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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Butterflies love flowers and today we will be planting some in our butterfly garden.

Also, sometimes birds can be a nuisance.

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 Mr. D will be joining me later.

All right, Joellen.

- Butterfly garden.

- This is your butterfly garden.

- We have a butterfly garden.

- Yeah.

- And look what a thug we have, [Chris laughs] in the aster, the fragrant aster, aromatic aster.

- It likes it, right?

- You know, this is a raised bed.

- It just likes the garden.

- It's got loose soil.

So it is being, you know, trying to take over.

- Sure.

- So we gotta keep it under control.

- Okay.

- So we'll dig some of it out and have room.

And one thing I wanna notice that, you know, the butterfly bushes come back every year.

The Sedum has come back every year.

Our oregano has come back every year.

And we have kept our parsley because, look, this year some of it's going to seed.

So that keeps generating the same plants that the caterpillars and the butterflies can eat, you know, and get nectar from.

But let's, first thing we need to do is get rid of the excess aromatic aster in here.

- That it is.

That it is.

So I will start doing so.

I get it.

- This aster has very long tubers that come out in roots and sections of rhizomes that come out.

And then they just say, "Oh, there's a soil surface," and then they come out and they just keep multiplying and multiplying.

And sometimes you don't get all of this root, so it will start coming back again.

You just gotta keep up with it to keep it under control.

Look, you're gonna come across some roots, I mean, some rocks.

- There's rocks.

- I'm trying to move the rocks.

- There it goes.

Thought I got it.

[Joellen laughs] There it is.

- All right, well we've got it mostly contained.

- Yeah.

- I'm gonna let you, we've had to take out some of the soil, so we need to put some soil back.

- Okay.

- All right, looks good.

Now we're ready to plant.

Before we do that, let's put a little fertilizer down.

We'll keep away from that.

It doesn't need any fertilizer.

- No, it does not.

- But the rest of the stuff could probably use a little bit.

And what we've plant new, will need a little bit.

- Okay.

- And like I said, it doesn't take a lot of fertilizer.

We have some large Echinacea.

- Yeah.

- That we have a perfect spot for now.

- Yeah.

- We'll place our Monarda here.

And we have two cone flowers.

We can space them back here.

I know you can't always see them from the front, but they will look nice back here.

And we have some Pentas left over that we will plant in the front here next to where we're gonna put the butterfly bush back.

- So will the Pentas attract butterflies?

- Pentas will attract butterflies.

- Okay.

- And bees.

- Okay, so all the pollinators.

- And other pollinators.

- Good.

- Now the Echinacea and the Rudbeckia are especially attractive to butterflies because they are flat and the butterflies have a better place to land and collect nectar.

- Ah, all right.

- And even hummingbirds will like the Monarda and the Pentas.

But butterflies like those also.

- Good deal.

- Reds, oranges, yellows.

The bright colors attract butterflies more than some of the other colors.

- Okay.

I like that.

- So let's put this nice landing spot for them to take care.

- Give 'em a place to hang out, right?

- Give 'em a little place to hang out.

Some minerals.

- Just a little tanning, right?

- Yeah, might need to mix up our sand a little bit here and, 'cause you want it to retain water 'cause that's how they get the minerals out of it.

We'll set it here.

And we'll take our rocks, place them around.

- Ah, look at that, fits just like a puzzle.

Pretty good.

- So they'll have a nice place to land, sun themselves, and then get a drink of water.

A good place to get some minerals out of the sand and to sun themselves on the rocks.

And then probably, now that this is not wood and it's gone, we've gone to these cinder blocks, they'll probably sit on the edge of this also.

They like to sun themselves.

And I guess we're ready to plant.

Yeah, these are fairly large.

We'll move this one out of the way so we can plant this one first.

And you see it, again, these are large containers.

You can keep ahold of them, but you squeeze the pot around all sides so that it gently comes out of the container.

And we look at the root system and this is very nicely rooted.

Not a whole lot of things to move out of the way.

Again, get rid of some of the circling roots so that the roots will go away from the plant.

And we will plant this perennial no higher than the top of this root, the soil in this container.

You don't wanna bury the crown of the plant.

So we'll dig a nice hole for this.

The top soil in those bags were slightly different from the top soil that is decomposed in the ground.

So we can mix 'em together and everybody will be happy.

- Just a little mixing.

- Yeah, you wanna measure the container with your shovel and see how deep it is.

- Let's do that.

- See if your... - Hey.

- That's pretty good.

- Hey.

I'm learning.

- Now we can set this in here.

- Hey, look at that folks.

- And we'll put some of the soil back around it and up to it, but not over it.

- And we get it off these rocks right here.

All right.

- Now we've got one planted and then we'll plant the next one the same way.

- Okay, same way.

Yeah, you're right about that.

Nice.

- And again, we've got some nice roots, a little bit of circling.

We'll just take that out, so it'll go straight and we will set it down.

- All right.

Look good to you?

- Okay.

Yeah, looks good.

- Yeah.

- And we'll plant these two Rudbeckia.

They'll bring some nice yellow to the garden.

And, again, we wanna take that out and we just squeeze the container and, oh look.

That's a lot of circling roots.

So we'll fix that.

I would prefer to cut these.

I don't have a sharp knife.

Let's see if this will work on it.

Yes, it will.

I prefer to do this with all these circling roots, 'cause what will happen once I do this, these roots, as you can see here, are gonna start coming out towards me and away from the plant's center and it will stop all of this circling.

- Wow.

- Again, it'll keep coming out and it'll stop all that circling and it'll grow away from the plant like it was trying to do in the first place before the container stopped it.

Again, we'll plant it no deeper than the soil level that we have here.

- All right.

- Again, we'll dig a hole, incorporate some of the existing soil with what we put on top.

Plant it at the soil level depth, but no higher.

And now we have this Monarda.

Monarda is a butterfly and hummingbird magnet.

Pinks and reds.

This one is raspberry, so it'll be in the red family.

- Oh, raspberry.

- So it's gonna be really pretty over here.

Again, we're gonna move the soil outta the way.

Incorporate some of the existing soil with what we put on top, nice and loose.

It's why this butterfly garden has done so well.

It's got some real dirt in it and some amendment and it's just really drains well and the plants like that.

- All right, so this is gonna be interesting because if you look here.

- Oh my.

Yeah, I have a feeling we're gonna have the same problem.

- So we'll see.

- I might have to do a little jiggling to get the roots off the bottom of that.

- There it goes.

Ah.

- Oh, it's not as bad as I thought.

- Not that bad.

- No.

That is not too bad.

In fact, this one I wouldn't cut this.

I would just simply just move out the roots 'cause it seems to be only at the base of it that it has a problem.

So I would just cut those a little bit with our fingers, just pull 'em out.

I'm gonna break that.

So that goes both ways.

So it'll go away from the center of the plant.

Here we go.

- Can I tell you something else I like to do, Joellen?

- Mm-hmm.

- I always like to look and make sure you don't have any weeds.

- Weeds on it.

Oh my goodness, that's a good idea.

Very good idea, 'cause it happens a lot.

- Happens a lot.

- You know, nurseries can't get everything 'cause there's, the wind carries a lot of plants a lot of places.

Again, we put the soil back up around it, but not quite over the top but close to it.

And then we have a couple of these Pentas.

These were root bound too.

So we had to move the roots away from them.

Didn't take much to cut, do that.

- No.

Soil's nice and loose.

- And we do have some extra Vinca that are annuals and the Pentas are annuals.

We'll put those in just for some extra color 'cause the more color you have, the more attractive it'll be for something flying by.

And we can always replace the annuals.

But the core perennials will be here.

And this guy that's taken over, this aromatic aster, it will bloom the last of all of these plants.

So we'll have a succession of blooms throughout the season.

- All right.

Joellen, thank you much.

I can't wait to see what it looks like later this season.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - I have a favorite weed folks, and this is it.

This hairy bittercress produces a rosette of leaves first on the soil's surface and then up comes the rest of the plant.

This plant has a small white flower and it also produces a pod.

And inside of the pod are seeds.

So if you brush up against this weed, the seed pod explodes, and it actually throws seed 10 feet.

Pretty impressive, huh?

Again, this is my favorite weed.

Hairy bittercress.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mr. D, let's talk about songbirds as pests.

- Yeah, that's kinda- - They can be pests.

- It's kind of bad that sometimes they're a pest because we try to attract them.

We have bird feeders and, but they can be a pest, especially when you are growing fruit.

Blueberries especially, they will completely wipe out your blueberry planting.

So what I try to do is plant enough for me and the birds.

- Sure.

- And try to beat 'em to it.

I try to try to beat 'em to it.

But there are things that will give you some relief.

The best thing, and the only thing that I know of that is pretty much a hundred percent effective is exclusion using bird netting.

If you have small enough plants, two or three plants that you can put, you know, posts around and completely cover with bird netting, a real thin netting, then that will work.

And you may have one, even then you may have one that somehow gets in there every once in a while.

But exclusion is the only thing that I know of that will completely work.

And one thing you can't do, you can't kill 'em, you can't shoot 'em.

- Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

- Songbirds are protected by law.

- They're protected, okay.

- So, you know, the 12 year old with a 20-gauge shotgun, BB gun, forget it.

You can't.

- Don't work.

- You can't shoot songbirds.

There are other birds that you can that are not classified as songbirds.

Some of the black birds, cowbirds are considered pests and they're not considered songbirds even though they sing, you know.

But some, you know, you may need to check local regulations where that's concerned.

But exclusion is by far the best way to keep 'em out.

If you don't have a very, very large planting, a very large planting, then you need to go with, you can use sounds, frightening devices.

There are propane cannons that you hook up to a propane tank and every so often it'll build up pressure and then it will make the loud noise, exploding noise.

Owls, the plastic owls.

You can put them around.

Mylar tape that flashes in the sunlight.

You can hang that around in different places.

Anytime, with all of those, you have to change it from time to time.

A radio blaring, especially with country music, you know, will chase 'em, will do a good job chasing them off.

- Country music.

- And you can switch channels.

But you've gotta, you know, put a radio in a, I have a radio in an outdoor patio storage box to keep it dry and it's pretty effective, so.

Because the voices change and, you know, it goes from the DJ to the music and all that.

And so it's not something that they, it lasts pretty good because it's not something they can get used to as easily.

- Yeah, plastic snakes.

- Plastic snakes, any kind of predator.

If you can find a plastic red-tailed hawk that you can set up on a tree.

And the owl.

You know, move them around.

- Sure.

- Because if they see it sitting there all the time, they go, it ain't not gonna bother me.

But those are all things that, to be successful, you've gotta be persistent and you've gotta use a lot of different things, you know, diverse and then, you know, you're gonna have some damage.

Be prepared to tolerate a little bit of damage.

- Now what about when they start building nests?

How do you go about dealing with them then?

- The only time that I see nests as a problem is if they stop up your gutters and things like that.

Now I have seen swallows, they'll build a mud nest.

- I've seen those yeah.

- Up around your light fixtures and your garage and your carport.

That's where the snakes really come in handy.

Where the nest is, close to where the nest is, if you will put a good lifelike looking rubber snake or a live snake for that instance, you know, up there, that will, I think that will, they will think twice about doing that again.

And I've actually wrapped a snake around the light fixture that swallows kept building their nest in and they didn't do that anymore.

Of course, you have neighbors that, you know, folks, friends that come in, they almost have a heart attack when they look up there and see the snake up there.

But it keeps the birds out.

- Right.

- But that's probably the best thing for a nest.

Wherever a nest, I mean that's a stationary location.

And you put something there that scares the bird, that should do the trick.

- Any structural damage that you know of that they may do or cause?

- Woodpeckers can create, can damage your, if you have a wooden western cedar house or a wooden house, they can get out there and they can peck holes in it.

And most of the time what they're doing is a mating ritual.

- Right.

- But same thing, you know.

An owl or- - Something you can move around.

- Yeah, something that can make some noise because they're relatively shy, you know, woodpeckers are shy.

But a radio or something like that can.

- You like that radio deal?

- I like the radio deal.

I've gotta give- - With the country music.

- Yeah, yeah.

Dave Keety gave me that idea when he was successful at keeping raccoons from eating his sweet corn with a radio in his garden.

Dave, thank you for that idea because I use it all the time.

Oh yeah, I guess I'm a music fan.

- He's a music fan.

And before we wrap it up, Mary, is there anything that you wanna add about songbirds or do you know much about them?

- Sure, yeah, the only thing I would add is if you're gonna discourage the nesting, do it right when you first start seeing them nest before they start laying eggs, things like that.

And it's just like D was saying about the, against the law to kill the birds.

You can't really remove those nests either once they have eggs and young in them.

So get your fake predators out there early.

- So it has to be done early.

- They are protected.

Just remember that.

- So yeah, you can't shoot 'em.

So we definitely wanna bring that up again.

All right, all right.

We appreciate that information Mr. D. - Good deal.

[upbeat country music] - The basil that was planted here is looking a little sad.

Well, after we planted it, it got down into the 30s and basil is pretty sensitive to temperatures.

So that might have been just a little bit cold for a new plant that maybe came out of a greenhouse.

So it's not looking too good.

What we're gonna do is put some slow-release fertilizer on it, and if that doesn't work, then we may have to put some iron on it also, because it's a little chlorotic too.

We just wanna talk a little bit about this slow release fertilizer.

These little small pills are actually called prills and they are time sensitive to temperature.

And on here you'll notice it'll last three to four months at an average temperature of 70 degrees.

Of course the temperature fluctuates lower than that and higher than that.

So it may not last a whole three to four months based on the temperature.

But the fertilizer's actually inside each of one of these and the temperature releases it in the ground for the plants to feed.

And that's why it lasts so long.

In a few months you can see the prills, they'll still be in there, they'll be empty and they won't have any fertilizer in them.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Joellen.

Here's our Q and A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- All right.

These are some great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"After I take off the small branches "growing on the trunk of my oak tree, "they just come back.

"What can I do to stop the small branches "from growing on the trunk of my oak tree from coming back again?"

And this is Alejandro on YouTube.

- Ah.

- Ah, so how about that?

- Yes.

- So they're growing on the trunk of the tree.

- On the side.

And that happens a lot.

It's called epicormic growth and you just cut 'em off, like he's doing.

I don't know of anything that you can do to stop them, but I wish we had a picture.

- Right.

- Because I'd like to know how old the tree is within the size of the tree he's talking about that has this epicormic growth on it that keeps coming back.

And I'd like to see what the condition the rest of the tree is in because sometimes that epicormic growth is a result of some kind of stress on the top of the tree.

And so I just would like to know a little bit more about what the tree looks like.

But epicormic growth, you cannot stop.

The tree is going to do that.

- Right.

- And so you just have to keep cutting it back.

But do watch and see if there's some other stressor in the top of the tree that is causing the tree to feel like it needs to branch out lower on the trunk.

- Right.

I agree with that.

So yeah, definitely some type of stress.

Yeah, because it's trying to produce, yeah, limbs.

Yeah, so something is going on with the tree.

- But trees do have epicormic growth and you cut 'em off, but they usually don't grow back for a while.

- Yeah, yeah.

- In a normal healthy tree.

- Right.

- So that's why I'm worried that there's some kind of stress going on if it keeps coming back and he has to keep cutting it.

- Right.

So there you have it, Alejandro.

Yeah, just keep cutting it back.

- Keep cutting it back.

- Yeah.

And you know, assess the overall health of the tree.

- Yeah, and you can always call somebody.

- An arborist out.

- A certified arborist.

- Yeah, sure.

- And see if there's something else going on with the tree that he needs to address.

- All right, that's good.

All right, thank you, Alejandro.

We appreciate that question.

Here's our next viewer email.

This one's interesting, right?

"I've seen the trunks of crape myrtle trees "braided when they were young to look like a tree.

Is this good for the tree?"

And this is Jarie on YouTube.

So what do you think about that one?

It's pretty interesting.

- That's very interesting.

- Yeah, it is.

Yeah, braided.

- I have not seen that with crape myrtles.

I've seen it with other tropical plants, but I haven't seen it with crape myrtles.

I would not want to get that because you don't know what, unless you actually know what type of crepe myrtle it is and you know it's not gonna get big.

But most crape myrtles get to be tree size and that means the trunk has to expand with it and that braiding is actually gonna girdle itself.

- Right, I see.

- It'll restrict the growth of the, each of one of those trunks and it's not gonna grow properly and you're gonna end up with a very sick tree because it's not going to get the nutrients because all the nutrients are on the entire circle around each trunk that's been braided.

And when you cut 'em off 'cause they keep growing, it's not gonna get nutrients to that section of the trunks.

- Okay.

All right, Jarie.

Thank you for that question.

Interesting question though.

- Yes, very interesting.

- Yeah, all right.

We appreciate that.

Here's the next viewer email.

"While weeding my flower bed, "I am finding little seashells.

"Something is living in the shells.

"They are smaller than a penny.

"I'm not sure if these things are good or bad.

What should I do with them?"

This is Sharon from West Tennessee.

Well guess what, Sharon?

We appreciate that picture.

What do you think of that those are?

- Those are snail shells, yeah.

- They're snail shells.

- Yeah, they're snail shells and there's probably snails in them.

- Yeah.

- And they, like slugs, they like the same thing slugs like.

And I kind of put 'em in the same category with slugs as being thugs in the garden.

- Okay, all right.

- Yeah, because they like to chew on the nice plant material that we would like to see and not have a bunch of holes in 'em.

- That's right.

Yep, so, yeah, they're good or bad?

They could be bad.

- They could be bad.

- They could be bad.

- If there's enough of 'em, it could be bad.

- Right.

- They like wet, wet, dark conditions.

- Yeah, I was just about to say, yeah.

So the environment.

- Yeah, environment.

But I just, you know, don't necessarily want them to continue to live if there's a large population.

Because they, like the slugs, they put a lot of holes in the plants.

- Yeah, they can cause some damage to your plants that you have out in the landscape.

So, Sharon, we appreciate that question.

- Good question.

- Thank you much.

All right Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- Thank you much.

Appreciate that.

All right.

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 watching.

If you want to learn more about the plants Joellen planted, or about keeping birds away, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

We have more information about that and everything else we talked about today.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]