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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Winter often results in drab landscapes.

Today we're going to talk about how to make yours look interesting.

Also, weeds don't only grow in the summer, we're going to talk about fall and winter weed control.

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. Lelia Kelly.

Dr. Kelly's a retired horticulture professor in Mississippi and Rudy Pakin Barber will be joining me later.

Hi, Dr. Kelly.

- Hey, Chris.

- Good to see you!

How you doing?

- Good to see you too.

Always a big time.

- Always have a good time with you being here.

- Yep.

Yep.

- So let's talk about winter landscaping ideas.

It's not too early yet to talk about winter, which is coming soon.

- No, we're soon gonna be there.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- So what are some of those interesting ideas?

- Well the first thing, I gave this great thought because when you sent me that topic, I'm like, winter landscape, you know, it could be fall, winter, but I'm like, Okay, let's just think about this.

I thought, well, the first thing you wanna do before you do any, you know, kind of fixing up and sprucing up and doing this and that, I think, well, you need tidy up first.

- Right?

Tidy up.

- Tidy up that landscape.

You know, cut down all the old dead perennials and all this kind of stuff and clean up, rake up the leaves, get 'em off the lawn, clean up all the dead foliage around your perennials.

You know, get, get everything cleaned up and as neat as you can get it.

And then I think the next thing you could do to really make an impact with very not a whole lot of effort is to put a nice thin layer of mulch.

- Oh, there you go.

Okay.

- Brand new mulch.

I'm telling you, nothing brightens up a landscape and makes it look like that you really have worked hard and know what you're doing - Right.

- When you, you know, get all that pretty-- - I like that - Got all that pretty mulch on, but you obviously don't wanna put it in the areas of your beds and things where you rely on reseeders.

- Okay.

Right.

- You know, coming up, you know, you don't wanna kind of keep those from coming up.

- Okay.

- So-- - Good point.

- Do leave though when all you're tidying up, do leave flower heads of things like, you know, purple coneflower, some of the rudbeckias and sunflowers and things that provide food, you know, for the winter birds, because that's part of the attractiveness of a winter garden is to have the motion of the birds coming and, you know, visiting your garden.

So obviously you wanna put out a bird feeder, things like that, you know.

But do leave those, you know, those and ornamental grasses, don't be too quick to cut those down.

Even though I don't think birds use a lot.

They look pretty, you know, all through the winter - I like them too.

- Because they have the plumes that come up.

And we get what's called motion in the garden.

You know, the feathery moving back of the plumes, [Chris laughing] You know, the wind blows.

It's just, you know, it's like a wind chime kind of thing.

It's just real quiet.

But rather than spending a fortune on buying a lot of the winter perennials like the pansies and the cabbage and kale and some of the other things that are on sale.

- Yeah.

- You know, in the fall and winter to spruce up your, things are so expensive.

- Yeah.

- Now if you can afford 'em, yeah, buy a zillion of 'em - Sure.

- And spruce up everything.

But if you're kind of on a budget and you're kind of being careful not to, to overspend on these things, what I would do is cluster them in focal points around the landscape.

In other words, you're sitting at your dining room table and you're looking out the window, what are you gonna see?

- Ah, - You know, so, and you can do it in the ground, in the beds or you can cluster big pretty containers - Okay.

- With a lot of pretty things planted in those.

And it doesn't have to be, you know, like the winter annuals, it can be, you can sow rye grass in a container and that'd be just a big spot of pretty green.

You can sow things like the purple mustard, you know, and the lettuces that have the colored leaves and things, you know, Swiss chard.

- Oh, that's good.

- You know, you can, yeah.

And you can eat these things.

- Right, right.

- You can cut 'em back and eat 'em and then, you know, they'll come back and fertilize 'em and they'll come back.

But, you know, cluster things in groups.

- Okay.

- And in focal points, like around the front door, around the entrance to the driveway, you know, the areas that you look out in the winter, you know, above your kitchen, you know, window, sink or whatever you look out, you know.

You wanna see some color and you wanna see some movement and some interest.

- Okay.

- You know?

- Got that.

- So garden art, you know, that's really low maintenance.

You don't have to go water, you don't have to spray.

So get you some nice sculpture or gazing balls or statues or you know, any kind of thing that just fits your, you know, fancy.

- Right, right.

- You know - I like that.

- So, or you can, if you're a good do it yourselfer, you know, you can do some kind of crafty things with, you know, repurpose things.

- Right.

- And course you can do other things like, you know, cluster your gourds and pumpkins and corn stalks and the bushel baskets filled with mums or whatever, hay bales.

And I put ornamental grasses in that group because you know, they're awfully pretty.

- I like ornamental grasses.

- Yeah.

Oh, and I meant to mention something.

You can also just take dead stuff and put in pots, a colorful pot and you can get pretty branches or things that have a nice pretty dead structure.

And I have a picture that shows that very thing, you know, how you just, dead sticks in the right place can look kind of interesting.

You know, get that silhouette, you know, the structure of them.

Oh, and another thing you can do is as you're thinking about all these things and as you're doing these things, take stock of your garden as it is and your landscape, and you're gonna think, "Well, I just really don't have enough that provides color "and interest, you know, during the fall and winter.

So maybe I need to add a few things that have winter fruit," winter berries that are evergreen, have really great structure.

You know, like Mahonias, Oregon grape hollies are just really pretty, and they have a nice architectural structure.

So take stock and, and see if you have things already there or if you need things.

And then group them so that there of areas of interest, you know, in the winter where these kinds of plants or trees, shrubs, you know, any of these things, you know, they have... Well, I thought I had some examples here, but I don't guess I do.

But anyway, Mahonias and crab apples, you know, their fruit last and they feed the wildlife, - That's right.

- Of course.

And Hollies - Hollies have the berries, right?

- Yep.

Yep.

So there's a lot of things that have, you know, pretty - Okay.

- Seeds or structures, things like that, that you can take an inventory and say, "Yeah, I gotta have some more of this."

Oh, things with pretty fall foliage color.

- Okay.

Okay.

- Or things that have pretty variegation in them and they, we have evergreens that are variegated.

So, you know, anything that'll add some splash and interest.

So do that, don't forget about, you know, planting your, your flowering bulbs in the fall.

- That's right.

- So you're gonna have a pretty spring.

Oh, and one thing that, because of the pandemic, I have heard from my contractor friends that a lot of people are going to outdoor kitchens.

- Yes.

- So that they can have a nice gathering place.

And of course you gotta have a fire pit.

- Oh yeah.

- You know, a good gathering area.

There's nothing more fun to me than burning up stuff in my fire pit.

You know, I really love that.

And you gathering around putting something on the grill, you know, so if you don't have a place like that, you don't have to do an outdoor kitchen, you can just create a gathering area.

- Yeah.

- With chairs and a fire pit or fire pot.

- I like that idea.

- You know, and some pretty lighting.

Don't forget about the lighting, you know, up lighting on pretty structural things, you know, your focal points.

- Right.

- You know, do some up lighting, you know, on these types of, of focal points or do the string lights, you know, like they do now, the party lights, you know?

- Yeah, yeah.

Everybody's doing that now, they sure are.

- Yeah.

So anyway, I think there's a lot of things you can do to make it interesting, and to me, having that outdoor area together, especially during the changing of the seasons.

- Yeah.

- When it's not freezing cold.

- Right.

- It's just pretty and nice and the, you know, so.

- Those are some great winter landscaping ideas.

- Well, thank you!

Yeah, I had, so you picked my brain, you know, cause I'm thinking, "Hmmmm" - So thank you Dr. Kelly.

We appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

- Thank you much.

- Yeah, you're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - A great plant to consider this next summer is sorrel.

This is Jamaican sorrel or roselle.

It's a hibiscus and it makes great tea.

And this is how you extract the seeds or the seed pods using just a simple milkshake straw.

And there's a seed pod and this is, this is the calyx that you will dry and make tea out of.

In Jamaica, they make a punch out of this with cinnamon and ginger and allspice and boil that down, strain it and put a little simple syrup in it and some rum and it's fantastic.

[upbeat country music] - All right.

So Rudy, let's talk about fall and winter weed control.

What do we need to know?

- Well, when we're looking at our lawns, fall and winter control for weeds is probably the best time.

We tend to forget that during the wintertime there are a lot of weeds that actually start during the fall and wintertime.

So, during this time for your lawn especially, this is the best time to actually apply your pre-emerge.

- Okay.

- I'm a real big advocate for pre-emerge so that you don't have to worry about weeds during the actual growing season.

- I would agree.

- 'Cause once the grass starts to grow, it's really difficult to try and use those spot treatments and then post-emergents.

So if you really have to, you can probably do post-emergents, but you can actually control and really head off a lot of the weeds by using pre-emerge.

So this time, actually this month is probably the best time we try and water that in after we put that in.

So, if you can gauge your actual application from your spreader to apply it five days prior to an actual rain, it would actually then actually do a lot better job.

- I agree with that.

And those winter weeds are just out there big time.

- Oh yeah.

They'll pop up and you don't even know it.

And all of a sudden, especially if you have, let's say a Bermuda lawn, - Ah.

- it's all stark brown and then you have these weed patches all over the place, so it's hard.

- I always wondered how many days prior to a rain, I tend to run out there right before it hit.

- Yeah, yeah, a lot of people do that.

- Yeah, I think most of our specialists in terf and lawn they'll tell us within five days.

- Good to know.

- Try and a lot of times because it'll volatilize in the actual soil and then lose its effectiveness.

So if you can actually water that in after you actually apply it, if you do have an irrigation system or within five days within a rain.

- Yeah, they'll definitely be there.

All right, so how do we maintain the soil for the spring?

- Now for the spring, this is also the best time, for instance, for your gardens to actually provide any type of soil amendments.

Since a lot of your, your plants are already dormant and you're preparing your beds for the actual springtime, this is the way that you can address weed control by removing any dead materials and dead plants out of your beds to make sure that you're starting for a new season.

And this also helps controlling kind of overwintering of pests and diseases by removing those plant materials, if there are any weeds there, then you also remove those as well.

Destroy the weeds that are actually there because they can overwinter in your compost pile if you actually put those in your compost pile.

But adding soil amendments actually after you clean your beds out is the best time.

And then you can also during the times, during the wintertime and early spring, if you want to help control some of overwintering seeds of of weeds, you can do solarization by actually applying a clear plastic over the beds.

But I would wet the actual ground first and then provide that clear plastic to actually provide that solarization to increase the temperature.

- That's good stuff.

What about those perennials that are out there in the garden?

- Perennials, again, during the wintertimes, this is the best time to actually address any kind of pruning, pruning your shrubs and so forth.

Like we mentioned, we can also use our ornamentals, ornamental grasses.

This is the best time to actually then help them just stay as they are.

We try and keep those ornamental grasses during the wintertimes.

We prevent any kind of pruning because you can take advantage of the actual texture and sound from the actual ornamental grasses and the added variety in your landscape during the winter months.

But, during the spring you can actually tie them up and then cut them down.

But in the early fall and winter, this is the best time to actually manage and prune out some suckering in your actual trees and shrubs to actually clear out some areas and actually create better growth for the spring.

- Okay.

- I wanted to address just a second that when we talk about fall planting, 'cause I think a lot of people start thinking September or October when it's often very dry.

- Oh yeah.

No.

- So, in the south I always tell people I'll wait 'til I start to see oak trees losing leaves.

That's sort of a good sign.

You know, we'd like to look at these external clues about when to do certain things like apply herbicides for example.

- Exactly.

Right.

- And sometimes after Thanksgiving is, is the best time, and we tell folks, you know, kind of like a, as a marker on your calendar, you know, anytime after thanksgiving is the best time because a lot of the leaves will be down.

Everything is pretty much dormant and that's the best time to actually do any kind of spraying or any applications.

- And we started to have some rain and the grounds are softened as well, so I think that's also important 'cause I don't wanna have to water all the way through September, October.

- Right.

Any kind of planting is gonna require any, some type of irrigation to get the actual plant started.

So the best time would be later in the actual fall so that when you actually have the actual fall, winter, fall rains, then you'll have better irrigation and better soil moisture for those plants.

- Chris has always really emphasized, and I've benefited very much from, that fall clean up in the garden to get rid of the insect and disease pressures.

- Yes.

- Because that was something I often neglected.

- Yeah.

Clearing those out is the best time because we've had abundant growth during the, the summertime a lot of things have maybe flared up and this is the best time to address that and then clear those out.

And so you can have a fresh start for the spring.

- How about compost, building a compost pile?

- Composting, again, you've got a lot of material that is coming out of your garden.

- Yeah.

- Material that has gone dead and is, has already gone through their life cycle.

So if they're not diseased and they're not pest ridden, then that would be the best kind of material to put into your compost.

Starting a compost pile is really easy.

You can just start a pile somewhere in your yard and then just collect those materials.

You can also buy any type of structures to put your actual compost in as well.

But the key thing is to allow any kind of air to come through.

- Right.

- The actual compost to make sure that they're going to decompose.

- Okay.

That'd be good to do.

Huh?

- I know actually steal bags of people who are crazy enough to throw out bags of pine needles, especially, I love for mulch and then I get the leaves for making compost piles.

- That's right.

- So far I don't have enough trees in my yard.

- So yeah, you've got a lot of different litter from your yard clippings to your actual leaves from your trees.

- Right.

- To actually your garden litter as well.

All these materials that you can actually utilize for your compost.

- And she did mention mulch.

I mean this only a good time to do that as well?

- Yes.

Mulching is the best time also as well.

It's, it's a lot easier to put out mulch during the fall time because it's not as hot.

- Right.

- But yeah, putting out mulch also helps protect any kind of perennials that you have in your beds from the actual frost damage that may occur in the actual root system.

- Okay.

- So a minimum of three inches we try and recommend for most mulches in and around your actual beds is the best way to do it.

- Lastly is this, we need to evaluate our garden and flower beds, right?

So what worked, what didn't work?

- Exactly.

- Those kind of things.

Yeah.

Right.

- Keep a little journal maybe.

- This is the best time as well.

You've gone through your whole growing season and you've taken note of what happened, what didn't work, and then you can actually plan because they're also going to be the best time now to look at your catalogs for the actual spring to see what's gonna be coming out.

And maybe some newer varieties that you might want to introduce into your garden.

- I like to call it editing - Exactly.

- As an ex-English major, we're editing and sometimes things just didn't live up to the hype.

- Right, exactly.

So again, you can come back and then if you're actually, you know, working with these particular catalogs, you can actually get some feedback, give 'em a little heads up and say, "You know what?

I tried this over in this region, didn't work so well."

- All right.

Thanks.

That's good stuff.

- You're welcome.

- Appreciate that, Rudy.

[upbeat country music] - It's fall and it's harvest time.

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder and it's time to harvest the sweet potatoes.

So, if you'll see here, we have a couple sweet potatoes that have kind of poked up above the surface.

I'm kind of curious to see what's down farther under.

And you can see that the leaves have started to change color, which is a good sign that the sweet potatoes are ready to pick.

Now you wanna make sure that the sweet potatoes are not exposed to freezing conditions.

So, you want to try and keep them from below 45 degrees and especially from below freezing.

When you, if you have a lot of sweet potatoes to dig, you can use a digging fork, like this.

I wouldn't use a shovel 'cause you'll end up cutting 'em in half And that'll really reduce the storage time you have.

You can use a digging fork, kind of try and get underneath them and lift them up.

But because we're here in a square foot garden and we only have a few potatoes, I'm just gonna use a trowel.

So, let's see what we got.

[leaves rustling] Just kind of work 'em up here And just kind of lift them up out here.

Ooh, that's a big one.

There's one in here really deep.

Well, that looks like all of them.

So, looks like we got some four or three giant sweet potatoes here and three smaller sweet potatoes.

I'll go ahead and weigh these and add them to the information as to what we've picked outta the square foot garden on the square foot garden blog on familyplotgarden.com.

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

Y'all ready?

- Yes.

- All right, let's have some fun.

- Here we go.

- Here's our first viewer email.

"What kind of flower is this?"

And this is Rose.

So Dr. Kelly, what kind of flower you think it is?

- It's a, it's an Asiatic dayflower.

- Ooh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And we have native dayflowers, but I don't believe that one's it.

- Okay.

- This one, yeah, looking at, try to zoom in and look at it up close.

- Right.

- But I gotta tell you, I love these little things.

They don't get, I struggle with 'em in my garden.

- Okay.

- And they're very easy to pull up.

You know, they're very, very easy.

They're very, very shallow-rooted at the nodes of the stems, so you just pull 'em up.

But if you leave any little piece, it's gonna, the little stem, it's gonna just root and keep going.

But they have the most beautiful blue flowers.

- They do.

- And they're named dayflower for a reason because that little flower only last a day.

But there's just not a lot of pretty pure blue.

- Yeah.

- You know, in flowers.

And you know, in the right place they'd make a good ground cover.

But you know, they are considered invasive - Yeah.

- In our gardens and, but they're fairly easy to control.

They really are.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Actually I've seen 'em out in fields, you know, quite a bit.

Anything you wanna add to that, Joellen?

- No.

No.

Sounds good.

- The Asiatic dayflower.

- Yeah.

It's pretty good, but you know, the thing I like about the dayflowers is this, the anthers.

- Oh yeah.

- They're really trying to attract those pollinators.

- Yeah.

- Those yellow anthers, real long.

- Kinda come down.

- Yeah, they twist and curl a little bit.

- Really interesting and pretty flower, yeah.

- It's like, "Yeah, come get me."

- It needs to be like that big though.

- Yeah.

Small.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Like a big orchid, you know, or something.

- That would be nice.

- I do like it, very pretty.

Alright, Rose, thank you for that picture, nice picture.

- It was a nice picture.

- Appreciate that.

- It was a nice picture.

- Very Good.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

All right y'all, this one, this one's pretty cool I think, right?

"We have a crape myrtle bush.

"We cut it back to the ground level every year "because the new growth always comes from the roots.

"The root area expands to a greater diameter each year.

"And we have noticed there is no new growth in the center.

"The plant is now a ring shape.

"Can we split the root ball of our crape myrtle bush in half?

"Then we could replant the removed part in a different area."

This is Susan from Central Illinois.

All right, so it's a lot of things going on here, right?

- Yeah.

- So Susan, guess what?

Joella just happens to be from Central Illinois.

- Yes.

- So we're gonna start with her first, right?

- Yes.

Yes.

- So yeah, this is, this is pretty good.

- This is good, and yes, she can dig it up and divide it.

- Okay.

- There is one little caveat if any other part of she's in zone six or five, five, six, and zone six is about the northern edge of where crape myrtles live.

And they tend to be perennial there, which is what obviously hers is 'cause it, it dies back every year.

But the, in Illinois, they will measure the frost level at the four-inch level - Interesting.

- And the majority of roots grow in two to four inches of soil.

So yes, you can divide it, yes, you can replant it, but wait until spring in the growing season, 'cause I don't want the cold to harm the perennial crape myrtle.

- Okay.

- I don't want it hurt.

And if and if it's gonna be disturbed and you're gonna move it in a new place, I'd rather give it the nice growing season to be able to establish there and not just before winter, which is a lot, is a little bit different from what you normally would think is follows the time to divide, the soil is still warm, but I just don't know if it will be because it's a crape myrtle that's up at the northern end of its range, if that would be a good idea to do and, and wait until spring and divide it.

But yes, divide it and put it other places and enjoy.

- Split it, okay, and enjoy.

So what do you think about that, Doc?

- Good luck with splitting the thing though.

- Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about.

- Yeah, that's gonna be a job, but yeah, I mean I defer to her.

She's the Illinoian.

- Okay, but you definitely have to get enough... - Gotta get enough roots.

- Of the roots, right?

Yeah.

But you're splitting it, yes, it's gonna be a chore.

- Yes.

Gonna need, Yeah.

- But, but I can appreciate, you know, somebody wanted to, to try this, you know?

- Yeah, so wait 'til the spring?

- Yeah, I would wait 'til the spring.

- Okay.

- Because of the northern climate that it's in.

- Alright, so there you're have it, Ms. Susan.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Central Illinois.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"I have two lace leaf Japanese maples "that are large and have been planted in my landscape "for 20 years or so.

"In the past they were lush, "but over the past few years the canopies "have become increasingly thin.

"Fear this might be Verticillium wilt "from what I've seen on internet searches.

"Is there any hope for these tr ees or should they be removed from the landscape?"

And this is Michael from Athens, Tennessee, Dr. Kelly.

So Verticillium wilt, lace-leaf Japanese maple.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I have, I have a couple in my garden.

And I would like to know if they're in sun or shade because they do not like being in late afternoon full sun.

- Okay.

Okay.

- Because you'll get all that scorch and over time it does stress the plant and then it will just gradually die back and just not look good.

And the other thing is, I don't know if it's got Verticillium or not.

- Okay.

- You know, you would need somebody, like a county agent to come out and peel a little bark back and kinda look and see.

I don't know, I mean I, I think I would make a, just a judgment call on what the damage is and they've been there for 20 years.

- About 20 years.

- Just, you know, do your cultural, good cultural practices and make sure that it doesn't get stressed.

And then if it doesn't rebound and continues to die back, that's when she can make a choice whether just to remove them.

- Right.

- Yeah.

Right, what do you think about that, Joellen?

- Yeah, I, I, yeah, I would agree.

And, and yeah, we don't know if it has a disease or not.

- Right.

But obviously it is very unhappy.

But yeah, if she can't save what's there and in the next season, you know, in the spring fertilize and water it and see if it comes out anymore, then pick another plant for that area and I might not go back with a maple tree.

- Yeah.

Depending on where the sun/shade kind of situation.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- 'Cause she may have had a, yeah.

She may have had, maybe it's, and it maybe it's too much water.

Do they have irrigation system?

I mean I don't, there's a whole lot of questions.

- Yeah, there's a lot of questions.

I mean she got 20 good years out of it.

I think that's time to do something else.

- Maybe it's time, maybe it's time.

- It's very nice.

- Yeah.

that's a long time.

- It's a long time.

- That's good.

- So thank you for that question, we appreciate that.

All right, so Joellen, Dr. Kelly?

Fun, fun, fun.

- It was fun.

Yeah, how about that.

- Good questions.

- Yep.

- 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.

Thanks for watching.

Want more Family Plot?

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]