- hi, thanks for joiningus for the family plot, gardening in the mid-south,i'm chris cooper. it is time to plantvegetable seeds. today, we're going to plantbeans, squash, melons, and okra. also, aerating your lawncan help nutrients, water, and air reach the grass roots. today we will showyou how to do it. that's just aheadon the family plot, gardening in the mid-south.
- [voiceover] productionfunding for the family plot, gardening in themid-south is provided by good winds landscapeand garden center, in germantown since 1943,and continuing to offer its plants forsuccessful gardening with seven greenhousesand three acres of plants, plus comprehensivelandscape services. international paper foundation. the wkno production fund,the wkno endowment fund,
and by viewers like you. thank you. (cheerful guitar music) - welcome to the familyplot, i'm chris cooper. joining me todayis mike dennison. mr. d. is a retiredextension county director, and booker t. leigh willbe joining us later, to show us how toaerate our lawn. all right, mr. d.we're planting seeds.
- i think all dangerof frost is past. - i think it's gone man. - i don't think wehave to worry about it. - i don't think so. - okay, we're plantingvegetables in this raised bed, and it's a little differentfrom planting it in a garden. you, in your office, you'vegot a real good vegetable planting guide that the stateof tennessee has developed, and it tells you how farapart to space plants.
- [chris] yes sir. - how deep to plant emand things like that. we're going to have toput em a little closer here than we wouldnormally do a big garden. let's try to organize this,let's measure how much room we've got here, andtry to split this into about four different areas. looks like we're about 19 feetthree inches, is what it is. we're going to call that 20feet, so we're going to split it
into four different areas, start from this endbecause it's easier. - yeah, it'd be a lot easier. - how bout that, does thatlook pretty close to even. an average rule ofthumb on planting seeds is to plant them, as faras the depth is concerned, is plant em about four timesthe diameter of the seed. so for large seed like cornand beans and things like that, you'll probably end up plantingthem about an inch deep.
some of the real small seeds,turnips and things like that, you'll only plant maybe aquarter of an inch deep. it's very importantto try to have good soil-to-seed contact. we're going to start byplanting some cantaloupes here. - [chris] our melons. - [dr. d.] right, our melons,and what i'm going to do, looks like i've got roomfor one, two, maybe three, i'm going to try toplant em on hills
with about four or five,maybe six plants in it, and plant themabout a foot apart, is what i'm goingto try to do here. i'm going to come inhere, i'm about a foot from each side here,and i'm not going to dig a very deep hole cuzthese seeds only need to be plantedabout an inch deep. i'm going to open thathole up right here. i'm going to come back,and i'm going to do
the same thing right here,i'm still about a foot away. open me a littlehole right there. then i'm going to come over here about a foot anddo the same thing. okay, now we have six holeswhich will be six hills of cantaloupe plants, and ifall of these seeds come up, they're gonna be way waytoo thick, way too thick. i may let you help me here,i'm going to shake em out here. i'll let you holdthat for a moment.
- okay, i can do that. - okay, i'm going to try to put half a dozen seedin this first hole. that's one, two,three, four, five, i can think five is enough,that's a lot of seed. i'm going to come backto this other hole and do the same thing. - [dr. d.] later on, if allthese come up, like i said, we're going to haveway too many plants,
and we'll need tocome back and probably thin em to onlyone plant per hill. now, like i said, theseseed are pretty small, so i'm probably onlygoing to try to get about a half-inch ofsoil on top of em. i'm just going to use mytrowel here, and just kinda - [chris] justlightly cover it up. - [dr. d.] lightly cover it up, and try to keep the clods out.
now that i've done that,get that out of the way, i'm going to grabmy rake over here, and i'm going to try to firmit up just a little bit. i'm just gonna kindado this number. - [chris] okay. - [dr. d.] that will justfirm up your seed bed a little bit, andyou notice i'm going over the whole areahere because i'm not real sure wherethose hills are.
(chris laughs) - [dr. d.] hopefullyif they all come up, we'll know where they are. next we've got cucumber? - hello cucumber. - [dr. d] cucumber, okay, soi'm going to go between here and i'm going to doabout the same thing because these runningplants will take up about the same amount of space.
i've got an imaginary linerunnin' down through here, i'm going to come in,and i'm going to come out about a foot from my line,and a foot from there, and we're going to dothe same thing we did. i'm just gonna open upme a little hole here. one, two, three, four, five. cover em up here a little bit. the thing i do withthe rake is probably more valuable than aboutanything i'm doing here.
the way we figured thatout is when we were planting borages, wenoticed that the seeds would come up quickerin the tractor tires, where the tractor ran overem and compacted the soil, then into other areas,so just a good idea. the implement the farmersuse is called a cultipacker, and many of the plantershave a press wheel on the back of the planterwhich will do the same thing, it'll go aheadand press it down,
as part of the planting process. a'right, what's next? - [chris] how bout watermelon? - [dr. d.] watermelon, allright, what variety is that? jubilee. - jubilee. - that is a good, good variety. they grow that commerciallydown in alabama, and have for a number of years.
these probably arelittle bit larger seeds, so i may plant justa little bit deeper, i may go for threequarters of an inch here. - how many seeds yougonna put in her? - let's go with only four seeds. now if you come outhere in the summer and you eat watermelon,these are not seedless. i'm going for about threequarters of an inch here. a'right, what's ourlast trailing plant?
- guess what's left? - [dr. d.] squash, yellowstraightneck, well that'll work. that should be about thesame size as the cucumbers and everything, no, it's more like the watermelon,how bout that. - [chris] pretty good-sized. - pretty big seed. so we'll do the samething, we'll shoot for about three quarters ofan inch deep for those too.
- gotta be on the look-out for mr. squash vineborer with these things. - [chris] oh yeah. - [dr. d.] one, two, three,four, and the reason we planted all of those trailingvegetable plants on that side of this bed, is becausewe know they're gonna run, and we know they're notall going to be contained in the bed, andwe don't want them running over here inour bermuda grass lawn,
we want to keep em overin the raised bed area, and we have gravel overhere in-between these beds, and it'll be okay if theyrun out there, because we're not going to be runninga lawn mower over there. other plants thatwe're going to plant that are up-right growing,we've got some okra, and some snap beans. i'm thinking bout how wewant this thing to look, and okra is a much tallergrowin' plant than snap beans,
and i'm thinkin' we might toput a couple rows of okra, and say, start themhere, and go to here, and then on bothends put snap beans, what you think about that. - [chris] i like that. - [dr. d.] that way it'llhave a little symmetry to it. 10 to 12 inches apart is therecommended spacing on okra. i'm going to runthe runs like this, do a bunch of little short rows.
okra seeds are prettysmall, isn't it. - [chris] yeah,they're pretty small. - [dr. d.] i only reallyneed about a half-inch over these, or a little less. - [chris] how many yougonna put per hole? - [dr. d.] let's go with four. one, two, three, four. two, three, four, it is going to be very importantto thin these out.
i'm going to go to my antiquehoe, i'm gettin' tired of bendin' over, how bout that. yeah, it's really goodfor this kind of stuff, and if you're doing longrows, you can use one side of it to dig a trench,it's really handy. - [chris] a'right. - [dr. d.] let's do thesame thing on firmin' it up. you know, it would be goodto have those little labels to stick in theground, but i think
we can identify the plants. - [chris] once theystart comin' up, we'll know what they are. - [dr. d.] the seed are fresh,they should be really good. using seed from last yearthat you stored in a freezer, you may want to up yourseeding rate a little bit. okay, snap beans. - [chris] snap beans. - [dr. d.] we can putthem four inches apart,
so let me dig, i'm going todo some trenches like this. these beans are a little bigger, so they need to be aboutan inch deep i think. what i'm gonna dois i'm gonna put em about four inches apart. this also will probablyneed to be thinned. same thing, firm it up. that outta do it. doesn't take longto plant seeds.
- not long at all,that was good. we just do the samething on the other side? - same thing on the otherside with the snap beans. - all right, well mr. d. wedefinitely appreciate that. and again, we'll see how wellyour germination rate comes. - [dr. d.] we'll see howmy germination rate comes. - [chris] there are anumber of gardening events going on in the nextcouple of weeks. here are a just of fewthat might interest you.
- hi booker, we're out here,we actually have an aerator. you want to aerate our lawn, so why do we needto aerate anyway? - because over a period oftime, your soil gets compacted sometimes, and thatmeans water, fertilizers, not getting downto the root system. over a period of timethat's just goin to happen, especially if you got a latof traffic on your lawn, kids playing on it,you cutting it more
and crowds arewalking across it. then you need toaerate it sometimes, and the aerator goingto loosen the soil up for that water toget through the soil, it can move throughthe soil when it rains, the fertilizer can getdown to the root system. you want all that to happen toyour soil and to your grass, if not, you put fertilizeron it's going to stay on top, it's not going to be able toget down to the root system.
so you want to loosenthat soil up some. you got bermuda grass,and you got fescue grass, you've got a warm season grass,you got a cool season grass. the best time to do thatis your warm season grass, when your grass beginto come out of dormancy, and that's probably last ofapril or the first of may. it is not too hot, but onceyou aerate it, you expose those root system to the heat, so youdon't want to do that to it. if it real hot and you doit then, you might need
to water it in, otherwisethe roots will dry out. for fescue lawn, you want todo that probably in september, when that grass begin to grow,so you don't want to do it in the winter monthswhen it go into dormancy. you don't want to dobermuda grass in september cuz of dormancy, it's not goingto grow, and the roots will be exposed all winter long andthat could damage your grass. so that's a good time, nottoo hot now, probably get some rain or something, youdon't need to water it in,
and that way the nutrientscan pass through the soil. we need to aerate it,probably, depending on how much traffic you have on your lawn, maybe every four or five yearsdepending on your traffic. - okay, so it's not that often. - not that often that youaerate, unless you got somebody that's doingsomething all the time, like playing footballor whatever you'redoing on your lawn, or something like that,you have the compact soil.
be careful, don't mow yourgrass when it real wet, because when it's wet anddamp a lot, you compacting the soil down, so youdon't want to do it then. you want to make surethat when you cut your grass and everything,it's kinda dry. that's the one thing,you want to do that. just to aerate here isalways a good thing, and what the aerator do is itpunches a hole into the soil. you go up and down,and you go across,
and you get a goodcoverage on there, so water and stuff canpass through the soil. - so it pulls the plugsout, so would you leave the plugs on the ground? - you can leaveem on the ground, and over a period oftime, they'll break down. they'll compact and bebuilt into the soil. - and aeration issomething that works because you said youdid it in your own yard.
- i did, man, a coupleyears ago, and i could see the difference inthat grass that year, it just came up sopretty and everything. when i saw it real compact,i'd been in the house over 20 years, i said i needto do something to my grass, it just wasn't do good, i saidi need to something to it. i said, let me aerateit, and i did that, and it really helped. if you've been in yourown house for awhile,
you've got compact soil andyou see the water and things aren't getting downto it like it should, it don't look like itshould look, aerate it. bermuda grass, youwant to do it probably at the last of april, firstof may, fescue in september. - the grass will recover from, of course, the aerationitself, no problem. - that's why i say you want todo it when it begin to grow. you don't want todo it out of season.
- [chris] so it recover? - it recover quicker,yeah, and i wouldn't do it on a real, real hot day,i wouldn't do it then. if you do, you need to makesure that you water it in, you don't want to exposethose root system out there, cuz they could dry up. - okay, a'right, book. - you want me to showwhat i do, get a hard look at everything, when iwas doing last time,
i was pushing on the thing, be careful whenyou're doing that. (indistinguishable verbiage) (running engine) - [chris] so what'd you think? - [booker] man, it's good,do it when it's not too hot. (laughter) but it's good though, itdo what you need to do. you see how i wasgoing up and down,
you like mowing your grass,but you have to try to cover every spot, so this goingto help the grass look a lot better, you'llsee it again next year, this year, you'll seehow it grow real good. aeration's realbeautiful for it. - yeah, we could see the littleplugs that it pulled out. - see the plugs comeout of the ground, instead of going throughthat, if you want to do it real good, you cango back across another way,
that will help some too, butthis should be good enough, that one way should be okay. - a'right, booker, again, howoften do we need to do this? - probably about everythree or four years, depending on how much trafficyou have on your lawn. what i do, i would look at mysoil, and see how the water, is it doing anything,is the water beginning to convert to the soil, andwhen you look at this grass you can tell when it'scompact or not, when it rains,
and the water kindastand for awhile. also, when you add fertilizerto it and your grass is not doing anything,it might just be standing on top of the soil, it notgetting down to the root system. so you can tell when you dothat, so this is a good thing to do aeration, i like doing it. - it's good for thegrass because of what. - it's good for the grassnow, let water and air move through the soil, alsolet fertilizer get down to it.
you need that, cuz grassneeds to breathe too, roots needs some air, andthat why we do the aeration, aerate the soil andit stimulates things, like i said again now, bermudagrass, you want to do it probably at last ofapril and between may. fescue grass is a cool seasongrass, you want to do it when that grass begins to grow, and fescue besometime in september. - well, booker, we appreciatethat demonstration.
- oh good. all right, so this isroundup in the tank, and what we're going todo is, we're going to kill all of this bermuda grassthat's in our flower beds. we definitely don't wantthe bermuda grass here. what i'm going to do is goaround the parameter here, spray a little bit there. bermuda is a creeper, ithas rhizomes and stolons, and if you're not careful,i always like to tell people
who likes to go for those flowerbeds and those garden beds, you want to make sureyou get good coverage when you're doing it. be careful not to applyon a very windy day. this will knock outyour grass weeds and a lot of yourbroadleaf weeds as well. a'right folks,there you have it. roundup will killyour bermuda grass and also your broadleaf weeds.
a'right this isour q & a session, booker, you jump inthere with us, a'right? - i'll do that. - here's our first viewer email. i have a garden plot that wasa farmer's field years back. the ground grows greattomatoes, peas, and okra, and other above-ground crops. i cannot get anyin-ground veggies to grow, beets, onions,carrots, and turnips.
the greenery growsbut the veggies don't. the ground tills up fine, butthen it turns hard as a rock. how do i amend mysoil to make it easier for my plants to grow? have tried to chickenmanure, horse manure etc., and it is still hard, andthis is ms. beth in cleveland. booker, it is still hard,and she tried all of that, so what you think? - well, she might just start acompost bin and add some good
nutrient in there andtry to bring it up some. also, when you get thatunderground crop to grow, it could be low in deficiency, because if theabove-ground growing good, sometime your root crop,they need more phosphate and potassium, so she mightwant to check her soil ph, and also start addingorganic material to her soil. when it go back togetherreal fast, that could be some of the problem,compact soil.
- okay, mr. d.? - i agree with that. also, gypsum is aproduct, calcium sulfate, that will tend toopen up the soil, thems may want to trythat as a soil amendment, in addition to any compost,pine bark, anything that can kinda openup it up a little bit. but if you're doing a goodjob with tomatoes, peas, beans and all that kinda stuff,that is really good.
i wouldn't do awhole lot in the area where you're growingthose, if that's a-working. - yeah, they'redoin' okay already, so you don't want to stop that. - what about this, booker,what about a soil test? - you could do a soiltest, and a soil test would tell her what you needto add to the soil, especially the soil ph,if the soil ph is off, that kinda might besome problem too,
your other nutrient mightgot tied up in the soil, and it might not beusable by the plant. she might want to dothat too, just to see. what is it $7 per box? - $7 per box. - money well spent. - well worth it. - may just be thatcleveland soil over there. (laughter)
- a'right, so here'sour next viewer email. for the last twoyears my squash plants had blooms and theywere growing squash, but then they died fromthe bottom of the plant up. why did this happen, and howcan i prevent this this year? this is from ms. linda. so the squash plants,they had the blooms, they were growing, butthen the plant died from the bottom up.
mr. d., i see youthinkin' over here. - didn't we have somethat did that out in the backyard last year? i believe it's probablya squash vine borer, probably what the problemis, and you can tell especially if you look downat the base of the plant, and there's somefrass coming out, and just really trashy-lookin'junk coming out of the trunk, close to the soilline, you probably have
a squash vine borer,and if that's the case, if you're at thatpoint, it's too late to do anything about it. if you've had a historyof problem with that, then probably rightabout now you outta start spraying a pesticide outthere once every seven days. carbaryl, bifenthrin,esfenvalerate, and permethrin are four products that are recommendedin the ut redbook.
be sure that you directyour sprays to the base of the plant, becausethat's where the moth is going to lay hereggs, and that hopefully will prevent you from havinganother infection like that. - how far would youneed to spray the plant? - probably one or two feet,you got a big squash plant, you don't have to get out there where the fruit arewith these products. i don't think i'veseen a borer go in
much over 12 inchesfrom the soil line. most of em areright there within three or four inchesof the soil line, is where they go into the plant. - a'right, good deal, thereyou have it ms. linda. here's our next viewer email. how do you get ridof squash bugs? they were a huge problemin my garden last year. mr. d., squash bugs, seemto be a huge problem.
- right, three of theproducts i just mentioned, and this is somethingyou wouldn't do on a preventative basis,you wait until you see the bugs are there, anduse either bifenthrin, esfenvalerate, or permethrin, those are three productsthat you can use. they do a lot of damage, butthe larvae and the adults feed on the plant, they havepiercing sucking mouth parts, so they suck the juicesout of the plant,
and they can do a lotof damage to the plant, but they also havebeen discovered, there's a relativelynew disease called yellow vine decline,and we are pretty sure the squash bug is avector of that disease, so it's probably a good ideatry to control them if you can. - one thing i like to mentiontoo, flip the leaves over, cuz you actually seetheir eggs, they look like little bronze footballs,they usually come
in a group of 12 ormore, but they look just like littlebronze footballs. - if you pull that leave offand destroy it, it might help. squash plant's gota lot of leaves. - yes, man, and itrough, so the thing too i like to mention, look,practice good sanitation. - i like to tell people,rotate the vegetable garden each year, don't try toput them in the same place, cuz some disease or someinsect might not get
in the same plant, likesquash vine borer might get on corn orsomething like that. so you might want to do that,might rotate the vegetables in your garden as best youcan, so we always do that. - crop rotation andpractice good sanitation. inspection, you betterget out there and scout. - [mr. d.] gottabe on your toes. - gotta be on your toes. - a'right, booker, mr. d.,we're outta time, that was good.
- thank you. - [chris] remember, welove to hear from you. send us an email or letter. the email address isfamilyplot@wkno.org, and the mailingaddress is family plot, 7151 cherry farms rd.,cordova, tn 38016. or you can go online tofamilyplotgarden.com. that's all we havetime for today. to get more informationon seed planting,
lawn care, or anything else wetalked about on today's show, go to familyplotgarden.com. thanks for watching,i'm chris cooper. be sure to join us nextweek for the family plot be safe. - [voiceover] productionfunding for the family plot, gardening in themid-south, is provided by in germantown since 1943, andcontinuing to offer its plants for successful gardeningwith seven greenhouses
and three acres of plants,
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