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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Beautiful summer roses   require spring pruning.

Also there are thousands of   different gardening tools,   but which ones do   you really need?

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 Mr. Bill Dickerson.

Mr. Bill is our rose expert.

And Joellen Dimond will be joining us later.

Hi Mr. Bill.

You've got some roses here right?

- Yes sir.

- So what is the first thing we need to do when it comes down to pruning roses?

- Well to start with the tools, the big older stuff just to facilitate easing cutting I use the heavy lopping pruners.

I do most of mine with this middle size.

- I like that too, it's a pretty good size.

- Which is easier on my hands.

And then I use the hand pruners.

Good gloves, cause these things will eat you alive.

And then I've got this handy little stool that I can sit on and get in and do what I need to do.

First thing I usually do is look for dead wood.

This is dead here at the bottom and so I just close to the main cane, I just cut that off.

And as you can see it's brown and it's not live, healthy tissue.

- Now once you've made that cut do you actually clean those off before you make the next cut?

- Well I usually wear a blue jean shirt.

Typically in between bushes I'll use a cleaner and I'll sterilize my pruners from bush to bush and from customer to customer.

But one bush, it's either got it or it doesn't so I don't.

So I'll just do one and then I'll clean.

Okay now this, it's big and healthy at the top, but right here you see it's starting to get brown and it's dead so just to facilitate, I cut it as close as I can.

Here's a small one which is kind of a small cane, I'll get rid of that.

And I'm opening the bush up as I go.

Anything smaller than a pencil you try to get rid off.

I'm just gonna take this out to open up the center of the bush.

- So why do we need to open it up though, just to get the air moving through?

- Air moving through, black spot is your biggest enemy and you have to spray which is a fungicide.

And if you've got air going through it doesn't just sit in there.

Anything if it's too closed you're gonna get disease.

If you get rid of the dead wood and the little small stuff, it just kind of gets easier and easier to figure out where you are.

- You can see it pretty good huh?

- You can see.

Now keep in mind I'm gonna go down depending on the bush.

The bigger bush if I left it here, it's gonna have more blooms with smaller blooms.

Now if you cut it down to 12 inches, 18 inches you're gonna have fewer blooms but they'll be bigger.

So if you're wanting to take them in the house, you may cut them down a little more hard.

If you want a lot of blooms you just leave them out just for a garden rose.

Now here's another one that's kind of going in the middle.

I'm gonna take it out.

You always clean up after yourself, 'cause if you don't you come by here two or three days later and you gonna need to look at something and those prickles and thorns will get you.

Just a little small growth that's not gonna do anything, I take those out.

- So again, anything that's growing on the inside you definitely wanna take those out.

- I try to make everything grow out.

Now find a good example.

Right here example I cut right above where the leaf actual is and we're a little late because everything's leafing out.

Ideally you want it where there's nothing there.

But when you see these leaf structures at the leaf axle, if I cut above this, that next cane's gonna go into the bush.

If I cut above this one it's gonna go the same way this is.

So I kind of manipulate Mother Nature, I try to cut this new cane where I cut it off last year, I cut it so that it would grow out and not in.

- And this probably took years of practice right?

To be able to get the way you want to?

- The first time I'm like oh I don't know how I'm gonna do this but if you mess up it's just like a bad haircut it comes back and you just learn from your mistakes.

This'll come up and be out of the way I'll just kind of take that off.

This is in the middle.

It's a little harsh but you kind of have to teach this> I'm just gonna take this whole big guy out.

And it just opens up the bush.

And the more you take off, you're gonna put that energy into the canes that you have left.

Here I'm gonna look for a bud eye, there's one facing up towards Chris.

I'm gonna cut it back that direction.

And I kind of think about what I'm doing.

I may have them a little taller in the middle of the bush and then on the bottom, where they're away from each other and you'll have a nice form.

Here's a crossing cane, this is a big bulb, this is a little smaller.

So I'm gonna sacrifice that one.

Now here's some dead wood.

And the more you open it up, the more you can see.

Here's some dead wood I'm gonna take it out.

And then I'm gonna take this to there.

I'm gonna leave this bush typically a little taller than most.

I found a bud eye right here, I want it to come out so I'm gonna cut there.

I'm gonna face this because there's a bud eye here and the next cane will come out.

- Now could you tell us, bud eye, what do you mean when you say that?

- Well on the cane, where this comes out you've got a shot for three.

Here's two right here.

Where a leaf is gonna be, you cut it right above that.

It's either gonna come out as a cane or it's gonna come out as a leaf.

And you've got three shots to get a cane to come out of there.

So a lot of times if I was gonna do this, I'd just break it off.

Cause I don't want leaves cause it's little late.

I want a cane to come out.

Typically this time of year I try to do it before they start leafing out.

You can see this is starting to leaf out, now it's already leafed out.

And I'll break this off and then hope that I'll get a cane out of it instead of a leaf.

Alright over here there's a little sticking out on this side.

Later on that'll have a leaf on it.

In the spring everything starts from the top and works its way down so where I prune here, the canes will come up from the top.

You'll get some from the bottom, but most of where I pruned that next cane like this is gonna come back that way.

This is coming in the middle and I see it's bothering Chris.

I'm just gonna take it down real low.

And you're like oh no I've got this big.

Well once I cut it, and let's just say I cut it here last year, the new cane's gonna come out and you want your bigger canes at the bottom instead of up here at the top.

Because at the end of the year like some of these, they'll be ten foot tall.

That's questionable.

Is there a hole in there Chris?

- There is a hole.

- Alright here's the culprit.

Do you see where a cane bore?

And that's why you use the Elmer's glue.

After I prune I'll come on top of these and put just a dab of Elmer's glue, not a lot just a dab.

And that's just enough, it's a little old critter.

And he'll drill   and lay his eggs   and he might go a half inch   or he might come   all the way down.

So if you go ahead and do that'll you'll save a big cane like that.

- So it can be saved though at the end of the day?

- It can and what I typically do, is I just cut.

See he went down pretty deep.

So I'm gonna look to see how deep he went.

But you wanna get the healthy white pith in the center.

When you do cut it back, as fat as that looks, and I'm gonna stop there it's starting to brown up some.

Then you'll have a healthy cane come out.

Now this is a new cane, which you want to do.

It's not a basal growth which comes at the root graft.

Wish I had eyes in the back of my head, I'll go back and double-check that.

I'm gonna cut that so next year it'll have a cane and a bloom.

Which is takes about 40 days depending on the size of the bloom.

Once you cut that in 40 days you'll get a new cane come up.

It develops a cane and then you'll get a bloom.

And then 30-40 days then prune it back.

And I see where this is gonna go this way.

I see the little red dot.

I'm gonna cut typically about a quarter of an inch.

Ideally if you do it at an angle and run the water away that's fine.

Sometimes I do that and sometimes I don't.

And ideally a bush is 8, 10, 12 years old, you wanna take a big healthy cane like this, cut it out in hopes of getting a newer cane.

'Cause sooner or later it's gonna die.

So you get rid of it, you get rid of all that energy that's spent through that and you're putting it in a new cane.

And that way you keep your bush invigorated.

- Alright Mr. Bill we definitely appreciate this pruning demonstration that you've shown us today.

- Thank you Chris.

[upbeat country music] - The strawberries are looking pretty good.

We did have some cold weather about a week ago.

And, if you notice, it didn't completely, immediately kill the bloom.

Here, it's dark on the inside of this bloom.

This is one of the older blooms.

That strawberry is dead, it's not gonna make it.

But, if you look at these here to the side, these were probably not in full bloom last week.

They were just before bloom, so they were able to handle the 29 degrees.

When you have a bloom on peaches, strawberries, almost anything open bloom, a good heavy frost will actually kill that bloom.

If it's before bloom or after bloom, sometimes it can stand temperatures down to about 28 degrees.

So, we were in the range of where these strawberries got hit pretty hard.

Good thing about strawberries, if you knock all of the blooms off because of a frost, they will start blooming again.

And, 30 days from when that first bloom starts you will have ripe fruit.

[upbeat country music] Hi Ms. Joellen, spring is almost here right?

Folks are itching to get out into the garden.

But they need good gardening tools right?

- Yeah there is an array of gardening tools that I use all the time, and we're just gonna go over some of them today if that's okay?

The number one garden tool that I use all the time, are these hand pruners.

And there are so many things you can do with these hand pruners, I mean I keep them with me almost all the time when I'm out in the garden.

There are all kinds and they're all good, but the best thing I can tell you is make sure that they are scissor action ones.

Where this blade passes this other blade.

Scissor action ones are the best, they last the longest.

Some of the others that are anvil don't last as long.

But these, no matter how inexpensive or expensive they are, they all work the same and they all work well.

And if you've noticed, since it's the beginning of the year I have already cleaned and sharpened all of my tools for the winter.

Including the wood parts have linseed oil on them so everything is ready for spring.

- Mr. D. Would be so proud of you.

- The other thing I use all the time are gloves.

There's so many things that are sharp out there, I just have gotten comfortable wearing gloves and if you use gloves enough, you will be comfortable wearing gloves.

- True statement.

- Besides cutting things up to stems up to about 3/4 of an inch, you need something a little larger than that then you're gonna go with these called loppers.

And they give you more leverage and they've got a bigger blade on them and you can cut stems up to two inches with these.

So anywhere from one to two inches cuts with the loppers.

If you need anything any larger than that I would suggest the hand pruning saw.

And I like the ones that have a retractable blade 'cause these are very sharp.

And what's good about these is they're not like a regular saw.

They cut on the pull.

And this particular one, this double serrated edge it's got.

It cuts really fast on the pull.

Almost like butter up to maybe three and half to a four-inch limb.

But I wouldn't do anything larger than that.

About three inches is average that I use this for.

- Well cutting on the pull is good.

- Because it's not like a saw.

It cuts more on the pull, so you're pulling it back to cut it.

And that's what's different about this type of saw compared to regular saw.

Another thing that I use a lot for planting seeds, is this claw.

Sometimes weeding if you've got some small weeds.

It's easy to scratch the ground and get the weeds out.

Also when you're planting seed beds like lettuce, radishes, onion, small seeds.

You can rough up the ground, get a nice seed bed for the seeds to be planted.

So I use that.

Trowel.

Oh this is another one that I use a whole lot for a lot of things.

Now I like the narrow.

There are wider blades, I like the narrow blades.

I think this part of the country with the soils we have this one seems to get into the soil and able to work easier to make a hole to plant small plants.

I also will weed with it.

You know you can just sit and cut around the ground, get the weeds up.

So I use it a lot for a lot of different things, I like that.

And then there's something like this, called the pruning fork.

Dividing plants and digging up bulbs like tulips that are done for the year.

That's what I use that for.

- Could you use that for a compost pile?

- Yes and turning compost.

See I compost on the ground so I don't have piles but yeah that's what I would use for that too.

Next is one that a lot of people don't know about, and it's a triangular shaped hoe, and it's called a morrow hoe.

Again, it's good for weeding but it's really good at making edges on beds.

Like you've got a sidewalk and you've got a planting bed next to it, it makes a nice edge so that you can put mulch down to the sidewalk so that the soil won't keep running out onto your sidewalk.

I use it a lot for that and I also use it in the garden when I make my rows for planting my corns or my beans.

I just roll this down and seeds in and then you just take it and cover it back up.

Makes it real easy to plant rows of seeds in the garden.

So I like to use it for that.

Next is a small shovel.

And after the transplant trowel, if the plant is like a quart or a gallon size, it's a little bit bigger, I will use this to plant those plants.

Gallon size and below, it's good for that.

Then of course if you've got landscape shrubs and trees, we've used this out front to trim up the amendments for our beds.

So that's when I use the larger shovel.

Next is the leaf rake.

And you know I use it not only to get debris out of the way, leaves I also disseminate mulch if you've watched me with that.

So it's very versatile and cleaning up the yard, anything.

I like the leaf rake.

And of course then there's the garden rake.

And this is to move like rocks and mulch and dirt in large quantities.

The leaf rake will just kind of go over the top of it and get small debris.

But the garden rake gets larger debris, larger soil, larger rocks.

And you can really do some moving with it.

And I probably use it the least but when you need to move something, you really need it.

So I've always had one and have used it.

And of course the last thing you need is a broom.

'Cause you should always clean up after yourself.

So those are the ones I use all the time.

These are the ones that if you're starting out these would be good tools for you to get to have for your garden.

- And they can purchase these tools?

- These are found everywhere.

There's nothing new and revolutionary here.

Now there are a lot of specialized tools, I use these.

You can find them anywhere, I haven't found anything else that I like more than what I already have so I've been using these.

- And they look good.

You cleaned them up real good.

[Chris laughs] But again if you had to use one tool, what would that one tool be?

If you just had to have one.

- I would have my hand pruners, because they do just so much.

- And being agents we have to have that because we stop on the side of the road to prune things for demonstrations and such.

- But yeah I like my hand pruners.

Actually the hand pruners are probably the first one I had for myself when I was starting out.

And I've gathered all of these over the years, and inherited some of them.

- It's always good to clean the handles off too so you don't get splinters and those type of things.

- And one thing is like with the crape myrtle bark scale now, if you're pruning with any of this with a crape myrtle bark scale, you want to disinfect that because you don't want to transfer that to another crape myrtle that doesn't have it.

And if you have to cut and dig up diseased plants, it would be best if you put a little rubbing alcohol or a little bleach water, something to disinfect it so you don't move diseases and or bugs in your own yard.

- Good point, glad you brought that up.

Alright we appreciate that, that was good.

We know these are your tools that you use.

- These are mine, these are mine - Good deal.

Thank you Joellen, appreciate that.

[gentle country music] - Just like on Goldilocks, the three bowls of porridge, the soil has got to be in the right condition, too.

Example being this right here, this pile right here will not form a ball.

So, it's kind of a little bit on the dry side.

This one right here, this is way too wet.

This is one you're gonna let sit for a least two or three days and test it to find out if it's tillable.

You don't want to put a tiller in that.

Okay, this middle piece however, if I can form a ball and I throw it up in the air... Oops, and it breaks apart, then it's just right for tilling.

[gentle country music] - Alright here's a Q & A session, you ready?

- Ready.

- These are good questions.

Alright here's our first viewer email.

"Can I still spray   dormant oil on my shrubs?"

Can they still get   away with that now?

- I think it's a little late.

- Think it's a little late?

- Dormant oil spray, it has to be dormant.

Horticultural spray is a lighter spray, and it depends on what she's trying to do with it.

But yeah dormant oil spray is for dormant plants.

And we don't know when things go dormant because we don't know about our weather.

We have had no frost clear into December some years.

And I wouldn't spray the dormant oil spray on them until all the leaves went off the trees.

Yeah our weather is unusual, but dormant oil spray is when it's dormant so whenever it's dormant.

And then February's probably the last time that I would spray it.

Unless we have a really early spring.

But yeah you have to spray it in the cold part of the winter for dormant oil spray.

- Right because if you spray it too late then there's a chance that you damaged those blooms or flowers.

- Yes and you can also burn the leaves.

If it's an evergreen you can burn the leaves with them too.

- So when the plants are dormant?

Alright.

So here's our next viewer email.

"Is early spring the best time   to prune my azaleas?"

And you know what?

We get that question every year about this time at the office.

You would think people would understand it a little bit, but we still get that same question.

So what do you think?

- Well you can prune something that blooms after it finishes blooming.

So I would wait til they've bloomed first and then cut them back, even if it's severely.

But you're gonna cut off all your blooms if you cut it now before it blooms.

And that's the whole point of having azaleas they're beautiful.

So let them bloom first, and then cut them back.

And that goes for anything that blooms in the spring.

If it's gonna bloom in the spring, let it bloom then cut it back.

- Alright so do it after they're finished blooming okay.

Here's the next viewer email.

"What is the right time   in the spring to plant   lettuce and other   leafy greens?"

And that's another question   we get this time of the year.

So when is that time?

- Now is the perfect time.

Yeah early March.

- Of course if we're talking about collards, kale, mustard, turnips.

- And lettuces, radishes, radicchio, and mueslix.

All of those, spring.

This cool weather they love.

- I used to hear, my grandfather who was a farmer would say pretty much anytime after Valentine's Day you can plant your leafy greens.

So this would be the perfect time to get that done.

They're cool season crops.

- Definitely cool season.

- And they will definitely let you know when it gets too warm, 'cause they'll start bolting and they will not taste that well either.

- Yeah and bolting is when they start setting up flower heads and seeds.

And it's too late, time to turn them under for compost and plant some of those warm season vegetables.

- That's right.

So there you have it, go ahead and plant that now you'll be just fine and you can enjoy that crop going into the spring.

- That's right.

- Well, Joellen, we're out of time.

It was fun.

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, 38106   Or you can go online   to familyplotgarden.com That's all we have time for today, thanks for joining us.

For more information on what we talked about today, go to familyplotgarden.com I'm Chris Cooper, be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]