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

I'm Chris Cooper.

We usually think of a flower garden when planting for pollinators, but trees can also help pollinators.

Also, we will be canning tomatoes.

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 Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis.

And Cathy Faust will be joining me later.

Hi Joellen, how you doing today?

- I'm doing fine.

- Good.

So trees for pollinators, how about that?

- Trees for pollinators.

- Huh.

- And let's just define pollinators first.

- Okay, let's do that.

- Pollinators are bees.

A lot of native bees.

There's like 4,000 native bees in the United States.

- That's a lot.

- Then it's also butterflies and moths and birds.

- So birds are considered pollinators?

- Yes.

'cause you know, when you think about it like the Baltimore orioles, when they come through, they go to native tulip poplar trees.

And they'll eat on the tulips, the flowers for that and feed on that.

So birds also help.

And think about hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds help pollinate.

So yes, birds, bees, moths and butterflies are all pollinators, considered collectively as pollinators.

- That's good.

- And even some animals help pollinate- - Who knew?

- By going around.

- So yeah, - That's a lot, okay.

- So there's a lot of pollinators.

- A lot of pollinators out there, all right.

- And why native trees?

You know, why do we think about native trees?

Well, think about it.

Trees live for a very long time.

Of all the plant species, they're one of the largest.

And they live for a long time.

- Right.

- So the odds of a moth or an insect or any kind of caterpillar to be attracted to that to eat is high because it's there for a long time and it's large so you know you can't miss a tree.

- That's right.

- So yeah, that is one of the reasons why over time they have evolved together to help each other.

- Okay.

- The number one tree species are the oaks.

- I knew it.

Yeah.

Okay.

- The Quercus species, because they attract more caterpillars and they have the largest geographic region of any other tree species.

- That's a lot.

- And think about it, Asia, Europe, North America, Central America and parts of South America.

- Oh, that's a wide range.

- Continents.

Those are a lot of continents that oak trees are found in.

So they are the number one species for attracting caterpillars or pollinators.

And of course, oak trees also live for a very long time, a lot longer than a lot of the other trees.

If you have only room for one tree, try to find an oak tree that will fit that situation and it will be one of the best native trees that you can plant in your area.

- And it'll be around forever.

- And it'll be around for a very long time.

Now there are other North American native trees that attract pollinators and we're gonna start on them.

And we're gonna start with the most geographical region found in the United States and in other parts of the world.

Acer species, the maples.

- Right.

- Found all over.

Good fall color also attract a lot of bees and butterflies.

The Prunus species, the cherries.

And specifically here in the United States, the Prunus serotina, the black cherry and the Prunus virginiana, the chokecherry.

Those two are the best of the two Prunus families in cherries to attract pollinators.

Then there's the willow family, the salix species.

These are found in lowland areas and withstand wet soils.

So if you have a wet soil area, and you need something to plant there for a tree, try a willow.

- Try a willow, got it.

- Yeah, Betula also.

Betula, the birch family.

Found in a large part of the United States.

And they also withstand wet soils.

They have beautiful bark for the winter, even when they don't have leaves on 'em.

Then there are the hickories, the Carya species.

Hickories and pecans.

They attract, of course, the pecan farmers and the hickory farmers probably say, "Yeah, we have to spray a lot 'cause you know, things are very attracted to us."

[Chris chuckles] But you know what?

Hickories are a host for a luna moth.

And I always wondered why I had luna moths around my house and I have hickory trees, so that's probably why I have moths.

- That's a pretty good sized moth too.

- They're beautiful.

- Yeah, they are.

- They're beautiful Next Pinus species, the pines.

- Okay, pines, yeah.

- And of course that's evergreen.

But they attract a hundred and ninety-one different types of insects.

- Wow.

- And they're evergreen.

Juniperus species, also the cedars, also evergreen and good protection for pollinators.

- All right.

- Like the butterflies and the caterpillars will hang their cocoons on them for the winter.

So that's a good place for that.

Nyssa species, the tupelo.

It's good for fall color.

One that if you're driving along, you know it's a tall tree, so you see it red and along the interstates, real pretty.

Also, it's prized for its honey from bees.

In fact, there are some beekeepers that will actually know when the tupelo trees are blooming and then they will take up the honey after they finish blooming.

So their honey that you're getting from the tupelo trees is pure tupelo honey.

- How about that?

- And it's very expensive and it's very prized.

So interesting.

- That is interesting.

- A lot of people say it's the best tasting honey around but I've never had any, so I don't know if I can attest to that.

But anyway.

- I may have to try that and see.

- Yeah, I may have to try that one.

Another one that's found a lot large part of the United States is the Populus species.

The cottonwoods and the aspens family.

They have softwood and they are messy trees.

You really need some land to have them on.

But woodpeckers like them because of soft wood.

- There you go.

Okay.

- And they do attract a lot of bugs.

Alnus species, the alder tree, very interesting plant found a large part of the country and in Central America too and South America.

The wood hardens in water when it is wet.

In fact, Venice is actually built on alder wood.

- Wow.

Okay.

- And the Incas used to use it to fertilize soil because it's using alder's symbiotic relationship with a bacteria called Frankia Alni, which is found in the root nodules of the alder tree.

- How about that?

- And what it does is the sugars that are produced from that by photosynthesis make nitrogen, which also feed the tree and changes and makes the soil around it fertile.

- How about that?

Okay.

- So just alders are a very ancient tree and it's used a lot.

So it's native.

- Did not know that.

- Yeah, a lot of bugs eat alders.

Magnolia species.

And you know the Magnolia, some are deciduous, some are evergreen, some are small, some are tall.

I mean, you can find one to fit in your yard somewhere.

And they bloom in the spring and they bloom in the summer so just depends on what kind you have.

So it very attractive for pollinators.

Malus species, the crab apples.

They feed and have nice blooms in the spring and they feed a lot of bugs.

Of course a lot of people say that.

Because, you know, "I can't grow my crab apples because they have all the bugs on 'em."

- Yes, I've heard that.

- Yes, of course.

Another one that's native, if you have a smaller yard, Carpinus caroliniana, the ironwood.

And it can withstand wet soils 'cause in nature it's found on riverbanks.

Amelanchier species, the serviceberry.

It supports 114 caterpillar species.

- Wow, 114.

- Yeah.

It blooms in spring and the berries in the fall which are edible.

Cornus species, the dogwood, they support 126 different caterpillar species.

So yeah.

We know everybody we know have problems with their dogwoods.

- Dogwood, right.

- And then there's the Cercis canadensis, the eastern redbud.

Flowers in the springs.

The flowers are edible by humans.

It also supports a large caterpillar species.

- Okay, I know that one.

- And of course the red buckeye, Aesculus pavia.

It blooms in the spring and when you see it blooming, and you should put out your hummingbird feeders because the hummingbirds migrate th rough the United States when the red buckeyes are blooming.

- Got it.

- And that's the top.

Those are the top native trees that attract pollinators.

But now non-native trees also attract pollinators, especially if they bloom or have some kind of attraction for these pollinators.

And you know, they eat on the leaves of them too.

- Sure.

- So it's not just, I'm not saying just use native, you can use... You have at least some native trees with your other non-native trees.

- Gotcha.

- And then you'll have the best of both worlds.

So plant a tree.

- Plant a tree.

And leave the leaves I like that campaign.

- And leave the leaves.

- Joellen, that was good.

Yeah, real good information.

A lot of those things I didn't know, but I learned them.

That's pretty good.

Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] We are here in the butterfly garden.

And not only do we plant plants for the butterflies and other pollinators, but we also plant plants for larvae.

Right here we have parsley, and as you can see, we have a little garden friend here, right?

So this is the parsley worm caterpillar.

Beautiful caterpillar.

Of course, you'll have to plant a lot of parsley so they can have their share of it as well.

Once this parsley worm caterpillar starts to mature, it forms a chrysalis, in about a week or so you'll get the eastern black swallowtail butterfly, which is a beautiful butterfly.

So there you have it, beautiful parsley worm caterpillar.

[upbeat country music] All right, Ms. Cathy, we are here at the Extension Office.

And thank you for being here today.

- Thank you.

- And we're gonna talk about canning tomatoes.

- Wonderful.

- How about that?

- Great.

You know, it's tomato season and we have these beautiful fresh tomatoes straight from Jones Orchard.

- Beautiful.

- So we're gonna be canning these.

And as you can see, I've got all of my equipment ready.

It does take a little bit of preparation.

You have to go ahead and we just pulled our hot jars out of the dishwasher.

You don't need to sterilize the jars if you're canning something more than 10 minutes.

But we went ahead and we got our jars there.

They've cooled off a little bit and we've had our rings simmering at 180 degrees.

- Wow.

- And we've got our funnel ready, jar lifter, canning salt, citric acid.

But the first thing that you have to do is peel the tomatoes.

And a really simple way to do this and we just finished.

We put the tomatoes in boiling water for about two minutes and then we put them in-- - Look at that.

- Ice water.

And you can see how easily the peel comes off.

- It comes right off, huh?

- Yeah, it just peeled off so easily.

And after this point, we core them, chop them up really good and then we put them in a big pot.

And as you can see, I've got my pot right here.

But wasn't that easy.

- That was easy.

- We went ahead and got those taken care of.

So what we've done here, we've gone ahead and we have simmered our tomatoes.

Now these are, like we said, these are crushed tomatoes.

And we're gonna have these in the pressure canner for 15 minutes.

If you were gonna have 'em in a water bath canner, it would take much longer say 35 or 40 minutes.

So what we're gonna do here, we don't normally pressure can tomatoes, but by doing it this way, we've saved up a little bit of time.

- Good.

- Like I said, I'm gonna swap gears here.

- Okay, you need me to hold that?

- Hold this for me, thank you.

- I can do that.

- I'm gonna move this out of the way.

And what we will do, thank you, is go ahead and fill our jars to within one half inch.

We want about one half inch headspace here.

- And those tomatoes smell good by the way, my goodness.

- Oh, yes.

This has been nice.

And you see, we didn't add any water.

They made their own juice.

- Oh, so this is their own juice?

- Mm-hmm.

- It's a lot.

- Yeah, it made a lot of juice.

And we're gonna fill them to within one half inch of the top.

And people ask, why do we do this?

Well, if you don't give them enough headspace, let's say if we just filled it and it had an inch and a half left, the top may become discolored and it it might contract air and it would not seal properly.

And if we have too little headspace, it might boil over during the process.

So what we're gonna do, we're gonna go ahead and wipe the top of the jar and make sure that there's no seeds or anything up here.

- So good contact is most important.

That's what we're looking for.

- Oh yeah, because yeah, these lids have to fit just right.

And we're gonna add one fourth teaspoon of citric acid.

This is to the pints.

And we're gonna add one half teaspoon of canning salt.

See one half teaspoon of canning salt to the pints.

- So what was the acid for?

Why do we need to add that?

- Oh, it kind of helps preserve it.

You can also use lemon juice.

You could use about a tablespoon of lemon juice.

Now at this point, I'm gonna go ahead, this is my bubbler and I'm gonna stick this down.

You might see a little bit of air bubbles coming out.

- Just a few - Just a little, Just a few.

- Not as many as if you were doing green beans.

- Just a few.

- So what we're gonna do, we've got our air bubbles out.

And this is a handy little measurement tool.

We're gonna measure one half inch headspace.

- Okay.

Nice.

- You see all the way around, that's about one half inch.

And then we just add that lid right on top and we wipe that.

And then we get our bands and we put these bands on just fingertip tight.

- Tight, okay.

- Yeah, I've watched a lot of videos and sometimes they just put 'em on way too tight.

And at this point, we're gonna go ahead and put them in the pressure canner.

And I'm gonna put this in the pressure canner and then I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about safety of pressure canning.

It's just right over here.

And in our pressure canner, we've got about two inches of water.

Now people call me all the time.

They've never used a pressure canner and they're afraid of it.

And they ask me, you know, "What am I gonna do?

I might have one with the dial gauge or weighted gauge."

This is-- - I can understand people being afraid of that though.

- Oh, I heard horror stories about these things.

You see this has a little dial on it.

And you can come to our office and have this tested free of charge.

We test it at 5 pounds, 10 pounds and 15 pounds of pressure.

But for our tomatoes, we're going to use 11 pounds of pressure.

If we were going to use a weighted gauge, we would use 10 pounds of pressure.

Now you notice I've got a little piece of paper towel here.

One thing you wanna do, if you'll hold this for me, please.

- I can.

- You want to oil the gasket.

And we learned through trial and error, I think you were here that day.

We couldn't get the lid off.

- I remember.

- And we had to get Jim in here to get the lid off for us.

But you wanna go ahead and just rub this oil around the gasket.

And also, when you have your gasket tested, you wanna make sure that it's not dry rotted.

You can see this one's in pretty good shape.

You also may want to run a string through this little vent.

This is very important because what we're gonna do is we're gonna set the lid on top.

And once we secure it, we're gonna let it vent for 10 minutes.

And you will see steam coming out of this vent.

After the steam has escaped for 10 minutes, and that's very important, we're gonna put the petcock on top and then we'll start building our pressure up.

Usually on an electric range, it's at number seven to maintain it at 11 pounds of pressure and we'll start timing it at 11 pounds.

And we'll give it 15 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure.

[pot sizzling] - All right, Ms. Cathy, special delivery.

How about that?

- Thank you, Chris.

One of the important factors of pressure canning is you have to realize the pressure canner is too heavy for a lot of women to lift.

- Oh, it's heavy.

- So it's good to have a strong man around to lift it off.

I'm sure this weighed at least 25 pounds with the all of the tomatoes in it.

We appreciate you're doing this.

At this point, we are going to have to let it cool down.

It will probably take about 40 minutes for it to cool down.

- Wow.

All right, Ms. Cathy, now it's been 40 minutes, so let's see the product.

- Okay.

Thank you, Chris.

I was really surprised that it cooled down so quickly because normally it takes a little bit longer.

When it gets down to zero, we give it an additional 10 minutes so we we're sure that it has cooled down.

We're gonna take the petcock off and then we're going to- - Can you get that?

- Open our lid.

I can, oh, it's so easy because remember when we oiled it?

That's why it's so easy to open.

- Okay, that's why you do that.

- And you wanna open it away from you.

It's still pretty hot.

- Wow.

- And we're gonna take these jars out and I see them bubbling.

[jar lid pops] They're already popping.

- I heard one pop.

- I hear them popping.

- I sure did.

- Okay.

And you see how the liquid is on the bottom.

That will settle after a few days.

So we wanna put these out of the way of a draft.

You don't want a draft.

And we're just gonna leave these undisturbed for about 12 hours.

- Twelve hours.

- Now if we were doing a canning class like we've been doing recently.

What we would have, we would let everyone go ahead and take theirs home after they had cooled down a tiny bit.

- And the smell, you can still smell it.

- I know.

[jar lid pops] And you can see that, there goes another pop.

- I heard it.

- And then you can store these for up to two years.

We tell people we want them to consume them within one to two years.

I've talked to people who have said, "Ah, you know, I found some in grandmother's pantry from 10 years ago," and I would not recommend eating them.

But you know- - That's a long time.

- Some people do.

If we had used quarts, we would've used a half teaspoon of the citric acid and one teaspoon of the canning salt.

But we still would've pressure canned them for 15 minutes.

Pints or quarts.

- All right then Ms. Cathy, we appreciate that demonstration.

- Thank you, Chris.

- Thank you much.

[jar lid pops] - Success, there goes number four.

- Hey, there's another one.

- Okay, I think that's all five.

Yeah, I think I heard five pops.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

So one of our most common maintenance practices in the garden is gonna be some preventative fungicides.

And you have a lot of options.

There are biological options, there are also conventional fungicides.

You just wanna make sure that you know what disease you're addressing and that you're following the labels on the bottle.

This is actually chlorothalonil, is the active ingredient.

So it's a conventional fungicide that's been on the market for quite some time.

Wide range of crops that it's appropriate for.

Early blight is one of them.

And so we have it mixed up according to the label instructions.

And we're gonna be applying.

I would prefer in the morning or in the late part of the day when we're not in the heat of the day.

And the most important thing when we think about fungicides for the home garden is good coverage.

We wanna spray the undersides and the top sides.

Get good coverage from our protective or our control materials.

And so chlorothalonil, a lot of the biologicals, really most of the fungicides that we would use in our garden are gonna be protective, which means that we're not gonna be wiping out existing infections.

What we really wanna be doing is getting coverage over our leaves so that we prevent that fungal inoculum from infecting more.

And so what I wanna do is get good coverage over the plant.

Get as much of those interior leaves as possible.

Most of the time what the directions will tell us is spray to the point of runoff, right?

So we don't want the material completely dripping off the plant, but we want to get good coverage on those leaves.

Depending upon how often we get rain, lots of times we'll apply 7 to 10 days.

So keeping up that preventative fungicide is one of the best practices for maintaining disease-free plants through the season.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q&A segment, you ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"Our rose of Sharon did well for two years.

"Last year, it lost about a third of its upper branches.

"This year, it lost another third of its upper branches.

"There doesn't appear to be any fungus or growth on the bark.

"Why has our rose of Sharon lo st two thirds of its branches "over the last two years?

"Would appreciate any help you can offer.

Thank you," and this is Spike.

So what do you think about that?

The rose of Sharon?

- I would like to have seen a picture.

- It would've been nice.

Okay.

- It would've been like 'cause yeah, I understand rose of Sharon gets like that 'cause it gets bugs and things.

- Right.

- But it's good for pollinators and bugs.

[chuckles] But we'll take it out.

Obviously if sections are dying at a time, makes me think of something that is cutting off the circular- - There you go.

- The flow of nutrients to that area of the tree.

And what does that?

Borers.

- Borers, yes.

- You know, some kind of canker.

Could be a canker on the tree.

Anything that affects the bark on the outside where the xylem and phloem flow into the tree.

- I would agree with that.

I do have a rose of Sharon at home and I can tell you this, they don't really have major issues, but canker is the first thing I think of, right?

Or wood borers, which are secondary pests.

So it means that the- - Oh, it could be stressed.

- Yeah, it could be stressed.

Right, so yeah, anytime you lose limbs, don't have any leaves on the upper canopy of trees, I always think about something's compromising the flow of water and nutrients.

So Spike, I would search, you know, at the lower half, you know, of my rose of Sharon to see if there's any cankers, any wood borers.

Maybe you hit it with the lawnmower, weed eater.

- Could be.

- It's definitely stressed, but that's what I think the problem could be.

Either cankers or wood borers.

- Sounds right.

Sounds like it could be.

- Right.

So yeah, check it out, inspect, Spike.

We appreciate that question.

- Yes.

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

"Over the last 30 years, "I have allowed my southern magnolia free reign "letting the branches grow to the ground "so I don't have to bother ra king out the leaves that drop.

"I see that perhaps as many as six "of those branches have taken root "and in effect, I now have a wa ll of magnolias growing there.

"Is this a bad thing?

What do you expert silviculturists recommend?"

And this is Carl from Knoxville, Tennessee.

So thank you for that, Carl.

First thing first, let's define silviculturalist.

- Yes.

- Can we do that?

- Yeah, that's someone who knows a lot about trees.

Well- - Cultivates trees.

- I'm more of a horticulturist than a silviculturist.

- Right.

- But I can tell you right now that I agree with him for leaving the branches down.

- I get it.

- And I do that too, so that you don't have to pick up the leaves underneath it.

The problem is some of those branches get way far down.

- Yes, they did.

- Got covered up by layers of leaves and then rooted.

So he's got all these little trees coming up right underneath this tree.

- All of that nice organic- - So all that... Oh man, he made a perfect.

- Material.

- Yeah, you know, I can see not picking up the leaves in the season, but maybe in the winter or the spring just before you know, the weather starts changing to be really nice, maybe you just gather up all those leaves at once so that you don't have that air layering problem going on.

- Right.

That's what it is.

Air layering, right?

- Yeah.

I mean, he could dig them up and give them away if he wants to.

Or have somebody come and dig them up for him and say, "Hey, you want some free magnolia trees?

Come dig these up."

So yeah, that's what is happening.

- That's what's happening, right?

And again- - Mm-hmm.

- So he can leave them.

- He can leave 'em.

If he wants to, he'll have a forest of magnolia trees.

- Of magnolias.

He already has a wall of them, so you can definitely keep 'em there.

But yeah, again, yeah, all of those leaves are breaking down nice, organic material, right?

- Organic.

Well, he's leaving the leaves, so that's really- - He's leaving the leaves.

- That's really good.

- Leaving the leaves.

- And making a very nice habitat for growing things.

- Yeah.

So it's not a bad thing Mr. Carl.

- No.

Appreciate that question.

- I don't think so.

- Not a bad thing at all.

Thank you much.

Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- All right, thank you much.

Thank you much.

Remember we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016 or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about plants for pollinators or canning vegetables, 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]