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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Want to garden in a   very small space?

It's called   square foot gardening,   and today we're going   to learn how to do it.

Also, does your crape   myrtle have bark scale?

We'll show you one   way to take care of it.

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 Tonya Ashworth.

Tonya is our local garden expert, and Mr. D. will be joining us later.

Alright Tonya, it's good to have you here at The Family Plot garden.

- Yeah, thanks so much.

- Oh, no problem.

We're going to talk about square foot gardening.

So the first question is this, what is square foot gardening?

- Well it's my very favorite method of growing vegetables in my own backyard.

And it was popularized by books from Mel Bartholomew.

The idea behind square foot gardening is that it's a raised bed system.

The basic raised bed size is four foot by four foot.

And a square foot garden,   a true square foot   garden always has a   grid laid on top of the   four-by-four foot square bed.

That divides it   into square feet,   so you'll have   16 square feet sections   in a square foot garden bed.

And you can make those grids out of twine and nails,   or little pieces of wood   strips that you lay on top.

- Ok, that was going   to be my next question.

Ok, well what are the benefits of square foot gardening?

- Ok, well here's the reasons why I do it in my yard.

The first one is that it doesn't take up a whole lot of space.

You can grow a lot in a very small back yard.

You don't have to own a tiller or anything like that.

The only thing I've ever used in my square foot beds are my hand trowel.

Very, very little weed pressure, almost no weeds, I rarely ever have to pull a weed.

You use less water because it's a smaller space that you have to water.

And I have dogs in my backyard, so if I had a great big garden, I would have to fence around the whole thing to keep my dogs out,   but it's very, very simple to   fence around to keep dogs or   other critters out of   your square foot beds.

- Good point, good point.

No weeds.

Did I hear you say that?

- Very, very little.

Yes.

- How about that, ok. Now how do we get started with our square foot garden.

- Ok, the first thing that you have to do is build your bed, or now, you can even buy kits to build your square foot bed.

And you want them to be at least six inches deep.

Mine are a little bit deeper than that in my backyard, but six inches is really all that you need.

And then you would first locate that in an area that gets at least six hours of sunshine a day, so full sun is best.

- Full sun is best, ok. - And you know if you don't have a lot of full sun areas in your yard, if it's a concrete patio, you can put this thing right on top of concrete, so, it's great for small spaces.

And then you fill it with whatever you're going to put in your raised beds.

I think in his books Mel Bartholomew has his own mix that he's formulated.

It's like a third vermiculite, a third peat moss, and a third compost, but you don't have to put that if that's not what you have on hand.

If you've got some good compost, or whatever, you can fill that up.

So we're going to modify this barrel to show you an example of how to do a square foot garden.

So we're going to add a little bit of compost to our barrel.

- I think I can handle that Tonya.

- Thank you.

- You just tell me how much.

- Ok. And in my own yard in the spring, I usually will have to top dress with compost to get it back up to the top of my container.

- This is good stuff here.

- Alright, so another thing about square foot gardening is inside of these grids, you're going to plant your plants very close together.

And you don't plant in rows with a square foot garden.

So you'll usually see in planting guidelines, plant your things so many inches apart, and then so many inches between rows.

But we just ignore the row part and you put them on centers.

And so this allows you to be able to plant a lot of things in a small space, like in a square foot.

In one square in your raised bed   you can plant 16 carrots.

- Really?

Wow.

- Or you can plant   one tomato per square,   so that gives you 16 tomatoes   in one four-by-four bed.

Which is highly   intensive planting.

Or you can do one pepper,   or one eggplant per square.

You can also do four   bush beans per square,   or you can do nine   sweet peas per square.

So I know that   sounds like a lot, but I've tried it on my own and it actually works.

So in my one little one foot by one foot square I planted nine sugar sweet peas.

And when they grow up they kind of support each other as they grow, and you don't even hardly need a support system, and there's no weeds because they're out-competing all the weeds.

- Right, I got you, I got you.

- Those are some of the basics, and if you want to do this in your yard, and you're not sure how many plants to put per square, there's some good resources online.

You can go to squarefootgardening.com and watch short video clips on how to set this thing up.

And you can also if you're on Pinterest, you can follow the Square Foot Gardening Foundation and they have charts of samples for how many plants to put in each square, so that's a great resource if you're on Pinterest.

- Pinterest, ok. - So I brought some things with me to show, you could do one tomato plant per square, this is 'Pink Girl'.

- [chuckles] Pink Girl.

- Or one pepper, you could put that.

And then I like to plant from seed sometimes, you could do one okra per square in your garden, or 16 carrot seeds per square, you could plant a whole bunch of carrots.

Also it's good to plant carrots in containers because the soil is usually not as compact, they do better, they're a root vegetable.

Also eggplant, I'm going to try from seed this year, and this is a container variety for a 12-inch pot, so this would be perfect for my space intensive square foot beds.

So I'm just going to go ahead and plant, sorry, this tomato plant in there.

And we probably have, this is probably a little bit more than one square would be in your square foot bed, so I'm going to put it kind of towards the back, and then I'm going to put a parsley in there too.

'Cause I think we've got room.

- It's a good root system on that too.

- Nice, fluffy dirt.

- Alright, looks good.

Now how successful are you with the seeds though, when you're planting your seeds at home in your own square foot garden?

- Well I have three of the four-by-four raised beds, one of them I use strictly as an herb bed, so I have a lot of success with planting things like basil, and parsley, and dill from seed.

I've already got basil and dill seed sprouted up in my own yard in my own square foot bed, and also I've had a lot of success with carrots especially.

And lettuce, lettuce is a great spring crop that you can do.

You just get a nice seed bed and sprinkle out your lettuce seeds, it's fantastic for this type of scheme.

And then let's see, what else have I planted from seed?

My peas, I plant peas from seed.

So you can definitely save money that way.

And that's pretty much all there is to it.

- And I guess it's easy to harvest too, right, you said there's no weeding.

- No weeding.

- Harvesting is going to be easy.

What if you had like pest problems, it would be easy to just come in here and take those off, right?

- Yeah, I mean I've mostly just had aphids that you can easily remove if you catch them in time.

Yeah, the pest problems, very few, and my favorite part is no weeds.

And it's easier on your back too, it's easier on your back than doing it in the ground.

- I'm glad you mentioned that.

- And they're easy, the beds are easy to build.

My husband built mine for me, but I'll tell people that he was outside building my beds, and I was inside cooking dinner, and he got finished first.

- Oh, Daniel's good.

He's good.

[both chuckle] One last question, any disease problems, you know because they're planted fairly close together, so... - Yes, well, for my tomatoes I spray preventative fungicide.

Chlorothalonil is my favorite.

Yeah, so.

- And it works pretty good?

No other problems?

- No.

- Alright, well Tonya we appreciate that demonstration, we can't wait to see what it looks like throughout the summer.

- Yes!

- Thank you much.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, so we're gonna take a look at this watermelon.

As you can see, the bottom of it has blossom-end rot.

And what that pretty much means is that calcium is not moving throughout this plant.

And this is also an indicator of a calcium deficiency.

So, this is the importance of doing the soil test.

You do a soil test, you find out how much calcium is in the soil.

If you need to add calcium, please do that.

But, the major problem with this is, you need more moisture consistency.

You need a more consistent watering regime, which is why it's always good to mulch, because that mulch helps regulate soil moisture.

So, either you're giving it too much water, or you're not giving it enough water.

So, add mulch, and that will help with your moisture control.

You're not going to be able to correct the problem that you have here now, but you will be able to save those other watermelons.

So again, this is blossom-end rot, moisture control and calcium is not moving throughout the plant like it should.

[upbeat country music] Well, here at WKNO we have a problem with our crape myrtles.

Looks like we have the   crape myrtle bark scale.

- That's right, looks like   we got a fungus among us.

[Chris chuckles]   - That's bad.

- So how do you think the   scales got here Mr. D.?

- You know, I don't know, these   were first identified in Texas, is that right, in the United States?

- That's right.

- So there's got to be some windborn activity.

I know the males, we know have wings and can fly.

But the females are secile, they can't move so, they couldn't have come in on their own.

I think we've probably helped them a little bit.

- I think we helped them too, and I think birds may have also brought them over too, what do you think about that?

- Birds, birds.

But transporting plants around.

You know, we probably inadvertantly moved more critters and bad things than we really mean to.

- Right.

- But that would make sense.

- And I'll tell you what, there's some heavy infestations here in Shelby County.

I mean I've gotten calls from Germantown, Bartlett, Midtown, Collierville, so they're pretty much all over the place now.

- In one year, I mean it's a little over a year ago when they discovered them in this area.

- Right, you know, Dr. Harold and Dr. Windham came down last year, they're in Germantown, and saw a couple of cases, but this year, for some reason it's just exploded.

Just multiplied, so they're pretty much all around the area now.

- I wonder how closely they are related to their Asian counterpart.

They're common over across the ocean.

I wonder how close this race is that we have here   is to the Asian variety.

I don't know.

- That's a good   question, I don't know.

But right now we know   they're pretty much specific to the crape myrtles.

Which is a mainstay   pretty much here in the South.

Everybody grows crape myrtles,   so we'll see what happens.

- And it's been a   worry free plant, a plant that we didn't have any pests-- - Pest free.

So this is how we're to treat the crape myrtle bark scale.

This is what we've been telling the home owner to use.

- This is what, imidacloprid?

- It is, that's the active   ingredient, it sure is.

And of course, you know, our   crape myrtle is multi-trunked,   so you have to make sure that   you read and follow the label,   we definitely want   people to do that.

And what we're going to do   is we're going to measure the distance in inches around each tree trunk at about four and a half feet.

We're going to add together, and then we're going to multiply by .75, and that's going to give us the ounces that we add to a gallon of water.

- That's a lot more specific than I...

I don't guess that's that much more specific than a lot of pesticide, but it's kind of a different way of figuring out how much to apply.

- But make sure that you read and follow the label on that.

- That's the law.

- Alright, let's do that.

Alright Mr. D., so we're going to measure four and a half feet up.

- Diameter breast height.

- Alright, then at that level, we're going to measure in diameter the individual trunks.

- All of these.

It looks like we're going to have 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11?

- Eleven.

- Eleven measurements, ok. - Alright we're going to start with the first one.

And you're recording this, right?

- Yep.

That would be five.

Next one is going to be a bit bigger.

And look at all the scales on here though, my gosh.

- It's covered up in sooty mold.

- That's going to be five and a half.

- Ok.

Right there.

- Come up here, bring it through right there.

Six.

- Getting bigger.

- Yeah, getting pretty big.

This one is a small one.

Yeah, there you go.

It's four.

- Ok. - Looks like we're averaging around five.

- Yeah, it looks so.

You want to see if you can get those on that side?

- Yeah.

Trade?

- I'll record that.

- Four point seven-five.

- Ok. - Four and three quarters.

Looks like about three and a half.

- Three and a half.

- Five.

- Ok. - Six.

- Six.

That's a big one.

- Looks like three and a half.

- Ok. - Looks like four and three quarters, 4.75.

- Ok. - And that's 3.75.

Is that it?

- Alright, so that's going to be it.

- Ok, let's figure now.

Calculate.

- We got to do math.

- Oh man.

- Alright Mr. D., we have all the measurements, so what do we have.

- We do, it came up to 51.75 total inches, and we multiply that times .75 and we came out with 38.8.

So we need 38.8 ounces of the product in a gallon of water.

- Ok, sounds good, let's go for it.

- That's a big plant.

- It is.

And we always want people to be safe.

- We do.

Follow the directions.

It's the law.

- Follow the label.

Wear your gloves.

- Get your rubber gloves on.

- Alright, shake it up real good here.

[liquid shaking in container] - And as you see it's a pretty green color.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

- There you go.

It sure is.

- This is also a fertilizer, it's a 2-1-1 fertilizer in here.

- Ok, good deal.

- Alright, so it was 38.8 ounces?

- 38.8.

- Ok, we're going to put that there, and put this into our gallon of water here.

- That's turning green too.

- Yeah, look at that green color, I tell you.

[liquid splashes] Think that's pretty good?

- Ought to do the trick.

Need to stir it up a bit?

- Yeah, stir it up there, make sure we get it into a solution.

[stick scraping bucket] - Oh yeah.

- Do you just put it under the drip line pretty much, or all up-- - The label says get it as close-- - to the trunk?

- to the trunk as you possibly can.

- Ok. - Again, we're following the label.

- That's right.

- As close to the trunk as you possibly can.

- Ok. You got the gloves on.

- Alright Mr. D., I'm going to go ahead and pour this as close to the trunk as we possibly can here.

- Ok. - And I'll just try to go around here.

[water splashing] - It would be nice if they'd start falling off right now.

I don't think it works that way, do you?

- I don't think it works that fast.

And it will tell you on the label that according to the size of the tree it may take a couple of months for it to actually take effect.

And there you have it.

The roots will take   it up systemically.

And then we'll wait a   couple of months or so,   and we'll see what happens.

- Yeah, to be on the safe side,   we better treat the rest of these crape myrtles here, don't you think?

- I think so.

[gentle country music] - If you have shrubs next to your flower beds, and you notice that the shrubs are hanging over the flower bed, you want to cut some of those branches off.

Because this is only going to shade the plants in that bed, and you don't want the shrub to take the sun away from the plants that you're going to plant in the bed.

And when you do cut a shrub away, you gotta find the end of where it's coming out, either from the ground, or from another shoot.

And you cut it at that point.

This one here.

Removing these two branches will not hurt the plant, and it will keep the sun on the flowers in the bed and not shade them with these two branches.

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

- Yes.

- We have some good questions here.

- Uh-huh.

- Alright, so here's our first viewer email.

"Please help me get rid   of this hump in my yard.

"I pulled up an azalea   and now I have a hump.

"I want grass to grow back   over it smoothly with   "the rest of the yard.

What should I do?

Thank you."

And this is from Mona,   right here in Memphis.

So help, she has a   hump in her yard.

- Well, it's time to get out the shovel unfortunately.

- Uh-huh.

- And pull back that grass, and try to level it out as best you can.

- I think that's, yeah.

Shovel is one option.

Two I thought a good rake would be another option.

The third thing... maybe pull out a tiller?

You think.

Just kind of till it in pretty good, and then smooth it out with the rake, and I think that may help.

- Yes.

- But yeah, a hump after pulling out an azalea though.

- Yeah, usually you have a sunk in place, but... - Right.

So shovel, good rake, till it up, smooth it over.

You got a lot of work to do Ms. Mona.

- Yeah.

- Alright, thank you for the question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What is the definition of   the different kinds of soils   "purchased by the bag,   specifically garden soil,   "potting soil, top   soil, raised bed soil?

"All of these have   the same components,   "so how do they differ?

"Also, none of these   have clay as a component.

"Why not?

You would think true   soil would contain clay."

And this is from Chuck.

So we're talking about the old soils in bags that you get from the big box stores, so Tonya, let's look at these individually for a second.

Garden soil, what's in garden soil, do you think?

- Well garden soil is going to be a lot of wood products mixed in, not very much peat, and not as much organic matter as like a potting soil would be.

Garden soil is usually for just to put out into the landscape and not in a container.

You can use garden soil in a raised bed.

- Ok, so you can use it in a raised bed.

Alright, potting soil?

- Potting soil is going to be fluffier and ligher, less compaction, good drainage for your containers.

Usually it will have a lot of peat moss in there, and some vermiculite, and nice loose material.

As far as your topsoil, it usually comes from the top 12 inches of the earth's surface, and there's not going to be a lot of organic matter or anything in there, it's usually the least expensive of all those, the cheapest stuff to use.

You can use that, you can even mix compost in with that to make it a little bit better.

And as far as why-- oh, what was the other?

- Raised bed?

The raised bed soil.

- Raised bed, ok, that's going to be kind of like between potting soil and garden soil.

So maybe not quite as good for containers, but you don't have to buy raised bed soil for your raised bed gardens, you can use the cheaper garden soil, but it's going to be a little bit lighter and fluffier, and maybe a bit less wood product that just plain garden soil.

- Ok. You think you'll get the nutrients needed for plant growth if you use garden soil or raised bed soil?

- Probably not, you might want to wait and do a soil test after a little while, and you may have to add some things, and I would say if you're just dumping out a bag of garden soil it wouldn't hurt to mix in some compost if you've got it.

And was the other one, why is there not clay?

- Yeah, why is there not clay in it?

[chuckles] - Well you know, in soils class they teach you the three components of soil is sand, silt, and clay, so why don't they have clay in the soil.

Well, clay is heavier, it's finer, and it's... doesn't drain very well.

So that's probably why they don't put clay in there.

- Right, it's going to hold a lot of moisture.

Just take the clay in your backyard or front yard for that matter.

But yeah, you're definitely right about those, and yeah, you see these all the time at the big box stores.

Of course, you know, in the bags.

But yeah, you don't want a lot of clay in that.

- Right.

- And I was thinking too, for the raised bed soil, I would think some of that would contain maybe some organic material, wouldn't you think?

Probably has a little sand in it, little organic material.

Maybe it holds nutrients a little better than some of the rest.

The topsoil I use at home, I pretty much use that to fill in holes.

- Yeah, uh-huh.

- If I have little divots, or something in the yard or whatever, I just grab the topsoil and put it in there.

Seems to fit that purpose pretty well.

Alright, so there you have it Mr. Chuck, there's your different kinds of soils.

Thanks for that question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"My trees are dying   from the top down.

"The centers are hollow   and filled with ants.

"Why is this?

Is there anything to kill   the ants on a healthy tree?"

And this is from   Richard in Greenville.

So we talked a little bit about this earlier.

Be good to have a picture so we could see what's wrong with the tree.

- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- But anytime that I see or think about ants being in trees, there's a couple of things that come to mind.

It's usually aphids around, or soft-scales.

And of course we know aphids and soft scales produce honeydew.

Which the ants are attracted to.

So you may have aphids or soft scales.

And the second thing is this, so the tree is already hollow, which means it's decaying.

The ants are probably looking for an opportunity to nest.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah the ants are just a symptom, they're not really the problem.

- They're not going to cause a huge problem.

So I wouldn't personally worry about killing the ants, would you?

- Right.

No.

If you have the soft scale or something, treat that and then the ants should leave.

- Yeah, but since those centers are hollow... Mr. Richard, I would get a certified arborist to come out there and take a look at that.

- Yeah, if they're large, yes.

- Right, because that might be a hazard, potentially.

So I wouldn't worry so much about the ants, I would worry about the hazard.

- Right.

- The tree.

So there you go Mr. Richard, thanks for the question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"We had two, big, beautiful burgandy mums last fall.

"I trimmed them back this past winter when they were dormant.

"One has come back, but the other appears to only "have the front of the plant.

"Literally it's like the whole back half is gone.

Why did half my mum   plant die over the winter?"

And this if from Bethany.

So why do you think the plant died, Tonya?

- Probably too wet, not enough drainage and the roots rotted in that area.

And maybe a fungal thing set up.

In general when you cut back your mums though, you want to leave about six inches from the ground, you leave a little bit of that vegetation, you don't want to cut them back too terribly late because you don't want to risk the frost damage.

So those are some tips, but probably poor drainage.

- Poor drainage, yeah.

Definitely the first thing that came to my mind.

Our winters of course are when it's wet.

So I would always think about rotten roots, you know especially for those mum sitting there.

And a lot of the mums, if you think about it that you get from the big box stores, and some of your nurseries are annuals.

- Mm-hmm.

You can get some garden mums that will come back, but most of them are annuals.

- Yeah, most of them are annuals.

Tonya we're out of time, it was fun.

- Ok. Alright, thanks.

- 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 get more information about growing a square foot garden, or using soil drenches to control scale, go to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We have information on this and hundreds of other topics.

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]