- Hi, thanks for joining us for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South, I'm Chris Cooper.

Certain plants can be planted together, and they will help each other out.

It is companion planting, and we're going to talk about it.

Also, squash is a garden favorite.

Today, we're going to learn all about it.

That's just ahead on the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in t he 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 Tonya Ashworth.

Tonya's our local garden expert.

And Walter Battle is here.

Walter is a UT County Director in Haywood County.

Thanks for joining us.

- Thanks for having us.

- All right, Tonya, let's talk a little bit about companion planting, and I get a lot of questions about companion planting, so first of all, what is it?

- Companion planting simply means that you're planting two different crops near each other, and you're trying to influence pest pressure, maybe reduce insects, or get better yields, better tasting fruit, something like that.

- Okay.

Now can you give us some examples, because that's what folks wanna know, some good examples.

- Well, companion planting, the most famous example, is from Native American history.

Many, many years ago the Native Americans figured out that they could grow vegetables in a companion planting setting and get good results.

They called it the three sisters.

So they would grow corn, beans, and squash together.

The corn would provide support for the beans to climb, and the squash at the bottom of the plant would provide shade and weed suppression for the plants, and would help with moisture loss prevention.

And then the prickles on the squash would keep the raccoons out of the corn, and also, because those beans fix atmospheric nitrogen, it provided a nitrogen source for the corn, and corn's a heavy feeder, so they really had this thing figured out.

- Yeah, I tell folks that all the time, I mean, they really figured that thing out, and Walter, you talked about that, the three sisters, a time or two, I've heard.

- Yes, yes, during the Master Gardener I talk about that.

- Good deal.

So how can a home gardener know which combinations to try, because of course they're gonna wanna try this one.

- Right.

Well, unfortunately, if you just simply go on the internet and type in companion planting, you're gonna get a whole bunch of information, and maybe some of it's not right, actually, a lot of it may not be right.

There were a lot of lists circulated through the 1960s and '70s, and it's like, this plant likes this other plant, and dislikes this plant.

And if you see a list like that, most of it has been debunked by research, in the last couple, three decades.

So those aren't reliable, but there have been a few combinations that have kind of withstood the scrutiny of the research.

So one of those is basil and tomatoes.

Now, basil and tomatoes taste great together on the plate, and they also are really good to plant together in the garden.

For some reason, basil, when planted with tomato, will give you better yield in your tomato plants, and you could also get better tasting fruit.

And the basil will keep away thrips and help control the hornworms.

Another one you can try, same kind of concept as the three sisters, is planting your potatoes with your beans or peas.

Because potatoes like a lot of nitrogen, and the beans and peas fix the nitrogen and put it back into the soil for the potatoes.

And then also onions, the aroma of the onions kinda can keep away some insects, and so, one of those is onions and carrots.

If you put onions and carrots together, the onion can kinda keep away the carrot fly.

- (Chris) I've heard that one.

You heard some of those before too, Walter?

- Yeah, I've heard of some of those, but that's a new one on me, the carrot fly with the onions and carrots, that's a new one.

- That's good stuff.

But this is one we always hear about, though.

What about planting those marigolds?

- Yes.

- What about them?

That's probably the most common one that people will try.

Marigolds can get rid of nematodes, soil nematodes, in your garden, however, if you really have a nematode problem that you're trying to use marigolds to control, it's better to plant your marigolds a season or two before, so that they can have time to get rid of the nematodes.

So you get the best results not with a true companion planting.

If you plant 'em at the same time as the rest of the crops in your garden, you're not gonna get as good a control.

So it's not a true companion plant to get the best results.

Now if you wanna try that, there's some cultivars that work better for that, like Nemagold, Golden Guardian, things that have Nema in the titles (laughing).

- That gives you an idea of what it controls.

- Marigolds, yeah, that'll take care of the nematode problems.

And you know, there's been a study with marigolds thinking that they could ward off some insect pests.

- I was gonna ask you about that, okay.

- Yeah, so some researchers planted green beans, some next to marigolds, and some not next to marigolds, to see if they could control the Mexican bean beetle.

As it turns out, the beans near the marigolds had fewer bean beetles, but, they also produced fewer green beans, because the marigolds can exude a chemical to inhibit the growth of other plants near them.

It's kind of like an allelopathic situation.

Marigolds can try to reduce competition by stunting other plants' growth and that's what it did with the beans.

So you kinda have to be careful, you know, when you're gonna use marigolds.

So yes, it did control the beetle, but, you didn't get the result that you wanted.

- Ooh Tonya that's good.

I did not know that.

So, but you need to plant the marigolds, again, what a couple of seasons before?

- Before, before, to get the nematode controlled, to really get the nematodes out of there.

- How 'bout that.

'Cause folks are runnin' out now to the stores, nurseries, big box stores, to plant the marigolds, thinking that, "If I plant 'em this season, "it'll get rid of all the bugs for this season."

- But maybe not.

- But maybe not.

- Well they'll be in good shape two years from now.

- That's good stuff, okay.

Is there a big picture idea for the home gardener regarding companion planting?

- Yes, I'd say the big picture with companion planting is, you wanna think polyculture instead of monoculture.

Poly just means many.

You can kinda confuse your insects when they're flying by, they're trying to find their favorite host plant, and if you have a jumble of stuff out there, you've got things mixed together instead of everything in just nice, neat little sections or a grid or a row.

If you've got things mixed up that has different aromas, different bloom times, different ripening times, you can kind of confuse or, they'll maybe miss or overlook their favorite host plant.

And I've successfully hidden parsley in my garden from caterpillars by puttin' it in the middle of a whole bunch of other things, and making it a little bit harder for the caterpillars to find.

- So it actually worked out pretty good for you?

- Yeah, so think polyculture instead of monoculture.

And then the other thing you can do is plant lots of flowers, which I always love to plant flowers anyway, but you don't even haveto plant the flowers right next to your garden, they can be just in the vicinity, and we call these insectories.

What an insectory is, it's like a nursery for your beneficial insects.

So you want beneficial insects in your garden, because things like ladybugs and lacewings kill your aphids, and keep your vegetables, a lower insect pressure.

So you wanna keep those things around, and the way you can do that, because they have wings and they can fly off if there's no aphids to eat.

But if you have a whole bunch of different flowering plants nearby then they can go there and they can pollinate, and they can kind of munch on stuff there, it's a place for them to live until you have a pest problem, and then they'll fly over there and take care of those, and come back to your flowers.

It's also good just to attract bees and pollinators to your garden.

- Sure, sure.

- Wow.

Tonya, it's good stuff, we appreciate that information.

Thank you much.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Okay, I wasn't hard to tell that we had something feeding on our snap beans here.

We got holes in the leaves, and after we did just a very little investigation we found the culprit.

It's the Mexican bean beetle, right here.

It's the adult, both the adult and the larvae create damage on snap beans, butter beans.

They are one of the main pests.

The adult can fly away and hide from you.

The larvae are little yellow wooly critters and they can't get away from you.

See, they feed on the little bitty leaves and when the leaves grow, the holes that they create grow also.

One thing about almost any kinda beans, they can tolerate a lot of leaf-feeding injury without affecting the yield of the crop.

So, you probably don't have to treat right now.

A reason to wait would be the hope that a beneficial insect will come along and eat these Mexican bean beetles and you never build up a population.

But, you do need to keep a very close eye on 'em.

And, as soon as you start to see the larvae out here then you would need to treat, with carbaryl, bifenthrin, zeta-cypermethrin and gamma-cyhalothrin, are four insecticides that should take care of this problem.

[upbeat country music] Alright, Walter, let's talk a little bit about squash.

We have a couple of questions for you, so the first one is, what are some types of squash?

- Well, you know, you basically have two types, you have what we call the winter squash, and you have also the summer squash.

And of course, here we have an example of, this right here is a butternut squash, it's a winter squash.

Here's your spaghetti squash, which is also a winter-type squash, and the reason it's called spaghetti squash is 'cause it has the little strands, a little like spaghetti.

And then also one of my favorite winter squash is the acorn squash.

And the way I prepare those, I just cut 'em in half, and put some raisins and cinnamon, brown sugar in 'em and bake 'em.

They're real good.

But we also have the summer squash, and that's where you have your yellow squash and there's two types of those.

Like this, the straightneck, yellow straightneck.

And then you have the yellow crookneck.

And also you have the zucchini squash, and there are some black zucchini, and also you have the pattypan, the little white squash and yellow squash that's kind of circular in shape.

So there's all different types to have.

- So when should you plant your squash?

- Basically, May is the month that you can plant 'em.

Anytime, really, may through June, you can plant squash.

And also, you can plant like your winter-type squash on up into like July maybe, and that'll be fine.

- Okay, is there a certain way we need to prepare the soil for growing squash?

- Yes, you wanna till it and get that good tilth, that good scientific word, tilth (Chris laughs).

And then you wanna kind of space these plants out, 'cause they love to have a lot of space.

Squash vines, they like to run.

So therefor you wanna make sure, a good four feet row diameters, so to speak.

Probably wanna plant them about, I would say, about 24 to 36 inches apart per plant, to give 'em plenty of room, 'cause they really, really like to have space to run.

- All your vines right, anything in the cucurbit family, is pretty much gonna run.

- The cucurbit family, yes.

- So what is an issue you can have in growing squash?

- I would say one of the big issues that I see from a disease perspective would be powdery mildew.

You just tend to see it, it's just, pops up on there, and it has that little powdery look to it, so it's kinda where it gets its name.

There are several different types of fungicides that can treat it and take care of it.

And then of course, from an insect perspective, I guess the real big one, of course, is that old squash borer, that's where your squash vine is so beautiful and pretty one day, and then you go outside and it's just wilted.

And you're like, "What happened," yes, and if you pull it up, you'll see, at the very base you'll see these little holes where those borers have gone in there, and I guess bored it out and messed up all the flow of the nutrients and all that and killed the plant.

And you can use products that contain bifenthrin, I guess, to control that.

And also, they do get aphids, the squash bug itself, it gets those as well.

- And I always tell folks you have to scout.

Just look for those eggs and you can find them on the underside of the leaves.

- (Walter) That's right, up under the underside of the leaf.

- (Chris) Th ey're almost in straight rows, they look like little bronze footballs, some of 'em do.

- Yes, they're neat, they're neat little insects, they like things organized.

(everyone laughs) - They are pretty neat, no doubt about that.

So how long before you can harvest, though?

So we have 'em in the ground, how long before harvest?

- For summer squash, you're looking at about 50 days before you can actually harvest.

And you can harvest for, oh gosh, a good production is six weeks, I've seen 'em last that long.

Good varieties can hold out that long.

If you don't get the borer.

And I would say that your winter squash, well, it's a little longer for those, I can't remember the numbers on it, but you might, I think it's about maybe 60, 70 days, before you can actually harvest those.

But they store for like four months.

If you store them properly, they'll just last forever.

- So when you go to harvest, though, how do you know they're exactly ready to be harvested?

- Well I would say this, you look at this zucchini that I have here, that's probably the perfect size to harvest a zucchini.

This is probably the perfect size, maybe a little smaller, to harvest yellow squash.

And I will tell you, one thing about squash is, once they start producing, they don't wait on you.

That little squash that may be like three inches today, two inches today, that thing is like five inches tomorrow.

So you have to pretty much harvest them every other day.

- So how much squash can a person expect to produce, then?

- You can easily get, I know, about 75 to 100 pounds per 100-foot row.

Once they're good, you get a good variety, they really do great.

- Now, what about weed control though?

(laughing) Chop chop those weeds?

- Chop and pull is the best thing I can tell you.

Course, you can deal with your grass weeds, you can use something that contains, what is it, the active ingredient for products like Post.

You can use that to control your grasses, but most of your other weed issues, you just pretty much have to get out there and chop and pull.

- Just gotta chop and pull, right.

- Yes, good exercise, though.

- Another thing you wanna do, you definitely wanna practice good sanitation, because a lot of your insect pests actually overwinters in that crop debris.

- Absolutely, and that's why every year, we tell people to clean your gardens, just go out there and till all that stuff under, and let it rot and compost through the winter, and be ready for use next year as a nutrient.

- How about rotation?

So you're not gonna plant squash in the same place all the time, are you?

- No, no.

So next year I will probably come back and plant some legume crop or something there where I had my cucurbit crop the year before.

That's probably what I would follow it up with.

- So obviously, you like growing squash, don't you?

- Oh yes, I'm a squash freak.

(laughing) I absolutely love the stuff.

- So you prepare it many different ways, I'm sure, 'cause you told the Master Gardener class that a time or two.

- Oh yes, oh yes.

I mean you can fry, boil, just whatever.

Baked, the winter squash is just a very versatile plant.

All right, and what about varieties?

Do you have any favorite varieties that you like?

- To be honest with you, I just basically buy the types that's at the gardening center, there's not a particular brand that I pick, it's just, I get those little packets of seeds, and I just get out there and go at it.

- And all the information that you would need will be on those packets of seeds?

- Oh, yes, yes, just follow the information.

It's gonna tell you a little zone, when to plant, and all that, and how many days to harvest, and spacing requirements, so yes, you'll be fine.

- All right.

Well, Walter, we appreciate that.

Thank you much.

- Oh yeah, happy to.

[upbeat country music] - Okay, it's harvest time for the radishes.

We got some good radishes in here and we got some bad radishes.

This first one right here, is a good radish, it's a little split, and that comes from uneven rainwater.

But you notice that the foliage is small, the radish is big, and that's, just clean it up a little bit, cut out the bad parts, and it's totally edible.

But moving along a little bit further, and here is a radish that's beyond being good.

Notice that it has developed, bolted, and notice it's got a little seed head on it.

That means that this is gonna be tough and pithy, and probably best thing for it is to put it in the compost pile.

And, like all root crops, you wanna use a low-nitrogen and a high-phosphorous, potassium fertilizer like 6-12-12.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q & A session, y'all ready for this?

We got some good questions here.

Here's our first viewer email.

"When is the appropriate time to start planting cantaloupe and watermelons?"

Walter, how about that?

- May, the month of May.

- Any specific varieties that you like?

- I like all types of 'em, but for cantaloupes you have the Ambrosia, which is a very good variety.

And of course with watermelons you have the Jubilee, the Crimson Sweet, but yes, May is the time.

- May is the time to do that.

How long before harvest for cantaloupes and watermelon, would you know that?

- Well, I know, in our part of the world, people are typically harvesting somewhere around, we shoot for the fourth of July, that's what everybody shoots for, May to July.

Gives you kind of an idea about what time.

- That's probably about what, 80 to 90 days, something like that, for the most part.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"I am trying to get a garden going again after five years.

"In the process of pulling out roots and stumps, "I came across this plant.

"It has a root that is, in some instances, "is perhaps eight to 10 inches across, "is very deep, perhaps more than two feet.

"It is not wood, but it is very pulpy.

"It has a broad leaf up to three feet in length.

"What is this plant?"

And this is from Jim in Raleigh.

So, what do y'all think that is, Tonya?

- Pokeweed.

- It's pokeweed.

Pokeweed, you hear folks say make good poke salad.

- That's right, also known as poke salad.

- I've seen it, of course, out in the wild, grew up in the country so I always used to see it out there in the country, it can get pretty tall.

- Yes it can.

And also, you tend to find it around bulldozer piles.

And that's where you can find a lot of it, and people eat it.

I know some people say they fry it with eggs, and all that, but once it gets to the berry stage, I think the berries are poisonous.

- (Tonya) Th e berries are very poisonous.

- (Walter) You don't want to-- - (Chris) Ye ah, those berries are purple, black in color, the older parts of the plant are poisonous, for the most part, the younger part you can eat.

Has the magenta colored stem.

The veins in between the leaves ar e magenta in color too.

Big alternate leaves on the pokeweed.

And that thing has a very deep taproot system.

I've tried to pull some of those out of the ground, and I mean, fleshy roots, that thing is something else.

But it's amazing to see.

It's amazing to see, and again, those berries are just dark purple, black in color.

It's actually pretty.

- And I can see where a little kid might want to, so you wouldn't want that around your house.

- Actually, my husband, when he was a little boy, ate the berries and had to be taken to the hospital.

- Wow, yeah, so let that be a lesson to folks, very poisonous.

Oh my goodness.

So Mr. Jim, yes, poke weed, is what that is.

Phytolacca americana.

And I actually know that because, again, we used to try to pull it out of the ground all the time, and I wondered what is this weed, (laughing) this thing is incredible.

But there you have it.

If it's left undisturbed it can get massive, which we've seen in that picture.

So here's our next viewer email.

"When do you plant sweet potato slips?

What is the best way to do it?"

And this is from Phil.

- The best time to plant 'em is in May and June, okay.

And also the way that we were always planting 'em, was, we raised the soil up, and then basically, if you gonna hand set 'em, you dig down about three to four inches and what you wanna do is lay that slip horizontal with a little piece sticking up like.

And of course, bury it.

Research has shown that when you plant them horizontally in that row, they produce more sweet potatoes.

Some people just dig a big hole straight down, plant the plant vertical, but they tend not to put on as many potatoes that way.

So you wanna plant it kinda horizontal.

And I would probably say go about 24 inches between each plant, somewhere along that line.

- And how long before you can harvest those?

Those are probably what, 100, maybe-- - Oh yeah, 110, 120 days, somewhere along that line, you should have some good sweet potatoes.

- Any specific variety, again, that you?

- To me, if you want a real good sweet potato pie, Bunch Porto Rico is a very good variety.

If you're looking for an heirloom variety, the old Centennial.

- I've heard of those, yeah.

- They tend to have diseases, the Centennials, so you'll wanna watch those.

- All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Can knockout roses get bagworms?

"One of our bushes has what looks like bagworms, or it may be a butterfly that has made cocoons."

So, Tonya, what do you think?

Can knockout roses get bagworms?

- Yes.

- Of course.

- It's not bagworms' favorite food, but they're not able to move very quickly or rapidly with those bags around them, so they'll kinda take what they can get.

So very opportunistic, so yes, they can get bagworms.

- I've seen bagworms on just about anything.

I think research says, what, over 300 species of plants you can find bagworms.

So think about that, I've seen 'em on azaleas, ball cypress, I've seen 'em climbin' up walls, I've seen 'em just about everywhere, folks.

- I've even had 'em on my apple trees.

- Gosh, wow.

- Wow, okay.

- I've actually had 'em on my apple trees.

- Bagworms could be anywhere.

And if they're in your knockout roses, your roses and shrubs are probably not that tall, you know what you do, just pull 'em off.

Just pull 'em off and you'll be just fine, but yeah, you find those on everything these days, over 300 species of plants you can find bagworms.

Those things are tough.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"The leaves of my holly plant are covered "in a black substance.

What is causing this and what can I do to save the plant?"

And this is from Charles right here in Memphis.

Let's start out with the first part of this question, Tonya.

So what's the black substance on the leaves?

- It's a fungus called sooty mold.

But you don't treat the fungus.

- But, thank you, right.

'Cause most people when they call the office they say, I have the black mold disease.

- Yes.

The real problem is insects.

And most of the time on hollies, it's probably scale.

So, you'll have an insect problem on your plants, and then the insects excrete this sugary sweet substance called honeydew.

And then the sooty mold grows on top of the honeydew, so to get rid of the sooty mold, you gotta get rid of the insects.

And a couple ways you could do that, you can use horticultural oil to coat over the insects, so that they can not, that have spiracles on their back that they breathe through, so if you coat those over with oil, they can't breathe, they die.

And then once they die, no more honeydew, no more sooty mold.

And eventually, the sooty mold will kinda wear off.

You could do that, or I believe, imidacloprid as a soil drench around the base of your shrubs or trees will take care of that too.

- The soil drenches will work, this is a good time to apply those, of course.

Anything to add to that, Walter?

- Well, no, she's spot on.

I have known people to go out and wash it off.

- Yeah, if you can.

- They want their bed to look pretty, so they just wash it off, but yeah.

- And something else too I like to mention, when you're dealing with pests, it's always good to know the life cycle.

So which part of the life cycle is the best to control, and it's usually the crawlers.

- Yes.

- So if you can control those crawlers, you'll have more success in controlling your scales or aphids or whatever the case may be.

So you're exactly right.

Mr. Charles, I hope that helps you out.

My thing has always been this: why do they call it honeydew?

(laughing) - I don't know!

- It's always called honeydew, I always wondered about that.

So Walter, Tonya, we're outta time, thank you.

- Thank you!

- It was fun.

- Thanks for havin' us.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

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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]

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