The Family Plot - March 23, 2024

- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South, I'm Chris Cooper. Onions are a great garden vegetable, and they store well. Today we're talking about growing onions. Also, do you have an annual you don't want to lose in the frost? Just take a cutting and you can enjoy it all winter and next year, too. 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 Walter Battle. Walter's a UT County Director in Haywood County. And Dr. Kelly is here! Dr. Kelly is our horticulture expert. Thanks for being with us today. - Glad to be here. - Yes, happy to be here. - All right, Walter, I can smell something on the table here. - Yes. - Smells like onions a little bit, you know? - Oh

yes, yes. And I'll tell you Chris, I must say, I am an onion freak. - (Chris laughing) - I absolutely love 'em, they're just a very versatile vegetable you can use as far as cooking and all of that, and since I have to do all of the cooking at the house, I've just learned to love 'em. - Okay. Well we have the right man for the job, to talk about onions then, right? - Hopefully, yes. - All right. Well we have some questions for you about those onions then, Walter, so, when are onions planted? - W

ell, here in the Mid-South area, and I'm mainly talking about the Memphis area, I would say, usually February and early March. It's usually one of our very first vegetables that we put out there each year. So you go out there, it kinda gets me fired up for the growing season, 'cause I'm like hey, I can finally go out here and throw me up, as old folks say, throw me up some onion rows. (everyone laughing) And start plantin', so hey, I'm ready to go now, and I'm just lookin' forward for the weathe

r to get warmer at that point, but I know I have my onions. - So what about frost though, do we need to pay attention to frost dates, you know, if somebody's watching this over in east Tennessee? - Well basically, since we plant 'em so early, they usually gone come through most frost dates anyway. Now I know Dr. Kelly informed me before we came on the air that what, zone seven is what? - Is April 10th. - April 10th. - April 10th, okay. - Usually kind of the marginal, after April the 10th in zone

seven, we should be frost free. Based on prior data, but we could always get somethin' strange happenin. - Exactly, exactly, yes. - So does it matter how far apart you set the bulbs? - Yes, now if you're gonna grow your onions for what we call bunch onions or spring onions, you wanna set them about two inches apart from each other. 'Cause obviously we gonna get the little small heads here. But now if you're gonna wait and grow 'em as, for dry onions or whatever, then you wanna set them probably

about six to eight inches apart. Because some of these can get kinda big. And if I'm gonna have a good hamburger, I want me a nice, big onion on that hamburger. But that's basically how you can plant them. And also, even the onions that we grow for dry onions, you can pull them early as green onions, it's just kinda up to you to do that as the gardener, that's kinda your choice. So some people plant 'em kinda thick, and knowing that they're gonna pull some out and leave some there to grow later

for the dry onions, so it just kinda depends. - Okay. How long to harvest? That's what most folks wanna know, right? - Yes. Basically, if you're looking at to harvest 'em for green onions, you're probably looking at about, I'm gonna say 60 days are probably what you're lookin' at. So if you set 'em in March, you let 'em what, April, May, so you should be gettin' some green onions by then to chop up and put in your turnip greens and all those good things. And also to put in your salads. I like s

licing these green tops here just to put in my salads as well. And now of course, if you're gonna wait a little bit later and have 'em grow for the dry onions, then obviously, you'll be pullin' those around, I would say mid-June, is probably when a lot of 'em come off around our area. - Okay. So how can you tell when they're ready, though? - Okay, as far as the green onions, when you go out early in the spring and wanna pull some, you basically just kinda just pull 'em up, and if you see that th

ey're the size that you want, hey, start gettin' 'em. Now if you're gonna wait 'til later in the summer, I mean you're growin' 'em for the dry onions, obviously the green parts will fall over and flip over, and you can just kinda tell 'cause they'll be pushed up kinda near the soil edge, and again, just pull a few of 'em out, it'll be probably around mid-June, and you can just harvest 'em then and prepare to dry 'em out for cookin'. - So how do you prepare dry onions for storage? - Okay, well on

ce again, you go out there, and you'll kinda see, they start, obviously, pushed up near the soil, the green tops have fallen over, so you pull 'em out. And what I did, I saved an old patio circular table that has the wire grid, and I just put that in the garage and I put them on there and I just lay 'em on there, I wanna say I keep 'em there for about three or four weeks in the garage, seem like I get good air circulation in there 'cause I always have my garage door up a lot of times. - (Kelly)

You don't wash 'em. - No, don't wash 'em, please do not wash 'em. And you'll just kinda see them, they'll begin to, they'll tighten down just like this one has tightened down. And pretty much they're good to go. Now at that point you may say hey, how do I store 'em? I know that's usually a big question, and I keep mine pretty much out there in the garage. But those, when I bring 'em in, I put some up under the kitchen sink, (Chris laughs) just throw 'em up under there. But now the old timers, I

remember my grandmother, she used to put 'em in stockings and you would just see stockings hanging all throughout. - (Chris) I've seen that before, okay. - But the main thing is don't put 'em near water and moisture 'cause you're just gonna get those funguses on there. - What about varieties? Do you have a favorite variety? - Not really, I'll be honest with you, I just buy whatever they have at the garden center. I don't know if it's just where I live, we just don't get a lot of different variet

ies in those stores, I don't know. I will say this, when it comes to the dry varieties, I do like the Texas 1015. I love that variety, it's a sweet onion that grows well here in our climate. I mean, this is one right here, and they're very, very good. And I also get this question a lot. I know that that Vidalia onion is known for its sweetness and all of that, and a lot of people say hey, I go to the store and I bought some of those onion sets, but my Vidalias didn't turn out to be sweet like th

e ones that I buy. And I think it has something, and maybe Dr. Kelly, or Dr. Cooper here can tell me, I think it has somethin' to do with the soil type down there in that area. - That's what I've always heard, yeah. That's what the true Vidalia onions from Georgia, they say they're not really the real Vidalias unless they're grown in the soil of Georgia in Vidalia, Georgia. - Okay, well I-- - So. - Definitely the soil type. - So it's definitely the soil type. - Apparently. That's what they say a

nyway. - So you know, I don't know. (laughing) - Well, speaking of soil, what type of soil do onions prefer? - Well actually, from a pH standpoint, they like a seven, a neutral soil, but it goes back even down to about 6.6, 6.5 to seven, so slightly acidic to what we call, I guess, basic soil. So that's kinda what they like. And they also like a good, they like to be reached up, they don't like to be what we call wet feet or whatever, just planted where they get a lot of water, they like to drai

n off, and you want a soil with good till, good organic matter in it, and they'll do fine for ya. - Any fertilizer we need to put down? - Usually with the ones I grow at home, I might go out there and put like a triple 10 or something like that on there, but I usually have pretty good success with growin' 'em there at my home garden. - Must be some good soil down in Haywood County. Now what about diseases or insects that we need to be concerned about? - Well, I would say, as an Extension Agent,

I've never really ran up on any in our area, but there is an onion maggot that I've read about, and it's pretty destructive, but seems like I read more about it up in the East Coast side. - We don't tend to have that problem with the maggot here. - Yes, we tend not to have anything here, so I haven't ran across it. - (Chris) I have not either. - I think here in our area, we're fine. - I think we're good. - Okay. Walter, we appreciate that good information about onions. - Yes, well like I say. -

We can tell you like onions. - Oh, I love them, absolutely love them, yes. - Good deal. - Next time, bring onion dip. - Okay, you got it. (everyone laughing) [upbeat country music] - You know, this time of the year, we're out here pruning all of our fruit trees and everything and you got the blueberries at this stage. You may be tempted to do some pruning, but my recommendation is do not. Do not prune the blueberries. This plant is still at the growth stage. We're trying to create a larger plant

, and while some of these canes look like they're dead, they may very well be dead. Some of them may not be, and you know, I can use this as an example right here. This whole cane looks dead, but when you look up here toward the upper portion of it, it may still be alive. Now, the only time you really need to prune blueberries is when they're too tall, when you can't reach the fruit and only the birds are able to get the fruit. And then, if you have a 10-foot tall cane, you don't prune it at eig

ht feet, just as high as you can reach. You follow that cane all the way down into the plant and try to get down to where it's only two or feet above the ground and prune it there. Only time you need to prune a blueberry is if it's too big for you to handle. [upbeat country music] - Alright, Dr. Kelly, easy techniques to root cuttings on some of our favorite annuals. - Easy and cheap. - And we like easy-- - (Chris And Kelly) And cheap. - Exactly. Do it yourself little projects that we can do and

every year we have favorite, really pretty plants that are annuals that we get and they do really good and we always are like, oh, golly, I wish I could keep that over the winter. But mostly, we don't have places to bring in these giant, big old plants like hibiscus, the big old tropical hibiscus. Or the big, pretty geraniums that have just done beautifully all summer, or big old impatiens or coleus or some of these others that just really look nice and we're like, oh, gee, I wish I could keep

that for next summer. And there's a way to do that. Most of these plants root really, really easily. And so I'm gonna show you how to do that. So think I'm gonna demonstrate, I guess, first, the coleus. And of course, you got coleus, they're huge. - Right, right. - In your garden, so you just pick a terminal, and you come in, this little, cheap knife, I was tellin' y'all, they're really, really cheap. I usually keep a bunch of these around the garden or different place where I can find them. But

then you just go in and you just pinch that dude off or cut it off. And what you'll wanna do is of course, remove these lower leaves, because when you put it in the soil, those are probably gonna be below the soil level, and they're gonna rot and fall off and not be a good thing. So actually I usually just take my fingernails and pinch those off. So see now we've got a cutting of our little coleus. And what I do is I travel some, and you know in motel or hotel rooms, in the bathroom, they alway

s give you this shower cap. And who wears the shower caps anymore, so I have just collected these, I've got like a gazillion of 'em at home. And what I do is I use these to make me a little mini-greenhouse, and I'm gonna show you that first. - (Chris) How smart is that, though? - Yeah, really, so here's my impatiens that I have already stuck prior, about a week ago, I did these about a week ago. So they have actually, I think, a couple of 'em have roots, but I'm not gone pull it out, but I did t

his about a week ago, and I've just got regular soil mix in there. And then I just took some prunings from some of my plants, and made me some, these are like my, what do we call that, the frame of my greenhouse. And of course, when you take a cutting, you want to, it's got no roots, so you've got to keep the moisture in the leaves until it can, so it won't dry out, as we've talked in some of the previous segments about desiccation, so you take your shower cap, and you just put it, and the nice

thing about it, some people use plastic bags, but see I like the shower cap 'cause it's-- - (Walter) Elastic. - Yeah. It keeps the moisture in and there's your little greenhouse, and these things'll usually root in a couple of weeks. In at least a month, you've got a rooted cutting. And the way you can tell if it's rooted, let me just bring over one of these others. This is, the coleus, let's look at that one. Now this one I took a week ago as well, and I believe I pulled this one up just to see

if it had rooted and I believe I saw roots. Now if you wanna test if one's rooted, you just tug on it a little bit, you don't pinch the stem, because if you grab it at the foliage up here, if you pinch it, or break it off, it'll probably grow another leaf, it's not gonna grow another stem if you pinch it. And then I usually get something that I go in and sort of prize it up instead of just pullin' it. - (Chris) Smart. - Yeah, so that way we're not breakin' off. Oh, well, no, I broke it off. - U

h-oh. - I broke off my root. But if you look at it, you can see tiny little root initials which are little bumps all along the stems, so it won't be long. But it did have a root on it before I got here, I got a little vicious with it, I guess, when I pulled it out the first time. - Let me ask you this, so what's the best way to water those, though? - I have not had to water 'em for a week. Because you get condensation inside this thing, and another thing, good point, another thing, you keep 'em

outta the sun, obviously, because you're gonna bake 'em, you put 'em in a little shady kinda area of the garden, or I just keep 'em on the back steps of my patio, which is shaded, and so it'll just no time at all, this plant will transpire and this'll start getting moisture all built up in it. And so I have not had to water it for a week. Now there may be a time that I will before it roots, but I mean, obviously you can see the soil and it's wet, so as long as it's wet I don't worry about it. Bu

t there's another little way, if you don't travel and collect your shower caps - (everyone laughing), - but if you drink soda pop, you know. You can just cut one of these two liter soda, I don't know if that's the right one, I think this one went on this one. But you can get the clear bottles, you gotta pick your brand so that it's a clear bottle, usually, I mean you can get a green bottle, but I like the clear ones, 'cause I wanna be able to see my plants, see what it's doin'. So I cut the top

off, and that's your little impromptu funnel you can use, so you might wanna keep that. And then this is your little greenhouse, and you just basically stick it down, and kinda twist it a little bit to make it airtight as you can, and then there's your little greenhouse. So it's really easy, it's not a big thing, and then when they root, oh and here's my hibiscus. So this was one of the hibiscus that I stuck in there. And I brought that from a neighbor, I don't have tropical hibiscus, mine are h

ardy hibiscus. So I had to go over to the neighbor and really kinda snuck over and took some cuttings, I was actually pruning, it needed pruning, but anyway, I took some cuttings, and by the time I got back to the house, it had wilted. And I'm thinking, 'cause it didn't have water or anything, and I'm thinking, man I don't know if that'll make it. But I got it quickly and I did my little greenhouse thing, and within a day, it had straightened up. And see these, I had these on here 'til I got he

re, so see you can see the moisture that's collected in there, that keeps it moist until the roots come out. And then when it has rooted, then you can take it inside in the little pot, or you can repot it, or you can do whatever, but the trick is to put it in the right place in the house to get it through the winter because it's not gonna just grow like crazy because it's not gonna get exactly the right conditions probably, unless you've got a greenhouse you can put it in. You'd probably wanna p

ut it in a window that can get some really good early morning light, or middle afternoon light. And it'll probably do just really, really well, through the winter, and then you can take it out in the spring and by the next this time of year you can just do the cycle over again. And perpetuate your favorite plants, you know, and if you've got, some of these cultivars of some of these coleus, you find one, and there was one called Arkansas Sunset, several years ago, that they quit having now. And

it was absolutely gorgeous. It was like orange and yellow, looked like a sunset. And you can't find it anymore, and I've had several people ask me, "Where can we find it?" So that's a way to keep the plants that sometimes they quit, discontinue, to offer. Keep 'em going, your heirlooms. - (Chris) That's a good idea, sure is. - Yeah. - We appreciate that, that's good stuff. If you're like me, yeah, at the end of the season, like, oh man I hate to take that out of the ground, 'cause I can't bring

it in the house. - And as horticulture people we get asked that sometimes. "I got this favorite plant, you know, and it's tender "and I don't have room for it to drag it in, what can I do to propagate it?" And some of 'em I'll even root in water, but I like to put 'em in soil. - (Chris) Think that's good. - Yeah, just seems to work better for me. - All right, thanks for that good information. - Sure. - Appreciate ya. [gentle country music] - It's late winter and it's time to look at your trees a

nd do some corrective pruning. Look for crossing branches, like this one here that is rubbing up against this other branch, rubbing the bark off of it. So, we want to eliminate that. [pruners snipping] We're also looking at internal branches that are coming into the plant. We'd rather them go out to the outside, so we'll eliminate those. [pruners snipping] And, we'll look for water shoots, like this one that's growing clear up into the tree crossing all sorts of branches. [pruners snipping] And

continue looking throughout the tree. [upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q & A session. Y'all ready for this? It's good questions we have here. Here's our first viewer email. "We have lots of voles, help! How can we get rid of voles without using poisons?" And this is from Debby via Facebook. So she has lots of voles, but she doesn't wanna use poison. All right Walt I hear you over there sighing. (sighs) Oh boy. - Well, let me ask another question, that I get asked a lot, people ask

me what is a vole. And it's actually a little mouse-like critter that doesn't have a tail. And they tend to, they're really pretty much nocturnal. Course they stay on the ground, but I will be honest with you, without poison, I find it pretty difficult to probably kill 'em out. If you could get you a good cat or dog or something like that that could maybe dig up in there and catch 'em. - And trapping doesn't work really easily, you know. And then you've got re-population. You get a few and then

you've got a re-population back. It's hard to control 'em in a garden setting, because they do stay in, they tunnel through mulch, and you need mulch. So it's just-- - They can run mole tunnels. - Oh yeah, they can. - They run the mole tunnels. And the way you know you'll have 'em also, you'll see a bunch of little old holes, about the size, I would say, maybe, a silver dollar, if people even see silver dollars now. But it's about that size. I also have a problem with 'em with my apple trees, t

hat I have, because they like to suck on those roots. And I can kinda tell sometimes when they get in big numbers, so I usually use the poison products to kinda knock 'em back. - (Chris) Anti-coagulant fuels. - 'Cause I don't have a cat or a dog. - And too, if she's worried about poison poisoning a pet, if you'll put it down in the hole, like you said, just, and that's the way I'll do, I'll just put them, again, it's only a stop-gap, because you'll just kill a few, and then if it rains, your poi

son's pretty well diluted. 'Cause you usually use those pellets or something. - Pellets, and I usually tell folks, yeah, put on a glove, use a spoon and then put it down-- - Just put it down in there, yes, exactly. - You wanna do that, and something else, Doc, we talked about a little earlier. If folks would quit killin' the snakes they would actually help us out a little bit. - Exactly, yes. - Yes, yes, yes. - Those beneficial snakes. - We're talkin' 'bout good snakes, we're not talkin' about b

ad snakes. We're talkin' about rat snakes, king snakes, garter snakes, those that are non-poisonous, that they help us, they're a good thing in the garden, because they help us keep the vermin down. She could move away to a vole-free area, which I don't know where that would be. - I don't know where that would be right now. (laughing) - All right, Miss Debby, so there you have it. Hope we answered your question there. Here's our next viewer email. "What kind of weed is this and how do I get rid

of this?" And this is Mr. Lou, Southhaven, Mississippi. Thank you Mr. Lou. Okay, so what kind of weed is this, and we actually talked a little bit about this. I actually think that's dallisgrass. Now, most folks are used to seeing the seed stalk, of course, there's no seed stalk there, but I'm just looking at the growth, you know it grows in clumps or bunches, again, I was looking at the edges, you know, those blades, I tend to think that is dallisgrass. - Now it's obviously in her turf, I guess

, right? - Obviously in her turf, right. - So she's keepin' it mown so we probably can't really identify it 100% unless we can actually be on site and see a seed head or something. - And it would be good if we could that, the picture was good but-- - The controls are kind of the same for some of the weedy plants in turf so. - Right and usually for, of course, dallisgrass, again, MSMA is what was used to control dallisgrass, you can't get your hands on MSMA anymore. So you have to go with quinclo

rac, and that's what you will find in most of your products that will say controls crabgrass, is quinclorac, so you just read the label on that. - And that will control the dallisgrass as well? - It will control the dallisgrass. It's gonna be multiple applications, dallisgrass is tough to control. Again, grows in clumps, produces by rhizomes and seed, so that's gonna be pretty tough, Mr. Lou. All right, here's our next viewer email. "What is this white, fuzzy stuff on my cucumbers? "The leaves a

re wilting. It's almost to the new blossoms." And this is from Mike in Madison. So where do you wanna start with that Walter, what do you think that was? - Well, when I see the picture, it looked like I'm seeing a disease called gummy stem blight. And usually products that contain chlorothalonil will usually take care of it. 'Cause I'm goin' by those lesions that I'm seeing right there on the stem. And I do know that gummy stem blight affect cucurbit crops bigtime, so obviously cucumbers is in t

hat cucurbit family, along with watermelons, as a matter of fact, I see it a lot in watermelon plantings, is where I see this disease a lot. - Yeah, those tan spots on the stems, is why I thought it was that. I don't know of anything else that could be. Did you think of anything else, Doc? - Well that scalartinia, that stuff, but I think chlorothalanil will get that as well, I'm not sure, but probably. 'Cause chlorothalanil is pretty broad spectrum. - It is, chlorothalanil which is daconil or an

y of your copper-based fungicides, should do the trick as well, sulfur can be used as well, but just read the label on those. Will it kill the plant though? - Severe infestations, yes, yes it will. - If his leaves are already wilting, that doesn't sound too good. - Yes. - And it's not gonna have many fruits, 'cause it's on the blossoms. - Right so, this might be one you might say hey, I need to just start over, or just, this is it. - Go to the farmer's market just buy him some fresh cukes from t

he farmer's market. - All right Mike, so we hope that helps you out. So Dr. Kelly, Walter, we're out of time, it's been fun. - Okay. - All right. - Been good. - 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, Tennessee, 38016. Or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com. That's all we have time for today. Remember you can find all sorts of gardening advice and infor

mation online at familyplotgarden.com. We also have links to Extension publications for everything we talked about on the show. Thanks for watching, I'm Chris Cooper, be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South. Be safe. [upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]