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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Rats, mice and voles are   unwelcome guests in the garden.

Eagles, hawks and owls help   keep them under control.

Also, there are many fencing   options for the garden.

That's just ahead on   The Family Plot:   Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer)   Production funding for   The Family Plot: Gardening in   the Mid-South is provided by:   The WKNO Production Fund,   The WKNO Endowment Fund,   and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Mary Smith.

Ms. Mary is the Backyard Wildlife Center Curator at the Lichterman Nature Center.

And Mr. D. is with us!

- Howdy.

- Thanks for joining us.

- Good to be here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Mary, we like to have you here!

- I like being here.

- Yes, yes, so, raptors!

- Yes.

- Let's talk about raptors a little bit.

- Okay, so when we talk about raptors, we're talking about our hawks, eagles, owls and falcons.

And these birds all have one major thing in common.

Sometimes they're referred to as birds of prey because they're all carnivores, so they're gonna be eating other animals.

But specifically, the characteristics that they all share, which make them great hunters, are gonna be their claws, which in these birds, we call them talons.

This is their most powerful weapon and for most of the birds, it's what they use to catch and kill their prey.

So, not only do they have these sharp nails on them, - They are sharp, man.

- But they're also really powerful feet.

So if you make a fist and squeeze as hard as you can, that's your grip strength.

- Right.

- Okay.

Probably the strongest person you know is about 100 pounds of pressure per square inch.

But these birds, red-tailed hawks, are probably 2 to 300 pounds - Of pressure - (Chris) Wow!

How about that?

- (Mr. D.) Wow.

- But, bald eagles and golden eagles, probably 10 times stronger than the strongest person.

They can do 1000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

- Wow.

- And that's enough pressure to like crush a baseball.

- A baseball, how about that?

- Yeah, so try that home, try crushing the baseball.

- That's why you wear these gloves.

- That's right, that's why we wear these gloves, that's right.

So, but that's just one of their characteristics that make them great hunters.

- Wow.

- The second one is going to be their sharp, curved beak.

- That's cool.

- Okay.

So looking at that curved beak, you know it's a meat eater.

And they use that curved beak to tear their prey into smaller pieces if they need to.

And then lastly, their eyesight.

Most of these birds have really large eyes, they have really good eyesight either seeing things at long distances, or like our owls seeing in really low light.

- Okay.

- So basically, the eyesight, the sharp, curved beak, and the talons are the three characteristics that make a raptor, a raptor.

- Alright, so what raptors can gardeners expect to find right here in the Mid-South?

- Okay, so in the Mid-South, we have a lot of different types of raptors.

And it doesn't matter if you're in an urban environment or a more rural environment.

Because we have raptors in both environments and sometimes the same raptors.

The most common hawks   that we get here   are red-tailed hawks and   red-shouldered hawks.

Then we also have another group of raptors that like to eat other birds, so they're bird-eating birds.

One, your namesake, the Cooper's hawk.

- Ah!

How about that?

- Yeah, one of our   bird-eating birds.

Then we also have falcons, so peregrine falcons,   a lot of people know about   those birds, sometimes   they will nest in big cities.

But we also have things   like the kestrel,   which is a small,   insect-eating raptor.

And things like   Mississippi kites   which are eating   a lot of cicadas.

Those are really fun to watch,   they're really acrobatic.

And of course, we have our eagles, we have our bald eagles, which along the Mississippi,   their populations are   definitely increasing.

- That's good.

- And across the state   of Tennessee and throughout   the Mid-South as well.

- Okay.

- We also have golden   eagles, they're not   as common here in the   Mid-South, but you can sometime   get them in the wintertime   on short distance migration.

And then we have our owls, and we have a number of different owls in the region, too.

And so that basically is just kind of an overview of some of the raptors we have in the Mid-South.

- Okay, now why would we want these raptors in our gardens?

- That's a great question, so one, they're just great to see and to watch, but also they're gonna be helping with rodent populations.

So, some of these raptors are eating things like mice and rats, and voles, which I know a lot of gardeners don't like.

- Yes, yes.

- So voles, and also they're gonna be eating snakes, like we talked about some of them even eating other birds, and most of the time, these animals, these birds, are taking animals that are sick or they're old, and so they're actually helping to control disease in populations, and also just help control, especially rodent populations.

- Wow, which is good.

- Yeah.

- We definitely need that.

- Right.

- So how do we attract these raptors for our gardens?

- So there's a couple ways to attract them and it kind of depends on what sort of habitat you have.

But if you're in a more rural area, there are nest boxes that you can put up for some of our owls, like the great horned owl, or even our smallest owl around here, the screech owl.

They'll readily use nest boxes, but for our hawks that we really want to come and eat some of our rodent populations, one of the best things we can do is not to use rodenticides or pesticides.

Because those pesticides are gonna travel through the food chain, so if a red-tailed hawk sees a rat that's moving really sluggish, that's easy prey.

Unfortunately those pesticides and rodenticides often move into the bird as well and often will kill the bird.

So that's the number one thing we can do to help protect the birds, but we can also provide some good habitat.

So large roosting trees, and nesting trees, I know somebody had a red-tailed hawk in their yard.

- Ah, Mr. D. had one.

- I live in the woods.

- Yeah, and so they are nesting in urban areas, too.

I read a story not too long ago about one of our owls, the barn owl.

Actually, they've nested in Yankee Stadium before.

So they can definitely utilize some of our urban habitats as well.

But if you feed birds, if you maintain feeders for our songbirds, a lot of times they're also going to attract a Cooper's hawk as well.

- Okay.

- So they're not gonna decimate your bird populations, they're just taking birds here and there.

So, that's another way to actually bring in those larger birds of prey, too.

- Wow, that's good stuff, Mary.

So I guess now, we're gonna take a look at the owl.

- Yeah, so we're going to take a look at one of our raptors that we can find here in the Mid-South and look at some of the really interesting characteristics that it has.

- Hi, so we have our friend with us, Mary.

- Yeah, so I brought a barn owl, B-A-R-N. And I always spell that because we have two owls in the Mid-South, a barn owl, like this one,   and a barred owl, B-A-R-R-E-D.

So sound very similar, but   two totally different birds.

And barn owls in the Mid-South, you're gonna find these birds in more rural, open areas, they like fields or meadows, or wetlands to do their hunting.

But definitely a friend to the farmer and the gardener.

These birds love to eat   shrews and other small--   they'll also eat mice   and small mammals,   but they have been   documented a pair of them,   catching like up to   60 mouse-sized rodents   in one night.

- That'll get rid of your voles for you.

- That's right.

- For sure.

So I noticed, Mary, you have your glove on.

- That's right, so like we talked about with raptors, this is an example of one of our raptors, they have really strong and powerful feet.

And so in these talons, especially in barn owls, they have almost needle-like talons, so they can pierce and really hold on to their prey after they catch it.

- Wow.

- You can also see her eyes.

- Yeah.

- So we talked about these birds have really large eyes, and they see pretty well.

Owls, their eyes are actually locked in their head.

So they can't move their eyeballs around like we can, so that's why they have to turn their heads so often.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

And their eyes are so big compared to their body size.

If we had eyes that same size, we would have like baseball size eyes.

- Wow [laughs].

- Yeah, so unfortunately for this one and why she lives at Lichterman Nature Center is because she is an injured animal that can't be released into the wild.

It is against the law to keep these birds or even harass these birds.

- Wow.

- So she came to us because unfortunately, she was hit by a car.

And she is blind.

And cars, unfortunately, are one of the things that decreases their population.

And it has to do with the way they see.

So we have peripheral vision, we can see out of the corners of our eyes, but with these birds, because they have the round eyes, it's more like they have blinders on, so they don't see the cars coming until it's too late.

- Golly.

Man, that's good stuff.

Look, so, how do we protect our pets, you know, from these raptors?

- Okay, that's a great question and we get that question quite a bit.

Now, the one thing you have to remember: if you have a dog that's 20-plus pounds, there's not a raptor out there that can carry off that dog.

- Okay, alright.

- So our largest one is gonna be our great horned owl.

And so, maybe five   or seven pounds is   the maximum that that bird--   - Five to seven, okay.

- And they probably can't   fly off with that, either.

- Okay.

- Now if you have a small dog or kittens, or puppies, the best thing to do is keep an eye on them if you do see raptor activity in your area, whenever they're outside and especially at nighttime because it's our owls actually, that are mainly the culprits of-- - The owls?

- It is, yeah.

The great horned owl is probably the biggest culprit of that.

So, keeping your smaller dogs and cats inside at night.

- So watch over them at night for sure.

- Yeah, but most of the time, these birds get blamed for stuff like that but they're-- you know, a red-tailed hawk is taking something squirrel and chipmunk size, maybe a pound.

- Okay.

- These birds are really deceiving.

This bird might look like it weighs 20-plus pounds, it weights between half a pound to a pound and a half.

And so, if you think back to like elementary school, birds have hollow bones and feathers, so those don't weigh a lot.

And then their bodies are actually pretty small.

See if she'll let me do this, so if you can see how deep of feathers she has.

So right now is when I'm touching her body, so she's like a finger deep of just feathers.

So actually pretty light bird, so they're not gonna be able to take something that's five pounds that's five times their as much as they weigh.

- How about that?

Mary, great lesson.

We appreciate that, always learn a lot from you when you're here, so thank you.

- Thanks for having us!

- And thank you too, baby.

Thank you!

[upbeat country music] Scarification.

- Yeah, yeah.

That's one that we hear sometimes in reference to seeds.

There's scarification, and there's stratification.

Scarification is   a way to weaken, open   or abrase a hard seed coat,   because some of our seeds   will not germinate,   because for a length of time   until that seed coat   degrades in some way.

Now, if your a gardener, you can hasten that be scarification.

And, mainly the way we do it is mechanical.

You can take a file, you can take a knife, but what you're doing is you're just scraping or abrasing that seed coat to weaken it so that moisture can get in there and it can germinate.

And that's scarification.

You can also do it chemically, you know, with sulphuric acid and things like that.

But, I wouldn't recommend that for the home gardener.

[laughs] - Yeah, I don't know about the home folks, right.

- But I have definitely, you know, like beans bean seed is an example, canna seeds, morning glory family seeds, nasturtium, anything that's got a hard seed coat would benefit by scarification.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Mr. D., let's talk about the kinds of fencing.

Where would you like to start with that?

- Well, first you need try to determine what you're trying to keep out.

- Okay.

- Or keep in.

- Okay, yeah.

- Whatever the case might be.

But, you know, here in the Mid-South, probably the main critters that folks wanna keep out of their garden or landscape are deer-- - Yes.

- maybe rabbits, if they have vegetable gardens, maybe raccoons, because they can create a lot of problems around the house.

And you need different kinds of fences for all of these critters.

And probably there's no one fence that would work for all of them, with maybe one exception.

- Uh-oh.. - No, wouldn't work, the raccoons would get through.. - Okay [laughs].

- What I was thinking:   a privacy fence,   like a lot of folks   have a solid, wooden   privacy fence.

That would probably might work for deer simply because they can't see on the other side of it.

- I see where you're goin'.

- If it's, you know, tight enough where they can't see through there, you have overlapping wood or lapping wood, because even though there may be something on the other side that smells real good, like a vegetable garden or something like that, they tend to, since they can't see what's over there, maybe they're thinking that there may be something dangerous over there, so they don't tend to jump the solid wooden fences, even though they're shorter than-- I mean they could easily jump a six-foot wooden fence.

Deer can jump between eight and nine feet high.

And they can jump probably, 15, 20, sometimes 25 feet long.

- Wow.

- That wide of spread.

Now, they can't jump eight or nine feet high and 15 or 20 feet wide, they can't do that.

[laughter] They can either jump high or they can jump long.

So, a wooden fence, a solid wooden fence, in a landscape situation, might do a pretty good job of keeping out deer.

Rabbits can burrow under a wooden fence, so a combination of the wooden fence with a woven wire or expanded wire sunk down from three to six inches into the ground, buried three to six inches in the ground, that combination would keep deer and rabbits out.

And it would probably protect your garden.

- Okay.

- It wouldn't be cheap, it'd be pretty expensive, but that would probably be the trick for ya.

- A lot of work, too.

- Now the raccoons could climb that.

They would scramble up the top of that, you know, six foot wooden fence and jump over, so that would take care of deer and rabbit.

That's pretty expensive.

If you have a large garden or if you don't wanna spend that much money, a real tall, either metal or poly.

They have poly   deer fencing that   you can make eight   to nine feet tall.

They would need to be at   least eight feet tall.

That would keep   most the deer out.

- Most.

- But again, that's very expensive, because you gotta put post and you gotta do all that.

And the posts have to be fairly close with that metal fence or a poly fence.

Now, a cheaper alternative, and this is one that we use out in Agri Center and I even have to use it for the first time up at Murray State this year to keep rabbits and raccoons out of some of our plots, is electric fences.

- Okay.

- You can go to a farm supply store or probably any of the hardware stores have fairly cheap just wire.

It's a real thin wire, and you can use plastic fence post that you push into the ground that are only like 30 inches tall.

If you do that, for deer you need at least two strands, in my opinion.

The top strand,   about 30 inches tall.

The lower strand,   about 15 inches tall.

The lower strand will   keep the little deer out,   the fawns out, and the   bigger strand will,   I mean the deer's   gonna walk up there   and stick their   nose to it probably, and it does a pretty good job, especially if you lean it out at about a 45 degree angle.

And that's what we do at Agri Center and it pretty much keeps most the deer out of our plots out there.

Now, you might get by with one strand about 30 inches tall, that would keep the big deer out, but the problem that I've seen with just one strand is that the fawns will walk underneath it and then the mother's gonna blow through there if she needs to, she's gonna tear your fence all to pieces.

- Now what about the raccoons, though?

- Well, the raccoons, the electric fence works most of the time for raccoons.

You'd need a shorter fence, it needs to be,   ideally two strands, one about   six inches off the ground   and 1 about 12   inches off the ground.

- Okay.

- I've had success, we had some success, we kept raccoons out of sweet corn up at Murray State this year, with one strand, at about 12 inches off ground.

And it kept them out.

And this is a planting where last year we had a 100 percent loss-- - Wow.

- Of sweet corn.

They ate every bit of it.

[laughter] And this year, as soon as we took the fence down, we took the fence down during harvest, when we started harvesting it, and of course the harvest lasted a week or so.

And as soon as we took the fence down, it was like, they were coming in and we were gettin' some and they were gettin' some, we were gettin' some, they were gettin' some, but I think we out-harvested them.

But electric fences work really well.

And you might not have a power source, - Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

- Handy, like we don't have a power source at Agri Center or at Murray, so we used the solar powered chargers.

- Okay.

And you can buy   those at any place   that sells fencing materials.

And they're fairly inexpensive and you have to charge them first, you know, connect the batteries and then charge them for like 24 hours before you hook it up to the fence.

If you do that, pretty good little shock.

If you don't believe me, grab a hold of it.

- There's times you're gonna find out.

How do you maintain those electric fences, though?

Of course, you have to keep the grass growing up around it - Well, the new generation chargers will shock through grass.

- Oh, how about that?

- The chargers will, many of them will say that they'll shock 10 miles of fence.

But it's better to keep the grass, and what we did was we used herbicides.

- Okay.

- We just spray it, herbicide, Roundup, under the electric fence, you can weed eat.

- Right.

- But don't worry if you get some grass that gets up in it a little bit, it's still gonna shock right through there, it'll shock right through there.

So they have been really improved the past few years.

And you can, if it happens to be in your backyard, you don't have to buy a charger, I mean you don't have to buy a solar charger, they have chargers that you just plug into a 110 outlet.

And they'll do the trick too, and that's really probably better.

You have a lot of cloudy days, sometimes your solar power charger can get weak on you.

[acoustic guitar music] But, it's the cheapest route to go, is with an electric fence.

- Alright, I appreciate that, Mr. D., that's good stuff.

Be careful when putting up that electric fence, though.

- That's right.

- You be careful.

[gentle country music] - This is a goldenrain tree that we rescued from a nursery two years ago.

It was stuck in a container,   and the all the roots   were growing in a circle.

Down here at the bottom, since I did mention the girdling roots, but what I'm more concerned about is all the roots that are growing on the surface that could be exposed to, like drying out or freezing and desiccating.

So, we're gonna apply some more mulch on this later today.

But, what I want to do right now is I wanna try to loosen up some of this soil with this trowel and sever some of these roots that are trying to grow on top of the ground, and try to encourage this tree to produce more roots down lower.

So, I'm gonna take, and just very easily slice through the soil, vertically, away from the tree.

And, I think, what we're gonna do is encourage more feeder root growth further out.

Now, we don't want to go this way because it'll be just like transplanting the tree again.

That's why I went away from the tree like so.

This tree is doing good so far.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, here's our Q & A segment.

Mary, you jump in and help us out, alright?

- Alright.

- Alright, here's our first viewer email.

"I'm not going to be growing   "in my garden for one year.

"What cover crop should   I use in the winter   and the summer?"

Winter and the summer,   this is from Hal.

So, thinking right.

Thinking along the right lines, but he wants this for the winter and the summer.

- Winter is very, very common.

- Yes.

- A lot of folks would want cover crops in the wintertime.

I've got a list of them and I think I went to Oregon State University and got what they recommend.

- And this is their extension site.

- And a lot of the plants, you're gonna recognize.

Alfalfa, that's a winter.

Alfalfa, you can also   plant in the spring.

Austrian Field Peas would   be for the wintertime,   plant those in the fall.

Barley, you can plant barley   in either the fall or the   spring and it will grow.

Buckwheat, this is   spring and summer one,   so that would be one that   you would plant for summer.

Fava beans.

I'm not really   familiar with Fava Beans   but you can plant   them in early spring   and late summer so they   would work as a legume   and they would   work in the summer.

Garden peas, I'd be   wanting to eat those.

- (Chris)   Right?

[laughs]   - That's a cover crop   that you could eat.

Again, they're a winter   cover crop, so there you are,   plant you some garden   peas and you can   have a cover crop and a food.

Oats, spring and fall.

Annual rye would be   planted in fall time   and that would be good   winter cover crop.

Hairy vetch.

- I know about that one,   that's big time here.

- That's a good fall   one for winter cover.

And then wheat.

- (Chris)   Wheat.

- (Mr. D.)   Wheat, which you can plant   in fall for a   winter cover crop.

So, there you are!

- That's a good list.

But the vetch is something I know a lot of folks will do and till it under, of course.

- Yeah, and that's what they're recommending with all of these, is actually till them under.

They're not recommending them-- I guess you could no till them.

Go in there and burn them down.

- That's interesting, I didn't think about that.

Alright, there you have it Mr. Hal, thank you for the question.

Here's our next viewer email:   "What is this plant?

"I think it's a weed that   "I inadvertently   introduced into my garden.

"It grows from spring to frost.

"It's about a foot tall   with a dinky, fuzzy flower.

Thank you."

and this is   Ms. Victoria from Memphis.

I looked at that.

If you look at those leaves,   and you look at the, she   called the dinky, fuzzy flower,   I think it's mulberry weed.

- Could be, I don't have a clue.

- Because it starts off in a cluster, like that.

- Probably what it is.

- Right in the crotch-- Yeah, so I kept looking at that, and looking at the leaves, down low.

It's mulberry weed,   that's what I think   that is, Ms. Victoria.

If that's the case, that   weed is tough to control,   because it produces   a lot of seed.

Do you know about   mulberry weed, Mary?

- I do.

- Tell us a little bit about it, huh?

- Yeah, so you'll start finding it everywhere.

It's very prolific.

- Very prolific, it starts developing seeds very young, in his life stage.

It's a lot of seeds.

- (Mr. D.)   One of those invasives.

- Oh man, it can cause   a lot of problems.

Pretty much came up with   the ornamental plantings.

You used to see it a   lot in flower pots.

- (Mr. D.)   We have introduced   so many bad plants   into this country.

- So Ms. Victoria, yeah, I think that's what that is, mulberry weed.

So, it will produce a lot of weeds and it looks like, yeah it's a foot tall, yeah, it's already produced a weed seeds.

- I'd pull those.

- Yeah, do be careful with that and get rid of that, okay?

Here's our next viewer email: "We like Blue Lake green beans.

"We planted the bush variety and it did well this year.

"We want to consider planting the pole version, next year.

"Are there any differences   between bush and pole beans   we should prepare for?"

- (Mr. D.)   You need a trellis.

- You'll need a trellis,   that's for sure.

That thing is gonna climb.

- It'll climb and you probably will have more beans.

Because they'll continue and they'll, the harvest, you can spread the harvest out and you can produce more per square foot than with the bush type.

- 'Cause the bush type is pretty much all at one time, isn't it?

- Pretty much, they get ripe all at once and you harvest them, and you're done.

But the pole bean, it's just kind of spread out over a length of time, but, pretty much it.

But you need a pretty good trellis system.

One that can withstand summer thunderstorms and rain, and things like that.

- And a little weight.

- A little weight.

- Little weight.

So there you have it, Mr.

Guy here.

They're both good, though.

Don't you think so, Mary?

- Yes.

- Pole beans are good, too, as well.

Alright, Mr. D., Mary, we're out of time, it's fun as usual.

- As always.

- 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.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]