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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Peppers are a Summer garden favorite.

Today we're going to learn all about them.

Also, there's lots of advice floating around about how to plant.

Some is true, a lot is not.

Today we're separating fact from fiction.

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 guitar music] - Welcome to The Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Tom Mashour.

Mr. Tom is an Extension Master Gardener in Tipton County.

And Carol Reese is here.

Miss Carol is an ornamental horticulturist specialist with UT Extension.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Glad to be here.

- Alright, Mr. Tom, we're gonna talk about peppers.

- Love 'em.

- I know you love to talk about peppers.

- Oh, I do.

- So, where do you want to start?

- Well, let's talk about varieties.

- (Chris) Okay, let's do that.

- One catalog has 80 different varieties of peppers.

And that's not all inclusive.

There's a lot more peppers than just that one catalog.

- (Chris) Okay.

- Anywhere from bell peppers to ornamental peppers that grows these little, tiny, little purple peppers.

But ornamental peppers, all peppers are edible.

- Okay.

- Peppers are rated on the Scoville scale, which rates them by their pungency, is that the right word?

A bell pepper, no score at all.

You get into your jalapenos, and on the Scoville scale they're around 20,000.

You get into the habaneros, they're anywhere from 250,000 to 450,000.

- (Chris) Ouch!

- You get to the ghost pepper and it's 1 to 1.1 million.

And then you have to understand that there's a pepper that's even hotter.

And what makes them hot is the... capsaicin?

- (Chris) Capsaicin.

- Capsaicin, thank you, that's in it.

And pure cap..., one more time.

- Capsaicin?

- Thank you.

Is about 15 million.

And a lot of these heat pads, that's what they have in them to make them hot so you get that heat from them.

I personally do not like really hot, hot peppers.

- I don't either.

- One of the cute things is right here.

This is called a Fooled You jalapeno pepper.

It looks, grows, it takes just like a jalapeno, but it's just as hot as a bell pepper.

So, you get all the flavor but no pain.

And peppers are members of the nightshade family, which also includes tomatoes, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes.

- (Carol) Eggplant.

- And eggplant, thank you.

And the unique thing about them is when they group them together a lot is due to the flower, and all of the male and female parts are in each blossom.

So, they're considered wind pollinated.

Allows just a little breeze to shake them up a little bit.

That's all they need.

Matter of fact, in greenhouses when they grow hothouse tomatoes, peppers, and stuff like that, all they really do is every morning walk through with like bamboo sticks and just bang them, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, as they walk down them, which is enough shaking to cause pollination.

- (Chris) Oh, interesting.

- Which also creates a problem.

One of the problems is, like I did at my house by mistake and I knew better, I mean I really did but I screwed up, and I planted some sweet banana peppers next to my jalapeno peppers.

Guess what I ended up with.

I ended up with banana peppers that were actually hotter than the jalapenos.

So, I'll have to give those away with a cautionary note.

Starting peppers though are relatively easy.

One of the problems is, again, they don't grow anywhere near as fast as tomato plants do and they take longer to germinate.

So, I usually start my peppers, I start everything indoors or in the greenhouse, but I start them approximately a month before I even think about starting my tomatoes.

And the tomatoes, from the time I start the seeds to the time they're ready to go in the garden is less than six weeks.

Peppers, probably about two months before I put them in the garden, before they're able to handle the weather like that.

And I also plant them in pairs.

I'll plant two of them about that far apart, and then a space of 18 inches, then I plant two more, and then I plant two more and two more in pairs.

And the reason for that is the foliage of one plant helps protect the peppers of the adjacent plant.

When the sun rises in the east, and then it reverses on the west side, and it'll help prevent one problem.

I've still got a little bit of damage from it, but this right here is sun scalding, and that's because the pepper got exposed directly to the sun.

This one here got damaged because it was touching the ground, and the little critters that live in the ground got to it.

And of course this is what you're looking for.

- (Chris) Oh yeah, that looks good.

- Exactly, and by the way-- - Well, tell me this, are those still edible?

- Yes they are actually.

What you would do, or I would do, is I would cut out the bad part of it, in this case the sun scalding, and then cut it up in pieces, same thing with this one, cut it up, and then put them in one of those self sealing bags, squeeze the air out of it and zip it closed, and by reducing the amount of air in there they just seem to last longer.

They need, like most vegetables, at least six hours of daylight.

You need to stake them with bamboo sticks or something, because when it gets heavy, it hopefully will get heavy with peppers, the plants are kind of brittle.

If you get three or four peppers on a stem, it'll break off.

- And I've see people use cages.

- (Tom) You can.

- For their peppers.

- Those little-- - For that purpose.

- Cone shaped cages that are ridiculously, ridiculous for use on tomatoes, but they work good for peppers because they do support.

As far as I know, that's about the only use for them.

Watering, they like moderate watering.

Just like most vegetables, they like a damp soil, not soggy, but damp.

And by having it damp, constantly damp, you prevent a lot of problems with like blossom end rot, a few other things.

They like to the source water.

When you water, you want to water with a drip line on the way out.

A balanced fertilizer, a 10-10, 10-10-10, 13-13-13, 15-15-15, which again is good for most vegetables but not all vegetables.

- So, when is a good time to pick them?

- Actually that's a good point.

When they start turning red they get sweeter, just like especially on bell peppers.

And by the way, on the scalding, some bell peppers are about the only pepper that is affected by sun scalding.

But, there's a fine point when the tomatoes are solid red and they get mushy.

So, if you want a good, sweet tomato or pepper, like in bell peppers, then when it starts turning red but before it goes completely red, still got a little bit of green in it, it's still gonna be firm and sweet.

So, that's the best time to pick it.

And also, the fewer, like almost a lot of your fruit type vegetables, the fewer the fruit the bigger the fruit.

So peppers, well, people complain saying, "I just keep getting small peppers."

Well, you probably got about 100 peppers on that plant.

So, I usually tell people kind of limit to three or four peppers per plant, and then when you harvest one when it's at the right size for your needs, then let another one grow, and you'll be very successful with that.

And also, you don't have to have a garden for growing peppers.

They look fantastic in flower beds.

- And probably even containers.

- Yeah, yeah, they're very versatile as far as that goes.

And as I said, one of the few fruits something to grow in your flower bed that's edible.

- Alright Mr. Tom, we appreciate that information about peppers.

- Okay, I hope that's helpful.

- Thank you very much.

[upbeat country music] High tunnels.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause I know a lot of producers here in Shelby County are using high tunnels now, for tomatoes and some other of their fruits, so.

- And, that's a term to me that is just another name for something we already had, because a high tunnel is just a cold frame greenhouse.

That's all it is.

[Lelia chuckles] It is an unheated house, usually quonset- or bow-shaped, you know, around like this, semi-circle.

And it's covered with one sheet of plastic.

And, a lot of say vegetable farmers or cut flower producers, they use those as again, season extenders.

They're actually growing crops early, like people will grow to get a start on the season of their tomatoes.

They'll grow 'em in the high tunnel and they're able to pull up the sides or ventilate it because they're unheated, but yet as the season goes on, see in the spring, it can get pretty hot in there.

So, it needs to be able to either open the ends or roll the sides up, or something.

And even some people kinda put it where they can slide the whole house to another location.

And, usually in the high tunnel crops and plants are grown in the ground.

They're not up on benches or something, so.

It's just an unheated season extender.

And, sometimes they'll have supplemental heat just in case that the weather gets really, really cold one night and you don't want your tomato plants or your cut flowers, or whatever, cucumbers, whatever you're growing, you know.

Some people grow strawberries even in 'em to get a little earlier season on that.

[upbeat country music] Alright Miss Carol, I can't wait to hear this, okay?

Planting mis-information, okay?

Where you wanna start with that?

I can't wait.

- Well, I can be pretty vicious sometimes.

I was checking out something recently and the girl behind the counter tried to sell me soil amendments.

- (Chris) Uh-oh.

- with my plants, they were some old Hollywood junipers, and I was like, "Don't believe in them!"

I believe in improving soil, but from the top down like mother nature does.

If you dig a hole, they want you to dig a hole and mix the soil amendments in the hole and then plant in there, and actually what you're doing is creating a bucket of vastly different textured soil, which is gonna fill up with water in wet times, because the tight soil acts like a bucket, and it's gonna dry out faster during dry times.

Plus, the roots don't really want to leave that little pampered area.

They're like, "Ooh, I don't wanna go over there."

- (Chris) "This is nice."

- "I'll stay right here," which means they blow over easy, and again, can be a challenge to keep it watered.

So, I just break up the native soil as little as possible to get it in there.

And also if I do need to improve my soil, and my house, you know I just built a house in 2011, a lot of bulldozer work.

So, I really don't have a lot of good, native soil.

So, I'm not saying never till in soil amendments, but if you do do the whole area so that it can continue, because tree roots especially they want to go out sideways really far, so the more you can help them do that that's good.

They like for you to add hormones and root stimulators.

No scientific research has shown that that gives any benefit.

It's just another product that they're trying to sell you over the counter.

- (Chris) Interesting.

- Don't put any fertilizer in that hole.

- (Chris) I heard that one too, okay.

- Don't fertilize that plant for the first year.

Woody plants, now annuals and vegetables sure you do, that's a different thing, and till in all the stuff you want to there for that quick response.

But, for trees and shrubs I don't recommend fertilizer for the first year, because you have a challenged plant anyway.

It's going through some shock.

It's having to get real integrated into that new setting, and fertilizers are salty and they draw water from the roots.

So, you really don't want to be pushing the envelope with that and kind of giving them a little bit more challenge.

People wanna do that when a plant is sick, too.

They like to throw some fertilizer.

- (Chris) Don't fertilize them.

- Tried fertilizing it and it hadn't responded.

Well, you don't want a whole bunch of rich food when you're sick either.

(Chris laughs) Don't do that to the plant.

Just nurse it during drought-y times.

Try not to stress it.

See if it can recover from whatever is going on.

- Okay, let me ask you this though.

Let me back you up for a second.

So, when do you recommend tilling, tilling?

- Yes, if I'm gonna do a vegetable garden maybe.

Now, you can go the lasagna route and just layer things on top, but if I really want to improve the soil for the annuals and I really need to plant for seasonal display.

I'm gonna change that garden out twice a year from cool to warm season.

I want that quick response.

I don't have all day to wait for that plant, so I'm probably gonna till in and get some good amendments and some quick fertilizer boost and get that quick turnover for me there.

- Good, okay, good, okay.

- And also like in my soil, I'm down to the B horizon.

So, I'm gonna do the whole area.

I don't have any soil structure left because of all the bulldozer work.

So, I'm not preserving anything by not tilling, because when we don't till we're trying to preserve soil structure that was originally there, and right now I don't have any.

- (Chris) Good stuff, okay.

- I do strip tilling.

Just till one little strip exactly where I put the seeds.

- Yeah, well a vegetable garden I think that's cool.

That's fine.

Maybe not on my permanent vegetables, I mean perennial.

I'm gonna do some perennial vegetables around my new garden plot, and I'm probably not gonna till that every year by any means.

Anyway, another is container plants are always better than being big.

Of course, it turns out that container plants have their own set of problems, which is root girdling which I was not a big believer in.

Now I'm convinced.

And now with these days of looking online and finding lots of good images, you can find the coolest pictures of what circling roots can do.

They actually wrap around a lot of times especially when they're planted too deep, and they will girdle that trunk so severely that it's just like you put a piece of steel twine or a wire around it.

It also makes them snap at that point, too.

So you got to be sure if you are planting container plants to get those roots teased out or saw through them with a serrated saw, or B & B material, which if it's been properly grown is actually not, All those roots are going to be going out in the soil like they're supposed to.

- Let's go back again.

So, B & B stands for?

- Ball and burlap.

You dig up a root ball.

You wrap it in burlap.

Another myth was you could leave it on there because it'll rot.

- I was just about to ask you that.

So what about that one?

- You do not.

You take it off.

If it rotted that fast would you use it?

(Chris laughs) - Right.

- And also they don't even use real burlap these days.

They have some kind of synthetic product that looks like burlap.

You want those roots to get as in touch with that soil as fast as they can.

Take off the cage, take off the burlap, take off the wire.

Do whatever you can to actually get naked roots in touch with the soil where it's gonna be growing, and water in well, water in deeply.

- Okay, water in well, water in deeply.

- Yes, even if you have rain, if you have irrigation, that first soaking you need to really get that root ball settled in and soaked.

- Okay.

- We used to hear B & B material could only be planted in the winter when it's dormant.

But truth is if it's been well handled, root pruned, wrapped in a good ball of burlap, there's a lot of good intact roots in that plant right there.

You can certainly plant them year round as long as you're willing to water, which is the same thing you had to do with container plants anyway.

So, that is another myth.

They also used to tell you be sure you don't let that root ball come apart.

Keep that soil.

Now they discovered if you knock all that soil off and plant it and get it into contact with the soil where it's gonna be growing, it'll actually grow a lot faster than the one that is kept in the original root ball.

So, somebody finally does research.

If we got time for more, the idea that raw wood chips are always a bad idea for mulching established plants.

It is a bad idea if you're tilling it in, and little baby plants it's gonna rob the nitrogen, and it could certainly deprive them of the nutrition they need for growth.

But, if you're just using raw wood chips to put on the top of the ground around well established plants, it does not steal the nitrogen.

- Does not, does not.

- Does not.

It's a perfectly good source, and a good way to recycle things and help them from hauling those kinds of things off to the landfill.

- Okay.

- Talk about fertilizer, people have misconceptions about fertilizer being good for plants and what types of fertilizer.

Number one, most of our soils have plenty of P and K, so usually you don't have to add a lot of that.

You really don't have to fertilize a woody plant at all.

You really don't.

We've got plenty of nutrition in the soil.

The plants out in the woods have done fine without anybody helping them out.

We like to.

We like to get rich growth and push them along a little bit.

People assume manure is always a good idea.

It's a good organic source.

It breaks down slow.

Some plants don't like manure.

We discovered that the hard way because we thought, well, grew up on a dairy farm and when we switched over to being a blueberry orchard we put manure on everything.

Blueberries don't like manure.

It's too alkaline.

And most of our ornamentals like an acid soil, hollies, camellias, azaleas.

- (Tom) Gardenias.

- Yes, they do not like that alkaline soil.

So, don't make that assumption manure is always a good idea.

- Does manure contain a lot of salt?

- I don't know if it's salt, it's alkaline.

You know, different.

I wouldn't think it would be a high salt thing at all.

Companion plants, you hear that business all the time.

- (Chris) You get it all the time.

- Companion plants, companion plants, compost tea.

(Chris laughs) I read somewhere say, "Why would you think a diluted product from compost would be better than actual compost?"

Makes no sense, does it?

They say it cures all ills.

You can use it for curing these diseases and that disease.

True, a healthier plant might be able to resist some disease.

I really like people to research.

There's some good books out there the truth about home remedies that you can read, which ones actually work, because some do, but a lot of the myth about companion plants was plants that repel mosquitoes.

I watch them land, I watched a mosquito land right on that citronella leaf.

(Chris laughs) I'm like, "Really?"

- Didn't do a thing to it, huh?

- No, but people swear by it, because they didn't have mosquitoes that summer.

Well, there was some other reason you didn't have mosquitoes that summer.

It had nothing to do with your citronella plant.

- You know, that's one you see on the Internet all the time, recommended plants to repel mosquitoes.

How about that.

- Somebody said put a little mint in your house and the mice will scamper away.

I'm like, "Really?"

So yeah, we have to be careful about these things.

If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably not-- - It probably is.

Carol, that's some good stuff.

I'd been waiting for that.

That's some really good stuff.

Thank you very much, alright.

[upbeat country music] - Okay, just like on Goldilocks, the three bowls of porridge, the soil has got to be in the right condition, too.

Example being this right here.

This pile right here will not form a ball, so it's kind of a little bit on the dry side.

This one right here, this is way too wet.

This is one you're gonna let sit for at least two or three days and test it to find out if it's tillable.

You don't want to put a tiller in that.

Okay, this middle piece however, if I can form a ball and I throw it up in the air.

Oops, and it breaks apart, then it's just right for tilling.

[upbeat country music] Alright, here's our Q&A session.

Mr. Tom, you jump in there and help us out being a master gardener and all, alright?

- Okay.

- So, here's our first viewer email.

"What causes a plum tree to flower every year but not give any fruit?"

And this is from Peter.

So Miss Carol, I remember you sent us out a publication about this once before about fruit plants that needed pollinators.

So, what say you about this?

- It's a lonely plum.

(Chris laughs) It's lonely.

- (Chris) It's lonely?

- You know, they're perfect flowers.

Everything in the Rosaceae family does have male and female on the same flower, but it needs a separate individual.

It doesn't want to pollinate itself.

That's not a good idea.

That's like inbreeding.

So, it needs a cross pollinator.

So, I don't know what kind they have.

- Right, yeah, that's right.

It just says a plum tree, so right.

- Some have been bred to be self fertile, but it sounds like their's is not, and most people don't know what they have unless they just got some.

So, I'd say just go get a couple other, two different types, then you kind of ensure that you have a pollinator and plant those near for the insects to ferry the pollen.

- It would help if they knew the variety, because if you know the variety some as you said are self pollinators and some do require companions.

- (Carol) Yes.

- So it's a lonely plum.

Alright, yeah, because I remember that.

You sent it out to all the agents about what fruit trees require pollinators and such.

So, that's always good information.

Alright Peter, so I hope that helps you out.

Here's our next viewer email.

"The last several days my zucchini has been blooming, "but I've noticed only one or two female flowers.

"This morning I counted and there were 20 flowers, "but none of them were female.

"Is there a reason for this?

"Is there anything I can do to encourage more female fl ower blossoms on my zucchini?"

And this is from Mr. Mike in Ringgold, Georgia.

Thank you, Mr. Mike.

So, here's the question.

"Is there anything I can do to encourage more female flower blossoms on my zucchini?"

- Well, the thing is this is kind of normal in the beginning of the season.

Just like my plants in the morning when they first started blossoming, they were all females, no boys around.

And then as time progresses, and I got calls about that, and not just for zucchinis, but just yellow squash and stuff like that, and then a little bit later the boys start showing up.

- Mine is usually the other way around.

I have males-- - Yeah, the males happen first.

- Well they used to, but one season I'll have the males in the morning, and then later on I would have females in the afternoon, by that time the boys are closed, the boy blossoms are closed up, and then sometimes it's reversed.

It just depends, like you said.

You have your boys.

But this year, I had all girls this morning, this morning, in the morning.

And then later on the boys showed up, and then they finally got together.

- I wondered if the first plant, first tend to be males because it doesn't take as much energy maybe.

- See, that's what I thought.

I thought it had to do with the energy.

- Yeah, female flowers they have to have an ovary, and they're gonna make babies.

It's gonna take more from the plant.

- (Chris) And they're larger blooms though, as well.

So, that's why I thought they required more energy.

- (Carol) That's true.

- Because you need the boys because the boys are gonna provide a lot of the pollen, and so they probably don't require as much energy as the female blossoms, which are bigger, ovary.

So, that's what I thought.

- That's what I think, the plant needs to be bigger to start producing the female.

- I've been getting the girls, but one of the things you can do if you want to encourage them-- - Is mulch with pink.

(Chris laughs) I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Just get one of those little cheap artist brushes, or even a Q-tip, and when the boys are open just go ahead and grab some of the pollen off of it, and then when the girls show up later then-- - I'm too lazy.

I'm just gonna wait a week.

(Chris laughs) - Nature will take its course.

- It will happen.

- So be patient.

- Be patient, Mr. Mike, is the word, and thank you for that question, alright?

Here's our next viewer email.

"Some of my squash plants "are big and have dark green leaves, "and others are smaller with light green leaves.

How can I help the smaller ones?"

This is Lyla.

So Mr. Tom, what do you think?

- Well my garden is like a micro environment.

I had one area right from one end of my garden to the other that things just did not like to grow in there.

Both sides of it everything was fine, just that one spot.

So, I ended up fertilizing it a little bit better, and put some soil amendments in that area and then now you couldn't tell it was there.

But I think I would probably give it a little bit more work on those weaker ones, give them a little bit better fertilizer.

- Could be drainage is a little bad?

- See, that's where I was going.

I thought maybe drainage might be an issue.

First thing that came to my mind.

- Good drainage might be a good one.

- Drainage, because they were larger leaves.

Now you have the light green leaves.

So, I thought maybe drainage could be an issue.

- And like Carol mentioned before, I think we all know that plants like air too, the roots.

And again, it could be just the soil in that particular spot could be different.

- Could be Miss Lyla, so there you have it.

Alright, so Mr. Tom, Miss Carol, we're out of time.

Fun as always.

- Real fun.

- 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 could go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Need some gardening advice?

Head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have hundreds of videos on all sorts of gardening topics to help you and your plants be successful this year.

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]