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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Winter is coming.

Today we're gonna talk about what to do to get your vegetables ready and help your ornamentals and trees have an easier time surviving the cold weather.

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 Tom Mashour, Mr. Tom, Extension Master Gardener in Tipton County.

Ms. Joellen Dimond is with us, Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis.

Thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- Good to be here.

- Alright Mr. Tom, let's talk about winterizing the vegetable garden.

- Well right now for most parts your winter garden should be going dormant, unless you have a fall crop growing right now.

And I'm gonna talk about three different things, but the thing I wanna talk about is weeds.

- Alright, yeah.

- Taking an artist during a new project, they like to start with a clean palette.

- Alright, I like that, okay.

- And I think that we should do the same thing in our garden, so in the spring when you're ready to plant it looks like it's ready to go and you don't have to be down on your hands and knees.

- Right.

[Chris laughs] - But so I wanna talk about weeds, and there's pretty much three common ways to handle the weed problems in your garden.

First one is chemicals, non-selective herbicide to kill the weeds, and it will do the trick.

But there's also some problems with it.

One of the problems is that some people don't want chemicals in their garden.

Secondly, by the way it is cheap and really quick to do it.

But because the cool weather, chemicals, the herbicides take a lot longer to take effect.

Meanwhile the plant doesn't know that and it's going out and putting out more seeds, so that's the drawback of it.

Another way is the mechanical way, is using a tiller.

Now a tiller will do the trick, but we're in the days now of no-till gardening, and secondly when you till and you got weeds, you're planting the weeds.

So you're getting 'em ready for the next year's crop.

Or you can do the, my particular favorite is hand-weeding.

- Oh, that's what I do at home, I'm with you.

- I prefer it, and if you spend the time during the growing season, maybe 15, 20 minutes a week, and you're getting those weeds when they're small, hand-weeding is not a big deal, it's not really bad at all.

And when you pull the weeds out, they're gone.

- They gone, that's right.

- Seeds and all.

Roots, whatever, and of course you do not want to compost it, you just get rid of 'em.

Another thing I wanna talk about is mulching.

Right now we're gonna be entering the season of abundant leaves.

- Right.

- And I do not, matter of fact I've got a shredder I don't even use any more.

Everything from my lawns, grass, leaves go directly to the garden, they do not pass go, do not collect $200, they go right out to it.

Why not take these leaves and put 'em in the garden rather than sitting 'em out on the street to the city get rid of?

You know, and it's free, relatively free.

Shredding would actually be a better way of doing it, but like I said it's really a step that you can really avoid, you don't have to really do it.

Matter of fact I'll probably do it today.

My lawn's weed-free, doesn't look very pretty 'cause there's leaves and grass all over it, but I'm gonna hit it with some high-nitrogen fertilizer to help it decompose, to break down little bit better.

And another way is planting legumes, which is a ground cover for winter use.

And being legumes, legumes take the nitrogen out of the air, which is by the way, 87% nitrogen, and puts it in the soil.

Matter of fact in California the professional farmers in the San Joaquin Valley where I used to live, 'bout every fifth year they plant alfalfa for the same very reason.

And the orchards in California, they plant a winter crop and then just get it in when it starts getting hot, and they use expression green manure, and it works out really well.

- And these are what, clovers, hairy vetch, yeah.

- Hairy vetch, crimson clover, even annual rye.

Of course I don't like annual rye 'cause they're in your lawns and stuff like that.

But crimson clover is supposed to be very good, and the nice thing, crimson clover puts a big mat out and then you can take and just cut it off in the spring at ground level, and the roots decay.

And since they're legumes it breaks down and feeds the worms.

And one thing about worms, by the way, worms live in the soil but they eat organic matter.

And if you don't put organic matter they only got two choices, die or move.

So the more organic matter you put in there the healthier you're gonna have as far as worms go.

The better worms you got the healthier garden you're gonna have.

- Yeah you want worms, I mean they're your tillers in the garden.

- Yeah, they're called nature's gardener.

- That's right, that's right.

- And the third thing is planting for purposes of what are you gonna be doing next year.

And come probably within the next month or so you're gonna start getting all the seed catalogs, and start time to pick out what you want.

And one of the things that's pretty common to do is divide your garden into quadrants, usually four.

And you rotate your crops each year from one quadrant to the next, to the next, to the next.

So what was in quadrant one will be moved to two, two to three, three to four, four goes to one, which helps to keep from spreading diseases.

As you know, like on tomato plants they say don't plant 'em two years in a row in the same place, that's pretty much with all vegetables.

So by doing that you're reducing the chances of having soil-borne problems.

My own personal way is I do it in threes, a third.

And the reason is I keep one third in cool-weather crops and the other two in the summer crops.

And I still rotate 'em, and as you know and Joellen knows that all vegetables, and most other plants are listed as either cool-season or warm-season, you never see 'em listed as cold season or hot season.

- Right, right right.

- So your cool season, like right now I got cool-season crops going right now.

Onions, beets, cabbages, and that's pretty much what I got growing right now.

So you wanna do that, do your crop rotation and plan what you're gonna put where.

Now the reason why my summer crop plots or quadrants is double that of the wintertime is a lot of your summertime plants are vines.

You know, like squash, beans and things of that nature, so you need more area.

And the cool-weather crops, usually there's no vining plants.

You know, you go radishes, broccoli, cauliflower.

- Mostly leafy vegetables for the most part.

When do you normally start your seeds indoors for next year?

- Okay, well I got some information that tells you when to do it, but typically on the summer-type crops, or even your fall-type crops, six weeks before I even put 'em in the ground.

Six weeks seems to be just about the right time for the plants to go from seed to planting size.

So like my cabbages, I started those on July the 1st, and by August the 15th they were ready to go in the ground, which is still hot, but they're small and they can handle the heat 'cause they don't have big leaves on 'em where it gets burned up.

And by the time it starts cooling off they're ready to stretch, they really are.

- What about your spring vegetables though, when would you start those?

- What kind?

- Your spring.

- Spring.

Again, our typical frost-free date is April the 15th, so I will start those, depending on what my plants are, for example on peppers I will start them two months before the frost-free date.

Tomatoes, no more than six weeks because they grow so fast.

You know, you could almost feel like shoving, trying to get out of the container.

And of course there are also like sugar snap peas, you plant those the first of February outside, outside.

So you look at your charts when you use the Tennessee's Department of Agriculture "Growing Vegetables in Home Gardens".

- Yeah, which is a good publication-- - It's excellent, but it's made for the whole state.

- Right, right, it's real good.

- But it gives you a good guideline, tells you when to put the plants out, then all you have to do is back up six weeks from those dates and you got to when to plant 'em.

- Right, yeah, that's a real good publication.

I tell people it's the ultimate cheat-sheet.

That thing really, it was good for the whole state as you mentioned before.

Mr. Tom, thank you for the good information.

- I appreciate it.

- Alright, thank you sir.

[upbeat country music] - Well it's the beginning of November here in the perennial garden that we have for the butterflies and the pollinators.

We don't see any butterflies anymore, but we do have got bee action on our aster.

This is the perfect time of year fo r the aster to be blooming and it attracts the pollinators.

Then you have the lantana that's still blooming, and some of the other Vinca and other Vinia annuals that are still blooming.

The sedum has just passed its bloom time, so it'll be forming seed heads.

And then the butterfly weed is going to seed over here.

So we'll collect some of this seed to plant for this next year, to have more butterfly weed for the butterflies.

But everything looks good here in the butterfly garden.

[upbeat country music] Alright Joellen, what do we need to know about ornamentals and trees in the fall and the winter?

- All sorts of things going on in the next few months.

Number one thing of course is leaves, leaves are everywhere.

And interestingly enough, the reason why we get nice fall color is because the leaves all have those pigments all year long, but chlorophyll is masking their color.

So either day length and temperature are two triggers for the trees, saying you know, you've stored up enough carbohydrates this year in your root system, so it's time to lose the leaves.

So the chlorophyll dies and then we have the pretty colors, and then they fall off the trees.

- Yeah, beautiful colors, yeah.

- The falling off the trees is our problem because they get everywhere.

And if you can at all possible, try to use your leaves for mulch.

Mulching your beds with them instead of buying mulch, you've got ready-made mulch already.

But one thing is you wanna keep the leaves off the lawn, because when you think about it, trees, when they lose their leaves in the forest, they mulch themselves, but they don't have any lawns in forests.

So you know, we don't want the leaves on top of the lawns to decompose our grass, 'cause we're trying to get grass to grow there.

So we have to collect the leaves off of the grass, so you can blow them off, but if you have large quantities of them it's nice to get them and compost them.

You can do several things with them.

Like Tom, I put mine in my garden.

And it's great mulch and great composting, but some people have composting bins, you can put them in there, and some people say well I have too much.

Well try mulching mowers, and mulch 'em in place if you can.

You know, because this is one thing that happens is it changes the structure of the ground.

It puts organic matter down there that worms can grow, so then you're gonna increase the porosity of your soils so then when it rains and there's runoff from your rain, from your roof and everything else, there is more area to absorb them before it runs off of your property, so it keeps all your water on your own property and you don't contribute to water runoff.

So it's always a good thing to keep as many leaves as you possibly can.

But of course that's gonna be something that you can work on for a long time, 'cause it takes a long time for all the leaves to fall off in the winter, it does.

You know, there's another thing you can do, it's called lasagna gardening.

And I know it's not exactly the best time of year to do it but you can put cardboard down in even a grassy area, doesn't matter if you wanna make a new bed, and then you layer it with leaves and then, you know, the frost is gonna come and all of the basils and the annual flowers that you had need to be pulled up.

Well that can be your green in between the layers of leaves.

And you can build up a nice bed, and it would be ready to plant in the spring.

So you can do that with 'em too.

Now since we're talkin' about trees, we gotta remember about young trees, and especially thin-skinned bark trees.

Sunscald is a really bad problem because what happens in the winter is it's nice and warm, and hot, and sunny during the day.

The bark warms up, and then at night the temperatures sometimes fall really low, and then that causes the bark on the sides of that tree to crack.

And sunscald cracks take years for trees to overcome, and sometimes they never do.

So if you can wrap your trees, especially your small trees, and thin-skin barked trees, it would be good to buy some tree wrap for it.

It's usually white or an off-white color of some kind.

And if you don't have that, how about an old sheet?

You put it to strips and just put it around the base of the tree to help keep the sunscald from happening to your small trees.

Also critters.

- Hmm, yes.

- You don't wanna pile up mulch around the base of any large shrubs or trees, because voles especially are notorious, mice, they will burrow in that nice mulch that you have and then oh, here's a food source and start nibbling on the base of your trees and shrubs.

So you don't wanna put a lot of thick mulch around that.

But I mean some loose leaves is nice if you think it needs it, but yeah.

That's one thing you can keep away.

Plus some people have problem with deer and rabbits, and you need a physical barrier for that.

Either some wire fencing or some plastic fencing, whatever you can put around it to physically barrier the animals away, keep them away from your trees and your special shrubs.

- Yeah, that's a good point.

- So that's gonna be something.

Also, November and December is the best time to plant bulbs for spring-blooming flowers.

Daffodils are especially, get your most money for daffodils, 'cause they will come back every year almost reliably.

Tulips and some of the others will come back sporadically, but they all are a great, nice, spring burst of color.

And highly recommend going ahead and putting some in the ground around your house, or in containers, and enjoying the bloom that they have in the spring.

- I would agree, you can't go wrong with those, can't go wrong with 'em.

- You gotta give 'em January and February to be able to get enough strength to, you know, make roots and break shoots, so you really need to be in the ground before December, I mean before January.

Let's see, mulch of course.

You know, that's why I say a nice layer of mulch, 'cause you want a layer of mulch that acts like a blanket for around the roots of all the trees and shrubs.

They like to have that, it keeps the temperature more even when the temperature outside isn't always nice and even.

Sunny in the daytime, warmer, then goes down cold at night.

But the layer of mulch, no matter what kind of material it is, will help keep that more even.

Perennials, great time to divide and plant perennials.

In fact it's a great time, fall is the best time of year to plant any kinda plant because our ground here doesn't freeze.

So it's the best time to go ahead and incorporate those trees and shrubs, perennials, in your landscape and they'll be set for the spring.

- Makes sense.

- Pruning, oh, February is when I usually start thinkin' about pruning, because the leaves are gone from the trees, you can see branching patterns and you can correct things that are wrong, like crossing branches and maybe crossed angles that are too narrow.

And also crape myrtles, it's the best time of year to start pruning crape myrtles.

And monkey grass or the Liriopes, it's time to cut those down and discard the leaves, because a lot of times you get rust on the leaves, and spots on the leaves, and that's a disease.

So if you cut 'em off the old growth, discard all of that, you will help get rid of some of your disease problems on your Liriope.

- Right, you could do that with the lawnmower or weed eater.

- Either one.

And protection, now sometimes, I have Camellias and I have some Loropetalums, and it gets cold sometimes.

And I wanna protect those blooms and those tender perennials.

I've got a Gardenia now so I wanna see how it does in the winter.

But even though it's a hardy Gardenia, we get some single-digit temperatures around here which is more zone six and five than it is us and here in seven.

So protecting them is good.

Always keep around some plastic, large pieces of plastic and some extra sheets.

And what I usually do, 'cause plastic is usually clear.

I mean if you can get black plastic that's nice too, but clear plastic will do and that's more available.

And you put a sheet over the plant and then put the plastic over that so if you don't happen to get the plastic off 'cause you have to go to work the next day, and it's gonna heat up that day, you don't get the greenhouse effect underneath there.

So that's to protect it from doing that and getting too hot underneath the plastic.

- Now does the sheet need to be supported?

- It would be nice if you can.

If you can't, at least something is better than nothing.

But the most important thing is for the plastic to go ground to ground, to ground to ground, because that's where the air heat gets trapped in at night.

But those are just some of the things that you can do to get yourself through the winter and into spring.

- Those are some good things, thank you Ms. Joellen, that's good stuff.

[upbeat country music] - It's late in the year here in the square foot garden and pretty soon we're going to be expecting a frost.

And, some people wonder, "When do you pick eggplant?

When is the right size to pick it?"

Well, it's not so much does it need to be big enough, like you think of tomatoes or peppers or things like that.

But, the question is it needs to be small enough.

So, looking at this eggplant right here, we have an eggplant that is still small for this particular plant, but it is large enough to pick.

And so, I'm just gonna go ahead and cut it off, and we'll keep that so it doesn't freeze.

And, that is a pretty small eggplant, but the important thing is is that it needs to still be shiny and it needs to be purple.

So, over here we have a larger fruit, quite a bit larger.

It's still shiny, so it is good to pick.

[pruners cutting] Now, you'll know that an eggplant has gone too far and is no longer good to pick when it loses that shine.

When it stars to ripen farther, it 'll lose its shine, it'll start to turn yellow, and it'll be bitter and not any good to eat.

So, just make sure that you still have the shine on it, but let it get as large as you can before that point because that way you get a larger fruit.

[upbeat country music] - This is our Q & A segment, Mr. Tom you jump in there and help us out, alright?

Here's our first viewer email.

"I have this plant at my house in Midtown.

"My sister refers to it as the Chinese Paper Tree or", I like this, "Kudzu Tree.

"I would like to know what it really is.

"It is very prolific, I have never seen any flowers.

"It seems to propagate by runners "and it is taking over my yard.

"How do I get rid of it?

I am thinking that digging them up is the only solution."

And this is from Max in Memphis.

So Chinese Paper Tree or Kudzu Tree, you wanna help him out, Joellen with that one?

- Actually, sometimes called the paper mulberry, but it's really not related to mulberry trees 'cause mulberry trees are the genus Morus, this is, oh gosh, Broussonetia.

- Okay, good, good.

- But they're different families.

The problem is this was originally brought over as a shade tree but they found out, it's very prolific around here, it escaped cultivation and is out in the wild.

And she is right, they do reproduce by seeds, they reproduce by rhizomes and they will become a thicket and get rid of everything in there, so it is invasive in this area.

So yes, it should be gotten rid of.

- So how do you get rid of, I guess-- - Yeah you can, I mean you can spray it if you wanted to with a herbicide, a non-selective herbicide, but yeah, cutting it out, digging it up is gonna be a, 'cause look at all the carbohydrate reserves in the roots.

If you don't start digging it up and getting rid of the roots themselves, you're going to have years of having that carbohydrate reserve popping up plants everywhere, so yeah, she's right, she needs to dig 'em up.

- Oh Max, you gotta, yeah, strong back.

Start diggin' those things up.

And I always like to refer to Dr. Dirr, Michael Dirr.

He actually called the tree, the paper mulberry, a weed in the south, considered to be very invasive.

And he's the man, you know, so that's what he said.

Consider it a weed in the south and it's very invasive.

- Very invasive.

- Oh Max.

[hearty laughter] Got a lotta work ahead of you.

- Yes you do, but everybody around you thanks you for trying to get rid of it because then it won't be a problem after you get rid of it, so.

- Alright, so thank you for that question, Max.

Alright, here's a letter, okay, it's a letter.

"I have had a water vine plant that has been growing "in water for about seven months.

"It was happy and growing well, "now the leaves are turning yellow, but not wilting.

"Also there is green mold growing "in the bottom of the container.

What should I do to help my yellowing water vine plant?"

And this is from Steven in Whiteville, Tennessee.

Alright, so the water vine plant has been growing in water for about seven months, but we have the green mold and yellowing leaves.

- Well of course, you know, the green mold is not a good sign.

That's the sign that it's got bacteria or something growing in the water, algae, nothing else.

I'm sure he's cleaned it out and put new water in.

Does it have enough light, I hope it's got enough light.

But more importantly maybe it needs nutrients.

It's in a container with water, but is it supposed to go in a pond outside, is it supposed to be in a fish tank?

Because if it was in a fish tank, you know, the fish would provide the nutrients that would feed the plant.

But maybe it's lacking nutrients if it's yellow and it's got plenty of light.

Maybe the water has not got enough, just water itself doesn't have enough nutrients to keep it green.

- I agree with that.

- I have bamboo plants that grow strictly in water.

And what I do is I take a teaspoon of water soluble fertilizer to a gallon of water.

And every time I add water to it I'm giving a little weak solution, and the plants are extremely healthy by doing that.

- Okay, so we're all thinking the same thing, nutrients.

- Nutrients, uh-huh.

- Okay, so there you have it Mr. Steven, we're thinking nutrients.

Alright, Ms. Joellen, Mr. Tom, we're outta time.

It's been fun.

- It's been fun.

- Thank you much.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]