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

I'm Chris Cooper.

This spring, we started an experiment to see what soil works best in a raised bed.

Now, after several months of growing, we're going to see what has happened.

Also, fungicides and glyphosate are common in the garden, but how do you use them correctly?

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 Peter Richards.

Peter is our gardener.

Thanks for joining us today, Peter.

- Well, thanks for having me.

- So experiments, we like to do experiments on The Family Plot, don't we?

- Yes, we do.

- All right.

So this is our experiment bed.

So you want to tell us a little bit about the experiment you're doing?

- Yes, so what we're doing here is we're testing eight different kinds of soil to see which one works best in raised beds over a three-year period.

- Nice.

- Now this is, we're half a year into the first year here.

So we're five or so months in, half a season.

And we've got some interesting results.

Let's just go down the line here.

- Okay, sure.

- And we have eight different soils.

This one right here is Miracle-Gro raised bed soil, and it's actually performed really well.

- Yeah, it looks good.

- From the beginning, the plants grew well in it.

And they've always looked healthy with the exception of our poor petunia.

- Yeah.

- But the petunia did poorly in every single bed.

So that's not a mark- - I would agree.

- Against this particular soil.

- Okay.

- But as of right now, you know, we have peppers.

There's a little pepper on there.

It'll grow.

The tomato took off and went nuts right away.

Zinnias are looking good.

- Yeah.

- Overall, so far, in the first five months of use, it's performed pretty well.

- Okay.

- Now it does have a lot of fertilizer in the soil when you start to use it.

- Okay.

- So that is an advantage for it.

I don't know if that's gonna pan out in the next few years, but for now it's doing great- - Okay.

Got it.

- For year one.

Okay, let's go over here to the next one.

And this one is what is called topsoil in the Mid-South.

- Yeah.

- It comes in a green bag and it's basically shredded pine bark.

- Okay.

- Finally shredded.

I was hesitant that it was going to do okay because there's no water holding capacity.

There's no nutrients per se in this soil.

And actually at the beginning, along with a lot of these amendments that we actually put in completely, it did really bad.

[Chris laughs] The plants looked very yellow and they almost died.

They've kind of recovered now.

- Yeah, they have.

- Now, something that I did do is I didn't want all the plants to die.

So I went in and once a month about, I've been putting two tablespoons of nitrogen on each of these beds.

- Ah, okay.

Okay.

- So including the Miracle-Gro bed, which probably already had a lot of fertilizer in it.

But just to try and keep it even across the experiment.

So a couple weeks after I had put on the nitrogen, this bed had recovered.

But if you look, it's still a little bit smaller than the other beds.

- It is, yeah.

- In the last couple weeks, it's kind of caught up a little bit.

- Okay.

- So let's go on here to the next one.

This is Black Kow.

- Yeah.

- Which is manure.

- Yeah.

- It's intended for an amendment, just like the topsoil.

But a lot of people think, oh man, if it's good as an amendment, maybe if I fill my whole bed with it, it'll be amazing.

Well, I can tell you that's not the case.

[Chris laughs] Because just like the topsoil, the Black Kow, the plants initially were stunted.

They were small, they were yellow.

Once again, I added nitrogen like the rest, which might have saved them.

In the last couple weeks, it too has kind of started coming back and recovering a little bit.

That's good.

We'll see what happens.

If you notice on it, it's actually sunk quite a bit.

- Yeah, sure has.

- Part of that is probably just the soil itself is settling.

Although you can't call it soil because it's not.

- Yeah.

- But part of it is that it is continuing to decompose.

And as it decomposes, it gets smaller.

So I'm curious to see by the end of the year how low we are in the bed on this.

- Yeah.

And I will say the plants actually look good.

- Yeah, the plants look good.

- Nice green color.

- Right now the plants look really good across all of them.

And actually I think part of our problem might have been, and part of the problem with the petunias is that it, we had a really wet spring.

And so that they didn't like the water.

Let's move on here to the next one.

This is leaf compost.

So essentially shredded up and composted leaves.

It kind of has the same problem as the topsoil.

- Sure.

- There's not a lot of nutrients in composted leaves.

And the water just goes through it really fast.

I would say that it was the worst of the group early on.

The plants were stunted.

They were yellow.

They were just about to die.

And some nitrogen kind of helped pull through.

You can see that the tomato plant here is the smallest of all of them at this point.

The zinnias are not very big.

- No.

The pepper.

- The pepper still has some yellow leaves, like it does not look happy.

You know, it does not look like it's been in the ground for almost five months now.

- No, it does not.

- It looks like I just planted it.

- It does not.

- Also, we have our salvia right here.

It is about the same size as when I planted it.

- Wow.

- It hasn't grown much.

The marigold's doing okay.

- Ehh.

Doing all right.

- Yeah.

But you can see that, you know, this is a great amendment to loosen soil.

It's not something to fill your raised bed with.

- Right.

- Now, in future years, as it breaks down more, we'll see what happens.

- We'll see.

We'll see.

- But it's also settling quite a bit as it continues to cook down, as they say.

Let's move on here to the Pro-Mix.

- A lot of people ask about Pro-Mix at the office.

- Yes.

So Pro-Mix is a mix.

And by the way, it's called Pro-Mix here in the Memphis area.

It's not necessarily gonna be called that in other cities.

- Oh yeah.

- But what it is, is it's one-third soil from the ground, one-third sand and one-third compost.

And so you can find similar mixes around the country.

- Sure.

Sure.

- Here it happened to be called Pro-Mix.

And so here we're starting to get actual real soil in the mix.

Everything before here had no soils, all soilless.

Here, once again, we had some issues because there's not a lot of soil in here.

Even though it's a third soil, that's below the ideal amount.

This also was stunted.

Now, Pro-Mix is intended as an amendment, not as a standalone planting medium, but a lot of people think it is.

Same thing.

Stunted growth early on, yellow.

I think the nitrogen probably saved it.

Just let the plants pull through to where they got more.

- Okay.

- But you can see the tomato's small.

The zinnia is doing pretty good.

It's pretty big.

The salvia is doing great.

- It's doing very well.

- You know, the pepper plant is not doing much.

- Ehh.

Looks stunted.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it's stunted, for sure.

But the interesting thing is, is that here the petunia actually has survived.

- Yeah.

It's trying.

It's trying.

- Yeah, it's trying.

- And the marigold looks about like all the rest of them do.

Marigold seems pretty constant in all this.

- Right.

It sure does.

- Okay, so let's go here to the next one.

So here we have what's called garden mix.

- Okay.

- So this is, once again, this is a mix.

It is one quarter soil, quarter compost, a quarter pine fines, and a quarter coarse sand.

- Okay.

- So once again, this is intended as an amendment, not as a soil.

But a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking it's a soil.

And they're like, "Oh, I'm just going to grow in this."

Once again, we had the problem where stunted growth.

It has pulled back.

The tomato is doing well at this point, and the zinnia is doing pretty good as well.

- Yeah.

- Salvia is okay.

- Yeah.

It's all right.

- The pepper is okay.

The marigold's okay.

The petunia is barely hanging on.

- Yeah, barely.

- Barely hanging on.

So this was, once again, it's a mix.

It's not a soil.

It's an amendment rather.

It's not a soil.

So let's move on here to the next one.

So this one, we're starting to get into what I consider to be a "real" mix here.

So what this is, is this is half soil and half garden mix.

- Okay.

- So it's got a little over half real soil in it.

- Okay.

- And it is one of the better ones.

- Okay.

You see that?

- Yeah, you can see it.

The zinnia's doing great.

The tomato's growing.

The salvia is going nuts.

- Yeah, it looks good.

- The pepper is small- - Eh.

- But okay.

- Eh.

- Now this also had a little bit of a problem early in the year with being, starting to be a little yellow- - Okay.

- As we started to grow.

But it popped out the fastest of all of the mixes that we have.

- So it responded very well to nitrogen.

- It responded well.

Now, this is close to what a lot of horticulturalists think would be the ideal mix, which would be to have, you know, over half soil and then add coarse sand and compost.

- Got it.

- Pine fines are basically what we had in topsoil.

That's what pine fines are, but ground up, finely ground bark.

It will decompose as well, but it creates a lot of pore space in the soil for the plants' roots to be able to grow through it easily and get the nutrients they want.

And especially get oxygen.

- Yeah.

- Plant roots need oxygen.

- Need oxygen.

- You know, if they're sitting completely buried and isolated, they can't grow.

They're gonna suffocate.

- Right, so pore space is what we're looking for.

- Yeah, pore space.

- Pore space.

- So this is what a lot of horticulturalists think is ideal.

Once again, I'm curious to see how this does in year two and three.

- Are we gonna find out.

- And so here now we got the last one.

- Here we go.

Yeah.

- And so this last bed, this is 100% soil.

- 100%.

All right - Now.

Caveat.

I don't know where this soil came from.

- Okay.

- Because when you go out and buy soil, you don't know where it came from.

But this is the healthiest growth.

If you look at it, the tomatoes are high.

The zinnias are good.

The salvia is huge.

- I think it's really branching out too.

- Yeah.

The petunia is dead.

Once again, because I think that they all drowned.

And then the marigold rather is doing about the same as everything else.

- Yeah, look at your pepper.

- And the pepper's doing well.

We got a pepper on there.

- You got pepper on there?

- Yeah.

So I think that what we're seeing here is that soil does really good.

You don't necessarily need to bring in a whole bunch of amendments to grow in soil.

- Right.

- Now, that being said, this is a, probably a silt loam.

Once again, I don't know what it is.

- Okay.

- It's probably a silt loam.

It has a high-clay content.

- Okay.

- Next year, it might be hard as a brick.

[Chris laughs] - It may be.

- We don't know that.

Next year it might not do very well because there's no organic matter in it.

- Okay.

- And so that's one of the advantages of something like this garden mix soil is that you get the advantage of the organic matter to keep the pore space.

Keep it open and loose.

Instead of just straight soil where this is probably going to compact and get really hard for next year.

And next year we may not see as good of performance out of it.

- Right.

- Now, something else that's good to note about soil, especially if you have a high-clay soil, is it's got tons and tons of nutrients for plants.

But if there's no organic matter in it, the plants can't get that nutrient.

It has to do with chemistry and how the charges are on the ions and all that stuff.

Don't need to get into that here.

But what the organic matter does is the organic matter helps to draw those ions, those nutrients out from the soil so that the plant roots can then get them and take them up and use them.

- Right.

- So organic matter, really important.

So, you know, we'll see what happens here.

Once again, I don't know where this soil came from.

So maybe it had a fair amount of organic matter in it to start.

- Maybe it did.

- And you know, eventually that's gonna break down and then it's just going to be soil.

- If it's a loam soil, you know, it has sand, silt and clay in it.

And the clay is good for nutrient-holding capacity, water-holding capacity, which is probably why you have good growth this first year.

- Yep.

- So to your point, yeah.

Next year we'll see.

- Yeah, so it's really interesting because the winners so far, soil is the top winner.

Then after that we got Miracle-Gro raised bed soil, which is a soilless mix is the next best.

So that's what we're looking at right now about, you know, halfway through the first growing season in this experiment.

- All right, and so we do need to mention that these beds are irrigated too as well.

- Yes, that is correct.

They are irrigated.

They're all irrigated the same.

We've tried to treat them all the same.

If we fertilize one, we fertilize all.

If we water one, we water all.

- Makes for a good experiment.

- Yep.

- Thank you, Peter.

- Yeah.

- Can't wait to see what it looks like later.

- Exactly.

- All right.

Thank you.

[upbeat country music] Let's take a look at this tomato plant.

As you can see from the leaves, the margins are purple.

That tells me that this is a phosphorus deficiency.

Usually when you have phosphorous deficiency, you either have wet soils or cold soils.

So I'm gonna say because of all of the rainfall that we've had here recently, wet soils.

So this is what you can do.

You can actually fertilize this tomato plant with a half strength of a triple-13, a complete balanced fertilizer.

That's one thing that you can do.

Or the other thing you can do is this.

Make sure that you have good drainage, right?

Make sure the soil drains well.

So again, this is a phosphorus deficiency.

And I'm guessing it's due to wet soil.

So again, fertilize with a half strength of a complete balanced fertilizer and make sure you have good drainage.

[upbeat country music] - Today we're gonna talk a little bit about fungicides.

Very important to understand that fungal diseases, most of the fungal diseases are spread by wind.

They're tiny spores that move throughout the air so you need to do a very good job of spraying the plant, coating the leaves, and it's probably a good idea to use a spreader sticker when you go with fungicides.

The mode of action is totally different than insecticides.

With fungal diseases, the fungicides tend to prevent a disease from occurring.

If you already have the disease, most of the fungicides don't do a very good job of curing the disease that you already have.

For that reason, we would recommend using fungicides on a preventative basis if you've had a history of a fungal disease problem.

If you apple a fungicide and then it rains on it or your irrigation comes on and washes it off, then you assume that that treatment did not occur and just go ahead and re-treat.

We have a couple of examples of fungicides here.

We have chlorothalonil, the active ingredient in this product, the Ortho product.

And then, I believe, captan is the fungicide that is in this fruit tree spray.

Captan is mixed with a couple of insecticides.

Carbaryl and malathion.

But these disease that we're trying to control are brown rot in peaches, black rot in apples, black rot in grapes, early blight and late blight in tomatoes, most of the fungal diseases that are in tomatoes.

Not as important to know exactly what fungus disease you have, but it important to know that you've had a history of the problem and then apply these fungicides on a preventative basis.

When applying fungicides, you pretty much treat them the same way most pesticides.

This is chlorothalonil, we're trying to control some of the leaf spot diseases that are common on plants.

If you've had a history of problems, we recommend that you apply fungicides on a preventative nature.

Try to apply the fungicide before you have the problem because fungicides don't do a very good job with treating diseases after you already have them.

They can stop the disease from spreading, but they can't cure the disease, very well, that you already have.

With a fungicide it's extremely important that you get good coverage on the plant.

Fungicides comes as wetable powders and as liquids or emulsifiable concentrates like we have here, as an example.

But we'll get good coverage on both the upper and lower side of the plant [water spraying] so that when the spore that's transported by winds lands on that leaf, hopefully, it will land on a leaf that has some fungicide on it so that it will die.

[gentle country music] We're gonna talk a little bit about glyphosate.

Glyphosate is another very, very commonly used herbicide in the area, been around since the mid-'70s.

The active ingredient in Roundup and the patent has long ago expired and so there are a lot of generics out there.

Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide.

Basically, when it was designed, was designed to kill any kind of plant that you put it on.

Some plants have developed a resistance to glyphosate now and that's developed a whole new market out there.

The way glyphosate works is it is absorbed into the green tissue of plants and it moves throughout the plant and will kill the entire plant.

It works best on plants when they are actively growing.

If you're in the middle of a drought and the plants are not growing very quickly, glyphosate is not taken up very well by the plant.

So it's a good idea, if you're trying to kill a plant with glyphosate fertilize it first so that it's actively growing and then you can go ahead and finish it off with glyphosate.

This is an example of glyphosate.

The patent ran out on Roundup several years ago so now there are several different generic formulations available.

This particular formulation is Roundup and it is ready to use.

It's already mixed up for you.

So if you want to use this, be sure, I'd wear rubber gloves if I use this type of sprayer.

[liquid sloshing] Be sure you shake the material up good.

You want to make sure that surfact that's in the Roundup is mixed with the active ingredient, the glyphosate.

The way this product works, it is a non-selective herbicide, which means it will kill pretty much anything that you put it on.

It is absorbed by green tissue, the leaves of the leaf blades and it translocates to the roots and it kills the plant.

So, with that in mind, and this is the example of a flower bed that has some Bermuda grass encroaching on the flower bed.

I'm gonna go in here, and if I get any spray out here on this Bermuda grass, it could injure it, probably will injure it.

So I'm gonna be very careful and I'm gonna direct my spray [liquid spraying] only to the Bermuda grass that is in the bed that I want to kill.

And I am gonna try not to get it on the Bermuda grass that's out here.

On the same vein, I can get it on this bark and it won't be a problem because that's not green tissue.

So I'm not gonna worry about getting it on the bark.

However, I will be very careful not to get any on this little piece of a leaf here because that is green tissue and it can translocate from that to the rest of the tree.

But that is the way you use Roundup.

If you have weeds out in the Bermuda grass that you want to kill, you can treat.

Like, for example, here we have a little broad-leaf plant that we want to kill.

And I'm gonna direct the spray to that.

Now, I will kill this and I may kill a little bitty spot of Bermuda grass right here, but Bermuda grass will go back into that spot very quickly.

[upbeat country music] - I've got a trick for you today.

You'll notice in the summer you don't get many fruit.

When the temperatures are hot and it's above 90 degrees, there's a good chance your tomato plant just can't have fruit pollinated.

Today, we're gonna use a toothbrush and you just go to the blooms and buzz them.

The plants are self-fertile.

[toothbrush buzzing] You just have to move the pollen around.

That's what your bees are usually doing for you.

And then it's gonna blur.

You don't have to get each individual one.

Just put it on the stem and make them all vibrate at one time and you will get fruit.

You can do this probably every other day and run through all the blooms every other day and you'll end up with plants loaded full of fruit.

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

Y'all ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are some great questions with good pictures.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Some of my bell pepper plants have stopped growing.

"The leaves are curling.

The fruit has turned brown.

What is happening?"

And this is Patrick from Bon Aqua, Tennessee.

So what do you think about that, Mr.

Jim?

- Well, in looking at it, my first thoughts are that it is aster yellows.

It's a bacteria-like disease that affects a lot of plants.

You don't see it in peppers very often, but we're seeing a lot of it now in hydrangeas.

And I think that's likely what it is.

It could also be water related because he's got four or five in a single area there.

And the fabric is great mulch material for holding stuff down, but it also doesn't allow water to escape as quickly.

And if it begins to wilt, you tend to water it again, which can multiply your root issues.

But just looking at the stunted plants, my thoughts are that it's aster yellows.

- It definitely stunted, talking about that.

Anything you want to add to that, Peter?

- I was gonna say, it could also be bacterial wilt.

- Absolutely.

- Very similar problem.

And it's vectored by a bug.

There's nothing you can do once it's got it.

Pull it up, throw it away.

I think aster yellows is probably the same thing.

- Absolutely.

Same thing.

- Yeah.

Don't compost it.

Just throw it away.

- Throw it away.

- Yeah, double bag it, as Mr.

D was saying, throw it in the trash.

That's for sure.

Yeah.

But the thing here, yeah, the leaves are just curling.

They're not curling, cupping, and twisting.

Because we would've been thinking- - Herbicide.

- Herbicide.

- Right.

But leaves are just curling.

So yeah, thank you for that picture too, Patrick.

Because you can definitely tell in one of the areas.

- Great picture.

- It's a good picture.

Patrick, we appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Is it normal for chrysanthemums to bloom in May?"

And this is Terry from Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

So Peter, is it normal?

Oak Ridge Tennessee's far east?

- Yeah, it can be.

- Can be.

- It can be.

It depends on the weather.

- Yeah.

- So chrysanthemums if left to their own devices can bloom anywhere from May to July.

They can put on a flush of flowers.

When they're being prepared for being put in the stores in the fall, everybody likes chrysanthemums in the fall, what they do is they are pinched back when they're about six inches tall.

And then what that causes them to do is that causes them to branch more.

And then when the branches are six to eight inches tall, they're pinched back again, cause them to branch even more.

And so when you get to fall, finally now they're allowed to flower because you haven't pinched off all the flower buds or the ends of the shoots.

And then at that point now you have this big round ball of flowers that everybody thinks of as a chrysanthemum.

Now, if you don't do any of that, yes, they can.

They can actually flower in anywhere from May to July, depending on your weather, how warm it was, how wet it was, all that sort of stuff.

So if you want to delay your blooms until fall, you just got to pinch them back.

- Yeah.

Pinch them back.

Chrysanthemums bloom based on the length of the night.

- Yeah.

- How much darkness they get.

So if you planted 12 chrysanthemums this year, six on the front side of your house, six on the back, they're fine this year, but next year they're gonna bloom at a different time because they're getting different amount of darkness, which is critical.

And then within the chrysanthemums, there are early, mid and late bloomers naturally.

- Yep.

- So, you know, like you say, you can see them from early, early, you know, in the spring all the way 'til fall.

- All right.

And they are beautiful.

So there you have it, Tammy.

- Yeah.

It can happen.

It can happen.

Right?

Here's our next viewer email.

"My 25-year-old dogwood seems to have a wilt disease.

Can I treat it?"

And this is Bob from Rock Island, Illinois.

So what did you see there?

- I don't see a tree that I think is suffering from anything other than water.

That's what I'm thinking.

- I agree.

I agree.

- The drought.

And one of the things that, and you and I have talked about this before, one of the things that's critical with trees is realizing that their roots go well beyond the drip line of the tree.

Roughly two, two and a half times the width of the canopy.

So you've got very shallow roots way out and they need to be watered.

That's where most of they're gonna get their nutrients from the rain, so you need to make sure that you're watering that entire circle, not just underneath that tree.

But to me, it doesn't look like a disease, a wilt disease.

There's no discoloration on any of the foliage that I can see.

I don't see any powdery mildew.

I think it's just totally a water-related issue.

- Yeah, no dead branches or anything like that.

I didn't see that either.

Peter, anything you'd like to add to that?

- My thought is the dogwoods are tend to be understory trees and that one seems to be planted out in the middle of the yard.

- Good point.

- So it doesn't get much shade.

So that magnifies the water problem.

- Right.

- Yeah.

So water stress is what we're thinking.

And something else, you know, from that picture, I know you had his lawnmower there.

Just be careful with the lawnmower, you know, around your roots, right?

Because they are shallow-rooted trees, you know, as well.

So I would be careful with that.

But yeah, I think water stress, right?

So let's get it watered.

I think it'd be good, Mr.

Bob.

We appreciate that picture.

Thank you so much.

All right, Peter, Mr.

Jim, that was fun.

Learned a lot, don't we?

- Always enjoy it.

- All right.

Thank you much.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com.

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 anything we talked about, head on over to our website, familyplotgarden.com, or visit our YouTube channel, Family Plot Garden, where we have thousands of gardening videos.

Be sure to join us next week for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]