- Hi, thanks for joining
us for "The Family Plot:
Gardening in the Mid-South".
I'm Chris Cooper.
Today, we're going to answer
a lot of viewer questions
on tomatoes, watermelons,
bees, birds, and more.
That's just ahead
on "The Family Plot:
Gardening in the Mid-South".
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Thank you.
(pleasant banjo music)
- Welcome to "The Family
Plot". I'm Chris Cooper.
This week, we're going to
answer lots of viewer questions
we have received over
the past few months.
We're dividing the questions
into two categories.
In a few minutes, we will talk
about insects and animals.
But first, here's some questions
we've gotten about plants.
The tree in my backyard
is dripping a sticky
sap-like mess everywhere
which causes everything
to be sticky.
What in the tree
is causing that?
- Well you know what?
It'd be good to know
what kind of tree that was.
- It would be good to know
what kind of tree that was.
- I'll bet it's either a
pecan or maybe a maple.
But if it's aphids, and that
tree are secreting a substance
called honeydew, and the
leaves are probably shining.
It's a very common situation,
I wouldn't worry about it.
Aphids normally, when they
build up to very high levels,
predators will come in
and feed on them and also
there are diseases that
take aphids out.
So I wouldn't worry a
whole lot about that.
The sticky substance that drops
on everything, pretty soon,
another substance is
going to start growing
on that sticky substance
called "sooty mold"
and it will turn black, so
it would be a good idea,
especially if it's your car
under there, to wash it.
Wash everything that the
sticky stuff is falling on.
Wash it off, and you
could use detergent.
Regular detergent can take
it off and maybe prevent
the sooty mold from taking over.
- Alright so it's honeydew.
- Honeydew.
- So the next time you
walking under a tree
and it's not raining,
it could be...
- Honeydew. And that's a
very, very nice way of saying
"aphid poo-poo".
(laughter)
- That's what it could be.
(pleasant banjo music)
My tomatoes have rotted on
the vine while still green.
Why is that, doc?
- Oh, gee, I don't
know. That one, really,
a picture would have
been really good because
rotting to me
may not be exactly
what he thinks is
rotting, or she.
So, we talked about this
a little bit, Chris,
and you think...and I think
this is probably right,
that if it's the bottom or
the blossom end of the fruit
that's rotting, that's
blossom end rot.
But if it's rotting in other
parts of the fruit, that's just
some kind of
disease, you know...
- [Chris] Some kind of
blight or something.
- So, you know, again with
the fungicide treatment,
but if it's the blossom end rot,
then that is a problem
with water uptake.
Because of calcium not
being taken up in the water.
So having plenty of
water, even soil moisture,
checking your pH, make sure
you got the available calcium,
the pH is right, should
take care of that.
(pleasant banjo music)
- [Chris] What is the best
way to keep all tall plants
from falling over,
especially in the wind?
- Becky let's let you go first.
(laughter)
- Okay, I would stake them
some way, or put them close
to the fence, so they have
something to lean up against.
Okay, go.
- Well, the other plants
can provide some support.
And you can buy these
expensive litle circular dudes
at good gardening shops that
actually the English use a lot.
They're like little
mini tomato cages.
- [Chris] Ah, I've seen those.
- That'll support it, but a
cheaper way for us to do it,
and more down-home for the
South, is to get just a
big ol' piece of what I
call hog wire fence and just
set that out in the garden
and let them grow through it
and then they'll be
supported if you know
it's going to be a floppy plant.
- [Chris] Okay,
yeah, I like that.
And I've seen that, of course,
at some of the garden centers
where you can buy it,
the little hog wire.
That's a real good idea.
(pleasant banjo music)
Is it possible to have
blossom end rot on watermelons?
It kind of looks
like the same thing
that happened on my tomatoes.
What do you think of that,
Tonya? Is it possible?
- [Chris] Yes it is.
- [Tonya] Yes, yes it is.
And I would say the first thing
you need to do is soil test.
It could be a problem
with calcium uptake,
you may need to add lime
for the next growing season.
And blossom end rot
can be also caused by
uneven moisture levels or
the moisture fluctuation, so
make sure that in times of
drought, they're getting water.
So that's what you can do in
the short-term, is make sure
that you water appropiately,
and then for next year
soil test and lime if needed.
Is that what you think?
- That's it.
I know under real dry
conditions, even if you have
adequate calcium out there,
under really dry conditions
the plant can't take it up, so
keep them watered, if your pH
is right, keep them watered
and you ought to be okay.
- Yeah, and I always like
to tell folks to mulch.
It helps regulate
soil moisture a lot.
I think that'd be a
good tool as well.
- Also keep in mind that
little spot got on that fruit
when it was small,
and just because
you start doing measurements,
that little spot's
not going to go away.
As a matter of fact, if that
fruit grows, that little spot's
going to grow, so what
you're trying to take care of
are the other fruit that do not
have that little spot on it.
You want to keep them
from getting that
little spot on them.
(pleasant banjo music)
- Hi Chris, I think I should
have you over for supper,
as many questions as I ask.
We need to take that idea.
- [Woman] What's on the menu?
- Yeah, we need to
see about that one.
What are these bumps
on my pecan tree?
These bumps are everywhere,
but only on one tree.
Thanks, Miss Robin, and
guess what Miss Robin.
We have here today, Mr. D,
who knows all about pecans.
So we're going to
sit back and listen.
- Yeah, I used to live with
pecans a few years ago.
Yeah, that's pecan
phylloxera, very common.
It's caused by an insect
that basically lays an egg
during budbreak,
right at budbreak.
We actually have a home pecan
fact sheet, if I can find it.
Oh, here we are.
Homeowner pecan spray guide
that I took out of the Red Book.
You know, you might want
to make you a copy of that.
That tells you how to
control pecan phylloxera.
I'm interested in...she
said she only had one tree
that had it, does that mean
she only has one pecan tree?
It will not get on other trees.
It doesn't get on oaks, or
maples, or things like that.
But, if you will spray,
at budbreak, if the tree
is small enough, if this is
a small specimen pecan tree
that's 10, 12 feet tall,
you can spray it at budbreak
with Thiomyl, Malathion,
Merit 75WP, or Merit 2F.
That one application will
take care of phylloxera.
You don't have to go
down through the rest
of the spray schedule
to control phylloxera.
That's the only one, it just
shows up this time of year,
and there's leaf phylloxera,
there's stem phylloxera.
It gets on the
leaf and the stem.
- Will it hurt the
plant in any way?
- It's not going
to hurt the plant.
It looks bad, it can
be rather unsightly,
but it's not going
to kill the tree,
it's not going to hurt
the tree that much.
If you got a 100 foot tall pecan
tree, you can't do anything
about it in a
homeowner's situation.
Commercial growers have
no problem with it,
because they have
airblast sprayers.
They go out there
with their budbreak sprays
and take care of it.
(pleasant banjo music)
- [Chris] I have a
red-slash-brown large spots
on our potted heuchera.
What is it and how
can I control it?
And this is from George.
I have heuchera in my own
yard, in my own landscape
some of the same spots, okay?
It's just leaf spot.
That's what it is.
It's just leaf spot.
Practice good sanitation.
You know, make sure there's
space between the plants,
of course, because you want
those leaves to dry off.
Make sure you have
well-drained soils, though.
You definitely need that for
your heuchera, and if you must,
because that's what
he's asking here,
is for control, you
can use a fungicide.
Now I always tell folks let's
use the safer fungicides,
let's go with the copper
soaps, sulfur is something else
that's safe, if you don't want
to use those, then there's
the chlorothalonil,
which is Daconil,
you know, which is
something you can use.
But I always like to
mention the safer, greener,
products first, like the
copper soaps and the sulfur.
But there you have it.
It's just leaf spot.
And we see a lot of leaf spot
this year because guess what.
The weather.
The weather pretty much
dictates what diseases
we're going to see,
for the most part.
- [Woman] That's true, yeah.
- And these spots are
right on the veins,
so that leads me to
believe that's leaf spot.
- Yeah, that sounds
like it to me, too.
- And with all the rain
we've had, it's hard to keep,
even if you were spraying
with the fungicide,
it's more of a protectant,
it's not a curative.
So you know, the
rain washes it off,
you got to go back and spray
it again, and it rains again.
And what the rain
does, is just splatter
those little pathogen
spores all over the place.
It's hard to control, you
know, leaf spots and things,
when we've had a lot of rain.
- And that's a good
point, doc, because again,
now it's not going
to correct this leaf.
So this leaf is gone, but it
can protect some of those other
leaves because fungicides
are protective in nature,
preventative in nature.
- Exactly.
I would tell them, too, if
it's not a lot of leaves..
If it's just a
few.. Like you said.
Practice some sanitation,
just remove them.
Get rid of them, destroy
them, and hopefully
that might be a good
way to control it.
- [Chris] I think it would be.
There are a
number of gardening events
going on in the next
couple of weeks.
Here are just a few
that might interest you.
(pleasant banjo music)
This week, we are catching up
on answering viewer questions.
Here are some questions
about animals and insects.
We are going to start off
with Japanese beetles.
How do you control
Japanese beetles?
They are eating everything
in sight in my garden.
He's already shaking his head.
- They've just been
such a pain this year.
There are so many of them.
They've been here
for a long time,
and it looks like they're
not going anywhere.
They're a problem in
farmer soybean fields.
They don't do a
lot of damage....
They actually do
a lot of damage.
The damage they do, they
have chewing mouth parts.
They have little bitty mouths,
though, so they basically
skeletonize leaves, and
I'm thinking if we continue
to have problems like this,
we're going to have to
start to go earlier with
some of the soil products.
In the Red Book, it
mentions Marathon in April.
Soil application, that
ran you in the middle,
so you may want to do that.
The only problem is
they're very strong flyers.
And if you kill all the
larvae, they're like a white,
grub worm in your soil, they
do damage your turf grass
and other plants when they
feed in the soil as larvae.
But they can really make
your ornamentals look bad,
and agricultural settings
we don't normally recommend.
Soybeans can take a tremendous
amount of leaf damage.
They can tolerate a tremendous
amount of leaf damage
without it adversely affecting
the yield, and probably
our ornamentals can, too,
but it just looks bad.
Either you have an
aesthetic threshold,
everybody's aesthetic
threshold is different.
The other, Sevin,
Tempo, Decathlon,
Tempo SC Ultra,
Talstar, Scimitar,
June, July, and early
August, spray weekly.
- Weekly...
- Weekly.
And that's not w-e-a-k-l-y,
that's w-e-e-k-l-y.
- Weekly, he says.
- Agressively spray
weekly. There you are.
- Do you have any
of those problems?
With Japanese beetles
in your landscape?
- Yeah, I do. I actually
have in my hanging baskets,
I have a potato vine
that's coming down
and I have these beautiful
skeletons of potato leaves.
They're beautiful.
- They definitely
skeletonize your leaves.
And Mr. D, you want to add
something else to that?
- Yeah, I do.
A lot of folks, including
a lot of my relatives,
buy these bags at lawn
and garden centers
that have a pheromone
attractant in it,
and it attracts these, and
in just a matter of hours
they get completely full
almost, in a day or two.
They completely fill up
with the Japanese beetles,
and there's an insecticide
in there that kills them.
So you've got a big bag
of dead Japanese beetles,
and it works, and you
can get some pleasure
out of seeing those
dead Japanese beetles.
But, the thing that folks I
don't think understand, is that
there's a pheromone attractant
in that bag that attracts
Japanese beetles,
and you may think
you're only getting
the ones in your yard.
But they're downwind, if they
can smell that pheromone,
the males are coming.
So you may be bringing
in Japanese beetles
from miles away
to your backyard.
So you've got to kind
of weigh the advantages
and disadvantages of doing that.
- No bags for me.
(pleasant banjo music)
Last year I had a problem with
birds eating my blueberries.
You sure you didn't
send this one in, Mr. D?
How do I keep them
out of my bushes
so they will not
eat them all again?
There are some things
that you can try, and then
something that you're
probably going to have to do.
The things you can try are an
owl, stick you an owl up there
to try to scare those
birds away, or a snake,
scatter you some plastic
snakes around and those might
give you some temporary relief.
What you're probably going to
have to do is put net around.
Bird net. Put your
structure around.
Of course, you only
need them on there
when the blueberries are ripe,
so you're talking about ten
for three or four weeks.
These rabbiteye
type blueberries,
they only get 20 feet
tall in our area,
so you only have
to go 25 feet tall
unless you prune them
down to a smaller size.
And you can, you
can bring them down.
You can control
the height a little
so that you only have to build
a 10 or 12 foot tall
structure around them.
But that's the only way I
know of, and there's certainly
nothing you can spray
to keep the birds out.
- No, there's
nothing you can do.
- But I would try the
frightening agents.
I don't know if the
noisemakers will help a lot.
But I've seen owls
and I've seen snakes
work for a little while,
but birds are pretty smart.
They figure those
things out pretty quick.
(pleasant banjo music)
- Red wasps are in every nook
and cranny outside my home.
Is there any way to keep wasps
from making their
home at my home?
This from Miss Liz. I like that.
Wasps, so when I think of
wasps, they like to be in areas
where there's like
open containers,
where there's food
around, so trash.
Bins, and things like that, so
make sure you don't have any
spoiled fruit or anything like
that lying around your area.
Second thing is this, I
actually do this at home,
they make their homes, but their
homes start out real small.
If you can spot
them in time enough,
I'd knock them
down with a broom.
- [Woman] With a
paper wasp? Yeah.
- Yeah, I just knock
them off with a broom.
And try to discourage them
from coming back
in that area again.
And then thirdly, hey, you
got nooks and crannies?
I'd try to seal those up,
you know, any little holes,
or anything like that, I would
seal that up, and hopefully
that would discourage them
from coming in as well.
- Oh, and they hurt,
too, when they sting you.
And some people are
allergic, which is kind of
a real serious situation
for some people.
So they can be bad.
And they'll want to get
right under your porch.
- Right under.
- Or we had one, one time,
that we had like a picnic table
like this, and we had benches.
You sat down, and there
were wasps under the bench.
And they'd come out and
sting you right in the
fatty part of your leg.
Boy, you would just
about flip the end
of the picnic bench over,
because oh those things...
Just like getting
hit with a hammer.
So they can be in sort of scary
places, so not a good thing.
- Not a good thing, but
if you can do those things
that I just mentioned,
I mean that would help
to discourage them
from coming around.
- Alright Miss Liz,
you be careful out
there with those wasps.
(pleasant banjo music)
Can you have Mr. D talk
about controlling possums?
I live in rural Shelby
County and they are
wearing my place out.
Mr. D, can you help us?
- Well fortunately, since
you live in a rural area,
then you can use my
number one control method
for controlling possums.
- I know what that method is.
- It's a 12-year-old
with a 20 gauge shotgun.
(laughter)
And number six shot or larger.
That'll do the trick, and
I'm reading this right here
from my prevention and
control of wildlife damage
publication, and right
down here, it says...
Well, it doesn't say a
12-year-old, but it does say,
"Shooting can be effective
where firearms are permitted."
And fortunately in rural
areas, firearms are permitted.
"Use a shot gun with number
six shot or 22 caliber rifle."
Another good thing
about possums,
they're really intelligent.
They are intelligent critters.
But they don't act
intelligent, and they're not
wary of people, they will
easily go into traps.
You can use the baits that
you can use for live trap.
Vegetables, apple slices,
sardines, scrap meat,
canned dog food, chicken
entrails, fish, table scraps,
any of those things
will attract a possum.
- [Chris] Pretty easy.
- So trapping them, they
are nocturnal primarily.
If you see one running
around in the daytime,
be very careful because
they can carry rabies.
Not as common as raccoons,
but they can carry rabies.
But they are
primarily nocturnal,
you got a problem with them?
Go out every once in a while
with a good, high-powered
light, spot light, and shine
it around your property
and blast them.
I don't know of any
better method to control them,
really I don't.
Maybe if you let your
Jack Russell run free
out in your yard all
the time at night
that would probably
take care of it, too.
- Alright. When in
rural Shelby County...
- A 12-year-old and a 20
gauge shotgun, hard to beat.
- Hard to beat. Alright.
(pleasant banjo music)
What is the best way to
get rid of ground bees?
They have taken over
my yard. Ground bees.
- You know, most the time, when
I've seen heavy infestations
of ground bees,
it's been in areas
where the grass is kind of
thin, have you noticed that?
- [Chris] I have.
- So that kind of goes along
with what you mentioned
earlier, about some of the
other problems we have,
some of the weed problems.
If you do a good job soil
testing and make sure
you try to get your turf
as thick as you can get it,
and fertilize it correctly,
water it correctly,
mow it correctly and all that,
you may have fewer problems
with these ground bees,
because ground bees...
I'm not seeing any
university that recommends
spraying insecticides
to kill them.
They're solitary bees, they're
not going to sting you.
They're looking for a place
to burrow down in the ground,
lay eggs, lay an
egg, and you know,
continue propagating
their species.
They like generally dry
soil, so that may indicate
that you need to irrigate
a little bit more
where these ground bees are.
But they're really not a
problem, they're just kind of
unsightly, and they may
irritate you a little bit.
I would look at initially
putting a little water on them,
chasing them out that way,
and then trying to get
the grass thicker,
where they're a problem.
- I would definitely
recommend that as well.
- I have seen them in lawns,
though, a few years ago
in the Bartlett area outside
one lawn that I've never seen
so many ground bee
burrows in my life.
They were all over the place,
and that can be irritating.
That can be scary,
until you realize
they're not going to sting you.
- I recently went to
a homeowner's site
and she had ground bees,
but the lawn was thinned.
She was trying to grow
the wrong grass type
under a lot of shade, so it
just thinned out her lawn.
Ground bees were
all over the place.
And it scared her, because
when I drove up I could see
the ground bees very visibly,
they were just flying
all over the place.
I said wow, how about that?
- Probably don't need to aerate.
- No, because they're
doing that for you.
- Free aeration.
- Yeah, they leave small,
little round holes.
They sure do.
- Wow, how 'bout that.
- They're good questions, and
these are things that we see
out in our landscapes
all the time.
(pleasant banjo music)
Can you use vole
bait around dogs?
What would happen if my
dog ate some of the bait?
It's a legit question.
- Yeah, that's not a good
thing. Not a good thing.
Most of the rodenticides
are toxic to cats and dogs,
so it's a good idea to put
your baits in either a closed
bait station that only
the vole can get into,
or, unless your dog
is a heck of a digger,
you can make a little hole in
the tunnel and use a funnel
and pour the bait in the
tunnel, so it's underground.
That's a couple things
that you can do.
Or you can use something
other than baits.
You can use live traps to
catch them, or the snap traps,
things like that, set you
up with a bait station with
five or six of those
traps and go back
and collect voles
every once in a while.
Of course, I guess your
dog can get his nose
caught in the snap trap,
too, but it won't kill him.
You want to make sure
that any rodenticide,
that you have it in an area
that pets can't get to.
I'm not sure they would eat
it, because it's not normally
attractive to dogs or cats, but
some dogs will eat anything.
I don't know about cats, but
some dogs will eat rocks.
Some dogs aren't real smart.
- Definitely want to be
careful around your pets
and around little kids.
- [Woman] Yes.
- [Mike] Children, mostly.
- Definitely want to be
careful around little kids.
Don't want them getting
into these baits.
Remember, we love
to hear from you.
Send us a letter or an email
with your gardening questions.
Send your email to
familyplot@wkno.org
The mailing address
is: Family Plot
7151 Cherry Farms Road
Cordova, Tennessee 38016
That's all we have
time for today.
Hope you enjoyed
all those answers.
Thanks for watching,
I'm Chris Cooper.
Be sure to join us next
time for "The Family Plot:
Gardening in the Mid-South".
Be safe.
(pleasant banjo music)