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

I'm Chris Cooper.

It's spring and there are things to do to get ready for the growing season.

We have a checklist to get your garden ready.

Also, we will be pruning figs.

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 University of Memphis.

And Mr. Bill Colvard will be joining me later.

Alright, spring is here, right?

- Finally, yes.

- Finally!

Yes.

So, what do we need to do to get our garden ready for spring?

- Well, you know, one of the first things that I like to do is go out to the perennials and cut anything down that has died from the year before.

I collect it, and whatever's not diseased, I go ahead and put that in the compost pile.

- Okay, makes sense to me.

- Another thing to do is, usually about late winter, early spring, the ornamental grasses, the leaves start breaking up and falling everywhere.

So, to prevent that, it's good to go ahead and cut them down.

Now, cutting them is relative, because some of them are 10 feet tall, so you don't have to cut them clear to the ground.

But, just cut off the majority of the leaves, and whatever size of perennial grass that you have.

And then, you know, again, if it's not diseased put it in the compost pile.

- Okay.

Let me ask you a question about that.

So, what would you use to cut the ornamental grasses?

- Well, you know, people use different things.

Head sheers, people have used.

I've seen people have the blades on a weed-eater that they'll just trim around with it.

Some people just use head sheers and just hand, you know, prune them down like that.

So, whatever, you know means that you have.

But it's best to cut them down because you don't want them to - They're just gonna go everywhere and make your yard look messy.

- Okay, good.

- So, get those down.

Also, it's also time to cut monkey grass, or Liriope, down.

There's a reason for that, though, because if you'll see on an almost all of them have some kind of little brown spots and stuff, which, Chris, that's anthracnose.

And you've got to cut it and remove it and get rid of it.

You don't put that in the compost pile.

- Right.

- If you have a chronic problem with it during the year, you may wanna start spraying it bi-weekly with chlorothalonil - Mm-hmm.

- product.

But you're gonna have to do it for several months.

You know, bi-weekly for several months to keep, to get that under control.

- And read the label on it that, please.

- Definitely read the label.

Follow the directions.

After you're cleaning up your perennial beds and your perennials like that, if you have, some parts of the country, you have to actually wrap some tender perennials.

They'll put straw down in them, like roses and stuff.

You need to unwrap them because if you start getting spring rains it could cause rot problems in there.

So, we just wanna get those unwrapped as soon as possible.

And as far as spring, is the second best time to plant trees and shrubs.

- The second best time.

- Yeah, or anything, you know.

Fall is the best, because you've got the warm weather and you have the warm soil, which encourages root growth.

In the spring, you may not have the the warm soil so much, but you've got pleasant temperatures, and it's still cool enough that you've got enough chance with the spring rains to get the roots established in the beds before the summer comes.

- Okay, that's good to know.

- So, second best time to plant plants.

- Second best time.

- And of course there's fruit trees.

- Oh yeah.

- If you have fruit trees, it's best to prune them before the buds and leaves come out on them.

So, you can see crossing branches and just see the form of the tree.

If you-- Horticulture oil would be a good thing to put on the plant, after you finish pruning it.

This will keep down scales and mites and things that come out, you know, before the flowers appear on the fruit trees.

And then of course follow the guidelines of your local extension agent.

They'll have a fruit and nut tree spray program.

Just follow that, and read your labels on your chemicals that you're gonna apply for your particular fruit tree.

Lawns.

- Ahh.

- You know, cool season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and fescues are great to plant during this time of year because the night temperatures are in the 50s and 60s, which is ideal for them to germinate.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, renovating your lawn with cool season grasses is good, plus just renovating your lawns.

Sometimes people will do thatch in the spring, and apply, you know, top dressings and fertilizer a little later.

So, great time to renovate lawns, is in the spring.

- Okay.

- Pruning ornamental trees, like crape myrtles.

Again, like the fruit trees, they don't have leaves on them.

So, you can see all the branching pattern.

It's a lot easier to cut it this time of year.

And if you need to keep it under control, of a certain size.

Hopefully you've gotten a variety that gets this ultimate size that you want, but if you don't, you can prune it down this time of year and see the branching pattern.

- And I would, make sure you inspect your crape myrtles for crape myrtle bark scale too.

- Yes.

- Just in case.

- Because you can spray some horticulture oil before the leaves appear.

- Yes.

- To control that.

- Yes.

- Now, the big one: vegetable gardens.

- Yes, this is what everybody wants to do.

- Everybody wants to get into the veg.

So, cool season crops are great to start in the spring.

Root vegetables like carrots and turnips, beets, parsnips, radishes.

And then all your leafy greens, like your lettuces, your endive, radicchio, arugula, spinach.

All good time of year to plant.

Your cruciferous vegetables like broccoli.

- Ahh.

- Cauliflower, kale, cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts.

In fact, I planted, we have a, this part of the country, we don't have that severe winter usually.

- Usually, right.

[Chris chuckling] - Usually.

And so I planted broccoli this last fall.

- Oh, cool.

- And I've, just this last week, have harvested another whole section of broccoli.

- Nice, nice, nice.

- So, yeah.

Good, good time of year for that.

Also some kohlrabi, green peas.

I've just planted some green peas in my garden.

I have a nice cattle fencing put up, and I put a row on each side of cattle fencing, and that'll grow up and do well this spring.

Fava beans.

And of course if you're in the heat zones.

Probably 7 through 10.

Potatoes.

It's a good time of year just to plant potatoes, and harvest them before it gets hot outside.

- Mm-hmm.

- And of course, don't forget your covers.

If you wanna start something early, and you have a freeze that comes along, then you wanna cover your seedlings.

Those row covers that are made of fabric, usually white type of fabric.

There's different grades of them, the thickness.

So, that would help to keep your crops from freezing, if you've got that.

And, of course, now is also available blueberries and raspberries, grapes, and other small fruits like that that you can go ahead and plant, because it's time to plant those here.

- Those are good.

- In the spring.

Of course, now, when the ground warms up.

This is important.

The ground has to get warm, probably closer to 70 degrees as possible, 'cause you wanna plant your summer-blooming bulbs.

- Summer-blooming bulbs.

- Summer-blooming bulbs are planted in the spring, but you gotta wait 'til the temperatures of the soil are warm enough.

And this is like caladiums, gladiolas, dahlias, iris, lily of the valley and crocosmia, things like that.

Bulbs that bloom in the summer.

And of course then, evergreens.

It's good to plant, to cut evergreens in the late spring.

- Late spring, gotcha.

- You wanna wait 'til it warms up just a little bit.

And, of course, this year, it's like my house.

That cold temperatures we don't normally get here.

I know Texas, clear up through the Mid-South area.

We got cold temperatures that we don't normally get.

So, I have a lot of my evergreens that are burned from that.

- So do I, so do I.

- So, I would wait.

- Be patient.

- I wanna make sure that the buds start coming out and I see where it's still alive before I cut something that's dead off.

And then that same is true for hydrangeas.

- Mm-hmm.

- I mean, you know, some hydrangeas you prune in the spring, some you don't.

But, anything that's dead, you can prune, but you gotta wait 'til it comes out and buds out before you cut that off.

- Okay.

Good points, good points.

- Other things to do in the spring would be, you know, you gotta get your pool ready, your irrigation systems, your solid surfaces, clean up your steps, and get the algae off of everything.

Just a whole bunch of little things like that, that you can get done in the spring.

- Alright, so that's our spring checklist.

- Spring checklist.

- Sounds good to me.

Thank you Joellen, appreciate that.

- Welcome.

[upbeat country music] - If you have dead plants in your landscape, go ahead and remove them.

Those dead plants can harbor fungal spores, or they may have insect pests on them.

And you don't want those spores to affect your surrounding other plants, or you don't want those pests to get on your plants either.

So, go ahead and practice good sanitation and remove those dead plants.

[branches rustling] And if you would, be a good citizen scientist, right?

Inspect that plant material to see why it possibly didn't make it.

And as you can look at the root system, it looks like this plant was planted in an area that was not well drained.

So again, practice good sanitation and remove those dead plants.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, so I'm here with Mr. Bill.

We're at the Memphis Botanic Garden and we're gonna prune some figs.

- What's left of some figs.

- What's left of some figs.

Alright.

- We've already had a abnormally warm spring.

- Yes we have.

- Before spring got here, in fact.

And figs, which are a tender plant, have started to put out.

Normally they would not have produced any fresh leaves until at least May.

- Wow.

- And some of them in June.

So we've had an unusual growth.

We also had four days of cold weather, extremely cold for this time of year, last week.

And so on our fig trees, we have what only a few days ago was a nice green, new growth, as far as the fig is concerned.

Now, we have two things here, as far as taking care of the figs.

If you prune too early, which we're not going to, - Okay.

- Prune too early for this year, just because of the give and take of the weather.

These have died back.

And this time we don't know to what extent, because each one of these leaf nodes, which is just a little lump right on the side of the tree, is a potential for a bud.

These budded out, and then got hit with 34 degree weather.

- Wow.

- And being a very tender plant, it just curled up and died on us.

- Yeah.

- And dried out in a few days.

Now, some of the figs have not put out at all.

Do not be concerned if yours doesn't.

- Okay.

- In fact, the one that hasn't put out yet may be in better shape than the one that did and then got frozen back.

- Okay.

- But there again, that's not for the homeowner to worry about because even if we had to-- say this tree is not going to bear for the year, and why are we even fooling with it?

You can take a saw, four or five inches off the ground.

Take the whole thing out.

And before the season is over, if you've treated it properly, it will be anywhere from six to eight feet tall.

- Alright, Mr. Bill, we're gonna let you have at it.

We're gonna let you start pruning this fig tree for us.

- Well, first thing we need to look at on this tree.

We want a good sturdy branch to support the bulk of the tree.

When you look at this, it had at one time a single trunk.

- Okay.

- Now, from the old trunk dying out, the 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, about 14 small ones.

Now, you don't want that.

- Okay.

- So you select.

This is one of the sturdier ones.

That's a sturdy one down at the base.

- Okay.

- But those others that are laying on the ground, that's what they're going to do when they mature.

- Oh, okay.

- When they get up here and run out like these little bunchy ones here.

As they grow, the weight will get to them, they're down at the ground, anyway.

It'll pull it to the ground and pop the stump out.

- Okay, I got you.

- So, you wanna pick out two or three, maybe four, and take out all the immature ones around it.

These leaf nodes right here are pointing all different directions.

If you cut it in here where the leaf nodes are thick, you're going to get a burst of little limbs.

Very desirable for a small tree.

- Okay.

And you want limbs with leaf nodes for making fruit, not a long spindly plant like this one is, kind of.

Alright, if you wanna have figs to eat, but you don't have a huge amount of space, then you might wanna come in here about head height and do your cutting.

The problem is, if you do your cutting too soon, as some of us had done, because I had too.

I was shaping my tree for visual effect, as well as bearing fruit.

But, by pruning it back early, this is a fairly hollow stem right here.

And if you get a little moisture in there and then the frost with it, it'll just explode the limb, on occasion, if it's extreme.

So, we've got six leaders here.

- Yeah.

- I would take two more out.

- Okay.

- But most people, most gardeners do not prune as much as needed to be pruned.

They're always afraid they're going to ruin the plant, whether it's a fig plant, any of the fruits that are clustered on there.

You're doing yourself a dis-favor if you don't thin them out.

The ones who were here at the Botanic Gardens, when we had an orchard here.

We had a general rule of five inches apart on fruit.

- Okay.

- People got very upset when you tell them that, that you'll have more poundage of fruit, if you've properly pruned it, than if you just let it stay there.

Also, when you make a cut this severe, pick out which way you want the replacement limb to come.

You've got a marker there already on the plant, where the leaf nodes are going to come out.

So, that one that's cut off here is gonna go this direction.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- And if you can get several leaf nodes in here, on a cut like that, then you come up with a lot more fruiting because this is gonna sew a cluster of new growth.

- Okay.

Gotcha.

- If you wanna root you some plants from this, five neat leaf nodes from your trimming.

At least two leaf nodes, I prefer three, below soil level and two above.

So that you get a place for the first green limbs to come out.

That's just the basic element.

- Yep.

- That one doesn't need to be in here at all.

It's running parallel to the ground, not upright.

- Okay.

There you go.

- Okay so-- - So that comes out.

- Started coming around and one more cut.

And now we have, we've gotta take that one out.

Someone that needs a plant, you pick it up.

There's not any roots on that one, so you can take the whole thing out.

And that is basically the shape.

- Huh.

- The basic shape.

- Basic shape.

- And it rounds out.

- Mr. Bill, I appreciate that demonstration.

[gentle country music] - This last fall, before we had a killing frost, I decided to take some cuttings of my coleus and they have rooted.

And instead of just putting them right down in the ground, I like to pot them up in a container for a few weeks and then put them in the ground.

When you're taking them out of the container, the roots are all tangled, so you have to gently separate each of the stalks from the roots of the other plants.

When we put these roots, new roots, into the soil, the soil is moist.

Like the roots are moist.

And then when we get through planting it, we'll water them.

That way the roots won't have any kind of shock going from just straight water to a container.

These are all in one container and they're not gonna be in here for just a few weeks, and we'll have to gently take them apart and separate each plant, when we plant it in the ground.

Now these are nicely potted up and in a few weeks it'll be the right temperature to put them outside in the garden.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Joellen, this is our Q and A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

Alright, let's start with the first one.

"My grape vines have black rot.

"What is the best way to get rid of it, and how do I prevent it from coming back?"

And this is Jamie from Colliers, West Virginia.

- Wow.

- Alright, how bout that?

So we're talking about her grape vines and black rot.

Black rot is a serious disease of grapes.

- Yes.

- Okay.

You would get reddish-brown splotches on those leaves.

- Mm-hmm.

- The fruit itself will become mummified.

- Mm-hmm.

- So here's what you have to do, right?

Gotta prune them, make sure you have good air circulation to get those leaves dried off.

Practice good sanitation.

You have any diseased parts of this plant, get it out.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

You can use fungicides.

So we talked about a spray schedule before?

Yeah.

- Yes.

- So check with your local extension office, get you one of those spray schedules.

Orchard spray is probably what it's gonna be, or fruit tree spray or something like that.

But it has to contain something like captan, immunox, or mancozeb.

Okay?

Just read and follow the label on that.

Apply that according to the label and you should be fine.

But again, this is a serious disease.

Black rot is, of vines, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Attacks all plant parts.

- It's, yeah.

I've gotten some when I, yeah.

In the extension office, when I was in there, yeah.

- It's tough.

- The thing is, you have to continue to spray.

It's not like this one-time spray.

It's a continual season-long spray you have to apply.

- Right, it's gonna be multiple applications.

And the intervals are probably 10 to 14 days.

It'll be on the label.

- Yes.

- Just read your label.

But do know that this is a serious disease, and something else I like to mention too: look for resistant varieties.

- There are some out there, yes.

- Look for those.

- Yes.

- So, you know, practice good sanitation.

Good air flow.

Look for resistant varieties.

Get rid of all the diseased plant parts, Jamie, and you will be fine.

Thank you for that question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"How do I get phlox seed to grow?"

And this is Nancy.

So, can you get phlox seed to grow?

- Yes, you can.

The thing is, though, phlox seed requires darkness to germinate.

- Oh, okay.

- So, a lot of times the seed packets will have on them how to, you know, what temperature the seed likes to be at, and the depth.

Like, I think it is an eighth of an inch, covered.

- Okay.

- But, to ensure that it germinates, I would put a black piece of plastic over the germination tray.

- Okay.

- That then will ensure that it's dark, but it only take 10 to 11 to maybe 21 days.

So, I would put it down and I would check it every about 5 to 10 days and just see if anything is germinated.

And as soon as it has, you gotta take the black plastic off.

- Okay.

- And now that also helps it act like a greenhouse underneath.

- Right.

- On the flat.

- So you don't necessarily have to have a grow light to start these because they like darkness at first.

But then once you start seeing the plants come up, you're gonna have to put them in some light.

- Okay, you put them in some light.

- But there's a certain amount of temperature and moisture requirement for them.

And some- and phlox is just one of those that's kind of picky about that.

- Okay.

- So that's just, read the label of how the seed says it needs to be germinated or just make sure you cover it with darkness for a few days.

- So it has to have that darkness.

What about soil media?

- Yeah, and germination mix.

Just a nice germination mix, and get it moist, and then put that black plastic over the top of it.

And then, you know, check it every 5 to 10 days, and it will probably start germinating.

- Wow.

Okay, how bout that?

So you can grow phlox.

- You can grow phlox from seed, yes.

- From seed.

There you go, Ms. Nancy.

How bout that?

Thank you for that question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"The trunk of our curly willow is staying so small, "we have to keep it staked.

Do I need to trim the limbs until the trunk gets bigger?"

And this is Bonnie.

Now, let's go back here for a second.

So, the trunk is staying small.

I wonder if it's been staked this whole time?

- Well, that's a good question.

We don't know 'cause we don't have a picture.

- Right.

I remember you telling us this before, right?

So what makes the trunk strong?

- Yeah, we have to, the trunk has to move just a little bit because it has to produce reaction wood.

- Right.

- To make it stand up straight.

And if it's staked the whole time, it never develops that reaction wood.

So when you take the stake off, it'll just fall over.

- Right.

- But you know, I don't know.

Also, does it have one central leader?

Or does it have a whole bunch of branches that are trying to lead to be the tall tree?

And if that's true, then I would cut.

I wouldn't cut them off, but I would cut them back, and leave one to be the central leader.

'Cause you know, this is apical dominance.

You know, you gotta, somebody's gotta, something's got to lead and you've got to make sure that one of them is gonna be the leader.

- Okay.

So this is a couple of things going on here.

- Yeah.

- If we had a picture, it would really help us out a little bit.

- Yeah, it'd be nice to have a picture.

- Right.

But yeah, you don't wanna keep these, you know, trees staked forever.

- No, not forever.

- Yeah, they need to build up their girth, right?

- Yeah.

- Alright.

Alright Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- Thank you much.

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[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]