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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Spring and summer bring a new seasons for gardens.

It also brings a bunch of garden problems and questions.

Lawns, tomatoes, trees, and more, it's the Q & A show, just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening 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.

This week, we're going to spend the whole show answering viewer questions.

Every week we get more questions than we can answer on air.

This week, we are catching up, showing you some of the questions we did not get to air because of time.

We start with a few questions about vegetables.

"Why are my tomato leaves curling like this?"

And this is Andy from Memphis, Tennessee.

So, great pictures, curling leaves, what do you think about that one?

[Natalie laughing] And I'm pretty sure you get a lot of questions about that as well.

- Oh yes, and when we experience changes in moisture and changes in temperature, then these kinds of leaf, when I see that question, what I think is physiological leaf roll.

- Right, exactly.

- And so that is when the leaves roll linearly, so kind of curl on the edges, and, often times, they'll get a little bit tougher or leathery, and so that could be a stress sign, and sometimes it can be rapid changes in moisture.

It's been relatively cool and moist, and then it got hot.

- Which has happened.

- And dry.

- Which has happened here in Memphis.

- Sometimes it happens multiple times a year, and so that leaf is kind of reducing its leaf area to collect less heat and so it can be a stress-avoidance technique.

Pruning can also contribute to leaf rolling, if you prune too much.

- Too much, okay, that I didn't know.

- Take off too many suckers, so you can kind of stress that plant by, essentially what you're doing is rapidly changing its food sources.

- Okay, gotcha, makes sense.

- Yeah, so those can be a couple of things.

Now, I don't wanna overlook the fact that there can be viruses and also some herbicides that can cause cupping and-- - Which looks like, one of those pictures did look like it was phenoxy herbicide damage.

The cupping, curling, the leathery feel to those leaves.

- Weird veins, you know, strange patterns in the veins and so those we would look more towards some kind of an herbicide or, yeah, and if you're seeing, oftentimes for physiological leaf roll, those leaves will remain fairly green.

- Okay, that's good.

- There are some viruses that if you see yellowing with some of that curling, like, you know, yellow leaf curl virus.

So, sometimes color can be an indicator too.

- Okay, color can be an indicator, okay.

What about production though?

- So, overall, we typically say that physiological leaf roll isn't a huge barrier to production.

Oftentimes it'll be on the older leaves, which aren't the ones that are doing the most work to feed developing fruit, so as long as it's a minor stress response, and it's not something like massive water deficit or something, you know, then most of the time, and sometimes they'll come out of it.

- Okay, what if the plant did have phenoxy damage, though, which we think one of those plants did, will it grow out of that, you think?

- It all depends.

- It does depend, and the thing about the phenoxy herbicides is, if you're planting your tomatoes somewhere in your yard, for the most part, most people use those chemicals to control broadleaf weeds.

So if you're gonna be spraying these chemicals, these pesticides, above 85 degrees, that's gonna be a problem.

- Yeah.

- It's gonna be a problem.

- And we're seeing a lot more of those lawn herbicides have mixed modes of action, so sometimes they may have different kinds of herbicides than you thought they might.

- So, be careful when you're using pesticides around your tomatoes.

- Tomatoes are our canaries, right?

- Yeah, [laughs] that's right.

- They're pretty sensitive.

- That's right, that's for sure.

[upbeat country music] "I planted turnip green seeds last year.

"They grew to a certain point and just died.

What caused that?"

And that's Bill in Memphis.

Turnip green seeds, they started growing, they just died.

- Frost.

- Depends on when he planted them.

Could it be in the seed itself, maybe?

- Too wet, maybe?

- Could it be too wet?

- Too hot.

- Well, turnips are winter annuals.

So, if you plant them in the spring, they're not gonna do very well, and they will come up and they'll die, and if you plant them in the fall, they're gonna grow through the wintertime and then die, they'll just die out in the summer.

So, I can't think of any disease that would wipe them out.

- Unless it gets too wet.

- But I don't know whether he's talking about, are you talking about shortly after they came up or after you'd been able to harvest them and get some good out of them?

- Good question.

- Or, a lot of questions, it brings up more questions- - 'Cause it's a timing issue, would be my guess.

- Could be, timing.

- They just maybe did it too early and then it was too hot, and then the sun got them, and then they maybe wilted.

- Or it could have been too wet, as we said before.

We just don't know, but it's a lot of questions, that's for sure, you know, about that.

Good seeds, could have been good seeds, good viable seeds.

I mean they did grow, but we don't know, he said to a certain point, we don't know what that point is, but.

- It just brings on a lot of questions, but the bottom line on turnips, they're usually very easy to grow.

- Sure, easy.

- Pretty easy.

If you have adequate moisture and adequate fertility, and if you plant them at the right time, plant them in the fall, and should have turnip greens for a while.

- Okay.

[upbeat country music] "Tree fungus and moss is growing on my peach trees "and it's killing my trees "and all of my peaches are brown rotting.

"What do I need to do to save my peach trees from moss and fungus?"

And this is Doug.

All right Mr.

D., we've got a lot of things going on here, right?

- Yeah.

- Tree fungus, moss, brown rotting, which you always tell us happens [laughs] to peaches, right?

- Right, right.

You know, bless your heart.

[Chris laughing] You've got peach trees.

The only thing you can do to keep a peach tree alive, in a homeowner situation, is just spray it, and spray, and spray, and spray, and if you don't, you will have brown rot.

- You always say it, yup.

- And brown rot affects the fruit.

It affects the leaves, and it affects the stems, and it can kill the tree.

If you don't spray, you will also, if you're lucky enough to have fruit, you will have plum curculio.

You'll have a little worm, or several worms, in every fruit because the plum curculio just does that.

That female finds that fruit, she makes a little semicircle cut, lays an egg under it, and so, if you see a little half-moon scar on the fruit, you know that somewhere in there, there's a larvae tunneling around and enjoying himself.

You will have white peach scale, which is one of the things that I think they're talking about when they're talking about moss growing.

- Moss growing.

- That's probably white peach scale.

It will completely cover, circle the trunk, circle the lower limbs, and wherever the white peach scale is, that part of the tree will die, and so if it circles the trunk, the whole tree will die.

The University of Tennessee has a home orchard spray guide and in order to prevent these things from happening, you need to spray the delayed dormant spray in late winter with oil and oil emulsion, and that will help you on the scale control.

It'll also help you with aphids and mites.

At bloom, spray with fungicide, and Captan is the one that we recommend, and late bloom or petal fall, do that again, and you can use Captan or sulfur, or chlorothalonil, another fungicide.

At shuck split, you need to go back and spray again with Captan, or sulfur, or chlorothalonil, but you need to kick in an insecticide.

Malathion is the insecticide that we recommend at shuck split, and then, and that's seven days after, shuck split is usually about a week after petals have all fallen off, and then, cover sprays 10 to 14 day intervals, with Captan, or sulfur, as a fungicide, plus malathion and you need to do that up until harvest.

If you spray and it rains and washes your spray off, these sprays are preventative in nature, and if Mother Nature decides to wash your spray off, you need to pretend like you didn't spray and go out there and do it again, and that means if you spray and it rains tomorrow, you gotta go back spray again if it rains, and it's really, really hard to keep the cover spray on there.

Additionally, - Additionally?

Oh gosh.

- Another insect that will kill your peach trees is the peach tree borer, and there's a lesser peach tree borer, which gets in the upper limbs, which will just kill the limbs if they get in it, but the regular peach tree borer gets down at the base of the plant and, if it does that, it will kill that peach tree, and they're very, very common, and, in order to prevent that from happening, you need to go with trunk and main scaffold sprays.

May 31st in Tennessee, June 30 and July 15th, but you need to check with your local extension office, where you are, to find out the times to do that.

With esfenvalerate or gamma-cyhalothrin insecticide.

Those are the two insecticides that are recommended to control the peach tree borer, and then pre-harvest sprays, two to three weeks before harvest, Captan plus either thiophanate-methyl, Immunox, or propiconazole fungicides, so.

- It's so much, oh my gosh.

- And then, if you've done all that.

[Chris laughing] And you're succeeded and you had a good crop, next fall do an early dormant spray in the late fall, after the leaves have dropped, with copper, chlorothalonil, or liquid lime-sulfur.

So, and that's all from home orchard spray guide.

- Home orchard spray guide.

- So I would suggest you get you one of these, you laminate it, [Chris laughing] 'cause you're gonna want it out in you shop and you just need to do that, or- - I knew you were going to say that.

- Go to your local store and buy you some peaches.

It's a lot cheaper to buy peaches than it is to try to produce them.

You know, they're really, really hard, and same thing's true for plums, peaches and plums.

They're in the same category.

- Wow.

[upbeat country music] "What type of post-emerge can I use on my Bermuda grass to kill weeds?"

And this is Larry.

All right, so I have a couple of questions here though.

Okay, he wants to kill weeds with a post-emerge, which means the weeds are already up, okay.

But here's the deal, what kind of weeds though?

We don't know if they're broadleaf weeds, we don't know if they're grass weeds, and we don't know if they're sedges.

So, we have to know that first, before we can actually recommend what to use.

But before I like to recommend chemicals, I always go to cultural practices first.

You have to make sure you're growing a good, dense stand of Bermuda to begin with, and maybe you won't have those weed problems.

If you irrigate properly, okay, fertilize according to your soil tests, you can grow a thick stand of Bermuda that could withstand some of those weeds.

But he's asking for a post-emerge, so if you had, or if he had, broadleaf weeds, then you can go with a broadleaf weed killer, and most of those are gonna contain 2,4-D, dicamba, MCPP, which is mecoprop.

Read and follow the label on that.

These are, again, broadleaf weed killers.

They're oxons.

It makes those weeds grow themselves to death.

So, that's for broadleaf weeds, right?

If you have sedges, then you have to go with something that contains imazaquin, which is the chemical active ingredient.

Again, read the label on that, and then, if you have grass growing in your Bermuda, good luck.

[woman laughing] Good luck, 'cause you might just get out there, just pull it yourself.

- Yes.

- But again, Mr.

Larry, it would help to know what type of weed we're talking about before we can actually recommend something for you to control it.

All right, would you agree?

- Absolutely, you don't have to know what specific weed, you just have to know if it's broadleaf, a sedge, or a grassy weed.

And you can tell that sedges have triangular stems.

A grassy weed, the veins of the leaf will be parallel like a blade of grass.

- So monocot, right?

- Yes, and a broadleaf weed will have a central vein and webbed veins coming off to the side on a broadleaf weed leaf.

- That's right, and most of your broadleaf weeds have flowers.

- Okay, that's true.

[upbeat country music] - "I have several crape myrtles "that were damaged by the late freezes.

"My crape myrtles have small shunts "that are now coming out of them.

Will they make it?"

And this is from Jerry.

So what do you think?

- Well, you know it's interesting.

I had the same problem.

The shunts are from ambrosia beetles attacking the crape myrtles, and because I didn't want abrosia beetles around, I took the option of cutting that main branch down, and letting shoots from the base come up, and that worked.

- So it worked.

- Yeah.

But, you know, crape myrtles are hardy, and even though we got that cold weather and the tree is probably stressed, which is why the ambrosia beetles attacked it in the first place.

So I just cut it all down and let the carbohydrates bring up new shoots, and then they bloomed in the end of the year, so, yeah.

It depends on what he wants to do, but I would want to get rid of the ambrosia beetle myself.

- Yeah, which is gonna be tough to do.

- Yeah, 'cause when you cut the whole stock off and then get rid of it, then you get rid of the ambrosia beetle.

You let the tree come back out again, and you can pick it up and make it a tree, or you can let it be a shrub, whatever you want to do.

- Right, because the ambrosia beetle is a problem.

You know, it will attack healthy and stressed trees, and it's usually the fungus that it lays inside the cambium layer, that's the big problem.

Right, so, 'cause it will stop the uptake of water, and nutrients to the upper canopy, so that could be a huge deal.

But you're right, if you just cut off, you don't have to worry about that.

- It's gone, and it's still alive, because he said it's coming out from the bottom.

- That's right.

- Well, so, let it.

- Let it come on up.

- The few shoots, let it come up and it'll still bloom this year.

[upbeat country music] - "My spruce tree is over 20 years old.

"Last year it began browning at the bottom.

"It is spreading toward the top.

"The spruce is partially in the shade of a pecan "and beside a dogwood.

"What is causing this dying?

What do I do to save this tree?"

And this is Joy in Brighton, Tennessee.

So, we have some browning, it's a spruce.

- It's a spruce.

- Tree, a spruce.

- Here in the Mid-South.

- In the Mid-South.

- Yeah, well, for one thing, it doesn't like to be here.

But the fact that it's been 20 years, and that's fantastic.

- That's good.

- It's dying.

Could be stress.

Now, this last summer, we've had some of the worst drought we've had in 15 years, so that could probably be part of it but more importantly, because it's not planted in its native habitat and maybe we've had some really dry weather, it's stressed.

- Yes, definitely stressed.

- And when Colorado blue spruces get stressed around here, they get spider mites, and I think the spider mites are what is trying to finish off his Colorado spruce.

So, let's fix it.

Let's put some insecticide or horticulture oil on it, anything to smother the mites that are on there, and you cannot see them.

Those are mites you're not gonna be able to see with the naked eye.

In fact, you'll have to get some kind of high-powered magnifying lens to be able to see them.

- That's right.

- So if you took it to your extension office, locally, you could probably get them to look at it under a magnifying glass for you to see that.

- They could verify that for you for sure.

Yeah, so, Walter anything you'd like to add to that?

- No, just probably some product that contains imidacloprid.

- Right, as a soil drench.

- Yeah, as a soil drench or something could help.

- Okay, but stress.

- It's stressed, yeah.

- Right, 'cause it is a spruce, right?

Growing out of its native habitat.

So yeah, we did have a pretty severe drought last year, so.

- But it's gotten 20 wonderful years.

- 20 years.

- That's great.

- That's good.

[upbeat country music] "What is happening to my azaleas?

"Some of the leaves are yellow and spongy.

"What is causing this, and how do I treat this problem?"

This is Nita, from Memphis, Tennessee.

We've gotten a lot of questions, especially this spring, - This time of year.

- Because of this.

This is azalea leaf galls.

Cool, wet spring.

Fungus spores are in the air.

You know, those fungus spores get deposited on the leaves of the azaleas and create the galls.

So what do you do about that?

- I don't know of any chemicals that can work for this, or even to prevent it.

I had an internship, and we had to go around and pull the oak leaf galls off of all of the azaleas after they'd finished blooming, and then fertilize them, after they finished blooming too, so.

- So that's what you had to do.

- I have picked many an oak leaf gall off of azaleas.

But that's just the only way that I know of to do it.

- That's the only way I know.

Just pull 'em off.

Because again, like you mentioned, no fungicide is needed.

Just go ahead and pull 'em off if you can reach 'em.

If not, they'll fall off to the ground.

Pick them up, because there are fungal spores there, and just deposit them in the trash.

- And that's why you collect them.

It's best to not just leave them, to collect them and throw them away, because it'll just keep getting worse if you don't.

- The azalea leaf galls.

Of course, cool, wet springs.

[upbeat country music] "I started asparagus in pots "because the area I wanted them in wasn't ready yet.

"It is still not ready, but the pots are disintegrating."

[laughs] "What should I do?

"Is it okay to transplant asparagus in July into hard soil?"

And I like this.

"It is hard pan clay, "and I've added gypsum, compost, and vermiculite, but it hasn't done the job just yet."

This is Annie on YouTube.

I like that.

So, what do you think?

Can she transplant the asparagus in July, but here's the thing, in hard soil?

- Yeah, so we've got a combination of things there, and so one thing I'll throw in for some of your northern viewers, right?

Where can you grow great asparagus, right?

Sandy Michigan soil, right?

So asparagus likes lighter, well-drained soil, so I'll start there.

- It's gonna be hard to grow that here, with the hard soil.

- Yeah, and of course July heat, and that's gonna be the time when the asparagus would be trying to form its food, and doing the work that's going to support next year's structure.

- In July?

- Yeah, it's a challenge.

I guess my question would be, what are the chances that a raised bed might be available for those plants?

- And depending on where you are, when do they need to get in the ground, though?

- Right, and so we would typically put those in in the early spring, yeah, and also another thing that sometimes, sometimes we'll slowly harvest on our asparagus as well, so it might be a few years old before we get to full productivity, and so there's lots of things that we're focusing on on that young asparagus plant to try to make sure that it gets a strong root structure to get going.

- No, that makes sense.

So transplanting in July, I don't think it'll get that strong root.

- It'd be a challenge.

I mean, larger pots, raised beds, but yeah, this spring we've all probably got some plants sitting on our porches.

[upbeat country music] - "I would like my nine-year-old schefflera plant "to be fuller and thicker at the bottom.

"It has only two long stems "that have to be tied to a center support "to keep it upright.

"It is approximately three feet tall.

How should I prune my schefflera to make it fuller?"

And this is Sandra in Oakland, Tennessee.

Joellen, she wants to prune it to make it fuller.

- And she's very right.

That's correct.

- Very right, huh?

- And it's three feet tall.

Well, it doesn't take very much, 'cause what she's got, if she's got two major stems, you gotta think about apical dominance.

- Ho ho, look at you.

All right.

- And each stem has got apical dominance.

If you cut the apical dominance off, then the branches below it break, so that's gonna make it more full.

It doesn't matter how much she cuts it, because wherever she cuts it, she's gonna break that apical dominance.

So it's up to her of how much she wants to cut, but she should cut each stem, and then that will help all of the other branches break out, and be more full.

- So cut each stem, right?

All right.

- However much she wants, 'cause it doesn't matter.

She will take out that apical dominance of each one, and she'll have a fuller plant.

- Wow.

It would've been nice to have a picture just to see it.

- Yeah, it would.

- Just to get some idea.

Walt, anything you wanna add to that?

- I don't know a whole lot about house plants, but I think with those particular plants, when you cut 'em, if you cut 'em on the inside, will that make it grow chutes towards the inside, the ones that's gonna come after them?

- Yeah, it depends on where the leaves come out.

The leaf margin is where the next stem is gonna come out.

So yeah, you can direct the way that the plant grows.

- So they're gonna go to the outside instead of the inside.

I see what you're saying.

- It's true [murmurs].

[upbeat country music] - "I have two pear trees.

"One flowers about two weeks before the other.

"Is there something I can do so two pear trees flower at the same time?"

And this is Lynn, so what do you think about that?

- I think she's got two different varieties of pear trees, because all the same varieties usually bloom about the same time, and she can look at it this way.

She gets an extended period of bloom in her yard, because one blooms for a couple weeks and then in a couple weeks the other one's blooming, so she has a succession of blooms for her pear trees.

- Yeah, that's what I think it is, is just two different varieties, right?

Get the same ones, yeah, that bloom at the same time and if you don't, yeah, one is a couple weeks or so after the other.

- That's right.

- Yeah, outside of that, I don't know what else you could do about it, basically.

Probably nothing.

- Mother Nature is gonna be Mother Nature.

[upbeat country music] - "What causes yellow leaves on tomato plants?"

And this is Ann in Crump, Tennessee.

Common question that we normally get.

So what do you think.

- Well, I guess we can kind of start to throw out some options and maybe narrow it down, give a little bit more information.

So we would think about nutritional items as one first option, of course.

We always wanna talk about making sure you soil test and make sure your nutrition is correct, and so yellow leaves can actually be, well, more then one nutrient, but nitrogen's often what we think first, right?

So.

- And we usually see that with the lower leaves.

For the most part.

The older leaves, right?

- And so nitrogen is a nutrient that's mobile in the plant, so the reason we'd see it on the older leaves is because when it starts to be deficient, it'll translocate up to the spots in the plant that it really wants to grow those new leaves, so where we see those yellow leaves are a pretty important diagnostic element for us.

Other things that we would often see on the lower leaves first could also be disease issues.

- And some of the blights come to mind for me, of course, with that, so that definitely could be a problem.

- Yeah, so early blight lots of times we'll see as it moves up the plant, and of course that won't just be yellow.

We'll see browning.

- Of course, that's right.

- Target spots but that could be some elements, and there can even be some sap feeding insects that could even cause-- - Like aphids or something like that, okay.

All right, so a lot of different choices it could be, right?

So make sure you get out there and scout, Ms.

Ann, all right?

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to www.familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for sending in the questions.

They keep us on our toes.

To get more information on any of the questions we answered today, go to www.familyplotgarden.com.

Thanks for watching, and keep sending in the questions.

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]