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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Plant screens provide privacy and beauty, today we're looking at a few popular options.

Also, we're going to see how to take care of roses in the fall.

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 Celeste Scott, Celeste is a horticulture specialist with UT Extension and Mr. Bill Dickerson will be joining me later.

Celeste, always good to have you.

- Thank you, I'm excited to be here today.

- Yeah, well, this is your playground, right?

- Yes.

- This is the UT Gardens right here in Jackson?

- Yes, UT Gardens here in Jackson at the West Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center- - Nice.

- So, we love the opportunity to be able to use the grounds to educate and, you know, encourage people to come out and visit us.

- Awesome.

- Daylight to dark, we're open.

- That's good and the grounds are beautiful.

- Thank you.

- All right, so we're gonna talk about plant screens.

So, here's my question to you- - Mm-hm.

- Why do we need to use plants as screens?

- Well, there could be several different reasons why folks might wanna use a screen in their home landscape.

- All right.

- So, number one usually is to block out other people, right?

They want some privacy.

- They want some privacy.

- Right, so blocking out those neighbors, trying to get, you know, a sense of privacy, right- - Uh-huh, I hear ya.

- From those folks that are living right next to us.

Another reason that we might wanna use screens is to kind of block out some of the more functional areas of your landscape.

So, maybe you have, you know, a work shed- - Mm-hm.

- Or you know, a work area that maybe you don't wanna be right in your visual line from the place where you're relaxing.

So, maybe that's your patio or a hardscape area near the home.

So, several different reasons that we could utilize screens, also to, you know, provide for wildlife.

We are gonna have a higher amount of wildlife coming in if we can have varying degrees of height and layers- - Okay.

- In our landscapes to provide for different types of birds and other animals that might be coming into the landscape.

- Yeah, I say let the wildlife come on into the landscape.

- Yes, yes.

So, we have a few different reasons why people may look to using screens.

Another one that I hear a lot is, you know, folks are concerned about how expensive putting in a fence would be- - Ah-hah, wow, didn't think about that.

- And so they think that it's gonna be less expensive to use plants and that is not always the case.

- Oh, okay.

- They're like, "Let's just pick one plant, let's plant a bunch of 'em, have it done", and in their mind they think that's less expensive than an install of a fence.

- That is interesting, yeah.

- But a risk that we face with monoculture plantings is when pests or disease come into play.

All of those plants would be susceptible.

Like if one's susceptible, they all are.

So, a way to kind of protect ourselves in that type of situation is to use what we like to call a mixed screen.

So, you're utilizing not only more than one type of plant species, but we're using different levels, different heights- - Mm-hm.

- Different foliage and texture type plants- - Okay.

- And mixing those together to really create a nice visual interest- - Okay.

- That's gonna, you know, be easier on the eye than just staring at one plain plant over and over and over.

- Yeah, we want it to be easy on the eye, right?

- That's right, so in that mixed planting, if a pest came in and you only have one or two or three of that particular plant, it's three plants- - Right.

- It's not 40 plants.

- Good point.

- So, you know, some things to take into consideration and some different ways that we, you know, look at screens- - I like that.

- And what we encourage folks to do is really lean towards those mixed plantings.

- All right, so you're gonna show us some- - Yes- - Of your plant selection?

- We've got some great examples right here.

So, I'm gonna start out by showing us a group of arborvitae- is the common name, what you'll find in the market if you're going out shopping.

This is Thuja occidentalis.

This particular one right here is called American Pillar.

It's common on the market, easy to find- - Okay.

- Nearly all garden centers are gonna have this plant available for you.

It has a medium to fast growth rate.

You can see here that we've got a nice width, so I feel like it's mature width is gonna be around, you know, six to eight feet wide.

- Okay.

- We've got some really good height on this plant- - Yes, nice height.

- So, this is gonna be a great, what I like to call a backbone plant, for that screen to really get things started, start filling things in, and then we can fill in around this plant with some different colors, different textures- - Right.

- Maybe even some lower deciduous shrubs.

But I really do love this plant.

You may also see it on the market called Full Speed A Hedge, so- - Full Speed A Hedge.

- I know, American Pillar was it's actual cultivar name- - I like it, I like it.

- But then as it got more popular, they've rebranded that, so you may see it called both things.

- So, we don't have to worry about- - No.

- Disease, insects, anything?

- We do have some bagworm issues with these evergreens- - Ah, okay.

- But you know, that's something that we just need to keep an eye on.

- Okay, cool.

- I wanna show us another one here.

This particular cultivar is called- - I like it.

- Thin Man.

I like it, Thin Man.

- Thin Man, tall and skinny, right?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And this has a completely different purpose in the landscape or in a screen planting.

- Okay.

- If you have very narrow spaces, this can be super helpful in those types of situations.

You can see how tight it is- - Yeah, it's tight.

- It's gonna have one of the thinnest, tightest columnar forms of these arborvitae, so that's a great option- - Yeah.

- And also not as common to find it as the American Pillar- - Okay.

- But still relatively easy to find in the trade.

- All right.

- I've got one more arborvitae- - Good, good, good.

- I wanna show with us.

- Okay.

- This is called Skywalker- - Skywalker, I like it.

- And so I love Skywalker because it's an in-between, from the American Pillar and the Thin Man, right?

[Chris laughing] So, it's got kind of this medium width habit- - Mm-hm.

- Where it's gonna be anywhere from like three to six feet wide.

Then it's gonna get a mature height of about 15 feet and I feel like it could fit a special niche in a screen planting.

I have some more to show us.

- So, there's more.

- There's more.

We've got some broadleaf evergreens, you wanna come see 'em?

- Let's go check 'em out.

- Okay.

So, Chris- - Oh, okay.

- This is a broadleaf evergreen- - Okay.

- Called Foster holly.

- Familiar with that.

- It is a naturally occurring native hybrid to the southeast.

- Wow.

- So, two different native species crossed naturally- - Gotcha.

- Without human aid.

- Okay.

- And the Foster holly was born.

- How about that?

- And once it was discovered, right, it exploded in the trade.

They used to be used widely in home landscapes, but we saw them used a lot improperly on home landscapes.

- I have, I've seen that.

- Put on the, you know, the corners of buildings- - Mm-hm, mm-hm.

- Too close to structures, but this plant can get massive if allowed the space to grow.

So, 30 feet tall, varying widths.

In this particular planting, we've got 'em spaced pretty closely together, maybe five or six feet apart- - Okay.

- And the objective here was to create a wall.

- Got it.

- So, we certainly can do that and this screen could be even more visually interesting if we came in with some lower understory plants- - Okay.

- And kind of continued to build this screen out, but I certainly wanted to share this plant with you- - Sure.

- Show you some of it's excellent qualities for screening.

It has a medium growth rate, and depending on the quality of the soil, could grow even faster than that.

- Okay, really even faster?

- Has a really nice berry set- - Yeah, can see the berries.

- As you can see, they're already starting to develop.

Those are gonna be a bright red- - Good.

- Great for our wildlife and really a jewel for a landscape setting, especially in a screen.

- Yeah, we definitely wanna include something for the wildlife.

- Yes.

- That's for sure.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So, I wanna share another plant with you, another broadleaf evergreen.

- All right.

All right, Celeste, what do we have here?

- Yes, this is the last broadleaf evergreen I wanted to share with y'all today- - Okay.

- This is Illicium parviflorum- - Okay.

- So, anise tree, commonly called in the trade- - Okay.

- And I love this plant because it is so versatile.

- You like it?

- It can thrive in shady conditions- - Okay.

- Or sun and that's- - That's versatile.

- Yes.

And that's especially difficult to find for broadleaf evergreen plants, things that are gonna do well and thrive in shade specifically.

So that's one reason why I love this plant.

Also the leaves have a unique kind of licorice, anise scent when you crush them.

- Oh, okay.

- Mm, they smell so good.

and it has a small- - Oh, they do.

- But insignificant bloom in spring and then develops some pretty neat seed heads here- - Yeah, I think that's pretty neat.

- As we get later into the season.

- Yeah.

- Isn't that pretty?

- That's pretty nice.

- So, versatile, not a lot of pests, no heavy diseases to worry about here again, a southeast native, so gonna work well in gardens here in the southeast.

That wraps us up for evergreen broadleafs but I wanna share some deciduous plants with ya.

- All right, let's go.

- We can use those, too.

- Let's do it.

- So Chris, you know we do generally build our screen plantings with evergreens as the primary backbone, right?

The skeleton of our screen plantings- - All right.

- Because those evergreens are gonna provide year-round privacy- - Okay.

- However, I don't want people to forget the importance of deciduous shrubs- - Okay.

- The role that they can play in a screen.

- Okay.

- So we can get, you know, seasonal color from deciduous shrubs, we can get seasonal bloom- - Ah, yeah.

- And in some cases, if you're not an evergreen-type person, you can build a privacy screen completely from deciduous plantings.

- I like that.

- We just have to space them a little closer than you normally would in a landscape-type setting, right, to fill those gaps.

And we can actually mix deciduous in with evergreens for filler, for understory and for all those different seasonal interests that we talk about.

- I like it, mm.

- So, behind us here we've got a combination of sweetshrub, Calycanthus, that's a native shrub, so we can get some early spring and summer blooms from that.

- Okay.

- Beautiful large leaves for the majority of the growing season, so lots of attributes for that.

You'll also see we've got a Rose of Sharon- - Yeah.

- Mixed in there, so that provides summer long blooms, right?

- Yeah, love the blooms, yeah.

- So, we're trying to hit all the different seasons here.

- I see what you're doing, - And then paniculata hydrangea- - Yeah.

- Which many of those cultivars get pretty large- - Mm-hm.

- So they can be pretty useful in screen planting things, as well, so don't wanna underestimate the power of deciduous.

- Yeah, let's don't do that, right?

- Yeah.

- So, beautiful blooms and flowers and leaves and yeah, I like it.

- And if folks wanna learn more about screens or, you know, kind of dive deeper, I wanna invite them to visit uthort.com.

And things are organized by topics- - Mm-hm.

- So go to the landscape tile, go to plant selection and they're gonna see all of our plant recommendation lists for Tennessee housed at that site.

- That'll be good 'cause some of these plants that you're mentioning are probably in that publication, right?

- Exactly.

- Thank you, Celeste, we appreciate that.

- All right, thanks.

[upbeat country music] - We're at the beginning of August here at the UT Gardens in Jackson and we're looking at our pumpkin, squash and gourd display or planting that we've done, and you'll notice, are there weeds here?

Virtually none.

It's because we've used this landscape fabric and so after we prepared the soil, we rolled out the landscape fabric, we left a little slit down the middle and we planted our plants, or direct seeded plants into that and we also, you'll see, there's drip irrigation here, so we ran that drip right down the middle and that helps, of course, water the plants but also keeps from losing evaporation from overhead irrigation.

The other thing the landscape fabric does, and using the drip, also helps about disease problems because you don't have the splashing of water on the foliage if you're overhead watering and really helps with the different diseases that you might have in the soil itself.

So, this is a great method, you can also use this for tomatoes, for okra, for peppers, so, you know, other vegetables, as well, not just pumpkins, gourds and winter squash.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Mr. Bill, let's talk about rose care for the summer.

What do we need to do?

What do we need to know?

- Well, it's hot, roses don't like all the heat.

Here's a little Iceberg floribunda, but you can look at the color of it, and I brought an example- - Mm.

- You want the leaves to look a dark leaf and you notice how light colored these are?

- Yeah, you can tell the difference.

- So, I would suggest putting some fertilizer, whether it's Miracle Gro or organics or compost- - Okay.

- And water that in, but it's just a little lighter color and that's how you can, and the top stuff is newer and the bottom's gonna be a little darker than the top- - Sure, sure.

- And the floribundas, they have a bunch of small and when you deadhead those, you deadhead them high, you don't go way back like a hybrid tea- - Okay.

- But the fertilizers, I'll start with my horse food [Chris laughing] is what I use in the spring and in the fall and now's a good time to fertilize for fall blooms.

Your fall blooms are gonna be your big blooms.

- All right.

- In the summertime you get small blooms and by the time you come home from work, they fall apart, it's just because of the heat.

- Yeah, it's so hot.

- They don't like the heat.

This is alfalfa pellets that you get at the feed stores, it's $15 for a 50-pound bag, goes a long way.

A handful or two around the outside of the drip line and- - Okay, and alfalfa pellets are what?

Nitrogen source?

- That's just a slow release nitrogen- - Mm-hm, yeah.

- Plus it adds to the soil, amendments to the soil.

- Okay.

- So, you got alfalfa pellets and you've got cotton seed meal.

- Oh yeah, that looks good.

- And the cotton seed meal, you just take a handful and just kinda sprinkle it around.

My go-to, [Chris laughing] I do it in the spring and maybe once in the summer, but then right about now is I'm looking for those fall blooms where you're gonna have a rose to go from golf ball size to softball size- - Wow, okay.

- With that long, cool growing spell.

Epson salt- - Epson salt, how about that?

Okay.

- It's great for roses, it's great for tomatoes, I mean it's great for everything.

- Right.

[laughing] - It's a wonder drug.

About a cup a bush, just kinda sprinkle it out.

You can also use any of the Miracle Gros- - Right.

- Or the Peters brand water soluble.

It's a little more instant, and if you got a bush, it's kind of getting droopy and the heat's hitting it, it'll perk it up, it's got all the good microbe nutrients in it.

- Okay, that's good.

- And then at that point, hardwood or pine compost, but even good old fashioned leaves, you got a leaf pile.

- Yeah, just leaf litter, right.

- You know, it just, sprinkle that up, it keeps the water in, it insulates the plant from the heat, and it just holds moisture in the soil.

- Sure.

So, that's what you would prefer is just using the leaf litter for the most part or- - Well it's cheap and you got it.

- Cheap, okay.

- I use a lot of hardwood mulch- - Okay.

- 'Cause it's inexpensive and, you know, two or three inches.

A lot of people put an inch just to make it look good.

- Yeah.

- It doesn't really do much good, I mean, it's, but about two or three inches.

And just, you know, it piles up and when you water, it makes it easier watering and it just holds that temperature down in the soil, keeps the plant cooler and it holds water in better.

- Sure, yeah.

- Now back here we've got a Mr. Lincoln hybrid tea.

- Yeah.

- We've got a bloom starting here- - Yeah, I see that.

- A small bud, red growth, you got new growth popping out over here.

You can see some of these leaves, the Japanese beetles have got a hold of them.

- Yes, yes.

- Right now I don't prune back very far, typically you wanna go to a five leaf.

If you wanna dead head a little bit, you could just cut back a minimum, just cut the dead stuff off to make the plant look better.

[shears snipping] - Okay, and let me ask you about the five leaf.

Why do we have to cut back to the five leaf?

- A five leaf is usually bigger.

You know, you wanna go pencil size- - Uh-huh.

- You wanna go, a five leaf just has a better chance to get a new cane- - Gotcha, okay.

- And then once you prune, if you prune this and there's a little bud or a little starter right here- - Oh, I see it, okay.

- It's gonna be right here where that leaf is- - Right.

- On that leaf axle.

It's gonna take, depending on how many blooms, forty days to forty-five days.

- Wow.

- Once you cut this off to get a cane to start, leaf out and then a bloom- - Okay.

- So, now's a good time to start to get ready for those fall blooms and just put your organics down and it takes a while, then another thing on this bush is, I mean, these just are brittle, just like a Knockout, you can just almost break those off.

- Break those off, right.

- Now here is, the reason we deadhead, you've got a rose hip and that's making seeds and you wanna deadhead and cut those off 'cause if you don't, the plant thinks it's produced and it starts slowing down.

- Yeah, okay.

- It's done it's deal and it'll, you cut those off and all of a sudden it's, you know, everything starts over again and it's trying to reproduce and that's where you get your new blooms.

- Okay, all right.

- Now you always wanna cut, there's some dead wood in here, as soon as you see dead, you wanna cut that out 'cause if you don't it'll eventually, it could go down and you'd lose a whole cane, so as soon as you see a dying part and here, [shears snipping] there's a hole in the middle- - Yeah, there's a hole in it.

- Well, a cane borer went in there and dug a hole and it's just gonna die, so you wanna, that's why you use, the old fashioned was you'd use glue.

- Yeah, I remember that.

- Just a little outdoor Elmer glue, works great- - Okay.

- And just kinda wait and if you were gonna prune this, once it cools down and it's an obvious drop in temperature and the plants are getting ready for the big blooms in the fall, you could take that bush down to here and here, maybe to here, and then you'll get big blooms and a lot of new growth.

- Okay.

- On the ends you can see here there was, like, three places.

Well, what happens is this is, see how small the canes are?

- Yeah.

- Well you're gonna have little small blooms and so typically I would cut that back to here somewhere and then you're gonna get one big bloom- - Yeah.

- Instead of a bunch of small blooms.

- So, you prefer the bigger blooms as opposed to the smaller blooms, especially- - Well in the summertime, yes.

- Okay.

- They're gonna be small.

But in the fall you want those big blooms you can take in the house [Chris laughing] or give to your friends and neighbors- - Sure.

- Church people, shut-ins, and so typically that's gonna be weaker, that's why some of the Knockouts get so big and tall- - Oh, yeah.

- And if you cut it back a little bit, you'll just get much more growth and it'll be bigger blooms and much prettier versus- - Gotcha.

- 'Cause everything's coming at the top of the plant.

- Gotcha, okay.

Mr. Bill, we appreciate that demonstration.

- Well, my pleasure, Chris.

- Hopefully we'll have big blooms at the end of the season, right?

- We should and you know, you can cut these off or you can leave them, it's just, it's not a big deal.

- Not a big deal.

Thank you much.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate that.

[upbeat country music] - I wanna introduce y'all to a common landscape pest, this is the bagworm.

This tends to be a pest of primarily conifers, but we also see it feeding on some other deciduous plants in landscapes, most often the Japanese maples.

Now this time of year in late summer is not the proper time to do any treatment for bagworms, they've gotten too big and as they create those bags around their bodies, it becomes impenetrable to water, so any kind of insecticide application is not recommended from July forward, but keep an eye out for next year as they begin to start feeding earlier in the summer, around May.

And what you wanna look for then are very, very small caterpillars at first and as they feed, they begin to pick up trash from the foliage of the plant that they're feeding on and creating, building the bag around them.

That bag continues to grow as the crawler stage begins to grow, and that is when they're doing the majority of their damage.

So, we wanna target our insecticide applications for when those crawlers are young and before they have begun to construct the bags around their bodies.

So, you need to be out scouting your plants April, May, June, that is the window for effective insecticide applications for control.

If left untreated and we have high populations, it can completely defoliate an evergreen tree and for arborvitaes, junipers, things of that nature, once they lose all of this green on the tips, if they've completely defoliated it, you're not gonna get any flush back out from that plant, so it can be a serious pest of these conifers.

Now this time of year, the best thing to do if you know that you have them in your landscape, is to just pull 'em off.

Right, let's go out and do some hand removal, collect those, you can squish them, the ones that still have adults in them, which this one did, and prevent them from being able to lay eggs and increasing those populations for next year.

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

- Yes, sir.

- These are some great questions.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"Why do my peonies do this?

The blooms don't fully form before they die."

And this is Vivian from Forrest City, Arkansas.

So, what do you think about that one, Celeste?

- Well, I have a few ideas.

So, this general happening, people refer to it, peony folks refer to it as bud blast.

- Ah, heard of it.

- So, it could be caused from a number of different things.

One is botrytis blight- - Mm-hm.

- But in that picture- - I didn't- - The leaves looked okay.

- They look clean.

- Right.

And usually botrytis blight affects not only the buds, but it can also affect stems and leaves- - Yeah, yeah.

- So, I'm not sure what happens with this plant later in the season, right?

- Sure, that's fair.

- So you know, it's a potential that that could be happening, but things to look for for botrytis blight, that's usually more prevalent when we have rainy, cool- - Mm-hm.

- Long springs.

Also, most of the time there would be like a fuzzy type of spore development on top of that bud that lets you know that, yes, that is a pathogen, you know, affecting that bud, but other things that could be causing that could just be a late cold snap.

- That's what I was thinking.

- You know, a late freeze.

- Spring frost?

- Yeah, the peonies are pretty frost tolerant, but if it really got severely cold, also I think sometimes lack of sunshine.

- Yeah.

- Peonies love full sun and also- - Too much shade could be a problem.

- Too much shade.

And also they don't like to be planted too deep.

I don't think that would affect necessarily the bloom bud.

But giving them ideal conditions, full sun and shallow planted, you want that peony crown just barely below the ground.

- And anything that could cause stress really could be a contributor to this broader thing that we call bud blast- - Mm-hm, yeah.

- In peonies.

So, you know, if it's super low fertility- - Yeah, that's good.

- If it's like Jason mentioned, too much shade, if there's not enough air flow, I know I'm guilty of that, letting other plants kind of crowd in and drown out those peonies later in the season.

So, some cultural things that you can do to help with that is increase air flow.

Make sure that, you know, they've got room to breathe- - Mm-hm.

- Make sure they do have enough light and if you have to dig those to move them to another site, right, to rectify some of those cultural conditions, you can expect to not have, you know, bloom for a few years- - Right, yeah.

- Or you know, very reduced bloom because they're kinda finicky about being moved.

- And fall is a great time to transplant peonies.

- I was just gonna ask you that, - It's an excellent time of year, fall.

- Good deal.

All right, Vivian, we got it covered.

All right, thank you for the question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can I mix up a neem oil batch "and keep it for multiple uses, or does it need to be used immediately?"

And this is Patrice from Cumberland, Maryland.

So, what do you think about that, Celeste?

- Okay, so neem oil is unique.

It actually, when it comes into contact with water, it begins degrading pretty quickly.

So, we have about a 24-hour window to use that product, so I would suggest only mix up the amount that you need to treat the plants, you know, that need treating that day and just know that it has that short life once it comes in contact with water and to me it makes a lotta sense because in the environment, in the garden, once you've applied that product, it does not have a long-lasting residual.

And that's one of the qualities that we love neem oil for- - That's right.

- That make it easier on some of our beneficial insects.

- Right.

- Predatory and pollinators, also.

- You're exactly right.

- So, just mix up what you need.

- Right, and something else I would like to add to, as well, it depends on how you store it and where you store it, right?

- Mm-hm.

- So, is it gonna be in a climate controlled area?

- That's right.

- Or is it gonna be an area where you have fluctuating temperatures, like a garage, for instance.

So, that's gonna make a difference, and Jason, I know you use pesticides- - Absolutely.

- So what do you think?

- So, you know what, always with a pesticide, whether it's a herbicide, insecticide, miticide, nematicide, you want to read and follow those label directions very carefully.

They're on there for a reason, and if you'll follow that you will be successful with the use of your product.

- Well said, all right, so Patrice, we thank you for that question.

Jason, Celeste, always fun.

[hands clapping] - Thanks.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, okay.

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.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]