it needs selective pruning you know?

- Okay, so I was gonna ask you about pruning.

- Right, each year, go in, take out three to five of the oldest canes in there, they're gonna pop and go straight up through it and re-fill it and then you'll have more flowers next year.

Starts setting its flowers in late July and August, so do not prune it after the first of July, gotta be done right after it blooms.

- All right, but if you plant it under your daughter's window, don't prune it.

- Don't prune it at all, nuh-uh.

- All right, Mr. Jim, Mr D., this was fun.

- Hey, thank you, appreciate you asking me.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is FamilyPlot@wkno.org, and the mailing address is Family Plot 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee 38016 or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today, thanks for joining us.

If you would like more information on hostas or getting your soil ready for planting, visit FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have links to Extension publications about these and other gardening topics.

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]