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

I'm Chris Cooper.

The heat is over and it's time to plant the winter annuals.

Today we are planting kale, Dusty Miller, and pansies.

Also, bats play a valuable role in 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's the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and Andy Williams will be joining me later.

Joellen, this is gonna be fun, right?

- Yes.

- All right.

Something we enjoy doing, - Yes, we do.

- From season to season.

- Season to season.

And we're getting ready from going from the summer annuals to the fall annuals, but look at this.

Look at how well the Black Knight Colocasia did this year.

- Yeah, this is beautiful.

- This is just stunning.

We've never put that in this bed and it looks great.

- It does.

- Angelonia did well.

The begonias did well.

Coleus got a little bit shaded out by the Colocasia, but they've done well.

- They have.

- The bed looks good, but now it's time to go.

- This is always the hard part for me, though.

Is taking it out, always hard for me.

- Yeah, but it's the right time of year to plant the pansies and get them nice and established with some little bit of warm weather that's left so that they'll look good all winter.

- Okay, you convinced me.

- All right, so let's first take out everything except the Colocasia 'cause we can save that for next year.

I think that's it.

- Okay.

- Now that would go good in the compost pile.

Well, we have the Black Knight Colocasias left.

Look how large they are.

- Yeah.

- We are gonna save them.

So we'll dig them up and we'll set them aside and work with them later.

Yeah, you just gotta dig up around the plant and try not to cut off any too many of the roots systems.

But just go all the way around, dig down all the way around the plant, eventually it will come up and you can move it to wherever you want to plant it.

- There you go.

- Here is one.

- Okay.

Ah, there you go.

I can get that.

Look at that.

And get it in there.

- All right, well now the Colocasia is gone and look at the large holes that they created.

And this is a good opportunity for us to put a little bit of compost in the garden and mix it in - Okay.

- And do a little amending here with the existing soil.

And it will replace some of the dirt that was taken up by the Colocasia.

We're mixing it in 'cause if you just put this on the ground, it's gonna be a different texture and the roots that grow in it are not gonna have, they'll grow in it real fast and then it won't establish into the actual soil that's here.

And so you wanna mix it all in together so that the roots will be equally happy with both the compost and the existing soil.

And we'll just even it out a little bit.

Okay, now we're ready to get started with our fall color.

We first need to put down some slow-release fertilizer.

[Chris chuckles] And again, just sprinkle randomly.

- Yeah, what is it that your mother says?

- My mom says, - I like to hear you.

- "Feed the chickens."

- Oh yeah.

Thanks ma, feed the chickens.

Oh, they're nice and fed.

- There we go.

Doesn't take much.

And now we can start planting.

First thing we're gonna plant is this ornamental kale.

This is called Glamour, Glamour Red.

This is supposed to be a very hardy to zone 7a.

And we are in 7b here, so we will see how well this does this winter.

- We shall see.

- This bed is raised a little bit in the middle, and we like to feature these large plants in the center of the bed.

We can put the pansies around them and they will like it better in the center of the bed because it'll be a little bit raised and they'll have a good drainage.

So since these are so large, let's go ahead and plant them first 'cause everything else we have is a small container.

- Okay.

- And I don't want to pour too much dirt over them.

- Got it.

- This is hard to get out of this container 'cause it's so bulky.

[Chris laughs] But I don't wanna hurt the foliage.

And you can see it's a little bit slightly root bound at the end.

So we'll just break that circling up just a little bit.

- Joellen it's also gonna be a good idea to take out some of this dead foliage.

- Yeah, I see, I've got a couple of leaves here, - I got some in here.

- That it's got dead foliage and we don't need those anymore.

Set it in, make sure it's faced correctly with a nice side where the public sees, and we'll fill it in, but not over the top of the container.

As you see that, you can still see this top of this container.

We're planting up to it.

Normally after the slow release fertilizer's put down, we usually put down mulch, but we're gonna plant these first 'cause since they're such large containers, I don't want to put dirt on top of mulch.

- How much do you want?

- Just like you're doing, and I like that you're going in between 'em and around them.

- So why do we put mulch down before we plant?

- Well, when you think about it, the pansies are such smaller plants and the crown of the plant is right at the soil surface.

So if the mulch, we keep digging and then we put mulch on top of it, it's more likely that the crown is gonna get smothered.

So we don't want that.

So we put the mulch down 'cause it's easier just to move the mulch a little bit and plant a hole for the plant than it is to try to, can you imagine trying to put this around every little plant?

- No.

- It's just, it's very time consuming and it really doesn't work as well as mulching at first.

- And trust me, I've done it that way for years until you start showing me the proper way to do it.

- And it goes a lot faster.

- Oh, it goes a whole lot faster.

- Well, we have Dusty Miller here again.

This will be a nice color and it will last all winter long in the bed.

And we're gonna have it as kind of a contrast of colors for the kale and the pansies.

Different texture also, so it'll look pretty together.

So this is Dusty Miller and we'll just put a few out in between the kale.

- Okay.

- It's so bright in color that you wanna make sure it looks even when you look at the bed.

- Okay.

- What you're gonna do is you're gonna take your trowel, move away the mulch so you can get down to the dirt.

Set the plant in, put dirt back around it, and mulch up to the top.

Oop, I found a worm.

- Oh, goody goodie.

- It means we got some nice soil going here.

- Some good soil.

- Now we're ready for the pansies to go in and around all of them.

We've got three different colors here.

We've got a white, a light blue, and a nice dark, dark blue.

And these will look so pretty together all mixed up in here.

And what we're gonna do is it's gonna be random.

- Okay.

- We'll just, for the three colors we'll just start picking up the colors and planting them.

- So you keep a count in your head how many you gonna set out?

- No.

- Just kinda go the pattern.

- We've got enough to fill in where we think that looks good.

And I don't really think it needs any more than that.

- You don't think it needs more than that?

- We'll plant it and see.

And when you're planting these, these are nicely rooted.

I don't think I have to... The bottom of the container is nice.

Don't plant these deep.

Tip to the top.

Don't cover the crown.

That's the last one.

- Is that the last one?

- It's the last one.

- Oh, how about that?

- Well, I think it looks good.

It's gonna look pretty.

It's got the panties will fill out a little more.

So will the Dusty Miller.

The kale will turn a nice purple color, and it's all gonna look good together.

- I can't wait to see what it's gonna look like throughout the season, right?

- It's gonna be good.

- It's gonna be good.

Thank you, Joellen.

- You're welcome.

- It's always fun.

- Yes, it is.

- Yeah, thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - It's time to harvest basil.

It is a tender annual, and so when the cold weather comes it's gonna die anyway.

And it really holds its flavor well when it's dried, so that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna harvest the basil and the best way to do it is just cut it right at the ground and get the whole plant.

And there's several ways you can dry it.

Usually what I do is kinda take out the bad looking foliage or the leaves, and then I just hang it up, just like this, using a string or a big rubber band and hang it up in a hot, dry place.

At my house, that is a room above our garage.

So anywhere that is hot and dry and dark.

And it usually this time of year where the temperatures being what they are, it dries in just probably four or five days.

And at that point, you just get it and this'll all be dried up and you just start, you know, brushing it off.

It'll crumble right off of there.

And then you can put it in jars and seal it up and label it and put it in a cool, dry, dark place in your kitchen.

So it's real handy to start using all through the winter.

[upbeat country music] - This is going to be fun, 'cause we're talking about Halloween.

- Okay.

- And you can't talk about Halloween without talking about bats.

- Yeah.

- So Andy, you're gonna be Batman first today, right?

- I wanted to be.

[Chris laughs] I wanted to be Batman.

I still watch all the Batman movies and that sort of stuff.

- So do I.

- But the only thing more interesting than Batman are real bats.

- Okay, all right.

- But the strangest thing though, most people don't know a lot about bats and they're all around us.

Worldwide they're the second most numerous species of mammal.

And just for clarity, some people, is it a bird?

Is it a mammal?

What is a bat?

Well, bat is a mammal, meaning it's got fur, it bears young live, they nurse their young, it exercise in parental care.

- Wow.

- But 1,100 species worldwide is pretty impressive.

- That's a lot!

- It is.

- 1,100.

- In the United States, there are about 44, 45 different species of bat.

And here in the Mid-South alone, there are 19 species of bat.

But people rarely ever see 'em because, you know, they're good at hiding or something like that.

But going back to the worldwide bats, I brought some cutouts that can give you an idea of the diversity of bats.

They are just all over the place.

This is a representation of a flying fox.

These were found mainly in the South Pacific and they eat fruit.

- Okay.

- They use, I believe some echolocation, but if you see their face they're really kinda cute.

You can see why they call them flying foxes, but they can be agricultural pests.

But they do fly in groups and colonies.

And I've been in Australia, seen them flying overhead and seen them going out right after dusk.

It's pretty impressive to see that much, you know, darkness in the sky.

- Yeah, that's a pretty impressive size.

- That's a lot worse than a stink bug.

- Yes, it is.

- And with the two, three-pound body, you can imagine how much fruit it takes to keep that going.

Just for a way of comparison, this is the largest bat in the United States.

- Okay.

- If they're found in, it's a massive bat.

It's found mainly in Florida, southern states.

- Okay.

- For whatever reason, bats are most numerous in the tropics.

People who study bats for a living, you know, they all want to go to the tropics as you get, you know, fruit bats.

And we'll also talk a little bit about vampire bats, - Ah!

- 'Cause it's Halloween treat.

But a more typical size for our bats is along in this range.

The smallest bats, the micro bats, they weigh as little as like an ounce, like the weight of a dime.

I mean, it's a really strong diversity in sizes.

I've got some mounts, various places of typical Mid-South bats to give you an idea of, you know, generally what they look like when you, and these are the bats that you may occasionally find on the ground or circling a streetlight looking for bugs.

- Okay.

- A lot of, one misconception about bats is they're just mice with wings, you know?

[Chris laughs] And I could see how people may come up with that until you look closer.

Actually, as far as classification, they're close related to primates.

That's has to do with the reproductive bits.

And since it's a family show, I'll let people Google that if they need confirmation of that.

This is a kind of a species or a bat-specific thing, but they have a different reproductive strategy.

They typically have one pup a year.

So you can imagine, well mice, as you know, have several batches of young every year.

And they have, you know, their reproductive strategy is sheer numbers.

- Okay.

- Where as bats, it's parental care.

The younger, actually it's breached delivery in most cases, which is kinda interesting.

I guess if you hang upside down though, that kinda makes sense.

- Yeah.

[laughs] I would think so.

[laughs] - But you can see if you have one young a year and that sort of stuff, it'd take a lot longer for a colony of bats to recover than mice in your house.

- Okay.

- Because it takes 'em so long.

Their lifecycle, most of the bats around here anyway, hibernate.

And so basically, this time of year they mate right before they hibernate.

- Okay.

- They find a nice place to hibernate, which may or may not be nearby.

Some of 'em fly up to 300 miles to find a place to hibernate.

- Okay.

- They hibernate for the winter.

They're just on a food feeding frenzy right now.

And they barely have enough energy to last the winter.

And so if they break their hibernation during the middle of the winter, there are no bugs to eat and that sort of stuff, and they can starve to death during hibernation.

And so they try to find places that are remote, they're unlikely to be disturbed and have constant temperature.

When they emerge from hibernation, the females then ovulate or somehow they actually become pregnant when food starts becoming abundant.

The males go off and, you know, play cards or whatever they do, [Chris laughs] but the females tend to get together and they congregate in separate maternity colonies.

Most of the bat colonies during the feeding season tend to be females.

They're nursing young and they actually have a little nurseries inside the maternity colonies when they go fly looking for food.

- Wow, how about that?

- And so that's, you know, something to keep in mind, a lot of people in the South, it's really good idea to get into bat houses.

But before we get to the bat houses, - Okay.

- Two more myths.

When they say "blind as a bat".

- Yeah, I've heard that, of course.

- Yeah, but that's an urban myth.

Actually, lots of 'em have great eyesight, particularly the flying foxes use not only their eyesight, but their sense of smell to find food.

But bats, particularly at night, rely a whole lot on a process called echolocation.

They emit high frequency sounds, you know, ultrasounds, and by definition ultrasounds, we can't hear them.

- Okay, right.

- But of course, they have some squawks in the nursery.

They have vocalizations that for communication, but they find their way around by putting out a continuous stream of ultrasound.

And they look for patterns of sound to determine what's going on around them.

The closest human thing, I don't know if you've passed on the interstate by a truck or you go over a bridge and you can feel the vibrations from this truck.

It's sort of like that but on a much literally higher scale.

- How about that, okay.

- So anyhow- - Let's talk about the bat house.

We have a little time.

- Oh sure.

- Yeah.

- Well, the bat houses, this one is, I got it 'cause it's the fanciest one I've ever seen.

[Chris laughs] It may or may not be big enough, and the bats may really don't like to be disturbed, but this opens up and you can see it's got grooves for them to hang upside down.

All their toes are identical and they're well adapted for life hanging upside down.

For a bat house to be successful, it's gotta be at least 10 feet off the ground because in order to fly, they can't really jump up and fly.

They drop and then their wings catch the air and they fly off.

- Okay.

- Also, having it 10 to 12 feet off the ground, inconvenient for us, but it's also inconvenient for predators.

A successful bat house needs to be in about seven full hours of sun.

They like it hot.

- Oh, wow.

- And they like to be within a quarter mile of water.

You know, like it could be a, of course lake, stream, pond, but an outdoor water feature.

They'd need the water both for, you know, the water itself, but also for all the bugs.

All the local bats in this area are insectivores, and apparently important insectivores.

They can eat half their weight in insects every night.

And they actually eat mosquitoes.

You know, purple martins and some other things get credit for eating mosquitoes, - But bats.

- But bats actually do and they eat a whole lot of 'em.

- Thank you bats.

- Yeah, exactly.

- How about that?

Okay, wow.

Now can we talk briefly about the wings though?

How they fly?

- Yeah, how do they fly?

- Yeah.

- Well, I brought a poster that's I think is very helpful.

If you hold your hand up you can see you got your thumb at the top.

Bird wings are, at the bottom, are slightly different.

You can see that they have modified arm and their hands down here.

But the bats, their scientific name Chiroptera means hand wing.

And so they actually have folds of skin that stretch in between each one of their finger bones.

And this is their thumb at the top.

They can use the thumb for getting around the ground and that sort of stuff, but they actually fly, they drop, they catch their... They fly really well.

You see them flying in almost random patterns.

What a lot of people don't really realize is that they also have, our local bats have membranes in between their hind legs, you know, the former end tail.

And when they're flying around looking kind of crazy, they're actually scooping insects into their tail.

And then they reach down with their mouth to get the insects and all.

And so what looks like erratic flight is, you know, if you're gonna catch, five hundred, a thousand however mosquitoes, you've gotta be pretty agile - Right.

- To scoop 'em all in.

They're also, they eat a lot of moss and other nocturnal insects.

And so they're very, very important to protecting our agricultural crops.

- Hmm, didn't know that.

So we need to give bats a lot more credit than we would.

Thank you, Andy.

We appreciate that.

- Oh, very welcome.

- Good information about bats.

Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - We have one Black Knight Colocasia that we would like to pot up and save.

It hasn't died down yet.

The foliage is still nice, so we're gonna put it in this container.

Chris, can you come in and try and dig this one up?

Just put this in this container.

- Sure, I can.

The soil's actually pretty dry over here.

- It's very dry over here.

- I'll get one more just to, ah, there it goes.

I think we got all the roots there, too.

- Got all the roots.

- Yeah.

- So that's gonna be good.

We'll put a little bit more soil around it.

Just a little bit more.

That's enough.

- Okay.

- Here we go.

Now that it's potted, we can enjoy it until the cold weather comes and it starts dying back.

And that's when I stop watering it and I will take it inside my garage or a cool dry place and let it stay for the winter.

And then in the spring, start watering it back again and planting it back in the ground.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Joellen, you ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are some great questions.

- Yes, they are.

- All right, here's our first viewer email.

"Should container plants be watered until the water runs through?"

And this is Tim from Statesville, North Carolina.

He says he "has heard to let it run through "and also to stop watering before the water "runs out the bottom.

Which is it?"

It's actually, you know, it's a good question, right?

- It is!

- So what should you do?

- Well, you know, that's a really good question.

And I had to stop and think, "What is it that I do?"

- That's what I did.

- What I do is, yeah, I let it run through it.

I like to see water at the bottom 'cause I wanna make sure water's getting to the bottom.

And if the container has really dried out and you do that and you don't, the weight of the pot, that's what I do, the weight of the container.

- Okay, okay.

- Because if it's really dry, it's light.

- Yeah.

- And if you start watering it and you see the water come through and it's still light, that means the water hasn't absorbed in the medium.

- Okay, I see where you're going.

- So I just keep watering it and letting it come, you know, the water run out below it until the container's heavy.

And then I know that it's gotten enough water.

- Okay, so yeah, you just let the water- - Yeah, I just... - Yeah, I do too.

- But you know, any kind of container plant, if you don't want the water running all over everything and make a mess, I mean, you're gonna have to put some kind of saucer under there, - Right.

- Or you're just gonna have to see that the water doesn't run onto something that you don't want the water to run onto.

- Right, right.

So I agree with that.

And here's another reason why I do that, right?

So if you fertilize your plants, right?

You can flush all of the excess salts out.

- Yes, that's true.

- So the excess salts, or if you use, you have hard water.

- Yeah.

- You just flush all of that, you know, right on out the system, - That's true.

- You know, that container.

- Yeah.

- Right?

So yeah.

- Yeah, I've always done that.

- Always done that.

- I had to think, though.

You know, it took the question for me to start thinking what I did.

- Even consistent, you know, moisture of the soil, and yeah, flushing that excess salts, you know, out of the system of that soil.

And yeah, I think that works.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it's good though.

All right, Mr.

Tim, hope that helps you out there.

Thank you for that question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"The weather is expected to turn colder "and my Prime-Ark primocane blackberries "aren't ripening fast enough.

"Is there anything I can do to get them to ripen or protect them through early frost?"

And this is Deb from South Lyon, Michigan.

Interesting question.

- Oh wow.

- Interesting question.

- Yes, it is.

But yeah, I mean, the only thing I can think of that she can do to try to save them, especially if it's gonna be frosting, would be to put a tarp over 'em or plastic cover from ground to ground to ground.

- Right, yeah.

- And, you know, and if, because it's clear up in Michigan, you might wanna put a bucket of warm water in in there underneath it, 'cause then that'll help create warmth around them.

And that's the only thing I can think of to save them.

Now, I don't know how to make 'em ripen faster.

- All right, so can I entertain this for a second?

Because this is something I've been thinking about.

Primocane, right?

- Yeah.

- So the blackberries will be on current season canes.

- Correct.

- Couple of things that come to mind for me, right?

If it has any new flower buds, you could pinch off those flower buds.

That way the plant directs its energy to ripening the blackberries.

- Well, that's true.

- That's one thing I thought about.

- Yeah, that's true.

- Second thing is this, right?

So light intensity, right?

So if there's a lot of foliage, you can pinch back the foliage.

- To help ripen the fruit from the sun.

- Ripen the fruit from the sun, right?

Or the third thing I thought about, could you put plastic around those canes, around the plant itself, the plastic would absorb heat?

- Well that's true.

- Maybe.

- Or black landscape fabric or something.

- Yeah, maybe.

- Something dark.

But still, it's gonna frost.

Well those are all things that she could do.

And then if she has a frost, she's gonna have to cover it.

- But if you have frost it definitely have to be covered.

- And I think a bucket of warm water will help keep them, because you'll trap all that nice heat in there.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But yeah, those are the other things that she could do to try to help them ripen.

- Yeah, to try to help 'em.

Yeah, before the frost comes.

- Before the frost.

- Yeah, this is Michigan.

- Yeah, I know.

- So the frost is probably right around the corner.

Yeah.

- Yeah, that's true.

- Yeah, so we appreciate that question, - That's a good question.

- Ms.

Deb, and the picture.

- Yes.

- They look good too.

Yeah, they're good to eat.

So thank you much for that, Ms.

Deb.

All right, Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- As always, fun as always.

Thank you much for being here.

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.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

To learn more about the plants Joellen planted or to see what we have planted in that bed the last 10 years, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]