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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Flowers are an important   food source for butterflies.

Today, we will be   planting some.

Also, goats are a fun but   unusual addition to the garden.

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 Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis.

And Jeff Terry will be joining me later.

- All right, Joellen, it's good to see you.

- It's good to see you.

- What are we gonna do today?

- We got to look at our butterfly garden that we planted a couple of years ago, and we're going to reassess it and maybe add some more plants to it.

This is the parsley.

Course, parsley is a biennial, and it's gone to seed.

So we'll let a few of these seeds, you know, drift to the ground to maybe germinate for next year.

We've got, still have our butterfly weed, which is nice.

- That's good.

- They do have some aphids on them, unfortunately.

And then we also have our...

So a few weeds here that need to be taken out.

- Mare's tail, all right.

- We have our sedum that will will bloom in the fall.

And we have our oregano that seems to be still blooming.

So when they stop blooming, that's when we'll cut off all the seed heads of that.

But since it's blooming, it's still, we're going to leave that for now.

- Okay.

- And of course, then on the end, we have a whole lot of the aster.

- Yes.

- But it really likes the soil in this bed, and so it was kind of taken over.

So we've got to take it under control and divide it, and then we can share the divisions.

- Okay.

- And there's a little bit of sage over here too, this left.

So we will start working on this and getting it under control, and then hopefully plant some more plants.

- Okay.

So you're cutting those all the way back, huh?

- We've got some parsley coming up that's new, so we'll leave that.

Hopefully some of these seeds will come back this next year.

And it looks like we have some of our poker plant still here, so yay.

We'll leave that.

That'll bloom in the spring.

It's time to get out the shovel to divide the aster.

In our soils here, this aster doesn't really grow wild like this.

Our soils are really heavy and thick, and they tend to, they don't get as wide.

But this soil in here is so nice and loose that this has gone a little bit wilder than it does in the ground.

- There you go.

- That's an awful lot of dirt on that.

There you go.

Very happy here.

Let's get a... Yeah, let's try to get this up so sage can get some light.

- Ah, yeah.

Come on, get out.

You know you like it in there.

- And that's our little sand.

- That's the butterfly beach.

- Butterflies beach.

And even though this does bloom, I want the butterflies to be able to see their little beach.

- Their little beach.

- So I'm just gonna cut some of this back.

- See if I can get that out.

- And then we'll place the little beach back.

They like to sip the water, and then they like to sun themselves on the rocks around it.

- They couldn't see it.

- So they couldn't see it.

It was buried.

Now that we've gotten all of the dead and overgrown plants out of the way, it's time to add some new ones.

So we're going to add some new ones in here, some that were in here before they seem to have disappeared and a new one.

- Okay.

- Here is some Gaillardia.

This was in here before, but it has disappeared, so we need to add this to the garden.

- Okay.

- And I'm thinking he needs to be planted right here.

- All right.

- Then this is, we had a coneflower before.

It was purple.

This one is yellow.

And here is a tip.

This is okay.

It's not too dry.

It's a little bit too wet.

It doesn't like to be in this container.

It's a little bit of root bound, and it doesn't like to be too wet, so it's going to be happy to be put in here in a dryer situation.

So we'll plant him in the back right here on the south side.

- It'd be nice and dry.

- Nice and dry for him.

Something else that was in here that has disappeared is this Russian sage.

It blooms real pretty, and so we're going to plant that in here.

It's got some nice blooms.

- I forgot we had it in there.

- Yeah, we have that in here.

And lastly, something that we had in here that has disappeared is Monarda.

- Monarda.

- This is a pink Monarda, and we will plant that in here also.

- Good.

- And then our garden will be complete.

- Good.

All right, I guess we get to work, right?

- Now we get to work.

- Ah, look what we have here.

Hey buddy.

- A butterfly already on Monarda.

He says, oh, I like that one.

- Just give us a minute, all right.

[Joellen laughing] Give us a minute.

These have been watered pretty good.

Now our butterfly friend can come back.

- Oh wow.

Look at this.

There, it got a lot of circling roots.

So we're gonna try to make them stop doing that.

Just take a few places around here.

Very healthy plant.

- All right.

- That will probably like the drier soil.

- Oh yeah, it will.

Dry it is.

- It's pretty dry.

We'll have to water everything in, but then it can dry out between waterings.

We have some butterfly weed seeds that we wanted to add in this small corner to get some more butterfly weed in here.

And so I'm going to plant them here, just in this corner, and we'll see what comes up this next year.

And we don't need the pods, but we do need the seeds.

- Need the seeds.

- The fluffy stuff will decompose and act as organic matter.

- Oh, nice.

- So we'll just kind of- - Lightly cover them up.

- Cover them up lightly, and there we go.

Well, look at that.

Now we got filled in the spots, the garden is looking good again, and we're already attracting butterflies.

- Already, they can't wait.

- There's some over there, yeah.

- Yeah, they can't wait.

I see you.

- We'll get some water in their bath and water the plants in, and we'll be ready.

- You ready to go?

Thank you much, Joellen.

- You're welcome.

- Fun as always.

[upbeat country music] Let's take a look at these peppers here.

As you can see from the skin, it seems to be dry.

You know, they seem to be skin lesions.

Someone would probably ask, "Could you still eat these peppers?"

I would because again, these are just skin lesions.

You can actually use your finger nail and just kind of scrape them off a little bit, so it doesn't appear to go any deeper than the outer skin.

This may be a physiological disorder, may be due to extreme heat or lack of moisture or too much moisture.

So again, I would actually eat these.

I don't think anything's wrong with them.

[upbeat country music] Hi, Mr. Jeff.

Thank you for inviting us out.

- Thank you.

Thanks for coming out.

- We got goats.

- We do.

We have finally got goats here on the farm.

- How about that?

- Got four off them.

- Okay.

- And this is, thanks to a friend, Julie Lindow, with Shady Creek Farms.

She donated these goats.

We've got Jasmine here.

- Hi, Jasmine.

- We've got Blondie over there.

- Blondie.

- That's Pepper.

- All right.

- And... - There's Leo.

- Leo is right here.

- Yeah, Leo's hanging out.

- Yeah, exactly.

He's hamming it up now, so.

- So how about a little brief information, a little basic information about goats to get us started?

- Okay.

Well, they're one of the first domesticated animals that's ever been.

I mean, we're talking 11,000 years ago, and that was the beginning of all these kinds of domestication.

- Okay.

- Ever since then, they've been, well, in the United States, they were brought over probably around the time of the Mayflower.

We've got goats just all over the place.

- Okay.

Yeah, so let's talk about their eyes and their teeth and their stomachs.

- Yes.

- How about that?

- Okay.

So they have rectangular eyes, which are kind of cool.

But what it does, you know, they're a prey animal, so they need good peripheral vision.

- Okay.

- And the flat eyes, the rectangle eyes give them about 340 degree peripheral, and they can see basically everything up to right behind them, which is kind of cool.

- Wow.

- Their teeth... And they're chewing on your shirt right there.

- Yeah, teeth, yeah, appropriate time.

- They only have one set of bottom teeth and then just on the top, they have no teeth whatsoever.

- Okay.

- This allows their lips on the top to grab thorny bushes and things like that, and they're sort of almost prehensile lips at the top.

- How 'bout that?

- Yeah.

- And what about their stomachs?

- The stomach, they're a ruminant, so they have four stomachs.

So that allows them to eat very fibrous stuff, so hay, things like that.

One of their favorite foods, again, is Bermuda hay.

They love to do that.

And what they do is consume the hay that goes into the rumen, which is their first stomach.

- Okay.

- That's breaks down all of the fatty acids that can be consumed.

Then it goes into the reticulum, which is sort of, it's called the honeycomb.

- Okay.

- And what that does is grind up the fibrous materials.

Then it's pushed on to the omasum, which that extracts water from the grains or from the grasses.

And so they don't need as much water, as well.

They could be an arid climates and not have to worry about that.

And then it's finally into their true stomach.

And then after that... - Finally.

- Finally, it goes through all those stages.

- How 'bout that?

- Yes.

- That's so interesting.

What about the different breeds?

- Well, what we have here are the, this one is a LaMancha goat.

Okay.

- They were first introduced, or at least became into registered as a breed, in about 1927 out in California.

- Okay.

- And they have small ears.

They're called elf ears or gopher ears.

And these are not docked ears.

This is the way they were meant to be.

- Oh wow.

- And the theory is that they came from Spanish missionaries that probably came out of the south into California back in the 1600s with a goat that was very similar.

It had, again, gopher ears like that.

- Okay.

- So that was probably the progenitor for these goats, - Okay.

- For this breed of goat.

Then we have the dwarf Nigerians, and they're all over the place here.

And they were brought into the United States about 1950 from West Africa.

- Okay.

Not too long ago.

Okay.

And these are really great.

The LaManchas are great milking goats.

They have a higher butterfat content and just good producers.

The Nigerians are good, too.

These are boys.

Of course, we don't milk them.

- Okay.

- And these guys are actually weathered.

They have been fixed.

- Okay.

- Because one thing you don't want to have is a male goat anywhere near your milking stations.

They will foul...

There's probably nothing smellier than a male goat.

They are absolutely the smelliest thing on the planet.

- Oh my god.

- So early on, we had them fixed, and it makes them also a little bit more calm.

- Okay.

- The boys tend to, you know, if they go into a rut every so often, they really have a shorter lifespan.

- Okay.

- They will live about, you know, the only live 8 to 10 years-- - That all?

- If they go into rut every year.

So with fixing them as well, it makes 'em mellow.

It makes them real, just calm, a little bit more docile and also makes them live longer.

- Okay.

- Which all of these will probably live anywhere from 11 to 16 years, yeah.

- 11 to 16.

Okay.

- Especially with them milking goats, we're not going to really do high production with these girls.

It'll probably just be for a little while, and then, you know, if you stop milking them by 10 years, they'll live for another, you know, they could live up to 16 years.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Interesting stuff.

Look, somebody is probably wondering, can I have goats in Shelby County?

- Well, that is a good question.

From what I have read, you can have a goat as long as you're not within 1,000 feet of another residence or business.

- Right.

- That's kinda hard to come up with.

- That's gonna be hard.

- We have it here at the Farm Park.

We're not anywhere near anybody, you know, at this stage.

But I did read where you could get a permit from the Shelby County Health Department.

- Okay.

- I have not been able to get in touch with them to confirm that.

I really want to tell anybody in Shelby County to try to get in touch and see if that's possible.

Before you even consider a goat, make sure that it's possible in your area.

As far as Fayette County or Tipton County, any of these places out further away, I doubt that there's even an issue at all.

You could probably have as many goats as you care to.

- Okay.

So how do you house the goats here?

- Well, here we have, during the summertime, they stay in this little building here, and it's just sort of a three walled shed,   and it's got a   hardware cloth inside.

And actually it   was a chicken coop,   but it really worked out.

- I can see that.

- The goats have taken it over.

And they've enjoy staying out here during the warm weather, but then we also have a stall in the barn that we bring them in when it gets cold.

- Okay.

- And then I can heat it just a little bit and at least keep them from being in the absolute cold.

Goats can weather a lot of, I mean, the only thing they don't like is rain.

- Yeah, it was interesting when you told us that earlier.

They don't like the rain?

- They do not like rain.

It just bothers them to no...

I mean, I can barely get them in to the barn when it starts raining.

They don't want to leave any kind of cover.

And when they come out, they're just like hunkered down and just, oh, they absolutely hate the rain.

- They just don't want to get wet.

- Yeah, they really don't.

- Well look, I want to ask you a couple of questions about goat milk and goat meat.

- Sure.

Oh yes.

Goat milk is is fantastic.

Goats are... - and I've had it before.

- It is.

It's really good.

You know, it's naturally homogenized, so it doesn't separate out.

Lactose intolerant people can drink goat's milk, as well.

It's probably the most consumed milk and meat on the planet.

There are more goats consumed than cattle.

- Really?

- Without question, yeah.

- I did not know that.

- Not necessarily in the United States, but all the rest of the world, they are definitely one of the most consumed animals.

- Wow.

- And they're great.

I've had goat meat before.

Not these.

- Not these.

- Never these.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- These are my babies here, so.

But they're really good, and yeah, goat milk raw, of course, you know, we have to be careful with this.

I mean, there's a two sides of the fence on that one where raw milk is no problem, and then the other side of homogenizing or at least heating up the milk.

- Yeah.

- Around here that we call it moo-shine.

It's sort of like, if you, yeah.

If it's sort of on the, you can't have can't have it just yet, so.

- How about that?

I was in Italy, you know, some years ago, and a lot of the milk that we drank was goat milk.

- Oh yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

- I was amazed at that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- How 'bout that?

- It is fantastic.

It's very, very good.

- All right.

Well, Jeff, we appreciate that good information about goats.

- Thank you.

- We appreciate your babies.

- Thanks a lot.

- And hanging out with us.

- And they've been waiting.

- And they've been waiting, yeah.

- They've been waiting as patient as they could.

Raisins, their favorite treat.

So if anybody's coming out to the Farm Park, bring some raisins.

- Bring some raisins.

Come on out here to the Farm Park, y'all.

Feed 'em the raisins.

Thanks a lot.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate that, Jeff.

- Thanks a lot.

[gentle country music] - Well, we've done some watering here, and you need to test to see if you have watered enough.

The ground might look wet, but it might not have gotten watered down in the soil to get to the roots.

So after you've watered, you simply dig in the ground and see if it's wet or dry.

And you see, that's dry, so we haven't watered that enough.

You've only watered the surface.

You haven't watered down in where the roots are.

If you've watered enough and you dig down, you should come up with wet soil so that you know that you've watered enough to get down to the roots of your plants.

So this is a good example of light, shallow watering often is not a good idea because it tends to have the roots come to the surface, which then they're going to dry out faster.

You want to water infrequently and water nice and deep down to the root system so that the roots will want to stay down in the soil to have them away from the heat and the stress of the summer.

[gentle country music] - All right, Joellen, it's our Q&A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

- Good questions.

- All right, so let's go with the first viewer email.

This is interesting.

"I am fighting   puncture vine.

"Could you please   give me some advice   "on how to get rid of   this horrible weed?

"We live on a four-acre   farm and have horses.

"I will be happy   to get rid of it.

"It has been getting   worse every year   "for the last eight years.

Thank you so much."

And this is Anne from   Chaparral, New Mexico.

- Wow.

Getting worse.

- Puncture vine.

- Yes.

Very spiky.

- Yes.

- The seed pods of it.

They can actually   get into the tires   and hooves of some animals   and the tires of your bicycles   and things like that.

So yeah, this something that   I would want to get rid of.

You can't get rid   of it by mowing   because it is like a   carpet on the ground,   and you can't till it in becaus   that'll just make it worse.

So actually what they recommen   is, you know, digging it up, but with a hoe, but for four acres, she can't do that.

- Is gonna be tough.

- She really needs to see if she can put some pre-emergent on it to not make it worse.

It's really tough, so on certain pre-emergents can be used for it.

Then it's post-emergent time, but you need to get post-emergent.

- At this point, it is.

- You need to get post-emergent on it when it's young in the spring.

- Young and actively growing.

Yeah, so a broadleaf weed herbicide would work,   anything that contains   2,4-D, dicamba.

- Yeah.

- If you want to use   glyphosate, read the label.

Be careful with that.

I'm not saying   that you have to,   but it is something   that you can use.

A far as a pre-emergent,   trifluralin.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Is what you   can use for that.

- Trifluralin.

- Just read the label   and follow that.

But that's going to be a lot of work.

You know, it has the, again, the burr type, you know, seeds, capsules.

Those things can be pretty rough, especially if you have horses and livestock.

- Yes.

- So this is going to be a job.

- Yes, it's going to be a lot to do, but you got to keep at it.

- Yeah.

- And just, you know, pre-emergents and post-emergents.

Post-emergents in early spring is going to be your best bet.

- Early spring, again, when the puncture vine is young and actively growing.

And something else too, you know, she mentioned about, you know, it gets worse every year.

It's been getting worse every year for the last eight years.

Well, the seeds can remain dormant in the soil for like four or five, six years.

- Yeah.

- Right.

- That's why you don't want to keep it going 'cause you're going to be fighting for a while.

- Yeah.

So thank you, Ms. Anne.

- I'm sorry.

- You got some work to do.

You've got some work to do.

Thank you for that question.

Here's the next viewer email.

"My yard is made up of Bermuda   grass, possibly common.

"On the south side, I have   thin grass struggling   "due to shade from   trees behind my fence.

"The area gets two   hours in the morning   "and two hours of   evening sunlight.

"I tried fine fescue.

"It did well until   April, but then died,   "probably from the heat.

"Are there any shade tolerant   Bermuda or zoysia varieties   that would work here, or   should I use a fescue?"

And this is Perdit,   Collierville, Tennessee.

All right, Perdit.

We're here in Memphis, Tennessee at our Shelby County Extension Office, which is located at the Agricenter.

We have a turf plot.

And in a turf pot, we have   four different varieties   of zoysia.

Three of those will work very well in shade.

- Yes.

- Geo zoysia,   G-E-O, Geo zoysia,   Palisades zoysia,   which is a very popular   zoysia.

- One of my favorites.

- Okay.

Palisade is real good.

And then Royal zoysia.

They all have excellent   shade tolerance.

Again, excellent   shade tolerance.

They need at least four   hours of filtered sun, okay.

So it looks like we may have, you know, thar four hours here, those four hours here.

So four hours of filtered sun, but those grasses would work well in your area.

- Yeah, I have a Palisade on the north side of my garage, and it, where Bermuda and other grasses wouldn't grow, it has filled in.

- Okay.

- So yes.

- So you know it works.

- Yes, I know it works.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Zoysia's a beautiful grass.

- It is.

- You know, it grows like carpet, pretty thick.

You don't have to worry about weeds and things like that.

But again, for shade tolerance.

- Yes.

- Yes.

Those zoysia varieties will do you just well.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so come on over to the Shelby County Extension Office.

We would be happy to give you a tour of our grasses.

And don't forget other places in the country may have turf wheels or turf plots as well.

- They do.

- So you can also visit those at your local extension offices.

All right, so thank you for that question for Perdit.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have a hydrangea and it's three years old.

"It bloomed the first year, two or three blooms, "the second year, a few blooms, "but last year, guess what?

"No blooms.

"Why wouldn't my hydrangea bloom?

"I fertilized it.

It is growing well."

This is Ivis from   Halls, Tennessee.

All right, so a hydrangea.

We don't know what kind.

- Yeah, we don't know what kind 'cause different types of hydrangeas like to be pruned at different times of the year, so she may have inadvertently pruned it at the wrong time of year, which would cause you not to have blooms, or it could be this last cold snap we had.

This was when we hit unusually cold weather that a lot of the hydrangeas reacted to and are not blooming.

I have two that aren't blooming, and it is because of that.

And there might be one or two blooms on them, but I think the cold, you know, got it down, and it's not coming back to bloom this year.

- Right.

- But the foliage is gorgeous and beautiful, and I'm hoping next year we won't get such a cold snap, so it will bloom well 'cause I didn't prune it.

Mother Nature pruned it for me.

- Mother Nature did that for you.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, again, two cold snaps really.

- Yeah, and the only other thing I would mention is if it's never really bloomed well, could it be in too much shade because I used to have that problem also, and I have moved hydrangeas into a little more sun because of that.

I'm like, well, it's shady for you.

You know, it's bright, but it's not, it wasn't enough sun for them.

So that's another thing that she could look at, too.

- Right, okay.

'Cause again, you know, we don't know the conditions nor do we know, you know, which hydrangea we're talking about.

- Yeah.

- But yeah, thinking about environmental factors, yeah, yeah, we had some unusual weather this year.

There's no doubt about that.

But then, you know, after that, you know, some of the hydrangeas did very well this year because of the moisture.

So, Ivis, I hope that helps you out there.

Appreciate the question.

Joellen, that was fun.

Thank you much.

- It was fun.

- Thank you much.

Remember, we love   to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

he 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 want to get more information on the plants Joellen planted or learn more about raising goats, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]