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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Most plants grow from seed.

Today we're going to see how the harvest seeds and get them ready to plant.

Also, compost is a great way to get free fertilizer.

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] - Hi, welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Jessie Munson.

Jessie is the Plant Activities Coordinator here at Lichterman Nature Center and Mike Larrivee will be joining me later.

Hi Jessie.

- Hello, how are you?

- Good to have you on the show today.

- It's great to be here.

- Good.

So we're gonna talk about propagation.

- Yes, we are.

- So where do you wanna start with that?

- Well, so we're standing here in the plant propagation center.

- Nice.

- And we do a lot of propagating here at Lichterman.

We do by cutting, by division, but our favorite thing to do is seeds.

- Seeds, okay.

- So I'm gonna show you one method and maybe two.

We might cross over a little bit.

But I've got a plant here called Carolina bush pea.

- Beautiful.

- And that is this.

And I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about how to collect the seed and what to do with it.

- Okay, let's do that.

- So first of all, you have to know what you're looking for.

So you'll probably wanna know where your Carolina bush pea is growing in your garden or even at a nature center somewhere where they don't mind if you come take some seeds.

- Okay.

- Like here.

- All right.

- And right now the Carolina bush pea looks either like this or this.

- It's pretty cool.

- And these seeds are not ready to harvest yet.

If you're not sure if your seeds are ready to harvest, there's this thing called Google.

And then also we have, what I love to use here is this native plant propagation book.

- Ah, there you go.

Okay.

- And I don't know if I mentioned this is a native plant.

- Okay.

- So I will look it up in our little book here and it will tell me exactly when I need to start looking for these seeds.

- Okay.

- So the botanic name of this is Thermopsis villosa.

- Ah, sounds good.

- Yeah, it says it's closely related to Baptisia.

- Familiar with that.

- The lupin.

So it says collect seeds when pods are splitting and seeds are brownish late June to July.

- All right.

- So we're gonna look for something like this.

And then sometimes you wanna use the internet too to figure out what the seed actually is.

Some people might think this whole thing is a seed.

It's not.

The seed will be inside of there.

- And that's important to know.

I'm glad you mentiond that.

- Right.

So I'm going to just tap this.

- Oh.

That's all you have to do, huh?

- And we're gonna get some seeds out of here.

- Those tiny seeds.

- Yeah.

They actually look like tiny little beans.

- Yeah.

- Tiny little kidney beans.

And you can manually open up each of these.

They're almost like a little pea pod and get your seeds out.

Now this was one left over from last year, so it may not have as many seeds as we're looking for.

Luckily we have plenty of seeds that we've stored here.

- Ah-ha.

Smart.

- My volunteers have collected and labeled.

So this was just sort of to show you.

- Sure.

- How to get your seeds.

- Okay.

- And once you have your seeds out, we're gonna read in our book about what to do with our seeds.

So if we wanna store them, which we've done here, you're gonna store them at 40 degrees dry, so.

- 40 degrees dry.

Okay.

- I don't know what the refrigerator is exactly.

It's probably around 40 degrees.

So we store those in there.

And then when you wanna try sowing your seeds, this book says give them a boiling water soak and or scarify gently with sandpaper.

- Okay.

- Or you can soak in tepid water for 12 hours with the scarifying.

- Okay.

So what is scarifying?

Let's talk about that for a second.

- Okay, good question.

Scarifying is breaking the seed coat, the hard seed coat on a seed.

So a lot of, well, most seeds have a pretty tough outer coating on them.

And the reason they have that is they are, in general, they're gonna be dormant until the conditions are right in nature for them to break their dormancy.

- Got it.

- So a hard seed coat would allow something that's a perennial to make it through the winter and not start growing in the middle of the winter.

So the conditions, the freezing, the wet, the cold over time would break down that seed coat.

And when it starts to warm up in the spring is when the seed would be triggered to germinate.

- Be ready to go.

- Start growing.

So pretty much all we're doing is simulating that.

So we're gonna try and speed it up.

Alright.

- Those are real small seeds to do that.

- They are and so some people, I'm just not that good, but some people would take a tiny little tool and nick the seed coat.

- I wouldn't be that good.

- Just enough.

I'm not that good either.

And this actually just says to use sandpaper.

So you could do either, there's a lot of trial and error with these seeds.

- Sure.

- So, but we've had success with the sandpaper method and the soaking method.

So I'm gonna pour these seeds into here on my sandpaper.

And I've got some from the seed pod too.

And I just have two pieces.

I don't think it really matters what what grade or whatever it is.

- Right.

Yeah whatever to call it grade or coarse or something like that.

- All you're looking for is basically when that shiny coat is sort of dull.

- Okay.

- That's when I know they're probably ready to go.

So... [sandpaper scratching] I'm gonna do this.

You can see it's kind of dull now.

- I can see a little bit.

- We're just weakening that seed coat.

- Wow.

That's tedious.

- So next step, we are gonna put these in some water.

It can just be room temperature.

I tend to not do the boiling water.

Some people love it.

I don't really think they need it.

I think they just need to soak a bit.

So normally we would pour these in here, but what I've got here are some that have already been soaking for about 12 hours.

- Okay.

12 hours.

- So we're gonna start with these next.

- Okay.

- Okay.

And now all we need to do, oh, it's interesting.

I don't know if you can see that, but some, just a few of these are floating at the top.

- I can see that.

I can.

- In general, seeds that float after soaking for 12 hours are not viable.

- Okay.

They're not viable.

- They're not viable.

- That's good to know.

- But the ones that have sunk are viable.

- Got it.

- Now there's not enough here for me to try and pick all those out.

So we're just gonna go with all of them.

I'm just straining the water out now.

And then we're gonna get those seeds out and our next step is to put them in some soil.

- Are there any special kind of soil that you use?

- You can buy seed starter mixes.

- Okay.

- We use just sort of a general all-purpose soil here that's got a little bit of wood particles, little bit of compost, probably mixed in.

So what I do like to do with my soil for seeds, I think is important is to sift it.

You don't want a lot of giant chunks in there.

And also we use, we do a lot of reused soil here, but not for seeds because you could have weeds in there.

Weed seeds and I don't wanna get mixed up with what I wanna be growing and a weed that's gonna come up.

I'm gonna fill up my seed container.

- You fill them all the way up to the top?

- All the way to the top.

You gotta push them down in there.

You don't want these to just bottom out the second you water them.

Okay.

Now we're gonna take these over here and we're gonna just put our seeds on top.

- Right.

And because they're so small, they don't have to go in that deep, right?

- They don't need, they really don't need any cover.

I mean, if you wanna sprinkle a little soil over, what I do though that is helpful and we do here, is we will definitely spray these with some misty water.

- Sure.

-We want the surface of wherever we're planting our seeds.

You want the surface to stay moist all the time.

You don't want them to dry out.

- Okay.

- Until they start to sprout, you don't want them to dry out.

And one thing that will help, if you've heard of damping off?

- I have.

- Seeds?

It's a really, people hate, it's really frustrating.

But one thing I was reading about is if you have heat underneath your seeds about 70 to 75 degrees, you can hopefully get rid of some of that damping off or keep it from starting.

- It's a major issue when people are starting seeds.

- Yeah.

We always label put the date and then I will show you.

Oops.

Unveil the excitement.

These are the babies that I started about a month ago.

- Okay.

Good job.

- Of the Carolina bush pea.

- Okay.

- And I failed to mention that nature will take care of this all on its own.

Most of our native perennial seeds, you can throw it in the fall.

And all these processes that we just went through are done naturally.

- Right.

- This is just humans trying to do it faster.

- And just manipulate.

- Control it a little bit more.

- But it's pretty good germination rate?

- Pretty good germination rate.

And I will let these go a little bit longer.

This one, maybe another couple weeks and we could start taking some of these out and put in smaller containers.

- Okay and before we end, so let's talk about your using good internet sources.

- Yes.

- For information.

So can you just talk a little bit about that?

- Well, I love to, first of all, I like to Google the botanic name.

- Ah, that's important.

- Common names can vary.

And you can also have plants that have the same common name, but they're different species.

So Google the botanic name.

One of my favorite sites is Lady Bird Johnson.

- Yeah, familiar with that.

- Yeah.

And there's a Missouri Botanic.

- Definitely familiar with that one.

- Yeah.

And of course USDA will te ll you a native map range if you're really want to be specific about is my plant native to my county even?

You can find that kind of stuff out, so.

- Good.

- Yeah.

- Well, Jessie, we appreciate that.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

- Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - Well, it looks like this blackberry survived the winter fine.

We have a fine crop of blackberries.

Fine crop of fruit on this thornless trailing blackberry.

Kind I like to pick, however, over here, this one I think we have a little winter kill and it's just, it's surviving.

It's coming out from the roots.

You can see you have some green leaves.

You actually have some fruit on there.

And it really doesn't need any fruit on there.

We probably ought to pick the fruit off and let all the nutrition go to vegetative growth.

But this is just a classic example of winter kill and how some plants seem to survive it better than others.

These are the same variety and not much difference in location and this one made it through fine.

This one's struggling.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Mike, we're glad to have you on, man.

We're gonna talk about composting.

A lot of people wanna know about composting.

A lot of people believe it or not, are not doing composting correctly.

So you're gonna walk us through that process, right.

- For sure.

I'm happy to be here.

It's good to see you.

Yeah.

- Good.

So I, how you wanna get started?

- Oh, well, so this is something that we do with demos and this is sort of a why, sort of a why are we composting?

And we start with why and then then go to how.

- Sure.

- So this is sort of a, the journey of our food right here, if you will.

- All right.

- So we start with a homegrown tomato.

Right there, and that's where the whole thing starts as far as composting is concerned, how it hits us.

- Okay.

- And then we've got, good thing this isn't smellivision.

This is day one.

So we've got some fresh stuff in there.

- Look at that.

- And little caveat on that, that would make an unbalanced product right there.

Because this is mostly nitrogen, there's very little carbon in that right now.

And to balance that, we would be adding a whole lot of carbon to it.

And good carbon sources, leaves this time of year.

Also sawdust, make friends with a carpenter.

- That would help, wouldn't it?

- Yeah, for sure.

But you wanna watch out for treated lumber there.

- That's right.

- And also black walnut because they will affect the growth of some plants - Okay.

- If you're growing veggies.

That would be a problem.

- Good deal, good deal.

- And then, so compost wants a lot of the same stuff that we do to be healthy and to complete the metabolic processes.

So you wanna make sure it's got enough water, moisture content needs to be good, and air.

So it needs oxygen to be a good healthy anaerobic.

- I'm glad you mentioned that 'cause a lot of people don't realize that.

- Yeah, that's true.

- It needs air.

- Yeah, it does.

Yeah.

For sure.

And it will for sure decompose in the absence of oxygen, but good, healthy compost needs oxygen.

- Okay.

So you want turn it every once in a while.

So this is sort of an example of what it looks like when it's first turned.

- Wow.

- And you see like the tender greens, like the spinach and all that stuff is gone already.

It's already breaking down.

But the more fibrous stuff, like for example, there's a pineapple top in there and the heavy leaves and stuff like that take a little bit longer to break down.

You still see, you still be able to recognize those at this point.

- Okay, got it.

I'm with you so far.

- Yeah.

Next go round, things start to break down.

You see it starting to look more like dirt, I guess.

But you see the sticks are still in there and beets leaves and stuff like that.

And oak leaves that take longer to break down.

And then right over here is where you start getting into the exciting stuff.

- Exciting.

- This is pretty close to being finished compost right there and you really notice that it starts to, it has a different character.

It starts to get like looser and lighter and it smells kind of woodsy and sweet and nice.

And that's sort of where it starts to get finished.

So, and then we cure it up at that point.

And you let it sit and that's what it sort of really develops the nutrients that you're going to be looking for as a soil amendment.

- Now how long would you like to sit?

- Well, okay, so this whole process, it depends.

Composting is sort of a input in, output out kind of a situation.

So the more you fool with it, the faster it's going to break down, the faster you get to a finished product.

So if you follow like the University of California method for example and you're turning it every day or two and maintaining a consistent moisture level and keeping that oxygenated pile going, you can get to this stage here in a couple of weeks.

- Wow.

- Sometimes.

We have a much bigger facility.

We're dealing with windrows, so.

- Okay.

- Every couple of weeks we're making sure that we're turning it, especially during the growing season when it's hot.

- Okay, gotcha.

- We get to here generally in about maybe two months, three months and then it sits- - That's still pretty good.

- And cures up in the cure pile for another couple of months from there.

And then you get, this is a poor little volunteer that I got.

- He's trying to hang in there.

- Yeah.

I picked him out of the garden this morning against his will 'cause he was happy where he was at.

But he's sitting in some brand new sifted and finished compost.

- That looks good.

- It looks pretty good, I got to say.

And you know, good heavy nitrogen feeder like that.

That tomato would love a lot of that at home.

But yeah, this is what we're putting back out in the world instead of letting it get to the landfill where it's going to gonna cause problems instead of be helpful in growing stuff in our home landscape.

- Some good stuff.

Let's talk about the carbon-nitrogen ratio.

- Okay.

- 'Cause a lot of us get that wrong.

- Yeah, that's true.

That's true, yeah.

It's not a one-to-one.

- Yeah.

- It's not one-to-one.

And we were talking about that a little bit earlier.

If it smells funky, you don't have enough carbon in it.

- Okay.

- So you wanna be adding carbon, and the general rule of thumb is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to one carbon ratio to nitrogen.

So you want to be stockpiling those leaves this time of year 'cause they're valuable.

And if you're gonna be composting in the summertime when there's not leaves available maybe unless you've got a magnolia or something like that.

- Yeah.

Something like that.

Right.

- You wanna hang, if you have space for them, it's good to hang onto those so that you can add those as you're bringing your kitchen scraps and your grass clippings out to the compost pile and adding that nitrogen.

- Okay.

Let's give the folks some examples.

What is considered a carbon?

- Yeah.

Carbon.

So leaves are like the most readily available source.

Everybody's got a tree in their yard or in their neighborhood that they can shag some leaves from and don't put them on the side of the road in bags.

- That's right.

- You can cut down on your waste stream, yeah.

Save your leaves.

Save your leaves.

They're important.

But also sawdust is a great source.

Shredded newspaper is another one that you can get your hands on pretty easy.

- Sure.

- You wanna stay away from paper that's bleached if you can help it and you stay away from paper that's been any kind of wax coating.

- Okay.

Okay.

- Or heavy dyes or anything like that too.

But those are some fairly easily accessible carbon sources for folks.

- Okay.

All right.

And what about the nitrogen sources?

- Nitrogen is greens.

Anything that comes out of your kitchen for the most part, there's some carbon that you're gonna be putting in your kitchen bucket.

But most of your stuff that's coming out of your kitchen, your veggie and fruit scraps and stuff like that is gonna be heavy in nitrogen.

- Okay.

- Also grass clippings - Sure.

- Which are great and they break down super quick too.

- All right.

So we talked about the good things you should put in your compost pile.

What about those things we shouldn't put in?

- That's a good point.

It's a question of scale, but in a backyard compost situation.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

You absolutely, absolutely wanna stay away from animal products.

Any kind of processed or cooked foods, if it came out of a bag or a box.

- Oh, okay.

- Probably not such a good idea to be putting it in your compost pile and anything that you've cooked, you wanna stay away from too oils, bones, anything like that.

Because that's the difference between healthy compost that's useful in your environment and a rat farm.

- [Chris laughs] Right.

- We don't wanna be growing rats.

- Right we don't wanna be doing that.

- Memphis has enough rats.

- Yeah.

We got enough of that.

- We don't need anymore of those.

- I'm with you on that.

- So yeah, that's a great point.

- Okay.

What about scale of the compost pile?

Does it matter as a homeowner?

Should we start with a smaller?

- Yeah.

That's also a great point.

Okay.

So there's, if you want a really hot compost, there's sort of a critical mass in terms of volume that you're gonna be looking at.

- Okay.

- It's usually about a cubic meter, which is a lot if you're thinking about it.

And it may could take a while to get that.

But the thing to remember with composting is it's a fairly forgiving art and no matter how you do it within reason, you're gonna come out with a fairly useful product.

It's efficiency.

The more energy put in, the faster it goes.

The more you are concerned about properly sized compost pile and your inputs, the better the nutrient value of the compost that you're making is gonna be.

Another thing about that is you wanna have at least two containers.

- Okay.

- So that one can do the curing.

- Okay.

I gotcha.

- Right, while you're starting a second pile because you're not gonna stop eating, you're not gonna stop mowing your grass.

And the leaves aren't gonna stop falling.

- That's right.

- So you need to have a second pile or a second container available so that this first one can finish doing what it's doing and then you just flip and start that cycle again.

- Makes sense.

- And you can do a heap, I guess in a bin on the ground with that soil contact, which I find is helpful because you have more access to those microbes that are in the ground that are gonna be doing the decompositional work for us anyway and worms and all that sort of other stuff.

But you can also, there are lots of containers on the market.

Tumblers and all kinds.

and worm bins and stuff like that as well.

For sure.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- We appreciate you coming on and telling us a little bit about composting, man 'cause you are the compost fairy.

- Sure, I am the compost fairy.

Yeah.

We're serving Memphis for sure.

Happy to help with the education process.

- Yes.

- And diverting some of that waste out of the landfill and turning it back into some of that good stuff.

- Well, look you're doing a good job, man.

So we definitely do appreciate that.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks, Chris.

Appreciate it.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] - Here at Lichterman Nature Center, we like to sift our soil before we plant seeds.

So I'm just gonna quickly show you how we do that.

We use a rather small gauge sifting panel.

You can get these on the internet or you can make your own.

And I am going to just put some soil in here.

The reason we like to do this is, as you'll notice, this is just sort of your typical potting soil.

It has a lot of sort of mulch and pieces of wood, which is fine for an older plant or a more established plant, but for a seed, their roots are so tiny, we don't want them to have to try and curl around that.

So we're gonna get the soil as fine as we can and it also just is good for your soul, this sifting.

Helps calm me down if I have a stressful day.

All right.

And then when you're all done, the soil feels great, very velvety and it's perfect for starting seeds.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

Here's how Q and A segment.

You all ready?

- Ready.

- All right.

These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer emaill.

All right.

I like this one.

"I've loved ironweed since I was a kid.

"It is so homely, right?

"It's cool.

"But to grow ironweed, would I need a reservoir of water to keep it happy?"

And this is Bill from South Porch, North Carolina.

So what do you think about that, Jessie?

Do you need a reservoir of water to keep it happy?

- I would say no.

We have one of our favorite ironweed little patches around here is between the cracks of our concrete on our sidewalk and it comes up every year.

And we love it until it flops over and gets in the way.

Then we hack it off, comes back every year.

Now, if it's the very first year and you have a little baby, you're gonna have to baby it a little bit, just like any plant.

But once it's established, it doesn't need any more water than anything else.

It can grow pretty much anywhere.

- Okay.

So full sun, shade?

- It loves full sun, but we have some here in almost full shade.

- Oh wow.

Okay.

- So they're pretty tough.

- It's good to know.

Okay.

- There's a reason that the weed is on the name.

- Oh well, now.

- I love all kinds of natives that have weed in the name, but I think part of that is that they grow with tough conditions in a lot of places.

- Yeah, that makes sense.

Weed in the name, makes sense.

- Yeah.

- But guess who knows a little bit something about ironweed as well.

So there's a little story about ironweed.

- Yeah, let's hear it.

- Yeah, we'll just listen to Mary talk about this ironweed.

- Yeah.

So I'm a big fan of ironweed.

- Ah, she's a big fan.

- It's a great plant for pollinators.

It's a native plant all across the eastern United States.

I carried it down the aisle for my wedding.

- Nice.

- I was on my way to my wedding.

I realized I didn't have flowers to carry down the aisle.

- I like this.

- Pulled off the side of the road.

There's a nice stand of ironweed.

Clip some off.

So that's what I carried down the aisle.

Ironweed, it's a good one.

You don't need a ton of water.

Once it gets established, you're good.

- That's a great story, Mary.

- I like it.

I love it.

I like it.

So, there you have it, Bill.

I don't have anything else to say behind that.

I like that, plant people.

I tell you plant people, right?

"Oh, there's a some right there.

Let me get that."

Yeah, okay.

That's fine.

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

Thank you for sharing that, Mary.

That was good.

Thank you.

Here's our next viewer emaill.

This is interesting too, right?

"I hear gardeners say to do this or that "until the plant is established.

How can you tell if a plant is established?"

And this is Robin from Memphis, Tennessee.

Good question though.

- It is a good question.

- What do you think about that, Jessie?

How can you tell?

- Well, in my mind, and this might be more of a long-term answer for her, but for me, once a plant makes it the next summer when it comes up after a season, in my mind it's established and I no longer have to really do anything with it because I have almost all natives.

So native plants can deal with all of our conditions here, except that first summer when they're babies, they need a little extra TLC, I think.

But once it makes it through the winter and comes up in the spring, to me that means it's established.

- Okay.

- So that's, that's my rule of thumb.

- I like that.

- One other way you can kind of test to see if the plant has become established is to just give it just a gentle tug.

And if there's resistance, that means the roots are established in that soil.

If it's coming up, let it go.

Check it again another couple weeks.

- Okay.

Alright.

- Just a gentle tug though.

- Yeah, you don't have to try to rip it out.

No, I actually like both of those answers.

I think that was good.

And something else for me.

Yeah.

If you start to see new leaves.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- New buds growing and things like that.

I think it's established or getting to be established.

And for many of your shrubs, a year or two, right?

For trees, it'll probably take a little longer.

Maybe three to five years or something like that.

But no, I like that.

I think that's good.

All right, so Jessie, Mary, thank you so much.

That was fun.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for having us.

- Even had a good story about ironweed, how about that.

- I know.

- Perfect.

- That is good.

Thank you all much.

- Thank you.

- 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 collecting seeds, compost or anything else we talked about today, 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]