- Hi, thanks for joining us
for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.
I'm Chris Cooper.
There are hundreds of varieties of just one kind of vegetable.
But which is the best?
Today we're going to start some vegetable trials.
Also, we're going to plant corn.
That's just ahead on The Family Plot:
Gardening in the Mid-South.
- (female narrator) 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.
[cheerful country music]
- Welcome to The Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.
Joining me today is Dr. Natalie Bumgarner.
Dr. Natalie is the Tennesse Extension
Master Gardener State Coordinator,
and Mr. D. will be joining us later.
Alright, so, Dr. Natalie, we're out in The Family Plot garden,
it's a windy day, but beautiful day though.
- It just makes you want to plant beans,
I'm excited about gardening on a beautiful day like this.
- Alright, well look, before we plant those beans,
let's talk a little bit about vegetable trials though.
Why do we trial anyway?
- Right, so one of the most common questions that agents get
at the County office's is, "What do I grow?",
there are literally hundreds of choices.
And we try to do our best to trial in Knoxville,
but let's face it.
Tennessee is a lot different from one side to the other.
- Mmm-hmm, it is, it is.
- And so we have a Tennessee home garden variety trial,
which lets gardeners across the state pick crops that they're
interested in and pair two similar but different cultivars,
and tell us which ones they like best,
which ones germinated best, which ones tasted best,
which ones yielded the best.
And so they pick out from a catalog simple comparisons,
and then we send them seeds, and a straight-forward evaluation
that they send in in the fall, and we compile all the date and
come out with variety trial reports so that home gardeners
know what to plant in their own backyards.
- So how's it been working so far?
- It's been working so far very well.
Last year was our pilot year, we tested it out on a few
Master Gardeners, and this year we're expanding,
we have more than twice as many participants as last year.
Beans, corn, cucumbers, squash, watermelons.
- Watermelon, got to have that.
Alright, well you want to get started?
- Yeah, let's get started.
So what we have today are some green beans.
So this is the green bush bean trial,
and the two cultivars that we're going to be comparing
are Jade II and Crockett.
- Crockett.
- And we've sent enough seeds in each one of the trials to do
about ten row feet, which is quite perfect,
because you have about a ten foot wide plot here.
- I think we got that. - It's almost like you
guys planned for this. [Chris chuckles]
- So, and you've prepared, this is the first year that
this garden has been grown, right?
- This is correct, this is correct.
We've had raised beds before, but this is our first in ground.
- Yeah, in ground, so you guys are expanding
The Family Plot plot. - Yeah, we are.
- And so there's been some compost mixed in,
and you can kind of see that amending and getting our garden
soil with a good till, right, or workability is a process.
So we've worked it up, and we have a couple of rows here,
and we are just, we're just going to plant green beans.
- Alright, I'll follow your lead.
- Alright.
So, here you don't need the evaluation yet.
- Don't need it just yet, right.
- And with each kit comes a couple of tags.
Which hopefully will be waterproof,
but there's a nice little map in here also so you can plan out
where you put things.
So we made a couple of small rows here,
they're about two and a half, or three feet apart,
which should be enough to allow you room to pick,
but not so much room that you have plenty of space
for weeds to grow.
- Yeah, 'cause those weeds will grow in there.
I'm sure they will.
- Yeah, you'll have some good opportunities throughout the
rest of the garden season to talk about weed management
here in your open plots. - I'm sure.
- And so the first row that I have here is the Crockett.
So I'm going to pull out some Crockett green beans,
so these are untreated seeds, and we'll generally want to
plant our green beans after the frost-free date,
and your guys in Memphis is around the 15th of April.
So you know, we're in pretty good time.
And when we plant green beans, we want them to be about,
oh, three or four inches apart when they come up,
so I'm going to plant these beans about
every two or three inches apart.
If you get a little carried away,
and get them a little close, which I tend to do occasionally,
then you can always come back and do a little bit
of extra thinning.
So I'm just going to carefully place out these rows.
Now we made some really shallow rows here,
you can sort of follow.
You can make those with a hoe, you can make them with a rake.
My grandpa always said nothing grows in a straight row,
so I like to make mine just a little bit crooked.
Which is easy.
- Which is easy to do right, haha.
- Right.
So, my seeds came out quite well,
right at the end of the row, and so we're just going to come back
in and cover these up, we generally say that we want to
cover with about two to three times the diameter of the seed.
So with a bean, if we can get those
one and a half or two inches in the ground, then that
can be a pretty good depth.
Our goal is to get lots of good ground contact,
because we want these little seeds to be able to real rapidly
take up water and start all those enzymes cranking that will
allow them to germinate.
- Get them going, that's right.
- And so you can see this is actually a good soil moisture,
it's dry enough that we can work,
but as I turn it over you can see that there's a good amount
of moisture in there, so...
- Yeah, it's pretty prounounced, alright, ok.
- Yeah, so we got our first row of beans planted.
- How often should we water those though?
- Well, we say that vegetables like about
an inch to an inch and a half of water a week.
And many times during the spring time we'll be able to get enough
through rainfall, but as you get into the summer, it might be
good to irrigate a little bit of supplemental moisture.
Most of the time these green beans will yield
in 55 to 60 days, you might be able to beat
that days-to-harvest a little bit here in the warm
growing conditions of Memphis,
and these are both going to be a nice,
nice dark green green bean, so you might have to do some good
saute on The Family Plot later in the summer.
- Sounds good.
- So we'll just go ahead and do the same thing on this next row.
So within our trial we have folks all the way from
Johnson City, in Kingsport in East Tennessee,
clear to you guys here in Memphis.
And as you well know, those are quite a bit of
difference in growing conditions.
- That's one end of the state to the next,
man, to the other for sure.
- Yeah, difference in elevation, difference in temperature,
difference in moisture, all kinds of opportunities.
And then as people fill in their favorite crops and what did
well, we'll be able to kind of tailor our recommendations and
say, these are some of the best crops for West Tennessee,
or these did really well in East Tennessee.
Some of the challanges with green beans are,
that when you get into the really hot parts of summer,
sometimes they'll drop some of those blooms
if it's so hot during the day.
So that's the benefit of having gardeners all over the state.
We get feedback on how well the yield stayed throughout
the whole growing season.
We had a couple of beans leftover.
- Do we need to be on the lookout for any
diseases or pests?
- Some of the pests that I see most commonly in green beans are
going to be Mexican Bean Beatles,
you might get Mr. D.
on a little bit of that later in the summer.
And lots of times we'll see those initially as larva.
They'll be a yellow fuzzy larva, and they will defoliate the
leaves, so they're primarily leaf feeders.
There are some bacterial diseases that can impact beans,
and there are some mosaic diseases.
But many of the cultivars that we used in the trial had some
good resistance to some of those mosaic viruses.
So we'll hope that due to our selection and those comparisons,
you shouldn't have too much of a problem with diseases.
Insects and critters, might be some of your--
- That's another story?
[laughs] - Some of your other challanges
throughout the season, yeah.
- Well we can't wait to see what's going to come up from the
ground and get back with you later.
- Yes! - To see the end product.
- So you can evaluate and tell us what did well,
right here on The Family Plot, but I'm excited that you guys
are participating in the trial this year.
- Well thank you for being with us.
- Yeah, always good.
- (Chris) There are a number of
gardening events going on in the next couple of weeks.
Here are just a few that might interest you.
[cheerful country music]
- Alright Mr. D., we're in The Family Plot garden,
I'm excited, because we're going to talk about planting corn,
one of my favorite vegetables.
- Right, good 'ole sweet corn. Can't beat it.
- Good 'ole sweet corn.
So how do we need to get started?
- Well the first thing we did, you know,
back in the fall we prepared the ground initially and we pulled a
soil test, we did it the right way,
we pulled a soil test, and the instructions,
results recommend 15 pounds of 15-15-15 per 1,000 square feet.
So we don't have 1,000 square feet,
but we do have a hundred square feet,
so we'll knock a zero off and it's one and a half pounds of
15-15-15, and that's 24 ounces, and that's what I've got here.
- (Chris) That's easy math.
- Easy way to figure it out, so I've got it weighed out,
and I'm supposed to broadcast this.
And so we're going to broadcast it,
and then we're going to rake it in a little bit,
and then we will come back and side dress the corn when it's
eight to ten inches tall with some more nitrogen.
So let's go ahead and I'm going to try to broadcast here.
[fertilizer rattling]
I don't want to run out, like when I'm halfway
through here, that won't work very good.
I'm going to try to put out about half of it first go round,
then the other half the second go round.
- (Chris) Oh yeah.
Look at that, you've done that before.
- There we are, came out perfect, how 'bout that.
- How 'bout that, that worked out just right.
- Ok, now let's rake it in a little bit,
I'll let you hold that.
And I'm just going to rake it in a little bit,
and you don't really have to do this because these fertilizers
are water soluble, but I just kind of like to,
I don't particularly want the seed to come into direct contact
with the fertilizer and when we make our rows,
we will, we hopefully won't be able
to actually see any fertilizer.
Ok, we got that in pretty good shape.
Ok, what we're going to do is, I'm going to put double rows,
we're going to plant two rows, 10 to 12 inches apart.
Ten feet long.
Then we're going to skip over about 36 to 40 inches,
two more rows, 10 to 12 inches apart.
And so we'll have, and the reason we're having the
side-by-side rows is corn is wind pollinated.
And it makes the pollination process better.
And over here, we're going to do a different style,
we're going to plant a four-by-four foot section,
and we'll have corn in a checkerboard pattern,
12 inches apart. About 12 inches apart.
And that's good if you have a smaller area,
raised beds, things like that, that will work.
You can still reach to get in, and you also have good
cross pollination will take place.
So let me start with my first row here.
- Alright.
- Now my dad would be upset, because unlike Natalie,
he liked straight rows, and we had stakes that we would put on
both ends, and stretch a string.
And those still are out there on the family farm somewhere.
[Chris laughs] - But I guess I should
have brought them today.
- We're going to see how straight you are then.
- Yeah, let's see here.
- Not bad, not bad.
- I think it'll work. I need a hoe.
I'm used to using a hoe for this,
but we'll make do with this rake.
That is one row, and this is exactly,
I'm going to move this out of the way a little bit for now,
this is exactly, precisely 12 inches.
[Chris laughs]
About 36 inches.
Now this design is strictly from the University of Tennessee
publication, "Growing Sweet Corn in Home Gardens."
So if anybody wants to take a look at it,
they can find it online.
- How's the soil look to you? - Looks good.
Looks good, you can tell it was a little wet when we worked it
last fall, 'cause we do have a few clods in there,
but I think we'll be pretty good.
Ok, we're ready to plant this.
- What are we planting?
- We are planting sweet corn, 'Peaches and Cream'.
- Peaches and Cream, love it. Love it.
- Yeah, very, very good sweet corn.
10 to 12 inches apart, I'd say lets go 12 inches apart.
- 12 inches? Alright.
- That will make the ears bigger.
- Alright, that looks about right, huh?
- mmhmm.
Now let me cover it up.
Ok, that's got that in pretty good shape.
Ok, let's try the checkerboard style now.
- I'm looking forward to this Mr. D.,
I really want to see this.
- Ok, this is a little different.
And it's really good if you have a raised bed,
or you have a very small area.
And you pretty much ensure that you get good cross pollination.
Now we want to make sure that we stay at least twelve inches away
from that other row there.
Can we, we got a marker we can put down?
That's about right. Ok.
So I'm just going to make the holes first.
I'm going to come about 12 inches from that row,
and 12 inches from outside, and I'm just going
to dig a little bitty hole.
Not very big at all.
- Ok. - Coming 12 inches, same thing.
It's a lot better to do this than to plant one row of corn
a hundred feet long. - Right.
- Because the wind will just blow the pollen away,
unless the wind is just out of the right direction,
it doesn't get pollinated, this way no matter which way the wind
is blowing, pollination occurs.
So we only need 12 seeds. There's one, two, three...
Ok.
- And do we need to plant them close together?
What about thinning?
I mean, do we have to do something like that,
or, what are your thoughts?
- This is fresh corn seed, so I'm assuming that the
germination is really good.
You're going to know very quickly whether or not the corn
is up, and if you don't have, if one of these doesn't come up,
just need to go out there real quickly and re-plant.
Drop another seed there.
You know, they'll start spiking, you know,
in just a week or so.
So, to cover that up, I'm not going to use clods to cover it.
I'm going to try to just...
- You're going to hand cover it.
- I'm going to kind of hand cover it.
Ok. In just a few days we'll see what we've got.
- We'll see what we've got. I can't wait to see.
Thanks Mr. D.
- I'm glad you've got this good fence around here,
because it will keep the raccoons out maybe.
- I was just thinking about raccoons earlier,
I sure was. Sure thought about that.
- Yep. - Appreciate that though Mr. D.
- Ok, good deal. - We'll see what happens.
- See what happens.
[cheerful country music]
- The daffodils and the tulips have all finished blooming.
But you can see there are seed heads left.
Well, if you want it to be more attractive while you're waiting
for the foliage to die down, to enrich the bulbs for the next
years bloom, you can cut them.
And so I'm going to cut down these.
You'll notice you don't want them to go to seed,
so you want to cut the seed heads off,
because you want the energy to go down into the bulb to renew
the bulb, and not to go to seed.
[pruners snip]
And we'll just keep going,
and we'll get rid of all of these seed heads,
but it is important to leave the foliage to die down naturally,
so it is able to put energy back into the bulb
so that they can bloom again.
[pruners snipping]
Now all the seed heads are gone,
so the plants can concentrate their energy on enriching the
bulbs so that it will bloom next year,
and doesn't it look a lot nicer than seeing
all those seed heads.
[cheerful country music]
- Alright, this is our Q & A session, you all ready?
- Let's do it. - Got some good questions here.
Alright, here's our first viewer email.
"Is copper oxychloride a safe organic pesticide?"
And this is from Manuel, via YouTube.
So Mr. D. is looking at me.
- I think we need to pass this over to the good doctor.
- Oh, you're passing it off, ok. Haha.
- So there are lots of copper products--
- (Chris) Yes, there are.
- that are... some are organically certified,
but they are an elemental product,
so many people use them as an organic fungicide,
bacteriacide, so there can be many good uses.
And I guess, what my response would be about the safe,
I mean yes, if you use it in accordance with the label,
but one thing to keep in mind is that it is a metal, right.
It's an elemental product, and so over time,
repeated, heavy applications of copper can build up.
So even though it's an organic product,
what I would say is use it as we suggest for conventional
products, and rotate, don't just use one product.
- And don't make assumptions about it,
like I assumed a few years ago that a couple of teaspoons or
tablespoons per gallon of water of copper sulphate would take
care of my bacterial spot on my tomatoes
- (Chris) Uh-oh.
- Which it did.
But it also defoliated my tomato plant.
- (Natalie) Yep.
- It took all the leaves off, and so it killed all the
bacteria, but, so a little bit will go a long way.
- (Natalie) Right.
- In a lot of cases with a copper product.
- And there are lots of different formulations,
so, you really do have to follow the label on that.
Some are copper soaps, some are...
- (Chris) Yeah, copper soaps.
- Some of the old copper kocide is an example of a bacteriacide
we've used for years and years, that has copper in it.
Plants need a little bit of copper,
but too much copper in the soil can be a problem.
- Could be a problem, could be a problem.
- Right, yeah, so phytotoxicity certainly
possible with organic products.
- It can be a problem.
And if you use too much, as Mr. D.
said, you'll knock it out, but you'll also knock out the plant.
- [chuckles] Right. - Yeah.
- So there you have it Manuel,
read and follow the label please.
Alright, here's our next viewer email.
"What are suckers and water sprouts on a tree?
How do you identify them?"
And this is Gregory via YouTube. So that's a good question.
- Yeah, that's a good question.
- What are suckers and water sprouts doc?
- So the most important thing is where are they coming from.
- (Chris) Where are they, right.
It makes a difference.
- Yes, so the definition would be that suckers are actually
coming from the root system.
And most of the time in our apple trees,
we may actually have a grafted tree,
and so controlling the suckers, they're coming from a plant that
doesn't have the desireable fruit that we want.
So we'll trim off those root suckers.
And then water sprouts are coming from higher in the tree.
And lots of times we can see them
by a more vertical orientation.
- And they're, every one of them wants to be the strong central
leader, so they're fighting for the sunlight and all that.
And if it's growing up, straight up,
you're not going to have any fruit buds on that.
It's strictly vegetative.
And, pears are, they really, really have
a lot of water sprouts.
- And also too, some of those trees,
like your big oak trees, if they're pruned improperly they
will put out some water sprouts which are weakly attached.
You know shoots, so you gotta be careful with that as well.
- Less productive, more prone to breakage,
and yeah.
- Yeah, strong winds or anything like that,
they're coming down. For sure.
Alright, so placement, Gregory, placement makes
the difference there. Thank you for that question.
Alright, here's our next viewer email.
Oh, doc, you're going to like this one.
"Are ornamental peppers edible?" And this is from Miss Carol.
So are they edible. - Sure.
But you kind of need to know what you're dealing with.
Many of our ornamental peppers are hot peppers.
And it's not that they're inedible,
it's that they may not have the flavor quality that we would
expect from some of our traditional hot peppers.
So they're edible, they may not be great.
[Chris laughs] - They're also more cultivars
now that are really selected to kind
of have the best of both worlds.
So there's some sweet peppers that are
both ornamental and edible. So, sure, you can eat them.
- You can eat them. But they may be hot hot. Hot hot.
- They may be hot, or just bland,
or just not a great flavor profile.
- Alright. Mr. D., anything to add to that?
- No, I think you got it covered.
- Alright, so be careful Miss Carol.
They may be hot hot or bland. - Yeah, yeah.
- So be careful with that. Here's our next viewer email.
"What's the best way to get rid of fire ants in a raised bed?
Will they harm the plants?" And this is from Amy.
So Mr. D. Fire ants.
She's got fire ants, in a raised bed though.
How do we get rid of those?
- Hmm. I mean the Texas two-step method.
What are you growing in the raised bed?
Ornamentals or vegetables?
- (Chris) We don't know.
- Because if it's vegetables, you just
gotta worry them to death.
- (Chris) Okay.
- Fire ants don't like to be bothered.
You'll notice the reason they were in that raised bed is
because you won't bothering them with a tiller or a lawn mower,
if you just worry them to death they'll leave.
They will move.
And you can worry them by just disturbing them every time you
walk by there, but you better get
on out of there pretty quick.
[Chris and Natalie laugh] - Yeah, don't move too slow.
- You can pour water on them, you know,
pour hot water on them, you can do stuff like that
to get them to move.
But, and if it's an ornamental situation,
you can go with the Texas, or I guess it's the
Tennessee two-step where you apply some bait,
and then about seven to ten days later you go in there with
a contact killer and put it out there.
- (Chris) Okay.
- But be sure that you don't have any
edible peppers in there.
- Right, knowing what you're growing is important in
selecting your control material.
- So doc, the second part of the question though,
"Will they harm the plants?" So let's say they're vegetables.
I mean, will they harm the vegetables?
- Probably beneficials. - Yeah, aeration of the soil.
- Ah, see.
- Yeah, I mean I think it would mostly be the concern of you as
you're working in your garden at any given moment...
- Learn to work your garden very fast,
you move quickly.
[Chris and Natalie laugh] - You just gotta move quick.
- More about the people than the plants in that
situation I would say.
- Alright, so ornamentals, the Tennessee two-step,
is that what you said?
- I guess it's Tennessee two-step now,
it's Texas two-step, I think A & M came out with that.
- (Chris) Yeah, the Texas two-step.
- The Texas two step. - I guess in Tennessee
we just two-step outta there, right?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, we're one step behind on that deal.
- Alright, so there you have it Amy,
you be careful out there with those fire ants, alright.
Well doc, Mr. D., we're out of time that was fun.
- Alright. - Good deal.
- (Chris) Remember, we love
to hear from you. Send us an email or letter.
The email address is FamilyPlot@wkno.org,
and the mailing address is Family Plot,
7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, TN 38016.
Or you can go online to FamillyPlotGarden.com.
That's all we have time for today.
Thanks for joining us.
If you want more information about getting the ground ready
and planting vegetable seeds, head on over to
FamilyPlotGarden.com.
We have that, and a whole bunch more.
I'm Chris Cooper, be sure to join us next week for
The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.
Be safe.
[cheerful country music]
[acousic guitar chords]
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