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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Our wooden raised beds   are starting to rot.

Today, we're going to replace   the walls with concrete block.

Also, there are a lot   of gardening myths.

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 Peter Richards.

Peter is our local gardener and Carol Reese will be joining me later.

Alright, Peter, what will we be doing today?

- Well, six or seven years ago   we built these   wooden raised beds.

- Okay.

- And as wood wants   to do, it rotted.

So the advantage   of the wood bed was   that it was much   less expensive, but we're going to go for more permanent solution this time.

- Okay.

- So we're going to do concrete block, also while we're doing that we're going to make the bed a little bit bigger.

- Okay.

- So the boards that are in   it now are eight feet long   and so the actual bed   itself is two times   the width of   the board narrower.

So we're going to expand it out, so the bed is actually four feet by eight feet, since the concrete block gives us a little bit of wiggle room there.

So let's go ahead and   start taking it apart.

- All right, let's   take it apart.

- It's a good idea to water   the bed before you do that,   because that'll help   the dirt all stick   and you'll see it   maintains the wall   and we're just going to   build the wall around   what's already there.

So now that we've got the wood out, you can see the soil we have here and the way that this bed was built, is to help with drainage.

There's a lot of gravel here which we're going to end up reusing.

So these are the blocks we're going to use.

But, as you notice, there are a lot wider than the trench from the wood, so we need to widen this out a little bit.

We're going to lay   out the corners   and then we're gonna   just dig a wider trench.

We're going to reuse   the gravel base,   just for drainage.

If you're doing concrete block   and you don't want this   to be super permanent,   you can skip the gravel layer,   but you do need a flat   surface to work on.

Now we're going to stretch a string around the four posts that we've put in and the reason for this is that we can level the string   and then we know that   for level underneath.

I have a string level,   you hang it on the middle   of the string and then   you can adjust the string   up and down and   see if it's level.

Okay, now I'm showing   that your end is high.

You don't have to have a   string level to do this,   but again you could   just do it with   a regular straight level.

One more time, one more tiny tap, okay, there we are.

- Good.

- Okay snow that tells us that this string from nail to nail is level.

So now we're going to go ahead and do that on..   - The backside?

- On all the other   ones as well.

[light hammering] Stop, there you go, that's good.

Okay, so now that our string is level, we're going to start putting down our blocks and this is the longest and most frustrating part of this whole thing, because this first level has to be flat or level.

Once the first level, the first layer is level then you can just throw blocks on top of it and they're already level, so that's good.

So what we're going to do is here's our first one and just looking at the string, the string has a lot more space down there between the rocks and the string, than it does right here.

So that just means that we're going to have to dig this out and we're going to try and put our first level at the same, so the top of this block is at the top, is at the string.

So we still need to go down a little bit and we may have to dig out here and put some gravel back in.

Okay, let's try this one.

We're getting close.

About an eighth of an inch high.

Now, we're using these concrete blocks, you can use cinder block, you can use any other brick, anything like that just the same idea, you just have to give that first level straight and okay so our block is level or close enough and we're at the top of the string here.

So this first block we're going to say is laid at this point.

So now we move on to the second one.

And, I can see obviously it's tall or it's high, so dig some out and the second block.

Okay, well I'm gonna need some more over here, to level it and the whole thing is high mainly at right here.

Try it again.

Okay, so that one looks good.

Let's see how we're doing here.

It is just a little bit higher than this block here.

It's a little rocking so let's tap it down in a little more, okay that's good.

Now on to the third block.

We put down the gravel   bed, mainly because   it was already there   from the previous one.

You know if you just   have level ground   and you don't want this   to last a long time,   you're willing to come out   and fuss with re-leveling   the blocks every   couple of years, because they might've settled or something like that.

You can just do   this on bare dirt,   but you do need   to make it level.

- Gotcha.

- And you don't want   to have the block   touch the string, 'cause   then it'll push the string   one direction or another.

Also, if you're going   any taller than probably   about a foot to   a foot and a half,   you're going to want to   put it on a gravel base.

Because at that point, if you are out there working in your garden   and the wall fell over,   it could hurt you pretty bad.

Okay, so we've done most of this edge, we're getting close to the corner here, so let's put this block in, this will be the last block facing this direction and check to see if it's level here.

Okay we're pretty good, it seems like we're a little low in the front, so you can do is you can just lift up the corner of the block and kind of just pound some gravel under it, so you don't have to actually take it all the way out.

Okay, so for the corner here what we're going to do, is we're going to start because I don't have enough space here for another full block, I'll just turn it and start the next wall right here.

We'll just continue to level here and whoops, sorry about that and keep going.

Okay so now let's check it.

- Let's see how good you are.

- It's good.

At the corners, you can kind of go like this and get an idea several blocks long.

So, the first row is done that's the hardest part, 'cause once this is all level, now we have to do is just stack the blocks up.

This is easy, so now all we do, is we're just gonna take it, put the block on top, offset it by half and just go around and we just have to go around two more times, we'll be at 12 inches.

So if you want to grab some.

With stacking the   blocks you got to look   'cause the different   blocks that you use   will have a recommended   maximum stacking height.

In this case, they   give 12 inches,   so that's three tall,   that's what we're doing   'cause that's how tall   the beds are anyway.

Others you can go higher,   if you wanna go   higher than that,   you have to start getting   into engineering it.

Most places if you go   higher than three feet,   you actually need to have a   permit and have it inspected,   because there's a lot   of pressure back there.

You know, if you have   a lot of wet soil,   you got thousands of   pounds of pressure   pushing against that wall,   you have to be careful.

Here we have a problem that you might run into and that is that, there is a hole that needs to be filled but it's too big for a block the normal way, so there's a couple of ways you can fix this.

So you could either put a block in sideways like this, which works, you might not like the fact that it's not broken like this face is, or if you want to, you could go ahead and take the rest of the blocks in this, on this side and put a little bit of a gap between them kind of like that.

What you're going to do is pretty much up to you and what you wanna see.

I'm going to go ahead and put it in sideways, if this were a longer side, I might space them out, but since there's only five blocks here, it's going to be big gaps that you're going to have dirt leaking out through.

So you got the last couple, I'll let you do the honors.

- Yeah, let's do it.

- Yup, there you go, now we've got a little bit of gap, so just scoot, scoot the last couple of blocks, and kind of divide that gap between a couple of blocks.

Okay, good we're done with structure.

- Yeah.

- We have to clean up our dirt here   that's around on the grass,   which because we have   that trench for the rocks,   we can just go ahead   and rake it into that.

- Okay.

- That makes that easy   and then we're going to   have to fill the bed,   because we have   some extra space,   so we'll take some compost   and we'll bring it   in and fill it in.

Well, the soil's going to settle.

- Yeah it will definitely settle.

- So we'll have to come back and put some more in to fill back up again.

- Okay, looks good, man.

- Yeah, we'll have to have a Joellen come in and plant the extra space here.

And this is just, this is block right now, the way that the prices are, this is cheaper than wood.

When we built the wood originally, the wood was cheaper that's why we did it.

So you just kind of have to shop around, see what there is.

- Okay.

- Decide how you want to build it.

- Well, it definitely   looks good,   no doubt about that.

Well thank you much.

- Yeah thank you.

[upbeat country music] - In your lawn, you see a lot of different types of weeds in your lawn.

Right here we have some dallisgrass in your lawn.

We see this all the time with Bermuda grass, zoysia grass and a lot people want to know   how to control that   grass in your lawn.

A lot of things you can do,   you can pull it up,   that'd be the best   thing to do.

Get you a moist day when   the soil after the rain,   it'd gonna be easy to   pull this out of the lawn,   but then if not, you wanna   use some kind of chemical to spray on there, some types of herbicides to spray on there.

Quinclorac, NSMA   you can dab it,   you still have some   MSMA it'd be good to use   on this grass here   to control that.

But one of the things   that you might want to do   to sure you read the label   and tell you how much   to spray on here and all this   is based on a healthy turf.

If you have a real good healthy turf, you will see less weeds in your lawn in there.

But one of the thing to do is control this grass here early and before it goes to seed and you'll have less grass in your lawn for next year.

[upbeat country music] - Hi Ms. Carol, I can't wait to hear this okay?

Planting misinformation, okay.

Where do you want to start with that, God, I can't wait.

- Well, I can be pretty vicious sometimes.

I was checking out something recently and the girl behind the counter tried to sell me soil amendments with my plants, there were some old Hollywood junipers and I was like, "Don't believe in 'em!"

I believe in improving soil, but from the top down like Mother Nature does, if you dig a hole they want you to dig a hole and mix the soil amendments in the hole and then plant in there and actually what you're doing is creating a bucket of vastly different textured soil, which is going to fill up with water in wet times, 'cause the tight soil acts like a bucket and it's gonna dry out faster during the dry times.

Plus the roots don't really want to leave that little pampered area.

They're like, oh I don't want to go over in that.

- This is nice.

- I'll stay right here, which means they'll blow over easy and again be a challenge to keep it watered.

So I just rake up the native soil as little as possible to get it in there and also if I do need to improve my soil, in my house, you know I just built a house in 2011, a lot of bulldozer work, so I really don't have a lot of good native soil, so I'm not saying never till in soil amendments, but if you do, do the whole area so that it can continue 'cause tree roots especially, they want to go out sideways, really far, so the more you can help them do that that's good.

They like for you to add like hormones and root stimulators to the hole, that no scientific research has shown that that gives any benefit.

It's just another product that they're trying to sell you over the counter.

- Interesting huh?

- Don't put any fertilizer in that hole.

- I've heard that one too, okay.

- Don't fertilize that plant for the first year.

Woody plants, now annuals and vegetables sure you do, that's a different thing and till in all the stuff you want to, there for that quick response.

But for trees and shrubs, I don't recommend fertilizer for the first year, because you have a challenged plant anyway, it's going through some shock, it's having to get real integrated into that new setting and fertilizers are salty and they draw water from the roots.

So you really don't want to be pushing the envelope with that and trying to give them a little bit more challenge.

People want to do that when a plant is sick too, they like throw some fertilizer on it.

"I tried fertilizing it and it hadn't responded well."

You don't want a whole bunch of rich food when you're sick either, so don't do that to the plant, just nurse it during droughty times, try not to stress it, see if it can recover from whatever is going on.

- Okay.

- Anyway, another is container plants are always better than B&B, 'cause it turns out that container plants have their own set of problems which is root girdling,   which I was not   a big believer in   and now I'm convinced   and now with these   days of looking online   and finding lots   of good images,   that you could find   the coolest pictures   of what circling   routes can do.

They actually wrap   around especially when   they're planting too deep and they will girdle that trunk so severely, that it's just like you put a piece of steel twine or a wire around it and also makes them snap at that point too.

So you gotta be sure if you are planting container plants to get those roots teased out, or saw through them with a serrated saw, or B&B material, which if it's been properly grown, is actually not, you got all those roots are going to be going out into the soil like they're supposed to.

- Let's go back again, so B&B stands for?

- Ball and burlap, you dig up a root ball,   you wrap it burlap.

Another myth was you   could leave it on there, 'cause it'll rot.

- I was about to ask you that.

So what about that one?

- You do not, and you take it off, if it rotted that fast, would you use it?

[laughing] - Right.

- So and also they don't even use real burlap these days, they have some kind of synthetic product that looks like burlap.

You want those roots to get as in touch with that soil as fast you can, take off the cage, take off the burlap, take off the wire, do whatever you can to actually get naked roots in that with the soil where it's going to be growing and water in well, water in deeply.

- Okay, water in well, water in deeply.

- Yes, even if you have a rain, if you have irrigation, that first soaking you need to really get that root ball settled in and so.

We used to hear B&B material could only be planted in the winter when it's dormant, but truth is if it's been well handled, root pruned, wrapped in a good ball, burlapped, there's a lot of good intact roots in that plant right there.

You can certainly plant them year-round, as long as you're willing to water, which is the same thing you had to do with container plants anyway.

So that is another myth.

They also used to tell you be sure you don't let that rootball come apart, keep that soil.

Now they've discovered if you knock all that soil off and plant it and get it into contact with the soil, where it's going to be growing, it'll actually grow up faster than the one that is kept in the original root ball.

- Okay.

- So if somebody finally does if we've got time for more, the idea that raw wood chips are always a bad idea for mulching established plants.

It is a bad idea, if you're tilling it in, a little baby plants, it's going to rob the nitrogen and it can certainly deprive them with the nutrition they need for growth.

But if you're just using raw wood chips to put on the top of the ground, around well-established plants, it does not steal the nitrogen.

- Does not.

- Does not, it's a perfectly good source and a good way to recycle things and help from hauling those kinds of things off to the landfill.

- Okay.

- Talking about fertilizer, people have misconceptions about fertilizer being good for plants and what types of fertilizer?

Number one, most of our soils have plenty of P and K, so you usually don't have to add a lot of that.

You really don't have to fertilize a woody plant at all, you really don't.

We got plenty of nutrition in the soil, the plants out in the woods have done fine without anybody helping them out.

We like to, we like to see that rich growth and push them along a little bit.

People assume manure is always a good idea, it's a good organic source, it breaks down slow.

Some plants don't like manure and we discovered that the hard way because we thought, well we grew up on dairy farm and we switched over to being a blueberry orchard, we'd put manure on everything.

Blueberries don't like manure, it's too alkaline and most of our ornamentals like an acid soil.

Holly's, camellias, azaleas, - Gardenias.

- Yes, they do not like that alkaline soil, so don't make that assumption manure's always a good idea.

- Does manure contain a lot of salt?

- I don't know if it's salt, it's alkaline, yeah different, I wouldn't think it would be a high salt thing at all.

Companion plants you hear, that business all the time.

Companion plants, companion plants, compost tea.

I read somewhere, so why would you think a diluted product from compost would be better than actual compost?

It makes no sense does it?

And they say it cures all ills, you can use it for, you know curing these diseases and that is true, a healthier plant might be able to resist some disease.

I really like people to research, there's some good books out there, the truth about home remedies that you can read, which ones actually work, 'cause some do.

But a lot of the myths about companion plants with plants that repel mosquitoes.

I'll watch them land, I watch a mosquito land right on that citronella leaf.

[laughing] Really?

- Didn't do a thing to it, huh?

- No, but people swear by it, 'cause they didn't have mosquitoes that summer.

Well there was some other reason you didn't have mosquitoes that summer, that had nothing to do with your citronella plants.

- You know, it's what you see on the internet all the time, recommended plants to repel mosquitoes, stuff like that.

- Somebody said put a little mint in your house and the mice will scamper away.

I'm like really?

So yeah, we have to be careful about these things.

If it sounds too good to be true, they probably are.

- It probably is.

Carol that's some good stuff, I've been waiting for that, that's some real good stuff, thank you so much.

- Oh good.

- All right.

[gentle country music] - Okay, it wasn't hard to tell that we had something feeding on our snap beans here.

We've got holes in the leaves and after we did just a very little investigation, we found the culprit.

It's the Mexican bean beetle, right here it's the adult, both the adults and the larvae, create damage on snap beans, butter beans   they're one   of the main pests.

The adult can fly away   and hide from you.

The larvae are little   yellow, woolly critters   and they can't   get away from you.

So they feed on the   little bitty leaves and when the leaves grow, the holes that they create grow also.

One thing about almost any kind of beans, they can tolerate a lot of leaf feeding injury without affecting the yield of the crop.

So you probably don't have to treat right now.

A reason to wait would be the hope that a beneficial insect will come along and eat these Mexican bean beetles and you never build a population, but you do need to keep a very close eye on them and as soon as you start to see the larvae out here, then you would need to treat with a carabryl, bifenthrin,   Zeta-cypermethrin and   gamma-cyhalothrin are four   insecticides that should   take care of this problem.

[gentle country music] - All right so here's our Q & A session.

We have some good questions, ya'll ready?

- Ready.

- All right, here's our first viewer email.

"I have a raised garden   that is approximately   "six feet by ten feet.

"Is there a certain   way to plant veggies   to get more out   of your space?"

This is Renee in   Memphis, Tennessee.

So Peter, 6 feet by 10 feet but she wants to get the most out of that space.

How does she do that?

- Well, there's a couple things you can do.

So one thing that you can do is, you can take anything that needs to climb, so beans, tomatoes, things like that and angle them out away from the bed and so that gives you, that uses space in the air but not over the bed and so then you can get a little bit more in there.

Now the other thing to do, which is probably the better solution long-term is to start doing what's called square foot gardening.

- There you go.

I thought you might mention that.

- Yeah, so what you do is you basically divide your garden   into one foot by   one foot squares.

You can do that with string   or with little pieces of wood,   or you can just imagine it and then you densely plant within each of those one foot by one foot squares.

So for instance, you can put nine green bean plants in one of those squares, or only one tomato plant because it's a larger plant.

Some plants require more than a square foot, so your larger cabbages might require four of those square feet and so if you sit down and draw out on a piece of paper, how you divide out your garden into the square feet and then figure out what you're going to plant in each of those, and you can set it up, so you have spring, summer and fall in each square and then figure out how the plants, for instance if you're going to grow spinach in the spring in this spot, come June or July, that spot's available to grow something else and so by really planning the garden well, you can get at least two crops out of every square, maybe three.

- That works.

Square foot gardening, I would definitely do that.

Do your homework ahead of time though.

- Yeah.

- Yeah get it sketched out pretty good.

- Planning is good, yeah, planning is another thing.

Another thing, you don't wanna put all your tall plant gonna shade your other plants out in there, so you need to have them on the right side and so yeah, but planning is important, like Peter said, planning, you gotta plan how you're gonna do that, so you can get all that growing season out of that plot.

- Right.

And it will do you so much good, but this is a pretty good space, six feet by ten feet.

- Yeah, you can get a lot of produce out of that.

- It's going to get a lot of produce out of that.

So thank you for that question, Renee, good one.

Here's our next viewer email.

"We grow tomatoes and peppers in three raised beds.

"This past autumn, I composted our leaves, "oaks, maples, and one black walnut.

"I also dumped the walnuts and husk into the mix.

"The plan is to add the finished compost to the raised beds "this fall for planting next spring.

"Will all the juglone be   dissipated after one year   "of composting or will it   still hurt my vegetables?

This is Eric   from Pennsylvania.

Great question   here, all right, So we're talking about the juglone one year later after being composted.

- Right, well I did, I've never had to deal with black walnut in compost myself, so I did some research on this.

- Okay.

- And I believe it was University of Pennsylvania.

They said that the juglone is the biggest problem is the roots.

- Right, it's the roots.

- The leaves have a little bit, so you don't want to be taking black walnut leaves and spreading them around your tomato plants, your tomato plants being very sensitive.

But after about six to nine months of composting, including the husks, which are one of the higher places where you find the chemical, the chemical's been broken down.

It's not really a problem, so yeah, if you're going to, if you put it in this last fall and then this coming fall you're going to put it on your beds for planting next spring, that's 18 months, you should be fine.

- It should be fine after 18 months.

- Yeah.

- Yeah so the higher concentrations of juglone is found in the roots, and in the hulls, only little concentrations are found in the leaves.

So it should be okay, Booker think so?

- You put it in that compost pile and heat it up to the right temperature and everything and then you turn it, it should be okay.

I think the juglone should be no problem.

- It has to be fine because, something else too once the toxins, are pretty much reduced, so those toxins are reduced when they're exposed to water and when they're exposed to air and good organic material.

That's going to happen over this time, that we're talking about here.

So I think it'll be fine.

- It'll be fine yeah.

- It'll be fine.

So thank you for that question Eric, it's a good one.

Alright Peter, Booker, that was fun.

Thank you, thank you.

- Enjoyed that.

- 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 joining us.

If you want to see how we built the original wooden raise beds or planted the butterfly garden in the bed we fixed 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]