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

I'm Chris Cooper.

It's summer and the   garden is growing,   but there are a few common   problems you might encounter.

Also, bring the outside inside   with a greenery arrangement   from your 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 Dr. Natalie Bumgarner.

Natalie is a Residential Consumer Horticulture Specialist with UT Extension and Mary Heim will be joining me later.

All right, Doc, it's always good to see you.

- Yes, you too.

- Always good to have you here.

- It's great to be here, talking vegetables.

- Talking vegetables, and guess what we're gonna talk about?

Five common problems of vegetables.

- Yeah and I took a little walk in the trial plot the other evening.

I brought a few samples with me.

- Okay, so where do you want to start?

- Well, I would say let's begin with tomatoes.

We know king of the garden, right?

Everybody's favorite crop to grow and probably, maybe the most common question that we get has to do with leaf diseases on tomatoes.

- You'd be exactly right.

- Yeah.

And so I brought a sample here that most likely, we never say a hundred percent, right?

You know, we don't have a lot of samples, but most likely is an example of some early blight.

And so you can kind of see, we look and we, we come in on a bullseye pattern.

And so of course there are times when it may be, you know, on the tips of leaves, we may have a little bit more damage.

I actually sometimes see early blight even look a little bit different, you know, on some of my different cultivars, but I think that this is probably the most characteristic pattern.

- Yeah.

I think it's perfect.

I think it's perfect.

- So alternaria fungus, and we can address it in, well we need to address it in a variety of ways, right?

- Okay.

- So, one of the things that I do a lot in my trials is actually grow some of the newer early blight resistant tomato cultivars.

And when I say resistant,   I don't mean bulletproof   a hundred percent,   but they can get you a little   bit further in the season.

Some of those have   early blights,   Some of them   also have septoria,   which is another very   similar leaf disease,   which sometimes we may actuall   see on the same leaf...   - Yes I have.

- Yeah, at the same   time, so if you,   if you like a determinant   tomato, a medium-size slicer, we have some good options there.

If you're favorite selections are more beefsteak or heirloom, we don't have as many resistant options for early blight.

- Right - So your best option there is going to be good, preventative sprays.

But first, I would probably actually say probably sanitation.

- Yeah.

I would.

Pick up those diseased leaves, yes.

I would start with that for sure.

- Yeah.

So, um, rotation.

- Rotation, crop rotation is always good.

- Yeah.

And so, you know, a couple, three years rotation, of course, ideally we might say four, but at least get those away for a couple of years.

And then, one thing that I try to do as much as time allows is actually in-season sanitation.

So we know that early   blight spreads by, say,   last year's leaves   and you know,   some residual inoculum   bouncing up from the soil.

But when we get to this   stage of the season, it's very possible that a lot of the spread that's occurring is actually spreading within our canopy.

And so, I know this sounds like a lot of fun, but I actually go through and clip off diseased leaves to the best of the ability, especially in that June period when there's not very much infection and a little bit of sanitation can hold it down.

- Okay.

And preventative sprays.

- Okay, yeah, preventative sprays.

Okay.

- So it bounces back and forth between some organic options.

Sometimes I'll use a biological product, Serenade   or something like that.

I use Daconil quite a   bit, Copper as an option.

- Okay.

So those are good options.

All right.

So what's the next leaf we're going to talk about, right?

The next disease?

- Rolling down.

Well, I'll bounce to the other tomato example here.

And if you, now, ignore the wilt.

- I've seen that before.

- Right, yeah.

So we're looking at the distinct lack of... - Yeah, what happened to the leaves?

- Yeah, lack of vegetation.

And so the little critter that does this, I actually, I spared his life just for an example today.

So, this is the always formidable in the garden, tobacco horn worm, but they are voracious leaf feeders.

And so, it actually takes a little bit of work to spot them.

So they'll hang underneath the leaf like that.

But most of the time, my, you know, my scouting in the plot is kind of looking for these chewed off leaves.

And it's amazing how fast just a few caterpillars can, can do damage.

And so there are some great biological options, Bt.

- Yeah, Bt.

- That is ingestion.

So they, you know, they   need to consume it.

And really, as soon as   they consume that material,   they will stop feeding.

They might not immediately die, but they will stop feeding very soon.

So, once we get in the middle of summer, you know, just getting that reapplied enough so that there's always some there for, for them to consume.

- Okay.

- And it totally messes with their digestive system, - Yeah, we don't want those things around.

- Tears them up.

Yeah.

- All right.

So let's go to the next.

- Oh, yes, the last tomato, I guess I did bring 60% of the issues were in fact tomato, which may actually be fairly representative.

- Yeah, 'cause everybody grows tomatoes for the most part.

So that's fine.

- So this is, maybe, our most common physiological, not actually, pathogen problem, blossom end rot.

- Blossom end rot.

- Right.

And, and if we were to list all of the things that are put up as cure all solutions to blossom end rot, we'd probably be here for a while, but the, the geeky definition is quite a localized calcium deficiency, - Yes [laughing] - which leads people to want to immediately fertilize with calcium.

- With calcium, of course.

And of course, I'm sure you heard all the home remedies.

- Yeah.

- The calcium tablets and things like that.

- Yeah.

Tums right?

- Tums, Rolaids, yeah I've heard all that.

- So really what this is, and to a certain extent, physiologists are still kind of arguing a little bit about some of the mechanisms is the calcium deficiency a cause or is it effect?

But what it really is, is the plant not really balancing its uptake and movement of water that has dissolved calcium, with the leaves and the fruit.

So lots of times, we'll see this happen early in the season when there's both rapid vegetative growth and a whole lot of fruit set, because if you're a tomato plant and you're competing for water, the leaves are gonna out-compete the fruit.

And so there'll be more transpirational demand moving through those leaves than through the fruit.

And so some of these young cells that are just developing may be deprived of calcium.

- That's a good way to think about that.

Okay.

- So, so it's kind of a competitive issue.

There are some times when it truly may be a soil issue.

I don't mean to say that that never happens, but we want to do good soil tests before, because if we're in the middle of the season, we're not going to adequately address our soil issue.

But, very often it's an environmental issue.

And so the best thing we can do is even, moderate moisture, good mulching.

- Good mulching, right, helps.

- And a little bit of patience.

- A little bit of patience.

All right.

Good deal.

So what are we going to move to now?

- Well, I guess, I guess we can talk pepper.

We're in the, we're still in the same family.

And so, you know, we give a little bit of a similar disclaimer in the sense that we haven't put these under a scope, but we look at, we look at leaves like this and we think bacterial spot.

- I do, yeah.

Anytime I see those, what, yellow halos that are there that's the first thing I think about.

- So we see some of the yellowing around the leaf, we see kind of a light center and it tends to be one of the most common things we'll see on peppers.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So I can say that I had done a little bit of, hopefully, preventative for the younger leaves, copper spray on these plants.

So, there are some sprays that we can use.

Overall, we try to not get into bacterial spot bacterial leaf spot in the first place.

There are several resistant   cultivars on the market now,   especially when we talk   about the bell peppers,   Alliance I grow a   lot, Revolution,   even some of our favorite,   newer like, All-American   selections when... Emerald fire   which is a jalapeno, some of   the, some of the sweet bananas   So, there are some   resistant cultivars and   as a bacterial disease,   it can be spread by seeds.

And so, when transplants are young in the greenhouse, a lot of overhead watering going on, a lot of splashing.

So being picky when we buy our transplants is another way to kind of avoid it out of the gate.

- All right.

Good deal.

So, our last sample that we have here is?

- Last, but, well, maybe least he is, he is a sad, sad guy.

- That is sad, that is sad.

- So maybe the most common leaf disease that we see on our cucurbit family: powdery mildew.

- Powdery mildew.

- And, and we have it on the top, we have it on the bottom of the leaf and he's going to be a detriment in a couple of ways.

So, he is of course, pulling nutrients from the leaf.

So, he's essentially parasitic at this point in time.

But with this level, he's also kind of interfering with the ability of the plant to, you know... - Yes, the photosynthetic process.

- Yeah, yeah, and cucurbits really like their leaf area.

So, I will readily admit that at this point in time, we're not going to get a lot of control of this leaf, but I've put a preventative fungicide on the plants to try to protect the younger leaves.

There are some cucumber, there are several pumpkin cultivars that have, butternut squash, some powdery mildew resistance.

But what's interesting about powdery mildew is oftentimes, we may see it more on the edges of the season than the main season.

It is not a hot, hot weather pathogen.

I actually see it more, well we see it in our zinnias.

- Yeah, all the time, yeah.

- We see it in a lot.

Yeah.

In a lot of our flower beds.

Now, it doesn't require free water to sporulate like many other leaf fungal diseases, but, but you can tell it's reproducing pretty well.

That high humidity will... - Yes.

And, and crowding too, you know, could be an issue.

You want to make sure you get a good air circulation.

- Yeah - Right.

So it can dry off.

Good deal, Natalie.

We appreciate that good information and these nice samples from your trial gardens.

So thank you much.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

So what we're looking at here on this squash plant would be evidence of squash vine borer.

Parts of the plant, maybe the entire plant, will be collapsed and you'll see it wilting like we're seeing right here.

And, so it's important that we scout for, for this borer.

They lay their eggs right at the base of each of the stalks, where the stalks come off of the vine.

And when those eggs hatch,   they burrow right into   the center of that vine.

And this is a bit of what active feeding would look like.

This is called frass, what's left behind after they chew through those vines   that disrupts the vascular   system, and we end up with wilt   and there's nothing   we can really do for the parts that are already affected.

But, if you have vines on the plant that aren't affected yet, you could put some perspectives insecticidal sprays on there   using insecticidal soap.

You could try horticultural   oil, carbaryl, bifenthrin.

So lots of options   for control.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Ms. Mary.

We got some beautiful flowers on the table.

What are we going to do?

- We're gonna talk about plants that you can grow, either house plants are outside plants, that would supplement your flower arrangements.

These are things that I like to grow.

And I had to learn this by trial and error because when I started, when I started doing flower arranging, when you go to like Kroger or something, they'll give you those little scrawny things that are [laughing] the greenery, the fern, you know, it's just, it's just not anything real... real great.

So, these kinds of plants you can use and make a green arrangement, totally green, or you could put them as a supplement to your flowers.

- Are they easy to grow?

- Yeah.

Most of them are shade plants, outside shade.

A lot of them are house plants that always put outside in the summer, put them on a north porch.

- Okay.

- You want me to get started?

- Let's go ahead and get started.

- What I thought I'd do was take each one and then I'll place it in, in a, this is a container with wet foam.

You use wet foam for fresh flowers and it's, it's different from dry foam.

Wet foam you soak, you get it wet, and then your flowers will stay fresh for, you know, a week or more.

I'm going to start with an Alocasia.

- Those are beautiful leaves.

- This is a beautiful plant.

It's very interesting.

It's very strong and, and kind of upright and stubborn.

You can also cut   these in a design.

Now, some of them I'm   going to face to the side.

I might do a L-shaped flower arrangement.

- So do you already have this in your mind when you're arranging flowers?

- No.

- Okay, so just whatever comes.

- Yeah, I just go with it.

This is Aspidistra.

They come in many varieties.

You can, there...   some of them are thin.

I liked the speckled ones.

- Okay.

- And it it's a very straight   flower and it would be a good line flower, meaning, you know, it sets your stage for the other things that'll go around it.

- Okay.

- So it's called, like, a line flower.

Another thing you can do with this, is, I have put a wire, taped it on the back.

I used a, I think it's probably a 10-gauge wire.

It's a little, little tough, but it bends very easily.

And I just taped it with some clear foil tape.

- Hmmm.

- And then you can bend it whichever way you want to.

If you want your arrangement to do something different or move in a different way, you can do it like that.

- How about that?

- And you can also curl it and split it.

Here, I've put it.

[laughing] I put it, put the end of this, pulled it down and pierced it with the, with the very end of the plant.

And I cut it with a knife and split it up.

So now it looks like a whole different plant.

- Yeah, it looks totally different.

- Um hmm.

Now this is, a course, it's a Caladium.

I like to kind of nest them   inside each other, small, large to small.

And then you have a slight grouping of them and they'll look good to add, or just add them to your, to your flower arrangement on the sides, let them hang down the side.

And actually it's called breaking the lip of your container.

- Breaking the lip?

- Um hmm.

- Never heard of that.

- This is your lip.

- Okay.

Breaking the lip.

- And this is a Fatsia.

- Yeah   - These are nice pressed or   spray painted different colors.

But if, if your flower will go down like this, then you're breaking the lip of it.

- Okay.

- I like these.

This is called a leopard plant.

They come in variegated   variety also,   and they get very large.

Now, this is Equisetum.

It's a good line material also.

And what I've done with this one, is inserted a wire down here, and then you can bend it 'cause the wire's in there, you can bend it every which way you want to, and it will stay.

I put the wire down, then I use the clear tape again.

- Is it easier to get the wire through there?

- Yeah, it is, 'cause this is, yeah, this does has little resistance, some, but yeah, it's certainly not got not like a bamboo, you know?

It's easy enough to do and, and you can have all kinds of shapes to it, do multiple ones, have some come and you know, make a make a design out of that.

Of course, the mother-in-law's tongue.

- Ah, the mother-in-law's tongue.

- Yeah.

I like these because   they can be very colorful.

And they're a good line plant, also.

Of course you put probably multiple ones, the stronger line you wanted.

This one is pretty thin.

- Okay.

- Solomon's seal.

- Yeah, I like that.

- It's great.

And, and you see, you know,   it bends and makes a nice   flow to your, to your design.

Certainly could put it one on each side of your pot, of your flowers, your vase.

- I can tell you've done this a lot.

'Cause you're just grabbing, you know, different foliage.

This can bend, this can do this, you know.

Okay.

- You can get a feel for it after a while.

- Okay.

- Now, every yard should have some grasses, especially this time of year.

- Um hmm.

Beautiful this time of year.

- They are great to use in arrangements.

Usually group them.

This is zebra grass, fountain grass, and you could rubber band them together or wire them together and use them en mass.

- Look at that.

- Yeah.

You know, it just gives this lovely flow to it.

Another thing that I love is this papyrus.

- I love the leaves.

- Yeah.

See, and you   can, when you pick them,   they'll have various   stages of opening up and you could stage them that way in your arrangement.

- Gotcha.

Your arrangement is really coming to life.

- Sometimes it'll turn out really well and that's all you need, don't even need the flowers.

And then you have a smaller one that's just, just opening up with, in the various colors of green and green on green is pretty to me.

- And while you're grabbing that, let's talk about your tools.

Good sharp tools?

- Yeah.

These are nice.

These are sharp, very sharp scissors.

And the stronger stems are, you need a heavier, heavier one.

- All right.

- This is a form of Philodendron.

It's called Burgundy.

Look, has different color on each side.

- Yeah, look at the stem though.

Golly.

- And so you could use, you know,   one side and then the   other side and it, and it, it makes a nice background for something.

I like the, we need some ferns, some kind of ferns, some of 'em condition better which means you would cut your flowers, make a clean angular, cut, put it in water, sometimes I put alum in there.

It's a spice for pickling.

- That works?

- Yeah, yeah, especially hydrangeas.

It really keep your hydrangeas.

- I didn't know that before, alright.

- And I learned that from Rick Pudwell at a - Okay, yeah you learn so much.

- Botanic.

Yeah, just hanging around there.

Now, this is just an autumn fern.

It stays well, it stays conditioned quite well.

And then this, the Kimberley Queen is those huge ones that you see on French porches, and it will last a long time.

So, not all ferns are going to stay fresh a long time, but some, some will, I'm going to make him lean that way.

- Well, listen, Mary, while you're doing that, we do appreciate this fine arrangement demonstration.

This is nice.

It's really come to life though.

- Yeah.

- Don't ya think?

- Yeah.

It's a little jungle.

- It's a little jungle, all from your yard, all from your garden.

- How about that?

Thank you much.

Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

[gentle country music] - We're here in the garden with one of the staple crops of the Mid-South garden, and that is the beautiful okra plant.

We have a few blooms here that are just past, gorgeous bloom, but I think one of the most important and sometimes misunderstood elements in growing okra is when exactly do we need to harvest these fruit?

Oftentimes, what we'll say is when they're two to three inches long.

And so, we have a good example here of a growing fruit here that is of course too small, too small.

This could actually be a really nice size, tender for harvesting pretty quickly.

They will get a little bit larger than would be ideal.

They might get a little bit tougher.

We can see, here's a little bit too large for harvest.

Some other larger fruit back there.

It's important to keep a close eye on the fruit so that you pick at just the right interval to keep them young and tender.

Every couple of days should be able to get you in the range of picking just the right stage as opposed to over-mature.

[gentle country music] - All right, Natalie, here's our Q&A segment.

We have some real good questions here.

- Did ya save some vegetable ones?

- Yeah, we saved some for you, maybe a couple.

- Yeah.

- All right.

So here's our first viewer email.

"What is the best spray or dust   that I can put on cucumbers   "to keep the worms   out of them?

"I have a wonderful crop   of cucumbers this year.

However, the worms are   doing a lot of damage."

And this is Tamara.

So, worms, and of course,   I'm thinking pickle worm 'cause that's what I get a lot of questions about   because they're feeding inside   of the cucumbers.

Right?

- Yeah, they are.

It's a   pretty disappointing thing,   you have those beautiful   squash or cucumbers,   tiny little holes.

Sometimes we see a   little bit of exudate   So there's little caterpillars.

- Yeah.

Little caterpillars eating away there.

Yeah.

And I'll just cut around it.

You can still eat the cucumber.

- Yeah.

- So how do we protect that cucumber from the pickle worms though?

- Yeah, so we, of course, would, we have options.

There are some more biological   materials like Spinosad or   more traditional insecticide.

Those would be kind   of your spray options.

- Sure, sure.

- If you had a screen, you could actually try to keep out the moths as well.

If you went for, for exclusion.

- Okay.

Yeah.

I can deal with that.

So yeah, I would also add to that, neem oil could possibly help, Bt - Yeah.

- may help as well.

And then there are some other pyrethroids that you can get into, bifenthrin being one.

But I always like to go with the least toxic pesticides first and that should help you out, all right?

So, be sure to read and follow the label on that.

All right.

Thank you for that question.

Here's our next viewer email.

I bet you'll like this one too, huh?

"I am trying to collect pepper   seeds to plant next year.

Do the seeds   have to turn red?"

This is Casey from   Wynne, Arkansas.

Essentially, do the seeds have to turn red?

- Oh, no, it might be nice if the pepper was red, right?

[laughing] So, you know, that would be a mature fruit.

Peppers can be a great crop to, to save seeds from, they tend to be predominantly self-pollinated, so there's less of a chance of cross-pollination.

Now, we want to make sure they're an open-pollinated, might be an heirloom, you know, not a hybrid that we'd want to save those seeds from.

So, we want to make sure that the fruit is pretty mature.

Oftentimes those seeds will be greenish-brown, you know, and we'll kind of scrape them out from the interior of the ripe fruit and let them dry a little bit.

So they'd be unlikely to be red, probably.

Yeah.

- Not red, but yeah, it'd be nice that the fruit is.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Yeah, I like that.

[laughing] All right, Casey.

I hope that helps you out there.

Thank you for the question.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I just ordered potted David Austin roses for fall delivery.

"I'm in Zone six.

Can I plant roses in   September and October?"

And this is   Lady Kao on YouTube.

Interesting question.

So let's start here.

Let's go to Zone six, shall we?

[laughing]   - All right.

So plants should be able to   withstand temperatures between   minus 10 and zero.

So that's your   Zone six, you know.

Can she plant her roses in the fall, in zone six?

- I mean, I think that, that there would be some times when you might get good root growth and a good opportunity to establish, you want to be careful not to get them in too late.

- So that's going to be my thing.

Yeah.

You can do that in September and October, but I wouldn't plant it too late.

- Right.

- Right?

Or, you can plant in the spring.

I would do it in the spring.

Of course, I would wait, probably until the end of April, beginning of May to do so in Zone six.

And I think you would be just fine doing that.

Right?

So yeah, I would wait till the threat of frost passes, plant it in the spring.

Make sure that the soil is workable to do that.

You'll have beautiful roses.

So thank you for that question.

All right, Doc, that was fun.

That was good.

Thank you much for being here.

- Yeah, we had some good questions.

- Good stuff.

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 find out more about the problems Natalie talked about or see more videos on flower and greenery arranging, 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]