- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South, I'm Chris Cooper.

Fall is coming and it's time to change out the annuals for winter.

Also, just because it's winter does not mean you can't grow food.

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 Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and Carol Reese will be joining me later.

All right, Joellen, you always look forward to this every season, right?

- Yes.

Yeah, well, we gotta look at what we've done this last season, and I have to tell ya, the salvia did great.

- Did it?

Good.

- Marigolds, ehh, but the petunias.

- Yeah.

[laughing] - Oh my goodness.

- No.

- I guess petunias do not like irrigation.

- Well, yeah, hm.

- So, we won't be putting them, and look, we've got some volunteer vinca- - Yeah.

- From the previous years, so, but it's time to put in pansies for the fall and winter season.

- Okay.

- And it's time to take all of this up.

So, let's get started and we'll gather this and put it in the compost pile.

- All right.

[plants rustling] All right?

- Yep, not much.

Now to prepare for our pansy planting, I'm gonna let you- - Okay.

- Put that one in there.

For our pansy planting, we are gonna put down, now there's still some mulch on this from previously, but we'll dress it up just a little bit, but first we need to put down a complete fertilizer.

- Okay.

- That has a little bit of temperature deployment, meaning that depending on the temperatures, how much with water, it will release to the plants.

- Yeah.

- And we need to do that at the beginning of this fall, because we want the plants to get off to a good start.

- Okay.

- So there's no real rhyme or reason to it, just, you wanna put down enough, so what my mother used to call feeding the chickens.

- [laughing] Feeding the chickens.

So you just put enough down- [fertilizer rattling] so you can see it.

- Yes.

- And it's not necessarily, I don't wanna put too much down, just enough.

[fertilizer rattling] Then, we'll get the mulch out because these pansies are so small that we don't need to put the mulch down after we plant them.

And let's just, yeah,- - Just a little bit?

- Just pour out a little bit all along.

[bag rustling] All right.

- That's it, okay.

- Yeah, and we can just kind of move it around just a little bit, just to dress it up.

Cover up our fertilizer.

[mulch rustling] This year for this fall, I picked a mix of pansies with what they call faces, which means they have a dark center that tends to make them look like faces.

- Okay.

- And it's just a mix of colors.

We've not used this particular pansy before- - Oh, they're pretty.

- So we're gonna see how it does this year.

- Yeah, let's see how it does.

- And as we get them out, very nice, pretty pansy.

- Nice.

- The roots are nicely spaced in the container.

Nothing terrible, I would not try to disturb these 'cause it looks just fine with plenty of soil space between the roots- - Mm-hm.

- And we'll start setting 'em out and then we'll set 'em out and then we'll plant them.

- Okay, and how are you gonna set 'em out?

I know there's a rhyme to what you do.

- I usually put 'em in a pyramid or a triangular grid pattern, that way when they start filling in, they'll close in together and make one solid mass of pansies.

- Got it.

- And we have to remember, we have daffodil bulbs in this bed.

- Yes, that's right, I forgot about those.

- So if we come across those, we will try to go around them.

- Okay.

- Again, and like, if we have two 'round through here, we'll put one here, and then when I would come back for the next row, we will go in between.

- Got it.

- Okay.

All right, well I'll let you knock some of these, what we call knock them out of the pot.

- All right.

- And then I'll start placing them.

- Okay, sounds like a plan to me.

Squeeze on the bottom a little bit?

- Yep, and you can have- - Okay.

- The tag also.

And pansies get about 8 to 12 inches round, so you wanna space them, we're gonna space them about eight inches apart, 'cause we want them to fill in fairly fast, and I'm gonna start making the second row by going in between these.

It looks like we'll have enough for a fourth row up front but we'll plant these three first.

It'll be easier to reach them.

There we go.

Well, now that we have these three rows set out, we'll go ahead and plant them before we finish the first row on the front.

- Okay.

- And, again, when you're planting these pansies, you don't wanna plant these too deep because right at the soil surface of pansies are the crown of the plant and they do not like to be buried.

- Okay.

- So I tend to plant these a little shallow and maybe throw a couple of bark, pieces of bark from the mulch up over the top of 'em, but I don't like to bury them.

- Okay.

- Because they do better without being buried.

- All right, so don't bury the crown, right?

- Don't bury the crowns.

- Shallow.

- So since there's mulch here, we're gonna move the mulch out of the way, and any weeds we find.

- Oops.

- [laughing] Definitely.

- And we'll dig our hole, set our plant in, again, without burying- - The crown.

- The crown.

- Right.

- And push the mulch back over around it.

- Okay.

- Of course, the pansies we've got here probably were grown from plugs that a company bought to grow them on, but you can buy seeds of pansies.

The problem is their germination te mperature is so low, around 60, 65 degrees, and you know, a lot of the country, like we would not be able to do it because they would never germinate 'cause it's too hot here.

So growing from seed, and further north in Zones 4, 3, 2, yep, you could probably grow the seeds because it'd be cool enough for them.

But in this part of the country, not, here, it's just too hot.

- All right.

All right.

- Well that's the three rows.

- How 'bout that, So, three rows?

- Yeah.

Now we got room for one more row and we have some more pansies.

- All right.

- So, we'll finish the last row.

That's good, so now we'll plant this last row.

I haven't run into any of the bulbs.

- No, I haven't either, mm-hm.

- So, we are doing good, and we would like mature plants 'cause these will look fine now and clear into spring when we change 'em out.

So, we get a lot of season out of our pansies, whereas some of the other zones don't get as many months of growth out of them.

In fact, some places use these as summer annuals, they have such cool weather.

So, we don't, we aren't that lucky.

We have to make sure that during times of drought, that they will have some water, especially when they're starting to establish.

- All right!

- Yay, we got to the end!

- How 'bout that?

We got there.

- So, that's the faces pansy bed for the fall and the winter.

- All right, can't wait to see what it looks like.

- Gonna be a lot of pretty colors.

- Looks like it's going!

I guess we'll get it watered and all that good stuff now, right?

- Yes.

[Chris laughing] Yeah, water it in.

- Thank you Joellen, appreciate that.

- No problem.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] - We're in the square foot garden here at The Family Plot and 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, [basil rustling] and there's several ways you can dry it.

Usually what I do is to 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 at usually this time of year with 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] - Ms. Carol, it's always good to have you here.

- Always fun to be here.

- Always good to have you.

Now, let's talk about cool season edibles.

So, there are cool season edibles?

- In fact, I prefer cool season edibles.

[Chris laughing] I mean, who likes gardening out in the heat- - Ah, I'm with you.

- With the sweat and the bugs.

I know a lot of people do.

- Yeah, right.

- Some people love the heat, but I'm not, I'm a wimp.

[Chris laughing] I often tell people that once it gets to be hot summer, I wanna go in the house and lie down and wait for October.

- A'ight!

Oh, man.

- But I think it's easier to garden in the fall and spring and some of these things we're gonna talk about today will actually overwinter pretty well, and I'm all about pretty, as well.

- Yeah, okay.

- As a human, I like to eat, [Chris laughing] but I also enjoy beauty.

- All right.

- So what we're gonna talk about today is not only edible, but it'll be pretty in your landscape or in your winter containers, and a lotta people do like to do the winter containers.

I personally like to have something right there on the deck I can- - Oh, cool.

- I can snag and grab and put in the kitchen without having to run out to the garden in the rain or the cold.

- Okay, makes sense to me.

All right, so which vegetables would you like to start with then?

- I guess if you made me pick just one- - Just one, come on, Ms. Carol.

- I may have to go with the chards.

- Okay, you like chards, all right.

- I like chards, honestly, I don't eat it as much as I like to look at it, [Chris laughing] but I can eat it, and I do like any kind of green, actually, chopped up.

I always said if you put enough garlic and bacon in anything- - All right.

- It's gonna taste good- - Right, bacon too?

- And good for you.

[laughing] - Uh huh, I can get with that.

- But chard is so easily grown and they have so many colors.

The last few years it's gotten easy to find some of the rainbow chards- - Mm-hm, that's right.

- Even at the vegetable sections at most any garden center and they're very tough.

They hold up well through freezes, and that's the thing.

Some of these things we plant as cool season, they don't, I wanna kinda diss what people call flowering cabbage or flowering kale,- - Yes, yes.

- But, it's that big, beautiful purple or white or pink roses,- - Mm-hm.

- 'Cause they melt.

[Chris laughing] Once we have a good, hard freeze they're, poof, they're mush.

- They do go down, yeah.

- They do.

So, that's one reason the chards, in fact, I've had chard overwinter well, look good through spring, even not bolt in the heat of summer, and bolting, of course, is flowering and going to seed- - Okay.

- Which is usually the death of a biennial type plant like that, or a winter annual, and it will come back, not as soon as we start to get some cool weather, it starts to flourish again- - Mm.

- So, I really have had them almost act like short-lived perennials.

- Okay, okay.

- Two or three years, sometimes I have one in my garden.

- That's a long time, yeah, two, three years sometimes.

- The bad thing is in the summer, of course, the insects do like to eat it- - Ah.

- And you do have to worry about the same kinds of insects that would eat your cabbage.

- Okay.

- Mm-hm.

- So you have to watch 'em for that and monitor for pest issues.

- Okay, so they're pretty much the same pest, as well.

Okay.

- The colors though are what are so amazing.

Um, mostly it's stem color, but a lot of 'em will have deeply colored leaves as well, but the colors can be red, orange, hot pink, white.

They're just incredible.

- Oh, white, okay.

- And they're a plant that I like to say plays with light.

I've been developing a program called "Light And Shadow In The Garden".

- Okay.

- And you know enough about me that you know- - I do.

[laughing] - I designed my house- - Uh-huh.

- So that the deck is back lit from my kitchen sink.

- Right.

- As the sun is setting and it makes everything kinda glow, I call it the magic hour.

- Mm-hm.

[laughing] - It gilds and it makes translucent leaves glow like stained glass,- - Wow.

- And the chards are like that, they really do beautiful things with light.

- Okay.

So, you do like chard, don't you?

- I do like chard- - Yeah, I could tell.

- I could go on.

- You do like chard, a little bit.

- And I said rainbow, but there's Neon Lights, Bright Lights, you can, they're a range of colors, but you can also order solid colors if you want all red or UT orange.

- Yeah, I've had the Bright Light.

Yeah,- - UT orange.

- I like that Bright Light, that's for sure.

- Yeah.

- All right, now what about kale?

- Well, I like to eat kale, [Chris laughing] again, the way you cook it is all about that, and I like young kale in salads.

That's yummy, chop it up fine- - Yeah, mm-hm.

- And put a lot of good stuff in there, but the kale that I love and I was so impressed with, I fell in love with up north, they were using it in Chicago- - Oh, wow.

- Botanic Garden and Minnesota in downtown planning, where there's a little bit of a heat island,- - Mm-hm.

- And it would hold up through the winter months, And I was like, "Gosh, that's incredible", the Redbor is a deep rich purple.

I mean, the ruffles are insane.

The texture on that thing, an d it grows like a little tree.

So, if you're doing a container combination, you know, the old recipe, thriller, filler, spiller.

- Yeah, spiller.

- Right, yeah.

- It does a great job as that thriller.

- Right.

- There is a green one too, Winterbor, that's beautiful.

I mean, it's a light green in case you need some green, right?

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- It's a color, too.

- Yeah, just a color too?

[laughing] - It's a color, too.

- All right.

- So, they're not always available locally, although some of our local growers have started supplying it because there is good demand for it.

I know- - That's good.

- Some of the people up at Reelfoot, at the resort area there, the butterfly gardens have been carrying that now, but so growers are, you have to find it, you can find it from them, maybe let them know that you want it.

You can buy it, actually buy it in gallon pots or in six packs usually.

- Okay, all right, six packs.

All right, so let's run through some of these quickly, all right?

Purple mustard?

- Ooh, easy, easy.

- "Ooh", she says, "Ooh."

- It's so easy.

Now it will get bitten a little bi t in a real hard freeze, but it's one of those, if you get the giant red mustard.

- Yes, yes.

- That's such a beauty.

- It is.

- And it's got this fabulous crumpled puckered texture to the leaf, and if it does get knocked back a little bit in the winter, a couple of warm weeks,- - It comes back.

- It comes right back out.

So, yeah, that's a really good one and easy, you can just kinda throw the seed around.

I actually go out and sprinkle it in some of my gardens and pots as summer wanes, right about Labor Day, and some of it just comes up as the other things are dying down.

- Hm, yeah, okay.

What about some of the Asian vegetables?

- Asian?

I kinda always liked Asian vegetables anyway.

Napa cabbage and such,- - Yeah.

- But I fished an Asian vegetable catalog out of the garbage one day at work, [both laughing] somebody had thrown it out.

- Oh, my God!

[both laughing] - And I went crazy.

The Tatsois.

- Oh, my gosh.

- Oh, they're so beautiful.

The glossy foliage and they're like little flattened roses, and they come in greens and purples.

Oh, they're just gorgeous things, and there's lots of other, lots of daikon, lots of radishes, lots of hybrid greens.

You could go nuts, and I, you know, you can get online- - Sure.

- And find a lot of these, as well.

- Sure.

[Chris laughing] - I wanna talk about the dinosaur kale before we get away from kale.

- All right, let's do that.

- Because it is one of your very, very toughest.

It's a blue, blue, blue, green, and again that gorgeous puckered texture, and it's a very arching plant that kind of gives a little um brella effect over everything, and I always have to tell the story about Felder Rushing- - Oh, yeah, that's real.

- You know, he's got his truck garden.

He likes to put the vegetable garden in the back of his truck 'cause he says that's his argument against people who say, "I don't have time to garden."

[Chris laughing] And it goes with him everywhere.

- Yeah, and say's- - Yeah.

- And he says the dinosaur kale holds up to, you know, cold 70 mile an hour winds with absolutely no damage,- - Wow.

- So that's pretty good testament.

- [laughing] Yeah, it is.

- It's also free insect control.

- Oh.

- Oh.

- Didn't know that.

- You're blowing the bugs off.

- Ah, okay.

[all laughing] Makes sense.

- Yeah, there ya go.

- All right, I got it, I got it.

- So, let's hit the evergreen herbs.

Can we do that?

- Ooh, I do.

Parsley number one- - Okay.

- 'Cause parsley's gonna stay green through most of our winter unless we have a really severe cold snap.

- Okay.

- Cilantro, not quite so much, and a lot of people wanna plant that in the spring and it's gonna quickly bolt.

It actually does better as a fall crop- And then it'll make it through a milder winter, fine with no dinging and then all through spring as well, so you get several months of parsley.

- Okay.

- And often cilantro, if we don't have a really cold winter- And the green is just fabulous, especially on the parsley.

The flat leaf parsley is the most desired, culinary wise, but the little, crinkly, fine textured one, the fern leaf that is the Crispa, has got the gorgeous, most gorgeous color to it.

So do those, also oregano is gonna be one of your evergreen perennial herbs.

Thyme will also work and rosemary, though borderline sensitive to cold, so I usually use rosemary in a pot that I can easily pull back onto the porch or into the garage if we have a really cold snap.

- Okay, all right.

- But add those to your winter containers.

A few pops of pansies, which are edible, too.

- Yes, yeah.

- Mm-hm, that's right.

- For the bright color- - They're edible.

- Yeah.

- And you've got edible and beauty.

- Edible and beauty.

Thank you, Ms. Carol, that's good stuff.

Edible and beauty.

- I like that.

- I like that.

Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - About a week ago, we planted broccoli and cauliflower here in the square foot garden and it's fall, and the bugs have had all year to build up their population, and so they tend with the fall crops, if you have fall brassicas, they tend to attack and they can skeletonize and kill your plants in a day.

So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna preventatively spray Bt on these plants, so that if any of these cabbage worms or cabbage loopers try to eat these plants, they will very quickly die.

So, all I have to do here is I just have to make sure that I have the leaves covered.

So, it doesn't take a lot, and that was it.

Six plants protected, now if any of them land they'll die.

I'll have to make sure that I keep track of when it rains and come out here and reapply after it rains, so that as the plants grow, they continue to be protected.

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

- Yes.

- Yep.

- All right, these are good questions.

- Okay.

- Here's our first viewer email.

"Why do my hydrangeas look like this?

"They looked like they would be beautiful, but they turned out bad."

And this is Rasul from Brentwood, New York.

So we'll start with you, Joellen, why do they look like that?

And do they look bad to you?

- I don't think they look that bad.

I have some hydrangeas that look worse than that, [Chris laughing] but you do notice that there are spent flower heads on there, so it did bloom this year for him.

- Right.

- Good point, yeah.

- It's got some spots on it.

- Yeah, essentially some scorched leaf spot.

- Yeah, I mean- - Right.

- Just cosmetic.

- Yes.

- It is the end of the season, and you know, it's been hot, and so people have put a lot of water on it, so, you know, maybe it's just stressed from the weather.

- Yeah.

- Environmental conditions that's caused it.

- I agree with her, that's exactly what I was gonna say.

It didn't look that bad to me- - Mm-mm.

- And I don't know a hydrangea that this time of year looks good.

- Right.

[laughing] - Because they get that leaf spot.

- Right, they get the leaf spot.

- You know- - Right, which is just- - So she could just sort of clean it up, you know, prune out the bad stuff if it really bothers her.

- Right.

- There was some dead twigs and things and she could clean it up, but I wouldn't worry about the leaf spot 'cause we're fixing to get into the winter, it's gonna drop its leaves anyways.

So, just rake up those old leaves.

- I was gonna say and collect the leaves.

Sanitation.

Don't leave the disease on the ground.

- Right.

- And it'll be fine.

- It'll be fine.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, mulch it and yeah, everything will be good with it.

- Yeah.

- All right, thank you, Rasul, thank you for that.

Yeah, they don't look bad.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

This is an interesting question.

"Why can't you save the seeds from a tomato "and grow the same tomato with good production?

"I'm interested in indeterminate varieties, "like Big Beef and determinate varieties like Celebrity."

And this is Carolyn.

So Doc, what you think about that one?

Huh?

- Well, first.

- Okay, first.

[laughing] - I guess I'm just getting old, but the question was a little confusing to me.

- Okay.

- Exactly what she was asking.

- Right, right.

- But I think she's asking about seed coming true.

- Okay, right.

- You know, from collecting seed from her current plants and then they're not coming true.

Well, that happens, obviously, with hybrids.

- Right.

- You know, you're gonna revert back to one of the parents.

So, if she wants that same tomato again, she's just gonna have to get the seed or buy the plant, but now there are open pollinated varieties of tomatoes- - Mm-hm, mm-hm.

- Like Brandywine- - Brandywine, right.

- Some of the heirloom, that, you know, do come true from seed.

- Right.

- So I think that's the question she's concerned about, why can't she grow, you know, the tomatoes, if she collects the seed like she had?

So, I think it's a hybrid problem.

- Right, that's something that you and I talked about earlier,- - Yeah.

- And Joellen and I talked about it- - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- As well.

So Joellen, you wanna add anything to that?

- Yeah, I mean, it's nice that she wants to do that, but she is gonna have to go to the more heirloom and self-pollinating varieties- - Right.

- That are used to coming back from the seed.

In fact, that's how they get the seed for 'em, they just grow them and then collect the seeds.

- Right, right.

- Right.

- For the heirlooms.

- Right, and the heirlooms are good, of course.

- Yes.

- Oh, yeah.

- Good production.

- Yeah.

- It may not have the disease resistance- - That's true, that's true.

- But they are good and flavorful.

- They are.

They have, to me, they have a better taste.

I just like to say it,- - Mm-hm.

- I agree.

- But Brandywine, I mean, I grow it every year and it's, I love the taste of it.

- Okay.

- You know, you get that really tomato-er taste, it makes a big sore on your tongue.

[Chris laughing] you know, just love 'em.

I love it.

[laughing] - Yeah.

- She loves it!

- Yeah.

[all laughing] - Love tomatoes.

- So there you have it, Ms. Carolyn, thank you for that question.

I hope that answers that for you, okay?

Here's our next viewer email.

"How long will an herbicide application "remain effective after a rainfall?

"Should I immediately reapply after it rains?

Thanks," and this is Phil from Alexander, North Carolina.

So Joellen- - Yeah.

- Interesting, right?

- Yes.

- All right, so what do you think about that?

- Well, you know, you really need to read on the label- - I would do that.

- Because a lot of times it says you have, you can apply this two hours before a rain shower or four hours or six hours.

- Mm-hm.

- I mean, it depends on what the herbicide is and what the label says,- - Right.

- But four hours is a good average for all of them, but mostly it has to dry.

- Right.

- And if it, once it dries on there,- - Mm-hm.

- And it can rain on it because the plants already absorbed it, and you just have to wait- - Yeah.

- What do you think about that?

- For it to take effect.

- Yeah, I - What about it, Doc?

- Exactly.

- Uh-huh.

- I think that Roundup, you know, glyphosate- - Yeah, right.

- Is the most used herbicide out there.

So, probably she's thinking about that one, and I read the label, and the label says to not apply it if you know rain's coming three hours before.

- Yes.

- That it has to stay on there at least three hours.

- Yes.

- But I had lawn companies that I read about that said if you get it on there and it stays there and gets dry, that, you know,- - That's the key.

- In 30 minutes, yeah.

It's getting it dry and not applying it even when the foliage is wet.

- Right.

- Which I've been in a hurry and I couldn't wait for the dew to dry, you know?

- Mm-hm.

[Chris laughing] - I want to kill these weeds!

But you know, obviously you're diluting it- - Right.

- Because the leaves are wet and it can just slide off and mix with the water- - That's right.

- And just slide off, you know, with the droplets, but really read the label- - That's right.

- Because it will tell you, you know, how long that needs to be on there before rain, after rain, whatever, it'll tell you that.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Got to read the label.

- Yeah, always read the label.

- Yeah.

- It will lose its efficacy.

- Exactly, yep.

- So you have to definitely read that and yeah, watch the weather forecast maybe.

- Yeah.

- That might help as well.

[laughing] You definitely wanna make sure it's dry.

So thank you for that question, Phil.

Appreciate that.

So, Dr. Kelly, Joellen, we're done.

- Oh, wow.

- Thank you much, that was fun.

- Hot dog.

- It was good.

- 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 Rd 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 any of the flowers Joellen planted or the plants Carol talked about, go 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 music]