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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Having the right pH is critical for plant health.

Today, we're going to spread sulfur to lower the pH in our garden.

Also, fish can add interest to a large or small water feature.

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 Mr.

D. Mr.

D is a retired UT Extension agent, and Andy Williams will be joining me later.

Always good to see you, Mr.

D.

- Glad to be here.

- So we're in the Family Plot garden.

We're gonna talk about soil pH.

Why is soil pH so important?

- PH is important because without the correct or near correct soil pH, all of the nutrient absorption is interfered with.

- Okay.

- If you can have proper NPK, nitrogen, potash, phosphorus, can be correct, everything can be right.

If the pH is wrong, it makes no difference.

The plants will look like they're starving to death.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- So it doesn't matter if it's a vegetable garden, it could be blueberries or whatever.

You have to have the appropriate pH.

- You gotta have the right pH.

- Right.

- And most plants need a slightly acidic pH.

Seven is neutral.

So a slightly acidic pH would be 6 to 6.5.

There are some acid-loving plants, like blueberries and azaleas that the pH needs to be even lower, 4.8.

Most of the time, with vegetable gardens, I find myself adjusting the pH by trying to raise it because it tends to get more acidic over time.

That's just the way, especially when you add fertilizers, and they tend to lower the soil pH.

If you happen to have a wood-burning fireplace and/or a fire pit and you routinely add your wood ash to your garden, it has the same effect as lime.

It has quite a bit of calcium in it.

So you can get into trouble by doing that without soil testing and overdoing that by getting the pH too high.

That would be the situation we've got here.

The pH is higher than it needs to be.

- It's too high.

- I think the pH here is 7.3.

- I think you're right.

- It needs to be 6 to 6.5.

I think we're gonna try to lower it to about 6.3.

- That's the big experiment, yeah.

So we're gonna give it a shot.

So we're gonna let you get started with that.

- Okay, we're going to treat half of this plot and see if we can see a difference next year.

- Okay.

- The reason the pH is probably high here is this is a construction site.

And I understand this is where they did all the masonry work when they built this building behind us.

- Right.

- So that can explain- - Yeah, so that makes sense.

- Why it got to that point.

- Okay.

- So what we've got here is we know that we've done the calculations, and to lower the pH from 7.3 to 6.3, we need to add five pounds of elemental sulfur.

And the way I do that, I don't grab five pounds of elemental sulfur and start spreading it, because I learned that when I get about three quarters of the way across the garden, I'm through.

- Yeah, you used it up.

- And I've put in more than I wanted to put out.

- All right.

- So what I try to do, my goal is to put half of it out going one way, and then put the other half the other way, and then I get pretty close.

That's a pretty good way to do this.

We've got a set of scales here.

We've got the bag of sulfur here.

- Alright.

- I'm going to weigh out 200 or 2 and a half pounds, two and a half pounds of sulfur.

See what we got here.

I'm gonna take this out of the garden.

- That's pretty good sack- - 'Cause we don't wanna put sulfur back in the bag.

- Okay.

- I'mma put it on the scales and I'm gonna tare it.

- There it goes.

- Got 000.

- Sure does.

- So we'll try to get some sulfur in here before the wind blows it off.

And I'm looking for two and a half pounds.

Two and a half pounds set on ounces.

So two and a half pounds is 32, and 8 is 40 ounces, right?

- There you go.

[chuckles] - 40 ounces.

- Math is not my strong point.

- You got it.

- I think that's close enough, don't you?

39.95.

- 39.95.

Oh, there it goes.

- 40.

Okay, the wind's doing that.

- Yep.

- Okay, now, if I were doing quite a bit of this, I would pick this up and shake it.

And you can see what I did.

I've used this for fertilizer in the past.

- Right.

- I've used a sharpie, put a mark on it, so I don't have to measure it anymore.

I don't have a sharpie with me right now, so we'll have to weigh the other one out.

And it's faster than filling it the way I just did.

Okay.

- All right.

So which way are you going?

- So let me start down here.

We're using pelletized sulfur.

And the wettable sulfur is another form of elemental sulfur, which is very common.

Lime, I'm using both of these pH adjustment materials, comes the same way.

You can get pelletized lime, which will do a lot better in windy conditions than the agricultural ground line or calcitic limestone that's out there.

But today, it is windy, it's blustery.

We have pelletized sulfur, and that's gonna make this job a lot more accurate.

I'm trying to be as uniform as possible, and sometimes, that's kind of hard.

That's close enough for government work.

That's half of it.

- That's half.

- That's half of it.

If I do as good on the other half of this, we'll be fine.

See if we're still tared.

We are.

- Yeah, we are.

[wind blowing] I remember about where it went, so.

- Oh, yeah, you good.

- Good enough.

Does that look pretty uniform?

- Oh man, look like you know what you're doing.

- It's pretty good.

- Pretty good, pretty good.

So what would we do next?

I mean, does have to be watered in or- - This sulfur is water soluble.

- Okay.

- And it does need to be watered in.

And you gotta keep, you gotta understand, keep in mind that this is not gonna change the pH overnight.

- Right.

- The actual sulfur itself is not what's lowering the pH.

The sulfur is acted upon by bacteria, which turns the sulfur into sulfuric acid.

And that is what lowers the pH.

So we wanna do, we're gonna water this in, and it's gonna, over the winter, the winter rains are gonna continue moving it down through the soil structure.

And while it's doing that, it is going to encounter the bacteria and it's gonna start slowly changing the pH.

We should see a difference next year.

The pH, by the growing season next year, should be getting close to the 6.3 that we're aiming for.

We probably do need to check it, the soil again.

- Yes, sir, it will be checked periodically.

- And see what we've done.

- It will be checked.

- But- - Because this is one big experiment, right?

- It's one big experiment.

What we've done is we've treated this half of the garden, two hundred and fifty square feet.

The other 250 square feet, the pH should remain at 7.3.

This, by the growing season, by next summer, the pH should be down near 6.3.

If not 6.3, 6.8, 6.5.

That is a lot better than 7.3.

Because that's slightly basic, you know?

It's over on the other side- - So over to seven, which is seven is neutral.

- Seven is neutral.

It's slightly basic.

So this is slight, this should get it into the slightly acidic stage is what we need for most of our vegetables.

- Yep, and it's definitely what the vegetables want at the end of the day, right?

So we shall see, Mr.

D.

- We will.

- We shall see, as they say.

- I'm looking forward to checking it out.

- I am too, so thank you very much for that.

- You have good homegrown tomatoes here.

- Oh, there you go.

We have one just for you.

- Yeah, sounds good.

- There you go.

All right.

[upbeat country music] Do be careful when you are using weed eaters around plant material.

Weed eaters can kick out rocks and debris that can injure your eyes and your face.

And as you can see, a piece of mulch was actually impaled into this leaf of this canna, which is why it is always, always a good idea to have on glasses or safety goggles when you're using a weed eater.

Again, you don't wanna injure your eyes, you don't wanna injure your face, and you definitely don't wanna injure your plant material.

Be careful, folks.

[upbeat country music] Andy, we always enjoy when you're here, 'cause you always bring us neat critters to look at.

But this time, you have fish.

- Yeah, and not only fish, non-native fish.

- Non-native fish.

- Yeah, at the Nature Center, we may suggest bluegill, sunfish, bass.

But for most home ponds, that's beyond the capacity of the pond and really probably not what you want.

You want something ornamental.

So I'm here today to talk a little bit about ornamental fish.

- Okay.

- And in selecting the fish, you've got a lot of really good options for you.

But one thing you really should take into mind is that size matters.

- Okay.

- Like I'm talking about water features in yards with some capacity to them.

Some of the self-contained fountains like that are really attractive and give really pleasing sounds of running water but probably would not be good for fish.

One of the most important things to take into account when deciding on which fish you want is the surface area, the top of the water, how much surface area that you have.

That's important 'cause that's where oxygen exchange, gas exchange takes place at the surface.

- Okay.

- Something else you need to consider is the volume of water that you have because, as we'll talk about a little bit later, some fish need a little bit more space to move around.

- Right.

- But basically, as a rule of thumb, you wanna start off with no more than one inch of fish per one square foot of surface area.

- Wow.

- So that's pretty easy to calculate.

- Okay.

- You do need to know the volume of the pond though.

And you calculate that.

Basically, you try to square it out, multiply the length times the width times the height, and then go online to find a calculator to convert those, your cubic feet into gallons.

But roughly, one cubic foot of water is seven and a half gallons.

- Okay.

- You'll need that for water changes and medications as such.

You can stretch the general rule of thumb as far as the surface area to as much as two or three inches of fish, including the tail per square foot.

But you start getting in some dicey water.

You wanna consider not only how big the fish are when you get 'em, but the fact that they grow.

- Get bigger, right.

- So really, the top three types of fish for home ponds are minnows, goldfish, and koi.

- Okay.

- And so a lot depends on the size, you know, starting with the minnows.

They're the smallest, the best fish for, I think, for your home pond, for if you just want a few fish in there, you have a small feature, could be rosy minnows.

They're readily available.

There's some in the tank here.

There are also some gambusia, those are livebearers.

They look sort of like big guppies.

They're particularly good at mosquito control.

- Oh, good.

- And even small features that you maybe have some papyrus or lotus growing in a pot of water, you'll probably want a few small minnows.

Nothing too extraordinary to take care of mosquito larvae and such.

In fact, in any water feature, the fish are gonna eat the mosquito larvae.

That's a good thing.

- That's a good thing, as they say.

- That's a real good thing.

- Probably the most popular fish, one I would hardly recommend, if you have the space, would be a goldfish.

- Okay.

- Goldfish originated in China.

They basically were in the rice paddies and saw these fish, and they picked out the most colorful ones, and they kept breeding and breeding till they get the goldfish that we know today.

- How about that?

- I divide 'em into, you know, regular goldfish and fancy goldfish.

- Okay.

- What I call regular goldfish or the good old common goldfish, it's pretty plain-Jane orange fish.

But also in that, along the same lines, you can get comets that have long tails, and then have other types of the single-tail goldfish that vary with color patterns.

There's a lot of variability.

They have orange, white, yellow, red.

Also, multicolor ones, they're called Shubunkins.

- Wow.

- That have black, blue, along with the orange and red.

My personal favorite, and I brought one today, he's kind of at the top right now, but is called a sarasa.

It was actually all this goldfish or Chinese, the Japanese worked on them really hard, and the Sarasa is basically a red and white goldfish.

- It's pretty.

- Looks like orange and white.

That was Tennessee Volunteer, orange and white.

- Oh.

We're calling it red for that.

But that's the breed, you know.

The color also depends on what you feed them.

You get a lot of beta keratinoids in their food.

It brings out the red coloration.

- Oh, wow.

- The Japanese also went to town on a fish that we now know as koi.

- Yeah, know about the koi.

- Koi are not goldfish, they're not even related.

- Wow.

- The Japanese started looking at brightly colored carp, just the carp like on the dinner table or the grass carp and that sort of stuff.

And they grow to pretty good size.

The carp, as you know, can grow three or four feet.

Typically, most koi max out at a foot to two feet, but they can grow as long as three feet.

So obviously, if you've got a small pond, you think about minnows, you go to goldfish, and koi are really for specialists.

- Okay.

- They need a lot of water quality, they need depth.

They need a pond about three feet deep at least for them to have enough room to move around.

And a lot of code requirements, I believe, eighteen inches as deep as you can have on the pond safely without having any additional requirements for fencing and such.

- Okay.

- Water quality with all fish is important.

You can increase the amount of fish that you can have in a pond or water feature by filtration and aeration.

And what that does, it helps clean the water and also increases the surface contact with the surface area.

But if the power goes out, you're kind of up a creek.

- Yeah, you're in trouble.

- Generally, the fewer fish that you're comfortable with, the better the fish are and you are.

But all of them need clean water.

But the koi's the most finicky.

They're terribly inbred, and so they're really delicate, and just small changes in water quality can affect them.

- Okay.

- One thing everyone needs to do though for water quality, with or without filtration, is to figure out how to regularly change out the water.

Fish are the only animals that swim around their own waste, for example, and you got a small contained area.

They're exposed to their own waste.

Also, they grow a little bit bigger.

They put out hormones and all that that sort of inhibit the growth of other fish in the tank.

You've heard about fish tend to grow to the size of the container.

And that's not entirely true.

If you dilute the water, you're sort of increasing the size of the container continually.

But keep in mind the adult size of the fish, like I said, goldfish will max out at 10 or 12 inches, and difference between a 10 or 12 inches and two or three feet- - Sure.

- Is substantial, and you just really have to keep that in mind.

If you get stars in your eyes about koi, you gotta be willing to take it on.

One question I get a lot about fish is about feeding.

And I think- - Gonna ask you about that.

- Yeah, I do recommend feeding the fish.

[Chris laughing] - Yeah, it'd be fair.

- If you just have a few fish, they can probably find scrounge up enough to eat and all.

But if you feed them, they'll come up and recognize you, and you'll have a chance to them out for signs of disease or distress.

It's important to recognize signs of disease or stress, both in taking care of your pond and picking out the fish that are gonna go in it.

- Okay.

- So you go to reputable dealer and you look for fish that have erect fins.

They're not gasping at the surface and don't have any obvious blemishes or anything that would, if you see a red flag, avoid it.

Get another fish.

- Okay.

Andy, we appreciate that.

I've learned so much about fish.

How about that, Mr.

D?

- Yeah, I can understand the inbreeding part.

There's not a lot of choices in there.

- Yeah.

[laughs] - There's only like one male and one female so, you know.

- Well, actually, happy fish will breed, and their reproductive- - Not a lot of choices.

- Oh yeah.

[laughs] Well, I can see that.

- As long as they're happy, they're fine, right?

- Yeah, exactly.

- And we appreciate that.

Thank you.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] - One of the issues that we have with some of the trees that grow together, when the limbs are close together, they have a tendency to rub.

See how the close proximity of these two branches are, or two leaders?

That is what we call included bark.

And that's when the tree lands as they grow, they grow closer and closer together, and the bark gets included.

It looks like it's grown together but it really isn't.

And inside there, it will have a tendency to hold water, dirt, carpenter ants, and different things like that.

That's what we call a V-crotch.

So if you look up in the tree, you'll see that there's a seam.

The seam goes all the way up to where the branches aren't touching.

That's your included bark.

The dark stain that you see there is where that water or moisture and dirt is starting to ooze out where it's building up at the top.

So it comes down as that dark, dirty water like that.

If you can follow my laser pointer, the green laser pointer, this section right here where you see where that seam is, where it's the bottom of, almost the bottom of where the included bark is, that is a great entrance hole for carpenter ants and other boring insects.

They can make a home right up inside there.

It's perfect for them.

[upbeat country music] - Alright, you ready, Mr.

D?

- Let's do it.

- These are great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"What is the best place to plant a Meyer lemon tree?

When is the best time to plant?"

And this is Lee from McKinley, Florida.

- Florida's the best place to plant Meyer lemon tree.

- Florida is the best place.

- The Meyer lemon can with stand, what, 20 degrees?

- Yeah.

- But that will, prolonged twenty-degree temperatures will take one out.

- Yep.

- But best place to plant one is in full sun, good soil, well-drained soil.

PH needs to be between 5.8 and 6.5.

Plant it in the springtime.

Early spring is the best time to plant.

Late winter, early spring.

- Spring.

- And that's pretty much it.

- That's pretty much it, okay, yeah.

Get your soil tested, make sure you get your pH where it needs to be, right?

- That's right, get that pH to 5.8 to 6.5.

- How tall would they get?

- They get pretty big now.

My really only experience with Meyer lemons has been my sisters in Caruthersville, Missouri in her sun room.

And it was in a pot.

- Right.

- But they can get to be pretty size.

- Pretty size, yeah.

So space is something that you have to think about too, Mr.

Lee.

Alright, so thank you for that question.

We do appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"Can we trim our emerald green arborvitaes to make them slimmer?"

And this is Ray from Bartlett, Tennessee.

What do you think about that?

- Ray, let's talk to your local county agent.

What do you think about it, Chris?

- So you know what I think about that?

So I would be careful.

I would be careful.

So I would not remove more than a third of that foliage per year.

I would not cut into the old wood, because you cut into the old wood, 'cause you're not gonna get foliage.

- Right.

- Right?

Get you some pruners, right?

I would start at the top, narrow at the top, right?

Because you want the sun to penetrate the lower canopy to encourage more growth.

- Yeah.

- Right?

So be careful.

- Now 30% is quite a bit though.

- Yeah, I would be careful.

I'll be very careful with that.

So no more than a third per year.

Let's start with that.

Make sure you water it after you do that.

Make sure you mulch, right?

Two to three inches.

Pull it away from the trunk of the tree, all right?

And I think you'll be good, Mr.

Ray.

- I think so too.

- I think you'll be good.

- Think it'll work.

Your local county agent took care of you, yeah.

- I think you'll be good, Mr.

Ray.

So I appreciate that question, all right?

Here's our next viewer email.

"How do I convert to a clover lawn from existing grass?

Should I kill it first or can I overseed over time?"

And this is David from Mosinee, Wisconsin.

So what do you think about that, Mr.

D?

- Hmm.

I'd tell you, you can.

You would need to either kill the existing grass and overseed with clover.

I would do some research.

- Yeah.

- On the clover.

Probably wouldn't wanna use white clover.

In some homeowner associations, that's considered a weed, and you may have some problems violating some of your rules.

And also, a blooming clover that blooms a lot, which is gonna attract a lot of insects, and if you like to barefoot in the clover, you don't wanna be walking around on honeybees.

- Right, that's for sure.

- 'Cause they hurt.

- Right.

- But you can do that, overseed.

After you've killed the existing grass, you might wanna do something raking or aeration or something to get some seed to soil contact.

But yes, you can do it.

You can do it.

You can overseed into the existing lawn and use a herbicide that will kill the grass but not any broadleaf.

It would leave all the broadleaf.

- Sure would.

- It would also be the weeds, the broadleaf weeds.

- That's right.

- Which that might be an issue.

- Oh, it will be.

- Sethoxydim is a herbicide that would do that.

But I think your best route is going to be to kill your existing lawn, your existing grass, and go back in with the clover.

- I would do that, yeah.

It's gonna be the fastest method.

And I would wanna start with a clean slate.

If at all possible possible, so I definitely do that.

And we're talking about micro clover.

According to the researchers now, replacing some of your lawn, right?

So yeah, I would definitely do that.

- Yep.

- Alright.

So David, yeah, we appreciate that question.

- You can do that.

- Good question, yep.

But I would kill it.

Start with a clean slate.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"I grow small watermelons.

"I harvested two from different plants, "and they both look like this inside.

What is causing this?"

And I know we kinda went back and forth on this one, right?

- Yeah.

You know, the thing that, when I cut into a watermelon, usually, if it's a seeded watermelon, I see some little white seeds and I see some different stages and a few mature seeds.

In this case, all of the seeds appeared to be fully, fully mature.

And I'm thinking that the melon was probably overripe, both of them probably overripe.

That's what it looks like to me.

- That's what it looked like to me too, yeah.

- Pick 'em quicker.

Don't wait so long.

- Don't wait so long, right.

You have to pick them.

Yeah, 'cause I'm definitely thinking, was it due to an environmental stress too as well?

Right, I definitely think it was overriping, but maybe some environmental stress, maybe too much nitrogen fertilizer.

Was it too hot?

Was it too much water all at one time?

So those are the kind of things I'm thinking about as well.

- I wonder if really hot conditions, dry conditions could cause it to ripen quicker than normal.

- Right.

- Yeah, I don't know.

- 'Cause at that point, yeah, the plant is stressed, so it's like, hey, we gotta pump the nutrients in it, we gotta go, right?

So, yeah, overripening is definitely what I think.

Yeah.

- What it looks like.

- All right, thank you for that question.

We definitely do appreciate that.

Mr.

D., I always wanna learn so much.

Yeah, we learn so much, thank you.

Thanking you every day.

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 familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about soil testing or changing the pH of your soil, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]