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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Trees provide cooling shade on a hot day like today, but what makes a tree work?

We will be learning about tree physiology.

Also, weeds in the garden are bad but some weeds are awful.

We're talking about the worst weeds.

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 Wes Hopper.

Wes is the Natural Resource Manager with the City of Germantown, right here in Tennessee.

And Mr. D. will be joining us later.

We're at the Memphis Botanic Garden in front of this water oak.

It's a huge water oak.

And we're gonna learn about tree physiology.

- Yes.

- This is the question we usually get: "What is photosynthesis though?

How does that work?"

- Photosynthesis is where the tree's leaves absorb the sunlight and produce these carbohydrates and sugars and provides the energy and the food for the tree.

- So it's all about energy and food for the tree.

- It's all about energy and food.

- Okay.

Now, it's been hot here lately.

- Yes.

- What about respiration though?

- Respiration is the process where the tree uses that energy that's produced by the leaves, but when it gets over 92, 93 degrees the trees have cells that shut down the process of that photosynthesis that helps that tree maintain and retain the energy that has been already produced by the leaves.

- Okay, which is real important.

'Cause it has been above in the 92, 93 degrees.

All right, now let's talk about the different layers of a tree, let's talk about the xylem and the phloem.

So let's start with the xylem.

- Okay, the xylem works like with osmosis and that is on the interior part of the cambium, and it pulls the water and the minerals from the soil and takes it up through the tree all the way up to the tips of the leaves.

It goes through the transpiration process where that moisture and water is released through the pores of the leaf.

- Okay, and what about the phloem?

- The phloem tissue is the vascular section of the tree that takes that energy that's produced by the leaves and pulls it out through the tree and disperses it throughout the tree's parts.

- Okay, so that flows in both directions.

- Flows in two directions, yes, or three.

- Or three?

- Yes, you have the rays of the wood, which run from the interior part of the tree outwards to the where the sapwood is and that carries the nutrients radially to the sapwood.

Here we have, Chris, a slab of wood, this is a piece of red oak and just to describe some of the physiological aspects of this piece of wood, or this red oak, we have the vascular tissue is made up of four different parts or more actually, but to simplify it, the bark, phloem, cambium, and xylem tissue.

Phloem to the outside, cambium in the center, the xylem to the inside.

The bark is to protect all the other vascular tissue.

- All right.

- The phloem tissue is what brings the nutrients through the tree and disperses it from the leaves, then the cambium produces both the phloem and the xylem tissue as it grows, and the xylem tissue brings the nutrients up from the root system up throughout the tree.

- Okay.

- Now, the rays, you see the small lines right here?

Running through there?

- Yeah.

- Those are your rays, yes, they're very pronounced, especially when the wood is dried up some.

- Okay.

- And these are your growth rings, so as the tree grows it produces an annual growth ring, early wood and late wood.

Now the rays transports nutrients into the sapwood area, which is out here.

Now the unique thing about this functioning tissue is all this wood that you see in here is non-conductive, it's just there for the support that I mentioned earlier.

Your productive and conductive tissue or phloem and xylem tissue is only on the outermost part of the tree, right there.

That's why a tree can be hollow and still function, just like a solid tree.

And then of course you'll have places where insects will live in there, and the tree will compartmentalize over that.

But all through here you have the cells that divide when a tree is wounded like that, the cells, the parenchyma cells would divide and create new tissue and compartmentalize over the wound.

That's how all this functions.

The xylem tissue has the parenchyma cells that do that division.

- That's pretty good.

- That's how trees heal.

When a tree gets wounded, the wound is permanent.

When we cut ourself, we heal, but it's the same cell system that heals both our cut on our hand and the wound on the tree.

It's the parenchyma cells.

It's closely related to how our bodies function.

It's a living organism.

- Now let's talk about the roots though.

What do we need to know about the roots of the tree?

- Roots are very important, however there's trees that blow over.

A tree can survive without having a complete set of roots because of the energy that the leaves can produce for it.

So the roots function as anchorage to the ground, storage for what's produced by the leaves and anchored, just anchored, it keeps it anchored to the ground.

When you see a tree blow over, you'll notice that there might be one root and the rest of the roots are dead.

It didn't have anything to anchor it to the ground.

- How about that.

You know, most people think that tree roots grow deep, deep, deep down into the ground.

That's not the case though right?

- When they're young, they'll have a tap root.

That tap root will either turn and go out and become part of the lateral root system or it just dies off.

It can't function properly, it can't survive unless there's water down there.

Like a spring, well or something down low that it can get nutrients and water from.

- Okay, now what about the little tiny roots, the little fan roots that are right there at the surface?

- Fibrous roots?

- Yeah the fibrous roots.

- Or the hair roots, or the feeder roots.

They got different names for 'em.

They're very fine, kind of like our hair.

- Okay.

- About like that, and they absorb the moisture or the water, available water and that leads it all the way up throughout the tree.

- So that's pretty much their function.

- They're feeder roots, yeah.

- They're just feeder roots.

They just feed the tree.

Now this time of the year we get a lot of questions about, "Ah, the leaves are falling off my tree so early."

Why is that?

- Because there's not any available water in the soil, and so the tree's saying I need to stop using up the energy that I've produced so far and get rid of some of these leaves so I can start to rest and get myself ready for the winter.

It's just premature leaf drop.

- And I'm about to get to that because we've had a lot of hot weather, so does that amplify what we're seeing?

- Yes, it does, especially when the soil is dry now, as it is, and I mentioned the transpiration process stopping because of the temperature.

Yeah, it all ties together.

- Should we water trees?

- Yes, yes.

- How much would you water a big tree like this?

- Oh my goodness, a tree this size can probably, if it's available, pull up 150 gallons a day if it has the root system to.

And remember I mentioned that transpiration.

You know, where's that water go?

It goes throughout the tree, it's a big tree.

If it's able to transpire, it leaves the tree through the pores on the leaves.

- Through the pores on the leaves.

- On the underside.

- That has to do with what, stomates?

- Stomates, yep.

- Something like that, I remember that from simple biology.

- And the guard cells are what close the stomates to prevent them from losing all their water that they've taken up during these hot days.

- Okay, now when you're watering a tree, I mean should you use a soaker hose-- - Soaker hose is good.

- How would you go about watering a tree?

- I have a Ross deep root waterer in my house.

That way I can turn the water on and it's a long tube, attaches to the water hose, and I work that probe down into the ground with that water, so I'm creating more air space in the soil and I'm getting that water down deeper.

When this ground is really compacted, sometimes that water doesn't percolate down through the soil, so.

But other than that, a soaker hose to me is best, because that water that flies through the air and it hits the ground, it compacts the soil.

- It compacts the soil.

- That upper layer of soil, yeah.

- Okay, when is the best time to plant a tree?

How about that one?

- I prefer the winter.

- So you prefer the winter.

- Late fall.

- Why's that?

- Or early spring.

The temperature's not quite so hot, and the tree can rest through the winter, as long as you put proper mulch on it.

We have some trees we need to get into the ground this October.

Sometimes it's a matter of timing, sometimes the weather's not real good in deep winter but yeah, fall, winter, early spring.

- Early spring, what would be the best time to do that?

- Some people are planting trees right now.

I don't recommend it.

It's just too hot.

- Yeah, it is hot.

- But a landscaper's gotta stay busy.

- Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

Well look, we do appreciate all your valuable information that you have about trees.

- Sure, glad to be here.

[gentle country music] - Chlorosis.

- Yeah, chlorosis, and then the other one, the companion term with that is necrosis.

- Right.

- Chlorosis is a yellowing of, or non-chlorophyll in the leaves.

And that could be a result of a lot of different things.

But, that's just a term we use to describe yellowing of leaves for lack of chlorophyll.

And, necrosis is death.

That means there's dead places in the leaves, and of course-- - (Chris) Dead tissue.

- Necrosis comes from Latin root, that means death.

But, chlorosis can be caused by waterlogged soils.

- Too much and not enough.

- Yeah, exactly you know.

Or, it can be caused by nutrient deficiency, mainly iron, magnesium or zinc.

It could be caused by herbicide damage.

There's a lot of different things, or even air pollution can cause chlorosis of leaves.

Not enough light even, different things like that.

So, it's just a term we use to mean yellowing of the leaves.

[gentle country music] - All right, Mr. D. Weeds that we must get rid of.

- Weeds that we must get rid of.

You know, when I saw that topic, I just kinda leaned back and I thought "Okay, I can think of a few weeds we need to get rid of."

And I came up with four or five that kinda came to mind pretty quick.

- Oh I'm sure, real quick.

- And then I thought, "You know, maybe I need to do a little checking."

I started doing a little research, and I found a couple of lists-- - So there, okay.

- Out there on the internet that I thought would be worth talking about.

One, Mother Earth News did a survey of about 2,000 gardeners in the United States and Canada, so maybe a little bit further north than us, and I have what they came up with.

The 10 worst weeds.

- All right, let's see those.

- And let me go through those and I'll tell ya, in this list the number one weed I had mentioned didn't even make the list, and I'll tell you what that is in a minute.

- I'm curious to hear that.

- But the number one weed, number one by far, according to Mother Earth News, their survey, crabgrass.

- Crabgrass.

- Crabgrass was the number one weed that you need to get rid of.

The number two was dandelion.

Number three was Bermuda grass.

[C hris laughs] Number four was bindweed.

- All right, I can see that.

Five was chickweed.

- Okay.

- And then ground ivy.

Canada thistle, which is a real pr oblem in cattle pastures.

Burdock.

- Okay.

- Quackgrass.

And Johnsongrass.

- Wow.

- So those are according to Mother Earth News.

Then I went to Southern Living, I decided this is probably a little north, so let's go to Southern Living and see what they say.

- There a little variation in that?

- I got a much different list, and they included some of the hardwood-- - Okay.

- Pests that are out there.

But they got to the weed that I had pretty much at the top of my list.

And I'll tell you about it.

- All right.

- According to Southern Living, Wisteria, either Japanese or Chinese wisteria is one of the worst weed problems out there, or worst plant problems.

They consider a hardwood plant growing out of places as a weed.

Chinese privet was number two.

- Oh yes.

- Kudzu was number three.

Water hyacinth was a problem.

Field bindweed.

So I guess that's the first one that connected with Mother Earth.

- Right.

- And then they got to the one that I had pretty much at the top of my list.

Nutsedge.

- Nutsedge!

See that's what I would have thought.

that would have been number one.

- See, that's the first thing - that crossed my mind.

And then what they did is they included almost all of the weeds, most of the weeds that Mother Earth had.

They said grass.

- Grass, okay.

[Chris laughs] - And they said crabgrass, Bermuda grass, bluegrass, goosegrass, dallisgrass.

All of those are a problem, so they just said grass.

And then the chameleon plant.

- Yeah, okay.

- It's really pretty but really invasive.

Cudweed.

And common violet.

- Violets I can see.

- And now because of a program we had done earlier, we gotta add the mulberry weed to that too.

But those, according to a lot of people, are the weeds we need to get rid of.

I had nutsedge, goosegrass, Bermuda grass, pigweed, morning glory, dollarweed.

Those are some things that I kinda came up with.

- And why do we need to get rid of some of those though?

You think it's because they produce a lot of seeds, what?

- They bother me.

They get in under my blueberries and my blackberries and they do produce a lot of seed.

Pigweed, I mentioned, that's probably not a real problem for most homeowners but it's probably the number one weed problem that farmers face because one plant can produce up to 1.3 million seeds.

- Really?

1.3 million seeds.

- The seed aren't as viable.

They don't last that long in the environment.

They only last about four or five years, but who cares if you have 1.3 million per plant?

- It's a lot.

- And it's also resistant to a lot of the herbicides that are out there.

So that's-- - Crabgrass, I get that too.

- Nutsedge.

- Nutsedge.

- Not a lot of products that'll kill it, Image, Imazaquin - Yeah, Image.

- Is about the only thing that'll take it out.

Agriculturally, you can take it out with several different products.

- But nutsedge is tough, so that's why I would have thought it was number one because it's diverse.

- Of course if you like turkeys, what's it called in turkeys, it's chufas.

It's just nutsedge.

They plant it, turkeys love to scratch it up and they'll dig the roots up and eat 'em.

- So what, drought conditions nutsedge can grow, wet conditions nutsedge can grow.

- That's right.

It can grow through plastic.

- Yes, it can grow through plastic.

- Put down plastic and it's just.

- But you know what's not on there that I thought would have been?

Poa Annua, because it produces a lot of seeds and a lot of these weeds too tell you something about your soil, about the fertility, whether the ground is compact or not, like crabgrass.

It likes to grow in compact soils.

- Some of the other sedges, broomsedge and henbit.

- Chickweed.

- Of course, well chickweed made it.

- Chickweed made it on there.

- Made it on there.

- You know the thing about chickweed and some of these other weeds too, they're edible now.

Dandelion.

- Well kudzu.

- Kudzu.

- Everything.

Kudzu, and this discussion about kudzu.

"Deep-fried kudzu leaves are great."

But I've never had a deep-fried kudzu leaf, but the entire kudzu plant is edible and if you have cattle or goats, they will kill it.

they will eat it to the ground, they will not let it during this time of the year, late summer, if you mow or cut kudzu right now while it's storing up energy to get through the winter, you'll kill it.

- You'll kill it, okay.

- And that's what goats and cows do and they eat it all year.

It's a legume, high in protein.

- In a garden setting too.

Need to make sure people read and follow the label though.

'Cause on the label it's gonna tell you everything you need to know right?

And you know that, the label is the law.

- If you're using pesticides, we haven't mentioned a lot about using pesticides for these things but yeah, that label, it's really very, very interesting.

The label is very interesting, it tells you the toxicity of the product, LD-50.

It tells you what weeds it'll kill or what insects it'll kill.

- And what you need to wear.

- It'll even have a range.

Some of it'll have like it'll do a little good, percent effectiveness and all that and some of them are partial.

But it tells you how to clean up and how to dress appropriately and all the good stuff.

- Yeah, it's good stuff.

Really good important stuff, but there's your list of weeds that you've got to get rid of.

- Weeds you gotta get rid of.

- Gotta get rid of.

- Yeah, nutsedge wasn't number one, I'm shocked.

It was on mine.

- All right.

Thank you Mr. D., we appreciate that.

That's good stuff.

[gentle country music] - Alright, so we're standing here in a bed of pansies.

These are cool-season annuals for us here in the South.

We plant these en masse for seasonal color, and they have been uprooted from the soil.

And so, we came down here to investigate, and it seems that deer from the surrounding outskirts of area here have come in and nibbled these plants.

You can see here where they've completely eaten all of the above ground portion of that plant, and pulled these inserts right out of the ground.

So, you can see entire root balls, and some of these plants, I don't know if they lost taste for them after they had a few.

But, they had a great time just yanking them out of the ground and throwing them around.

So, I don't have a lot of good solutions on how to prevent this, just generally speaking in the landscape, but if you catch them soon enough you can just replant them.

So, I'm gonna show you how to do that right here.

So, you can see here we've got a plant that has a root ball that's intact, and has only been nibbled a little bit here on the top.

There is still some good foliage, and even blooms, and we're just going to... nestle those back in the ground.

We had a rain last night, so there's a lot of moisture in this soil.

I don't even think these'll need to be watered in.

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

Are you ready Mr. D.?

- Let's do it.

- These are some good questions.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"When is the best time to prune a plum tree?

Thank you.

", and this is Richard from Greenville.

So, I know you like that-- - I like that one, that's an easy short and sweet.

Late winter, early fall.

I mean late winter, early spring.

- There you go.

- Not fall.

- Not fall.

[Chris laughs] - Late winter, around the first of March, best time.

- And how would you prune a plum tree?

- Prune a plum tree just like you prune a peach tree or a nectarine with an open centered system, ideally three to four main scaffold limbs.

Open it up so your cover spray can get in there and so that it'll dry out and inhibit some of the fungal growth maybe.

- Late winter-- - Late winter, early spring, around the first of March.

Right now all you need to be doing is oiling your pruning shears, sharpening them a little bit and then just set there on the shelf and kinda look at 'em over the wintertime [Chris laughs].

- Just look at 'em.

- Leave 'em in there.

- All right Richard, there you have it.

Here's our next viewer email.

Interesting question.

"Why are there no blooms on my okra?

"I save seeds from year to year "and this is the first year I've had this problem.

"This year I used seeds from two years ago.

Thank you", and this is Matthew from Chattanooga.

So, no blooms on my okra.

Okra is a self-pollinating plant.

But no blooms.

- I don't think the fact that the seed were old had anything to do with that.

- I don't either.

Environmental stresses?

- Lack of water would do it.

I mean, I wonder, it takes 50 to 65 days after planting for blooms to occur, and maybe he's not quite there yet.

If he planted them late.

But lack of water, or a nutrient imbalance.

- I thought nutrients.

- Okra doesn't like a lot of nitrogen.

- True.

- Those plants really look green.

- Very green.

- If he hit it with a lot of nitrogen, and he may have a phosphorous or potassium, maybe a little low in that, that could inhibit it-- - That's a good point.

- So that nutrient imbalance could do it.

But I don't know.

You see, another thing that'll stop it from blooming is if you have a crop on there and you leave 'em they get real big, but that's not his case.

If you don't harvest 'em off they will not keep puttin', you know.

- But I know something else too about okra, 'cause of course my grandparents grew okra forever, and it almost doesn't matter though whether you have a bloom or not because the bloom doesn't last that long anyway.

It's just a couple of days whenever in the fall so as long as you have the okra developing, it will still produce.

Plant is still producing.

- Right, the petals fall off of the bloom real quick.

He may be okay.

- I think he might be fine, but I do think maybe environmental factors.

Could it be moisture, could it be heat stress, I don't know.

Nutrients, so those are some things that came to my mind.

But the old seeds, it's a couple years old I don't think it was that big a deal.

- Yeah, where is he?

- Chattanooga.

- Chattanooga.

I don't know what the rainfall has been there but we had a lot of in our area, we certainly had adequate moisture through the summer.

But I'm not sure about over there.

- All right, so there you have it Matthew.

Yeah, we just have more questions about that.

I hope that helps you out.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have brown spots on my oak leaves.

Are they okay or is there a problem?"

And this is from Ms. Betty.

All right, so Wes, what do you think about this question?

- That's a southern red oak in that picture and it has a lot of spots on it.

Those spots are fungal.

It appears to be the fungus anthracnose.

It's a foliar fungus.

We had so much rain earlier this year that it's not unusual to see that fungus on the trees.

Now the best practice to help prevent it next year is to rake up the leaves, and dispose of 'em when they fall off the tree this year.

The leaves that are falling on the ground now, do the same thing.

Rake 'em up, and dispose of 'em.

Just don't let 'em lay there 'cause when it rains again or you irrigate it splashes the spores that are on the leaf and that fungus and it just sends it right back up to another plant or back up into the tree.

- All right, thank you Wes, we appreciate that.

There you have it Ms. Betty.

From our certified arborist.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Why are my green figs not getting ripe?

The tree is an old one and has never done this before."

So green figs not getting ripe.

- The only thing I could find on that would be is lack of water.

And it's been a while since we had a rain in my neck of the woods.

- Here too as well.

- That's the only thing I've seen.

You get any other-- - That's the only thing I've, yeah.

- Yeah.

Unfortunately, they'll just sit there and they'll just wait.

Water it.

Water the tree and that should accelerate.

One thing you can't do is pick a green fig and let it ripen on the shelf.

It doesn't work that way.

[Chris laughs] - It don't work like that.

- It's gotta ripen on the tree.

That's the only thing I can think of.

[cross talk] The fact that the tree is old shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I mean, even when trees are on their last leg, the last thing they're gonna try to do is reproduce.

And so they'll produce good fruit usually their last year of life.

- And it did produce the figs like you were mentioning, so the fact it's old, no.

- No.

- But we had Mr. Bill Colvard.

You know Mr. Bill-- - Oh yeah.

- He knows a lot about figs and whatever and I heard him say before that usually that's the case, when it's green and it hasn't ripened yet, usually moisture.

- Bill Colvard knows.

Whatever he says about figs, I would believe.

- I would trust that guy about the figs.

- Fig expert.

- Yes.

He is definitely a fig expert.

All right, Mr. D. It was fun as always, man.

- That it?

- Fun as always.

Thank you much.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us a 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.

If you want to learn more about how trees live and grow or about the weeds Mr. D. talked about, go 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]