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

I'm Chris Cooper.

There's lots of water that flows from your rooftop and your driveways.

How about directing the flow of the water into a rain garden?

Also, correct mowing will help your lawn look its best.

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 Celeste Scott.

Celeste is a UT Extension Agent in Madison County and Booker T. Leigh will be joining me later.

All right, Celeste, it's good to have you here today.

- Thanks for having, thanks for y'all for coming here, so we are here at UT Gardens Jackson, just kind of going all around the grounds and we are standing at our rain garden demonstration area.

So for those who aren't familiar, rain gardens are, they can be beautiful, but they are also functional and have a real purpose, so as we can see here, rain gardens are depressed planting areas.

So when we're getting ready to actually create one, you're gonna need to do some excavation on the front end.

So one thing we wanna stay way from is establishing rain gardens in areas that already hold water, so that would be called a bog garden.

Okay, yes.

Rain gardens utility purpose is to catch rainwater and help infiltrate it into the soil profile.

So I feel like this is perfectly situated.

I don't know if the viewers can see, but there's a home over here on this side and we have gutters obviously that are directed towards this rain garden.

There's also this area of impervious surface.

We've got the paved driveway area.

We've got sidewalks.

So when we planted this garden, we used all of this in our calculations to determine the size of the garden and the depth of the garden that we would need to catch the rainfall that would come from an average rain event.

And here in Tennessee, that's about a half of an inch is our average rain event so that's what we based our measurements off of.

Another thing that we wanna check before we actually start constructing a rain garden is infiltration of the existing soil, so we wanna do a percolation test.

- So what do we mean by perc test?

- Okay, so it's super important that we understand what rate of infiltration our soils are gonna be able to tolerate because that's the purpose of a rain garden, to catch and infiltrate water, recharge that groundwater.

So we're going to dig a hole that's 12 inches deep.

The hole needs to have straight sides.

We don't want it tapered, so make sure we have straight sides.

You fill it up with water and allow it to completely drain.

That's what we call we're charging it, essentially.

We're just saturating the soil in that area.

Then you come back and fill it up a second time.

- So you fill it up again?

- Yes, and then you measure how long it takes for the water to drain out of that hole.

And in those documents we're gonna post on the site, there'll be a chart there.

If it's within this range of inches per hour, you're at a slow rate.

This one is a medium.

This range is high rate.

And you wanna aim for medium and high rates of infiltration.

If you fall into the low range of infiltration, we need to look for a different site for our rain garden or it's going to require some amendments.

We're gonna have to do some things to drill down through possibly hard pans.

We're gonna need to incorporate some organic materials, sand possibly, to help lighten that soil structure and help with infiltration so that's the number one priority when we're picking our spot is making sure that we're gonna be able to let that water move down the way it should.

- So you gotta do a perc test.

- Yes, so then once we have all these numbers together, we have the square footage of the impervious surfaces, the roof that's feeding the rain garden, the sidewalks, also sheet flow of the lawn coming directly into the rain garden could be a factor.

Once we have those areas and our infiltration rate determined, then we can bring all that together to figure out the dimensions of our rain garden and what is actually going to be most useful in that particular residential area.

So that's what we've done here and this garden is about 10 years old.

It's gone through a few facelifts.

So our planting plan is not the same as it was when we first came in, but what we do like to encourage folks is to plant in swaths so it's a little more visually appealing if you have several, like say three or four of a type of plant instead of one of this and one of that.

- So let me ask you this, so the plant material has to be able to withstand some water, right?

- Yes.

- So some wet feet.

- Good point.

So there on that distinction between a bog garden and a rain garden, so these plants can tolerate submersion up to 48 hours of submersion in the deepest zone.

So some of these plants would be things that you would find naturally growing in swampy type kind of areas.

And then as we work our way up, obviously we get higher and higher so then we've got a mid zone.

Those plants are supposed to be able to tolerate about 24 hours of submersion.

And then once you get into your upper zone here at the very top, that's basically, it's really close to just your regular average garden site.

Does that make sense?

- That makes sense, good stuff.

- So the closer you get to the edge, the more, you know, common type plants that you might would plant, things you would find like in your perennial borders.

So we've tried to plant everything in here with native species.

Now that is not a requirement for a rain garden.

You do not have to stay strictly native, but that's just an angle that we wanted to take for this particular garden and we have plenty of resources out there, plant lists, we've got publications that are gonna help you do all those calculations to figure out the size and dimensions of your rain garden, so definitely check out UThort.com.

- UThort.com and we'll try to have those publications on our website.

- Excellent, good, good, good.

So all these things are gonna be available for people to use.

I'm trying to think what, maybe what else should we talk about.

You wanna highlight a couple plants?

- Yeah, let's talk about a couple of these plants here, especially this one right here.

- Yes, yes, so this is a fun little plant.

This particular cultivar I think is called Sugar Shack, so it's a little smaller than the typical one, but it's a buttonbush, it's common name, what folks might be familiar with.

You can tell we've just passed our season of bloom there.

They have the cutest little white puff ball blooms that cover it so this is a really cool plant and it's one of those that can tolerate some of the longest submersion.

You'll see it's planted way down here deep in the concave of the garden.

- Yeah, what's this massive plant?

- This is pretty unique.

This is a willow leaf spice bush and so we know that this is a host plant to our swallowtails, right, so we're doing some things there for our pollinators and native ecosystems right there, but it's kind of growing wild on us.

It could probably use a little pruning to get it back into check.

Also, this right here to my right, this is a plant that I love.

It's called Baptisia.

This is one of the straight species, so it's not, you know, a named cultivar.

It doesn't have super flashy blooms.

It does have blooms in the summertime, I mean in the early spring, but they're nestled, you know, more down into the foliage.

They don't stand up on top like some of the newer cultivars do.

- And tell us about the pods.

- Yes, so these are really cool.

You can see, you can see here the seed pods and they kind of shake.

They have the seeds on the inside and so you can shake those.

Kids actually, back in the day, would use those as neat little, fun little toys.

Pop 'em open, got a whole bunch of seeds in there.

They'll grow easily from seed.

That's actually how this little grove spread itself around.

It started with one plant and it's just progressed.

Here's a new one coming on right there in the front.

So Baptisia's a great plant for rain gardens.

This monstrosity right here, this is ironweed.

So you might, a lot of people think this is a weed.

Well, I mean, it's got weed in the name.

So weed all depends on where it's planted and what you wanna use it for, but it loves the moisture.

It towers above us.

It has purple blooms later in this summer, so that's a fun plant.

- And we're sitting here looking at the rain garden now.

We hadn't had rain in a long time.

It's been hot and dry, but you can see the plants are still surviving.

- Oh yeah, they're gorgeous.

So the main differentiation between rain gardens and ball gardens is that these plants, while they do love periods of submersion, they also can thrive in droughty-type environments.

- Yeah, that's obvious.

- They don't require constant moisture and so that's the key.

They can tolerate it, they like it, but they don't require constant moisture.

- Celeste, thank you so much.

- You're welcome.

- That's real good.

- We're just so glad to have y'all out here.

Thanks for coming and visiting.

- We're glad to be here and if the folks are here locally, they can just stop by.

- Oh yeah, gardens are open every day of the week, sun up to sun down.

- All right, thank you much.

- Come on out.

[upbeat country music] Nematodes are soil-borne parasites that feed on plants and reduce their thriftiness.

So if you plant an area with nematodes with say annual plants, they're just not going to reach their full potential and fill out and look really beautiful.

We have struggled with nematodes in our parking lot island beds here at the UT Gardens Jackson for a number of years and have done some things in the past to try to reduce those population numbers unsuccessfully, so this year we're taking a different approach.

We've removed all of the plants, mulched the area, and we're just gonna use this kind of shady spot as a display area for some of our pots that we're growing that have plants that are going through container trials and see if we can lower those nematode population numbers just by not having any plants that they can feed on.

And then there are also some plants that nematodes are discouraged from eating like marigolds.

If you have an area that you know you've got higher nematode populations, you could try planting marigolds and they don't prefer to feed on those plants, so in turn, without a host plant to feed on, you could technically lower population density.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Booker, let's talk about the correct way to cut your lawn 'cause we don't wanna cut it too low, right?

We need the correct height.

So how do we go about doing that?

- Normally we got two types of warm-season grass, Bermuda grass and zoysia grass.

You got cool-season grass, fescue, you got some bluegrass.

We have bluegrass also too.

Those are cool-season grass in there.

For your warm-season grass like your zoysia and Bermuda grass, it wanna be somewhere between 2 1/2 inches tall.

For your cool-season grass like bluegrass, about three inches tall.

Now what you do, Chris, you can come over here adjust your lawnmower right here.

And now see these right here, these here, they will adjust your lawn lower like that.

What you can do, you can get a ruler, put it on the ground right here up to where you want the mower to be at.

I want level surface.

You wanna get a 2 1/2 inches tall or three inches tall, depending on what grass you cut in there.

And today I lowered my lawnmower blade real low.

The cut a spot to show what it looked like if you cut it too low and how that grass can be damaged like that and it will cause problem in that, so I'm gonna cut it real low this time.

You watch how I look and see the difference, okay?

- Okay, I will.

[lawnmower buzzing] Oh, wow.

- Definitely scalped that, look at that.

You can see the difference between the height and the real low there, big difference in there.

So you don't wanna scalp your grass.

I almost see the roots right now.

- You sure can.

- If sun hit that, it can kill that grass.

You can have a lot of brown spots in your lawn and you wonder why.

Why my grass look brown like that?

The roots of the sun right on it, right there on it.

If you keep it at the right height, then it kinda shade it out a little bit.

Protect that grass in there.

- I'll tell you something else too, when you scalp your yard like that, it makes that lawn thin, the weeds can actually outcompete your grasses.

- They like sun too.

- That's right.

- And then you see them weeds, they start popping up.

- So let's say you're out there cutting your yard, right, and you have maybe a little bump or stump used to be there or the ground is depressed for whatever reason and you're scalping it, how would you repair that scalping?

- That happen a lot of time you had a tree there or something like that and the roots will be there, that ground might be low right there.

You cut it to the right height, but the time you get to that spot, the mower drop down and caused it to be brown.

What you need to do, probably get some more top soil, something spread over that area, little sand and try to level that area up some 'cause you keep scalping that over and over again, eventually that grass gonna die there so you wanna get some top soil and try to build that area up.

You don't wanna keep scalping it like that every time.

- Because eventually grass will grow up through it.

- It would go back to that, to catch on through that and everything, but don't adjust your mower for that, just fix the spot.

- Right, right, so your mower's already at the right height, just a little depression, something, you know, stump, you know, rotted and whatever the case may be.

- Right, another thing, when you get the mower to the right height, a lot of times I like to cut my grass in different directions.

You wanna cut it this way this time, next time cut it this way, just like putting fertilizer down in different directions.

- So why the different directions though?

- One of the things, you want that grass to stand up.

When I first started doing that, it was hard to go against your grain.

So normally your grass just laying when you cut it one way.

You get the mower out the garage and you start cutting.

I did that for years and years.

- I've done that.

- Now I cut my grass, I cut it any way I want to 'cause the grass is standing straight up.

That means good for the water can get down to the root system.

The fertilizer can get down to the root system and not run off.

If your grass laying one way, that will hit that grain and then run off.

It's not getting down to the system.

So this time try cutting your grass in different direction.

You will see a big difference in that grass there.

- And you can do that whether it is a warm-season grass or a cool-season grass.

- Another thing that have that blade sharp.

- Oh yes, sir.

- Have that blade sharp.

Normally I sharpen my blade twice during the growing season.

Make sure I got a good clean cut so that grass stand up, you wanna make that grass stand up.

- Let's go back to the blade for a second.

You always used to tell us what, make sure you know how to take it out, right?

- I did that one time.

I took the blade off and the guy said, "How did you blade come off there, this way or that way?"

I mark my blade now so I know I can put it up under there.

Take it off, take the one to the hardware store and get it sharp, in the end put it back on there and you'll see a difference how it cuts.

- Let ask you this, so if you have this grass here, can you go back over that or can you bag that?

Or how would you do that?

- Normally, if you wait for a long time you might wanna bag that or run back across there.

Now the mulching mower, that grass is really good for your lawn.

They do add a little nitrogen to the soil.

You got little kids on there, playing on it, make it kinda little soft a bit.

A lot of folks thought a long time ago that add thatch to your lawn, but that grass is rotting and decaying good organic material.

Good organic material in there.

- One last thing I wanna ask, so is there a certain type of lawnmower that you like to use more than the other or what?

- Well, I got a mulching mower and I also got a bag on there too.

I can bag that grass if I need to, I can mulch it in there.

And when I bag that grass, if you got any kind of disease on your lawn, any kind of fungus on that grass, you wanna bag that.

You don't wanna leave that on there.

You don't wanna leave those clippings on your lawn.

You wanna bag that and put it somewhere, dispose that grass.

You don't wanna use it in your compost pile.

You don't want that disease whatever you're putting around 'cause they stay on there.

You got dead grass, diseased grass, bag it.

- Bag it.

- Bag it.

- Throw it away.

- Throw it away.

- Another question would be this.

So, I mean, when do you like to cut your yard?

Do you wait 'til the dew dries off or what if it just got through raining or, you know.

- I think that's a cool question 'cause a lot of time I see people cutting their grass when it's wet and that is not good for the grass and really not good for your lawnmower either because when that grass wet, that mower taking more power to cut that grass 'cause then you got a mulch mower, it's not gonna be mulched up real good.

You got a bag on there, it's not throwing it back to the bag.

Your grass not, it's not gonna look good when you cut it when it's wet.

I like for my grass to dry.

If I can cut it in the evening time, evening time be fine, long as there's no water on it.

Evening would be a good time to do that.

But you wanna make sure that grass is dry and you don't wanna cut it when it's wet.

'Cause you look under your lawnmower, all that grass done built up under there.

You're really killing your lawnmower life because it's pulling harder and not doing anything, not cutting the grass good and it not gonna look good.

- And plus, like you said, you'd be choking your lawnmower out 'cause that grass, there's a big clump of grass.

It rolls up into a ball sometimes so it could be real difficult.

- People doing that sometimes too.

It's not good.

It's not good on your lawnmower and not good for your grass.

- Usually when I was see they're not cutting it at the right height and then cutting it when it's wet, so it's a double whammy.

- Double whammy to everything in there.

When you're cutting when it's wet, your blade gettin' duller faster too.

So make sure you do it right.

- All right, thank you for that information, Booker.

Appreciate that.

- Enjoy.

- Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] So we're out in the garden, we're looking at this tomato plant.

I think we may have possible tomato hornworm damage.

As you see here, the leaves have been eaten off and something else you can do, you can actually look for the fecal material and guess what?

There's some right there that lets me know a tomato hornworm is near.

And there it is, the tomato hornworm.

As you can see the horn, hence the name tomato hornworm.

It's been doing a lot of damage here.

So this is what we're gonna do.

We're gonna get out the sprayer.

It has Bt product in it.

Javelin and DiPel is what you can use.

Again, the active ingredient is Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis.

Make sure that you spray your tomato plant, get good coverage.

And what happens is the tomato hornworm is gonna eat the foliage.

Once he eats the foliage, it's gonna give him a stomach ache and he's gonna die.

[upbeat country music] All right, this is our Q&A segment, you ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"I have quite a number of these orange Amaryllis, "which used to all burst into bloom about Easter.

"This year only a few flowered.

"I have plenty of foliage which looks healthy.

"Every so often, I would trim them because they multiply so enthusiastically."

I like that.

"I have never given them any special attention "and they have been reliable bloomers for decades.

"I leave them in the ground year round "and this has never seemed to bother them.

"We don't have a real winter here.

"Why don't they bloom as they once did?

Thank you, happy gardening."

This is Brenda from Orlando, Florida.

So Celeste, you're up on this one.

So, they were doing so fine, they were doing so well.

No care, all of a sudden they're not blooming.

- They're just not doing well.

- They're not doing well at all.

- You know, I know that she mentioned that she has thinned in the past, so I mean that is, you know, a potential.

They may just need to have some more space so each of those bulbs can grow individually.

But also I would ask her to look at the shade in that area.

So she said they've been there for years and years.

If she's got trees or large shrubs in that area, they've been growing as well over this period of years.

So maybe they're getting more shade than they used to and so maybe that's affecting their bloom quality.

- I could go with that, I sure could.

- You know, I have a thought, they have to have a dormant period and I wonder if something's changed about the water flow 'cause for us, we have to force them to go dormant and if she's being in Florida, it doesn't get cool, I wonder if something changed about the water or maybe too much nitrogen or something changed.

- Could be too much water, okay.

All right, nitrogen could be an issue as well, crowding could be an issue.

How about nutrients?

Did they have enough nutrients during the post-blooming period?

So that's something else I thought about as well.

- To kinda regenerate.

- Yeah to regenerate it.

- Like make sure that you're leaving the foliage because the foliage is gonna be a natural generator of energy and she's been doing this for years, so I'm sure that she's aware of that, but for the other viewers who might be listening to us today, make sure that they're leaving that foliage and letting it do photosynthesis and refuel that bulb for the next season's bloom.

So just keeping 'em thinned and monitoring the light.

Just keep eye on anything that's changed.

That's what we're trying to identify here, so evaluate all the options.

- All right, sounds good, thank you, Ms. Brenda, thank you for that question.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"What is this on my tupelo tree and what can I do about it?

"When we put the tree in 22 years ago, "it was about eight feet tall.

"Today it is 27 feet tall and seems to be healthy except for this occurring in June the last few years."

This is Mary from West Warwick, Road Island.

So how about her tupelo tree?

We know what that is, don't we, Celeste?

- Yes, I was so excited when I saw that picture, I was like, oh, I know what this is.

I don't even have do any research.

So those are called bladder galls and they're caused by an aerified mite.

They're very, very small.

You're not gonna be able to see these mites with your naked eye, so there is not a lot that we can do as far as control goes, but know that this problem is aesthetic and it's not really hurting the livelihood of that tree.

So if you can tolerate it, just live with it really because it's not causing any adverse effects.

- No help on the tree whatsoever.

- And as those mites, and it's a little confusing, there's tons of different kinds of aerified mites and they can cause lots of different types of galls, like different gall shapes, so we've got bladder galls, we have horn galls, and the list goes on, target spot galls, just all different types.

So if you see something strange happening on a leaf that you've never seen before, you know, delve in and do a little research on that, you may just be dealing with a certain type of aerified mite gall.

- Might just be.

So mites can cause that, also parasitic wasp, you know, something else that can cause those galls, so yeah, they're just unique.

I like the way they look.

They're not too bad.

- They're weird.

Yeah, they're weird.

And also on those tupelos, in addition to the bladder galls, they can also, there's a separate mite that causes the edges to crinkle and I think they call 'em like a crinkle leaf gall or something like that.

So like, those are just a few things that you might see on tupelos.

- All right, so thank you for the question, Ms. Mary, appreciate that.

Don't worry about it, it'll be just fine.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"I love Calibrachoa.

"I got some new plants from the garden center this spring.

"Within a few days after getting them home, "something was eating them and my petunias.

"The blooms and leaves are damaged, "but the plant is not dying.

"I see no larva or eggs on the plants, "but there is a shiny residue-like slug slime.

What could it be and how can I treat it?"

And this is Kelly from Bartlett, Tennessee, so.

- You know, we had a wet spring.

It's dry now, but we had a lot of rain in spring and early summer, which causes slugs and snails to be worse so I have a feeling that's what it could be.

And they're feeding at nighttime, they're not out in the daytime.

You might not see them out in the daytime and Calibrachoa particularly is prone to, I've found here, to snail issues.

Also, if it happens to be in a little bit of shadier situation, I know Calibrachoa is the sun plant, but you might have it where it gets some shade, there'll be worse in that situation.

But it could also be, you mentioned earlier.

- Oh, right, well, you know, when she mentioned the shiny substance, I was just thinking, you know, feeding from soft body insects, like aphids, white flies, things like that, as they feed they'll excrete honeydew.

- And it could even be setting below something dropping the honeydew.

- Good point, maybe they're feeding on crape myrtle and the pot's underneath the crape myrtle, so that's a possibility.

Eventually that honeydew in most cases will develop black sooty mold on it, but in the picture I didn't see any of that.

- I didn't see any either.

- Just that was kind of a tip.

- Snails probably.

- And then she said, what are some tips for controlling?

I've never really had issues with slugs.

- Well, I do at home as well as here occasionally, you know, if they're in pots, often times they'll go under the pot at nighttime, or I'm sorry, in the daytime when they're, they look for hiding places, so eliminate hiding places.

There are slug baits out there.

Just be careful if you've got pets, be sure to use some that are, there are some out there safe for pets, so be sure and monitor for that.

- Iron phosphate is the active ingredient, you know, for those that are safe for pets, iron phosphate.

- And of course you can also pick them off, you know, go out with flashlight.

It's amazing what you can see at night with a flashlight.

- Or a black light.

- Yeah, or a black light, yes, absolutely.

- You just have to know the environments that the snails and slugs like.

Damp, wet and things like that.

All right, so there you go, Kelly, Thank you for that question, we appreciate that.

All right, that was fun.

Thank y'all so much.

- Thanks, those are great questions.

- Yeah, it was fun.

- Had a good time, thank you much.

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 more information on hydrangeas, lawn care 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]