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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Winter has turned to spring and it's time to plant the summer annuals.

Today, we're planting Mandevilla, marigolds, and purslane.

Also, we're going to invite birds to our garden with a bird feeder.

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 a horticulturist, and Debbie Bruce will be joining me later.

Always good to have you, Joellen.

- Good to be here.

- Alright, you know this is one of my favorite things to do, right?

- Oh, yeah, I know.

[Chris laughs] We've got something new to do, but we've gotta look at what we did before.

Look, we picked the right cabbage that lasted through all the cold weather.

It is now starting to bolt- - It is.

- Which means it is starting to bloom, and it's nearing its end of its season.

It's trying to reproduce and set seed for next year.

- Ah, yeah, yeah, look at the flowers, it is trying.

- It's trying.

- Yeah.

- But we will be pulling all of this up and starting over again- - Okay.

- With our spring color.

- Okay.

- The pansies did not do well.

- No, no.

- And that's a shame, but they did not do well.

I guess the cold was just too much for them.

But the cabbage, Dusty Miller look great.

- The Dusty Miller really look great though.

- I know.

- I mean, look at the colors, they really look good.

- We might dig them up and save them for another time.

- Okay, that sounds good.

- Let's see if we can pull them up.

Oh, well that- - Is it coming?

It's coming right out the ground.

- That came up a lot easier than I thought it would.

- Yeah, these come right up.

- Now we'll get the Dusty Miller up.

We're gonna try to save this.

- Okay.

- And we'll put it in the bag and then we'll pot it, put it somewhere later.

- Okay, alright.

- Okay, yeah, that's what I thought.

We're gonna have to dig these up.

- They're rooted in pretty good?

- They're rooted in really well.

Well, since they won't pull up, we don't wanna disturb the roots very much.

So that's why we're gonna dig them up.

- Oh, look at that.

- It's interesting how some of them are well rooted and some are not.

It must be the way the irrigation or the- - Yeah, looks good.

- Moisture was this winter in the bed.

So they grew better.

- And look at the different sizes though, I mean, the size is even different.

- Yeah, some grew better than others.

That's when you call those micro-climates where you can be, plants can be beside each other and they do differently in a bed.

Okay, well, now we're gonna rake the mulch out of the bed 'cause we really don't want to incorporate the mulch in the ground.

- Okay.

- It's not decomposed yet.

- Right.

- It will decompose on top of the ground, but not yet, and we don't wanna incorporate it 'cause we've got some other things that we're gonna do.

- Okay.

- So I'll lightly move this mulch back out of the way.

- So the daffodils are gonna be okay with you raking over the top of them?

- Sure.

- They're tough, huh?

- These tongs are pretty wide.

[Chris laughs] And the leaves are pretty small.

- Yeah.

- And we wanna keep them there because we want the sun to give them nutrition for them to produce bulbs and flowers for next year.

- Okay.

Looks good.

- Alright.

- Looks good.

- It looks pretty good, but we can improve it with this compost that we're gonna put on the ground.

This is just compost that we have from around here that's composted.

It's nice and rich, loose.

- Looks good.

- And will be a great addition to our bed.

We're going to just take shovel fulls and just evenly distribute it across the bed.

Yeah, when you're amending a bed like this, we don't wanna put more than about 20% amendment to the bed.

It'll incorporate with the bed a lot better.

And you don't wanna completely grow in the compost 'cause you need the nutrients from the actual dirt in the bed to mix with the compost.

Now we're going to incorporate it into the bed by just turning it over.

And if you have a tiller, you know, you could till it, but we don't have a tiller, so we're just gonna turn it over.

And you'll never notice that the compost was there because it's gonna mix with everything else that's here.

Yeah, as you see, when we're amending this, we're getting some clods of dirt that the compost will help break that up and turn it into some nicer soil.

Yeah, that looks good.

- Alright, looks good.

- We'll rake it into a shape.

- Okay.

- I find the, I usually use a leaf rake for this.

- You just use what you have.

- We could use the garden rake but I use a leaf rake.

It just seems easier to me.

And I find clods, and I will do something with those if I need to.

But it just seems to shape the bed better than a garden rake.

But you can use either one.

And we're gonna put some fertilizer down for the new annuals to do well, to get 'em started.

It's a slow-release, it won't feed them the entire summer because this only works at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and we get up to 90, so.

- Yes, easily - It'll be gone before the end of the summer- - Easily.

- But it'll get 'em started.

[fertilizer bottle rustling] And I just sprinkle it... - Yeah, what does you mom always say?

- Over the bed, my mother- - I like to hear that.

- Says to feed the chickens.

- I like to hear it.

When I'm at home, I think the same thing.

- I'm not throwing it, but this has got a nice shaker on the end of it, which makes it a lot easier.

[fertilizer bottle rattling] - Oh, the chickens gonna be well fed, looks good.

I like it.

- Yeah, you don't want to over fertilize.

- Yeah, sure.

- You just wanna give 'em enough nutrients that, you know.

- Yeah.

- They can be vigorous and grow.

Alright.

- Alright.

- Now we put our mulch back over it.

And a lot of people say, "Why don't you plant and then mulch?"

- Well, it's a lot- - Yeah, there's plenty of mulch back there too.

- Easier to move mulch away, and then plant your plant and put the mulch right back, than it is to try to get mulch around all these little plants, so.

- Which is what I was doing before you showed me how to do it.

Yeah, so it works, folks.

- So it's a lot easier to- - It works.

- To mulch and then get them out, get the mulch outta the way to plant the flowers back.

Alright, we're ready to plant.

- Okay.

- We are not gonna plant in rows this time.

We're gonna do a little bit of overlapping groupings of plants just to see how they do.

- Ah, okay.

- And we're gonna take cues from this bed where the outside and the edges tend to stay dry.

- Yes.

- And so we have gotten some Portulaca for that that likes it- - Oh, that's pretty.

- Dry and sunny, which it is here even though this bed does have irrigation in it.

- Okay.

- So we will see if this does well- - We shall see.

- In this, the dry areas that are on the edges.

- Okay.

- Next, we're gonna have put in marigolds, a swath of marigolds- - Yeah.

- To go around that, and then, in the wettest area, we're going to put these Mandevilla.

These are upright Mandevillas, these aren't the vines.

These are those, the upright plants.

We'll see how bushy they get and how they look with all of this too.

- Okay.

What do you think about the colors?

- Orange and reds, all the same color, but slight variations- - Yeah.

- But there's different textures, there's different growth patterns.

This is gonna be flat.

- Yeah, I like that.

- Like this is like, this would be a spiller, a filler, and a thriller.

- Mm-hm, there we go, okay.

- And we're gonna do that for a container.

- Gotcha.

- But they'll look good in a bed because they have the same characteristics.

- Got it.

- And we took into account that these will get fairly big.

- Okay.

- So we're not gonna crowd these plants, we're gonna give them room to grow.

- Okay.

- At their mature size.

- Are any of those plants considered pollinator plants?

- All all of these- - Okay.

- Are pollinator plants.

- Yeah.

We like the pollinators.

- And we gotta kind of ignore the daffodils 'cause they will die down and not be there.

- Sure.

- Okay, so let's go ahead and plant these 'cause they keep falling over in our lovely wind that we don't normally have here.

And what we'll do is we'll move the mulch out of the way.

- Alright.

- And dig our hole.

- Okay, and how deep are we going?

- Well, you have to take this out of the container.

- Okay.

- You see I'm gonna move these roofs around a little bit 'cause they're kind of matching the container.

I wanna stop that circling- - Yeah so I was gonna ask you, yeah, there is circling, okay.

- Circling plant.

And so you wanna plant it so the top of the soil is at the soil's level that the plant is in the container.

- Okay.

- So these are fairly big.

This is our largest plant.

- Yeah.

- So we'll have to dig a pretty good size hole.

There was an earthworm there, he can just... - Hang out, just hang out.

- Be in the soil around this plant.

Next, we're gonna go and plant the purslane on the outside and end up with the marigolds on the inside.

This is gonna get fairly large and it hugs the ground a lot, but it likes sunny and somewhat dry conditions, and that's what the edge- - Yeah.

- And the and of the bed down here is.

- Okay.

- Again, we'll move the mulch away.

- Alright.

- Dig down a hole and plant it at the same level that it is in the container, put it at soil level.

- Okay.

- The soil around it.

Put the mulch back.

- Oh, these are good and watered.

- That's good, and we'll have to water this in when we get done because the soil is a little bit drier.

Okay, lastly, we have our marigolds to plant in between and we will ignore the daffodil greenery that is trying to get energy for next year's flowers.

And we're just gonna set these.

Now, I usually set things out before I plant 'cause I like to see the spacing and see how it's gonna look.

I don't just plant everything as I go because you might end up with not enough and you've not spaced it correctly according to the size of the plants we'll get, so.

- I think I've done that.

- It's a lot easier to set it up first.

Move the daffodil leaves out of the way, the mulch.

Get down to the bed and plant.

Again, don't plant them too deep or too high.

- Okay, got it, got it.

Alright, Joellen.

- Yay!

Well, that looks good.

- It looks good, it does.

- That's gonna be really pretty this year.

- It really does, yeah.

- Something different instead of straight lines.

Something interesting to look at.

And we'll go ahead and water them- - Okay.

- When we get done.

And it's supposed to rain in a couple of days, so.

- Hopefully.

- We'll help Mother Nature out by watering when we need to.

- Alright, well, that sounds good to me.

I can't wait to see what it looks like throughout the season.

- I think it'll be good.

- Alright, thank you, Joellen, appreciate that.

- You're welcome.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, so we have another winter annual weed.

This would be wild violets, or Johnny jump-ups.

They have waxy cuticles so they can be very difficult to control.

They have beautiful flowers.

Some of the flowers are purple, they have a little white in 'em.

Some are actually pink as well.

So again, winter annual weeds.

If you want to control them, you have to use a broadleaf weed killer.

Or if you don't wanna control them, they're beautiful flowers.

Again, we're the one that call them weeds.

They're actually nature's wildflowers.

[upbeat country music] Alright, Ms.

Debbie, glad to have you here today.

- Well, thank you for having me, it's a beautiful day.

- Oh, it's a gorgeous day, we're outside of the studio.

Bird feeders.

- Yes, I'm excited.

- I am, we're excited about this.

- I am, this is a beautiful area.

You guys must be covered up with birds and you don't even know it.

But putting a feeder in is gonna pull 'em out of the canopies of the trees- - Okay.

- And hopefully you'll enjoy some of 'em.

- Hopefully we will, alright.

- Yeah.

- Let's go ahead and get started with the demonstration.

- Okay, I've brought a pole system.

We're gonna start with a base pole and we're gonna put it into the ground.

- Okay.

- The pole actually has a hole in the center.

- Aha!

- And the reason we selected this site here, not only because of its richness in habitat, but we wanna be at least 12 feet from trees because of course you have squirrels here.

- Of course.

- And squirrels can jump 12 feet across.

- Okay.

- So we're trying to make it a little more difficult for them.

So we start with our base pole and we turn it into the ground and we just keep turning, and we just keep turning.

And we want to get it in a good 12 to 18 inches, believe it or not.

- Wow, so those go in pretty deep.

You want me to turn that for you, Ms.

Debbie?

- Sure, go for it.

- Let me turn that for you.

And you just tell me when.

- Okay.

- Or the ground's gonna tell me when, one or the other.

- It might, you might find a tree root.

That looks good.

- Couple more.

Oh yeah, we getting there.

- That looks good.

- Okay.

- Alright.

- Okay, thank you.

- Okay.

- Now, the next thing we're gonna add to our system is a stabilizer.

Nothing is worse than when you put a pole in the ground, you look out your window, and you have a slanted pole.

So this is gonna keep it good and straight.

So we just drop it over, and... - Loosen it up.

Alright, there it goes.

- Step it in the ground.

- Okay.

- I'll tell you what, I might need your boots there.

- Let me get that, alright.

And get on that side.

How about that?

- That's great.

That's perfect.

- That's good?

Okay, alright.

- That's perfect.

Now we've got a good straight base pole that's gonna handle a lot of weight- - Okay.

- And it's nice and straight.

The next thing we wanna do is to give it some height.

We're targeting birds that wanna eat at a height, at elevation.

And given the type of habitat you have here, you probably have chickadee, tufted titmice, woodpeckers, in addition to cardinals and blue jays, and even more than that.

But we have, I brought a four-foot base pole and a four-foot extension.

So that's how tall it's actually gonna be.

- Wow, how about that.

- But I'm short.

[Chris laughs] So I'm gonna pull it down to put it together, okay?

I brought two feeders that we're gonna hang.

Feeders can be either mounted on top of a pole, let me show you this, as a hopper like that with a special adapter that would fasten it.

- Okay.

- But today I brought a hanger with an arm with two areas to hang from.

- Alright.

- And I brought two on purpose to bring two different food sources.

- Good.

- So we're gonna hang one from each side.

- Okay.

- And then just to give it a finished look and to make you smile, I brought a cardinal.

- Ah.

[laughs] - Okay?

- How about that?

- So that'll make it look very, you have a bird on your feeder already, okay?

On your setup.

- Yeah, look at that, a cardinal, okay.

- Yeah.

- Folks around this area- - So now- - Are familiar with cardinals.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

You get it on there?

- And we push the button in and we lock it in place.

- Okay, good.

- Okay?

- Alright.

- I forgot something.

Because you do have this treed area, you're gonna have critters.

So we need to install our baffle.

- Okay, want me to hold that for you?

- If you would please.

- I will.

- There you go.

- Okay.

- I brought two different baffles.

One is very tall, it's to take care of raccoons, squirrels, possums, chipmunks.

And this one is for squirrels, possums, and chipmunks.

But I would pretty much bet that you have raccoons here.

- Oh, we do.

- So we're gonna go with the raccoon baffle.

Let's see, let me put that up there and see.

- Okay.

- Yep, that's good.

- That's good?

- This is called a baffle ring and it's gonna hold this onto the pole.

- Okay.

[metal clanging] Aha.

- There we go.

Now we can put that back on.

- There we go, okay.

Alright.

- And push the button.

- That's it?

- Mm-hm.

- Okay.

Alright, got it.

- Alright.

And then we're gonna put this on top of the unit.

[metal clattering] - Got it?

Okay.

- If this seems a little bit tall, we can use the shorter extension.

But this will give you a good idea of what it's gonna look like.

I brought a seed feeder, this is a hopper to put loose seed in, but it's gonna hang, okay?

And it has a large enough platform for your cardinals and for your blue jays, and maybe even a morning dove or two will try to get onto it.

But most likely, the morning dove's gonna eat off the ground.

- Okay.

- We did bring some no-mess seed [seeds rustling] so that you won't have sprouting in your yard.

And all the shells are removed, which takes away one of the variables for sprouting.

And this is a mixture of hearts of sunflower and peanuts.

- Wow, sunflower and peanuts.

- Would you mind hanging that please?

- I will hang that, okay.

And just hang it like this?

- Yes.

- Alright.

How about that?

- Alright, so when the birds come in, they're gonna perch along the trees and wait their turn to come to the feeder and to eat.

Then, I brought a different food source.

This is actually suet.

It's rendered beef fat and it's in a cylinder so it's so easy to feed.

- Okay.

- And this is for your clinging birds, woodpeckers, chickadees, tufted titmice would like this, Carolina wrens.

You're targeting insect-eating birds with suet.

- Ah, okay.

- So that'll go on the other side.

- Let's go there, alright.

There it goes, how about that?

- Thank you, okay.

Now you've planted your system and it's all set to go.

The only way I would tweak it is I'd probably pull the baffle down maybe about 10 inches.

You wanna protect the lowest point.

- Okay.

- But you've planted your system and now you just need to be patient and wait for the birds.

Sometimes it's immediate response, sometimes it takes up to six weeks.

- Okay.

- But given the time of the year that we're in, their food consumption is at a high right now because they're busy with nesting- - Sure.

- And need extra energy.

So I don't think it'll take long, and you'll have visitors at your little buffet here.

- I'm excited, Ms.

Debbie.

I can't wait to see the birds come and have their food.

- Let me know who comes.

- Alright, we will definitely do that, thank you again.

- You're welcome.

- Alright.

[upbeat country music] - Marigolds, these are nice annuals that are good for color all season long, and these are one of the last to die in the frost.

We're gonna plant these as attracting butterflies to the butterfly garden and they will bloom all summer long.

So we'll take one of them out of the cell, carefully.

They're nicely rooted.

We will dig our hole, but we will not bury it.

We'll only plant it up to the surface of the soil that is existing.

There are actually two different types of marigolds.

We have planted the French marigold, which is the smaller, more dwarf marigold that only gets around to 12 inches.

There are African marigolds and they get huge, but they have very large blooms on them, but they don't bloom as profusely.

And then in the winds and the rains in the summertime, it just breaks them apart and they fall over.

And so I really like the French marigolds 'cause there's more blooms on them and they're more uniform and they last better in the landscape.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, Joellen, you ready?

- I'm ready.

- This is our Q&A segment.

- Yes.

- These are great questions.

- They are.

- You ready to dive in?

- I'm ready.

- Alright, here's our first viewer email.

"What is causing the dark black spots and yellowing on some of the leaves of my tropical Duranta?"

And this is Susan from Memphis, Tennessee.

She says she is keeping it in the garage during the winter and she only waters when the soil is dry, which is good.

- It's good.

- Which is good.

But yeah, so what's the problem though?

- But, well- - We got yellowing, we have the dark black spots.

- Yeah, well, [chuckles] let me tell ya.

- "Let me tell ya," she said.

"Alright, let me tell ya."

- I love to bring things in that I wanna keep in the garage.

- I've heard you say that.

- I keep stuff in the garage all the time and it looks terrible just like that does- - It looks terrible?

- By the time that winter is over and spring is coming.

And hopefully here soon, right now, you can start having it outside.

I think air movement, 'cause in the garage, there's no air movement.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So if there's any kind of disease on it, it's gonna show up on the plant.

But I think it can overcome it if you take it outside, give it a little fertilizer, some sunshine, and being outside in the air, I think it'll recover.

- Yeah, so the air movement is very important.

- Air movement is very- - Yeah, inside of a garage, like my garage, it'll be dark, it'll be damp.

- Yes.

- It'll be, you know, cool.

- Well, and this is the thing- - And no air movement.

- We have cars in there, so we go in and out.

- Right, yeah.

- So when it's really cold, I really shove it up in the corner and put frost protection all over it.

- Yeah, you do that, okay.

- You know, so it saves it, but they look terrible by the end of the winter.

I agree, yeah.

- Yeah, so it's a couple of things here.

So the dark black spots that I saw on there, Cercospora leaf spot.

- Yeah.

- Is what that is, right?

- So what you can do, just pull 'em off.

- Yeah, I was gonna say- - The yellowing leaves, just pull 'em off.

- I was hoping that- - Pull 'em off.

- Just taking them outside and letting Mother Nature take care of things will help it.

- Yeah.

- But yeah, if they really bother her, she can pull 'em off.

- Yeah, yeah.

So there you have it, Ms.

Susan, thank you much.

Yeah, let 'em come on outside.

- Good.

- Yeah, alright, here's our next viewer email.

"This year as I've been prepping my garden, "I have found these really large worms.

"After some research, I'm afraid these "are Asian jumping worms.

Is this correct, and what do I do now?"

And this is Carrie from Marion, Arkansas.

- Oh.

- So we appreciate- - Yeah, that's nice.

- You know, the picture.

So what'd you think about it?

- Yeah, it's good.

It looks like a normal, large earthworm to me.

- It's just a large earthworm.

Yeah, that's what it looks like to me.

- It doesn't look like, I mean, you know, the Asian one, the ones that jump around, they don't have the same coloring and they don't have the, they just don't look like that to me.

So I think she's safe.

- I think she's safe.

The Asian jumping worms look more like snakes to me, right?

- Yeah.

- But here's how you can tell, if you provoke them, try to poke 'em, and if they are violent, you know, in the way they respond to it, jumping around or whatever, then yeah, that'll be Asian jumping worms for sure.

And then something else too, if you look at the soil, the soil look good.

- Yeah.

- Look good and friable, right?

- Yeah.

- If it was the Asian jumping worm, the soil would look like pellets.

Pellets, like ground, you know?

- Yeah.

- Pellets.

- 'Cause they ruin the soil.

- Like coffee grounds, is what they look like.

- Yeah, they ruin the soil.

- Little pellets, right, yeah.

So yeah, they can, yeah, they can decimate the soil, right.

So again, looking at the picture- - It doesn't look like- - Looking at the soil, so I look at everything, look at the soil, look good to me.

- Yeah.

- Right?

As opposed to what the soil can look like if it were the Asian- - There you go, yeah.

- Jumping worm.

Yeah, but just, yeah, if you poke it or whatever, it's jumping around, I think it's a telltale sign.

- And I do know that some of the earthworms will do that too.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But not as- - But these are real violent.

You know, I have seen them.

- But not as violently as- - Yeah, they're real violent and they do, you know, jump around.

- As the Asian, yeah.

- Right, yeah, your regular earthworm, they kinda just snake around, you know, they, around.

- Well, they'll fight a little bit, but that's why- - Little bit.

- The birds get excited.

You know, they go, "Oh, there's a worm, there's worms here."

- Yeah, I guess I can see that too, right?

Or if it's real hot outside, you know, - Yeah.

- They just slip across [chuckles] the sidewalk.

But yeah, so that's, yeah, so we just thinking they're regular earthworms.

- I think they're regular earthworms.

- Yeah, so encourage them to come to your garden.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, they're your garden tillers.

- We love to see them in the garden.

- Yeah, we like to see those, alright.

Joellen, that was fun.

- It was.

- It's fun, so thank you so much for being here, alright?

- Thank you for having me.

- Alright.

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.

Do you know Family Plot has a YouTube channel?

We do, and it has all the videos from past shows for you to watch.

We even have a playlist with the 20 other plantings we have done in our annual bed.

One might be exactly what you're looking for for your yard.

It is the Family Plot Garden channel on YouTube.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]