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

I'm Chris Cooper.

Some plants do better than others in a raised bed.

Today we're talking about the vegetables that work and those that don't.

Also, even if you don't have a lot of space, you can garden in five gallon buckets.

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, Celeste Scott.

Celeste is a horticulture specialist with UT Extension and Walter Battle will be joining me later.

Celeste, always good to have you here.

- Thank you.

I'm so excited to be on Family Plot today.

- Yeah, we're excited to have you.

And we know you like to talk about plants, right?

So we're gonna talk about best vegetable plants for a raised bed.

- Awesome.

- Yeah, so what do you think about that?

- Well, I love it because everybody wants to grow in a raised bed, I feel like nowadays.

- Sure they do.

- So, raised beds have lots of advantages, but they can have some drawbacks that we really need to consider.

So, some of your favorite go-to veggies that you might have been growing, in your garden, - What are those?

- They may not be appropriate for raised bed growing, right?

They might just be a little too rampant, a little too vigorous of a grower to grow in these smaller spaces.

- All right.

- So definitely I'm excited to talk about different cultivars.

And I wanna talk for a minute about tomatoes, because tomatoes are everybody's favorite, I feel like.

- I feel like too.

- When somebody says that they wanna grow a vegetable garden, usually the one thing- - The first thing they mention.

- Wanna make sure they have is a tomato.

Okay?

So if you have been used to growing conventionally in-ground and you've been raising indeterminate tomato types, indeterminate are tomatoes that just vine and they grow and they're gonna continue to vine and grow until frost.

And they also bear fruit all through the season.

Right?

Those aren't gonna be fun to try to grow in these smaller space raised bed garden sites.

Okay?

So typically we wanna suggest that people focus on determinate types of tomatoes.

These are tomatoes that only get a certain height, usually three to four feet tall, and they typically bear their fruit in a pretty short period of time.

So maybe like a two to three and a half or four week period.

These determinant types are gonna focus the bulk of their harvest in that smaller timeframe.

So that makes it a little easier, to get a larger volume of fruit at one time.

- I like that suggestion.

- And a couple that I wanna throw out there just in case people are like, well that's great, but gimme some examples.

Right?

So Roma tomatoes or San Marzano, those are two that kind of fall into that category.

If you are more interested in some slicer-type tomatoes, you're traditional for putting on sandwiches and things like that, think Celebrity.

Okay?

Homeslice.

That's kind of a newer one that's been out there.

- Homeslice.

- And Defiant.

Okay?

Anything that has the word "bush" in front of it.

- Really?

- Patio tomatoes, anything that's got that patio word in it, you can pretty much assume that it's gonna be a determinate type, but definitely those would all be suitable for growing in these smaller areas, raised beds essentially.

Then I feel like peppers.

Yeah, peppers usually come after tomatoes.

So generally speaking, pepper plants, I don't feel like themselves take up a lot of space, but sometimes they can get a little tall and need some support.

So these are even more compact versions.

Right?

And a couple of our favorite, everybody wants a couple sweet bells, right?

Because you're slicing those, using them in cooking all the time.

Alliance and Islander are two that are more compact.

Then there are some roasting sweet peppers.

Mama Mia is one that a lot of people are familiar with.

- Mama Mia, okay.

- That has a more compact habit, but the pepper itself is more elongated.

Think bell pepper, but kind of stretched out.

- Really?

- That's what a roasting sweet pepper is.

What about jalapenos?

- Yeah.

- Everybody loves a jalapenos.

Gotta make it for salsa, gotta have 'em.

Emerald Fire.

- That sounds hot.

- It does sound hot.

But that's a good compact short variety.

Moving on from there.

Okra is a favorite of mine.

- Gotta have okra.

- But what does everybody always hate about okra?

It's so tall.

- It just keeps going and going.

- It just keeps going and going, right?

And shade out everything else in the garden.

If you don't put it in the right spot, you can be setting yourself up for problems for shading things out.

So let's look at some dwarf cultivars of okra.

What about Candle Fire?

And that's a red okra.

And then Annie Oakley is a green-fruited variety.

So those would be two good dwarf options for raised bed gardening.

- Okra, how about that?

- I know.

Who knew?

Then I wanna talk for a minute about cucumbers and other vine crops that are in that cucurbit family essentially.

So typically those take up quite a bit of space.

And they could be challenging for growing either in containers or in a small space, raised bed gardening.

But for cucumbers we have more options I think then people realize.

For compact growth habits, okay?

Saladmore is a good option and pretty easy to find.

Saladmore, cultivar.

Patio Snacker.

Right?

Again, with the context clues.

Spacemaster.

So it's using space masterfully.

Marketmore 76.

- I know Marketmore.

- It's compact, but could still need a trellis.

So those other ones I mentioned could just be grown as a little compact bush without any trellising, but Marketmore, while it is smaller, it may still need some trellising.

And then there's another little snacker called Diva.

- Diva.

- Diva.

- It's too cute.

- Yeah, Diva.

- Everybody needs to try a Diva cucumber.

So what about watermelon?

Oh my goodness.

Watermelon's a cucurbit.

It's in that same group, but watermelons typically, gosh, they vine.

- Yeah, they just sprawl over the place.

- And they vine and you have 10 feet of vine and one watermelon sometimes.

Right?

So that can be challenging.

But we do have a few options now for more compact watermelons.

I'm not saying these- - Which means exactly what though, for a compact watermelon?

- Right.

It means that it's not gonna be as compact as these cucumbers we just talked about.

- Okay, all right.

I'm glad you said that.

- But it's gonna be much smaller.

Half the size of your traditional watermelon.

- Right.

Your Jubilee or- - Right, yes.

- I got you.

- So Mini Love, that is a cultivar that comes to mind.

- I like that, Mini Love.

- For the watermelons.

One of the primary advantages that I like with raised bed gardening is that we can make sure that they have really good drainage depending on the media that we fill them with.

And so if you really love herbs and want to try your hand at growing a wide array of different types of culinary herbs, whether that's for cooking in your home garden or just enjoying ornamently, because many of them have variegated leaves and beautiful flowering and- - They smell good.

- Right.

So plants that have lots of different qualities, raised beds are a perfect solution for that because we can make sure that we are using medias that have excellent, really good, sharp drainage, that are gonna support many of those culinary herbs that prefer more Mediterranean type growing conditions.

Things like rosemary and lavender, think along those lines, thyme, stuff like that.

- So, we know we can do herbs.

- Definitely.

I also wanted to touch on a few things that maybe we shouldn't even consider.

Let's just go ahead and mark it off the list for growing in raised beds.

- So we can mark off?

- Does that sound okay for a minute?

- Okay.

Yeah, let's do that.

- So I would not recommend people to try to grow sweet corn in a small raised bed area.

Right?

Sweet corn is gonna be more successful when you can plant it in larger blocks.

It's wind pollinated.

And so if it doesn't have plenty of access and opportunity for the pollen to fall on the tassels of neighboring corn stalks.

What's gonna happen is you're gonna get a plant that grows up to two or three feet and then it's just gonna stall out.

Nothing's gonna happen.

So I would discourage people from trying to grow sweet corn on a small scale.

- Okay.

- And pumpkins, I would discourage also really trying to grow pumpkins in a small raised bed type situation.

There are some small pumpkins, some small gourds, ornamental gourds that you could consider growing over a trellis in a small space garden area.

- I can see that.

- But that wouldn't be one where I would want it to be taking up the ground space because then you're just cheating yourself.

Right?

I mean, would you rather have one pumpkin plant or six tomatoes, right?

So you just kind of have to work with what you have there.

- Would you be okay with them just sprawling out into the yard space?

- I wouldn't, because I like mowing.

Right?

[laughing] And so, if you want, it's gonna be hard to manage.

If you're weed eating around your raised beds.

Whoever's in charge of mowing your lawns gonna have to be trying to go around those.

So, I mean, if you don't mind it, definitely, it's an option.

You could just let them grow out into that extra space if you have extra space available.

- If you have extra space.

Yeah.

- And we have even more recommendations for cultivars that are gonna do really well in containers and small space gardens that can be found on uthort.com.

And the publication is called "Cultivars for Small Space Food Production".

- And we will have that link on our website.

- Awesome.

Thanks.

- For sure.

- Thanks for having me.

- So, small and compact.

- Yeah.

- I like it.

I like some of those names too, Celeste.

- They're cute.

- Thank you much.

[laughing] [upbeat country music] Look how beautiful this chive plant is.

Chives have beautiful pink-purple flowers.

Pollinators are attracted to the bloom.

So bees love this plant.

They are a perennial herb.

They're a clump-forming herb.

This plant loves to thrive in full sun and well-drained soils.

Doesn't have any major pests or diseases that I know of.

I usually get a question about how to harvest chives.

So this is usually what I tell people, right?

So I would start at the base, go up about an inch or so.

When you go into harvest, you can harvest one leaf or you can harvest all of these leaves.

Don't worry about it, the plant will grow back.

You can leave the flower intact.

The flower is actually edible.

One other thing about this plant is it can grow to be about 12 or 18 inches in height.

So again, chives, I would recommend planting chives in your garden.

It's a beautiful plant.

You will see the beautiful purple blooms usually in May.

And the pollinators will love it.

[upbeat country music] Hi, Walter.

I see we have a bucket on the table.

What are we gonna do today?

- Well, there are a lot of people who simply do not have the space to garden.

- Okay, sure.

- And me being a person that liked to kinda watch my money a little bit, I was walking through a garden center one day and I saw where you could have these tomatoes already in a pot and they were getting like $17 for those things.

You know?

So I said, well wait a minute, if somebody like me who got a bunch of old buckets sitting around the house or whatever, you just my own.

So basically, what I did, I got my bucket.

Okay, now you wanna make sure, I really like to see you get a new bucket though.

- Okay.

- Because, if you're using something that used to have like petroleum products in it, or some kind of chemical or something, that might have some kind of residue in there that may work against you.

So, basically what I did, I go and I get my drill, and I drill some holes.

And these right here are one inch holes, but you can use half inch holes, just whatever as far as long as water can drain out of it.

- So that's why you put the holes in the bottom.

- Yes, yes.

And I always follow that little step up, Chris, by putting me some landscape fabric, just to cover that up a little bit so that we won't have a problem.

And then I even add a few rocks in there.

And let me see.

I won't make too much noise here, but I put some of that in there just to hold that down and make sure everything is fine.

You see what I'm saying?

- And that'll probably help with drainage as well.

- Absolutely.

It's gonna help with the drainage.

And then I began to mix my soil.

- Ah, that looks good now.

- Yes.

What I did, I purchased some already made organic soil, but I did add a little calcium to it.

I did put some lime in this.

- Okay.

- And all I simply do is just pour some of that in there.

Let me get it started before I dump it.

But I add something else to this organic.

I also add a little bit of cow manure.

- Ah.

- You know, and when you live near a cattle farm like I do- - It's readily available for sure.

- Readily available.

So I mix that in there too.

And then of course I'm gonna finish the rest of this.

Now you don't ever just fill it all the way to the top.

You get it right there.

And like I said, I added calcium to this.

I put about a cup of calcium in here.

And then of course I'm going to, let me get just a tad more to get my right- - So while you doing that five gallon, that's a pretty good size.

- Yeah, five gallon pretty good size because tomato plants, and look here, I wanna talk a little bit about that.

- Sure.

- Tomato plants, they're gonna put down quite a bit long, a good long root off in there.

Now when you first get that, notice that these have good white roots there.

And another thing that I do when I plant tomatoes, I like to do what we call sucker them.

So I cut off these little bottom ones right here.

And let's see, and also these plants here that I got, you can use them.

These were over on a rack.

Now normally we say don't buy those.

- On the discount rack.

- Yes.

But I noticed that they were actually, it's just where it hadn't been watered.

- Okay.

- So, I saved some money.

- So you could save them.

All right.

- And then, so I tear those little roots apart to kinda- - You tease the roots a little bit.

- Yeah, just tease them a little bit.

And there we go.

And we can set that off in there.

Let me get that more in the middle.

And then from there- - You just add more.

- I just add more around.

And let me tell you, you're gonna have some good tomatoes here.

This variety here is Early Girl.

- Oh yeah, that's a good one.

- It's a real nice variety to use.

And yes, there you go.

That's this here will do wonders.

And I even get all up around there a little more.

- Okay.

Now this would apply for more than just tomatoes, right?

- Absolutely.

I mean, there's other vegetables you can put in there as well.

- Yes.

As a matter of fact, you can put like one tomato plant in a bucket, but you can put two pepper plants.

- Okay.

- And you can also put maybe like one cucumber plant, a squash plant, you can put one of those in there.

I'm talking about in its own bucket.

- Sure.

- And hey, they'll grow fine.

Now one of the things about growing them in the bucket also, you can start 'em out early, so you can get out there earlier.

Another thing is you don't have to worry about weed control because you're pretty much controlling that.

Now I'm gonna tell you, if a pig weed or something comes in there, you put it in there.

[both laughing] It didn't come in there naturally.

And another thing, that you can move it around if you need to.

You can have a little flexibility with that.

And it's just all kind of benefits to growing in a bucket.

And trust me, it does not cost you $17.

- Right, right.

- Which is always a good thing.

- Right, that's a good thing.

- But once again, I do want to emphasize, do not use an old petroleum bucket or something like that.

If you see something like lubrication fluid or something on the bucket, don't use that.

But really just get you a new bucket.

- And let's talk again about the different soils you can use.

Now you actually put in manure.

Why did you put in manure?

- Well, 'cause I wanted to raise these kind of organically.

- Okay, okay.

- And that's gonna be a good source for my fertilization.

And nitrogen, all that that you get with the manure and all that.

So that's why I use that.

And again, once again, we do have people like to know where their food come from, how it's grown.

What better way than growing in a bucket.

- That's right.

- And as a matter of fact, I highly recommend people who live in apartment complexes that have just those little ledges, hey, this is an ideal way to garden.

I mean it just works perfect.

- Right.

And I was once in an apartment, so yeah, that does work.

- Yes, yes.

- I did it as well.

- And also I didn't bring any with me, but I would also put some mulch on top of this because when you water it, that would help this stay moist and stuff as well as hold that moisture in there.

'cause you know, here in the Mid-South, woo.

Once that June, July heat hit- - It'll dry pretty quick.

So let's talk about watering.

How much would you water?

- Oh, well, basically I would keep this, I would try to give it like maybe an inch a week.

Is what I would look at an inch and a half.

But basically just feel that soil.

If it feels moist, nice and moist, you are fine.

Now we do not want to just saturate it with water.

Because then we're gonna mess around and get all that old Phytophthora root rot and all this stuff developed in there and you're kind of defeating your purpose.

- Right, right.

- So you just don't want to just saturate it.

But of course with those holes in there, it shouldn't saturate.

But otherwise, just keep it nice and moist.

About once a week, maybe twice a week, go out there and just add a little water to it just like you would water any other plant.

- Sure, sure.

And you made the point about moving it as well 'cause I had to do that when I lived in an apartment.

Make sure you got enough sun.

So that's a good thing about putting them in containers or five gallon buckets.

- Exactly.

- Move it to follow the sun.

- You can move it around and also you can get you one of those little cages, and they'll work also.

And that's what I would do with this one.

I won't do anything but just put that little cage in there right now and it'll just grow right up and then that little cage and you'll be fine.

- Okay.

- But like I said, this is just a, to me it's really a neat way to even get kids to garden.

- Oh, I agree.

- A lot of times we see now that kids do not know where food come from, or whatever.

And this would just really be a nice way to teach some kids how to garden, where food come from and how they can grow things.

- Something they can do at home.

I agree.

- Oh, yes, yes.

And if you're looking for a good science project, there it is right there.

- Well, good stuff, Walter.

We appreciate that demo.

- Oh, okay.

We're happy to bring it here.

- Now we'll see how that does.

- Okay, yes.

- We'll test you out.

- Okay.

Well we'll be slicing tomatoes before long.

- All right.

Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] A few weeks back we transplanted this parsley plant.

As you can see, it's suffering from transplant shock.

Don't be alarmed.

It is still growing nicely.

But we do have some parts of the parsley here that we need to prune out.

So what I would do is I would just come down here and I would actually prune it or pinch it out.

And I'm just using my thumb nail to pinch them out.

It's pretty easy to do that.

Just trying to get as much of it as I possibly can.

Cleaning it up a little bit.

Anytime you have dead plant material, it's always a good idea to go ahead and pinch it out if you can.

The plant is doing fine, it'll be good.

Make sure you keep it watered.

Right?

Once you do that, you gather the plant residue and you can put this in your compost pile.

[upbeat country music] All right Celeste, here's our Q&A segment.

These are great questions.

- They are really good.

- Great questions.

- I'm excited.

- You're excited?

- Yes.

- All right, she's excited.

Here we go.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Why is my tomato plant dropping green tomatoes?"

And this is Brian from Ville Platte, Louisiana.

So you already grown tomatoes down there.

- Early tomatoes.

- Early tomatoes in Ville Platte, Louisiana.

So, yeah, why do you think they're dropping the green tomatoes?

- Okay, so there are a number of reasons why tomato plant would abort fruit.

That's kind of the term that we would use there.

The first one that came to my mind is poor pollination.

So sometimes if those flowers do not get pollinated properly, they will try to initiate fruit development and grow a teeny tiny tomato.

And then they realize, oh wait, all the things didn't happen that were supposed to happen.

- Oh wait, yeah.

- And they'll just drop, they'll just throw 'em off.

So that could be one, poor pollination.

Another could just be like environmental stress, fluctuations in any kind of environmental stress.

Is it heat?

- Is it heat?

Right.

- Is it drought?

Is it too much water?

I mean you could go the drastic one direction or the other.

Lots of different possibilities there.

But just that fluctuation in environmental conditions, like drastic fluctuations, - Yeah, that makes sense to me.

- Can trigger the plant to wanna drop fruit just as well as general stress to that plant.

- I would agree with that.

I'll stay away from a lot of nitrogen fertilizer.

- Ooh yes.

- I'll stay away from that.

And low-light conditions can do that as well.

So make sure- - That you're in full sun.

- That you're in full sun.

- You wanna put your warm-season garden where you get full sun.

For sure.

- Brian, we think that'll help you out.

So yeah, those are the things that always come to mind when any type of plant is dropping fruit.

I mean those are the things I think about.

- So don't go out there and try to think you're gonna solve the problem by just adding something because it could be a lot of different things.

- All right, Brian, so we hope that helps you out.

You had those early tomatoes.

Already growing down that way.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

This is interesting.

"What is this Caterpillar?

I found it on my porch in February."

And this is Twinkle and Mark from the Hill Country of Texas.

- Oh.

- Beautiful picture.

- Yes, it's so good.

- Beautiful picture.

- So I love that little caterpillar.

He's so cute.

That is, yeah, that's a caterpillar of the eastern black swallowtail.

So pretty iconic.

You know, we see 'em midsummer gracing our gardens.

Most often devouring any plant that's in our garden that's in the carrot family, that's their host plant.

So think anything that falls in that family.

Think dill.

- Parsley.

- Parsley.

- Fennel.

- Fennel.

And then Golden Alexander.

That's an ornamental plant that a lot of people forget is also in that same family.

So that's a perennial, yeah, perennial ornamental.

Also think Dara, which is like a variety of a cultivated Queen Anne's lace, that we see on the side of the road, that's in the same carrot family.

So those can all serve as host plants for that eastern black swallowtail.

So we're seeing those, you might find 50 on one plant in middle of the summer and they've just completely defoliated that plant.

But don't be alarmed.

We don't want people to go out and try to control them or save their plants.

I'd rather give up some plants so we can support that pollinator population, 'cause they turn into beautiful butterflies.

- Beautiful butterflies.

And you talked about a difference between the male and female.

- Yeah.

So it's cool, when once they mature, the males are a little flashier.

They have more color on them.

So they've got these yellow bands of like yellow dots, right.

That span the backs of their wings.

And then the females have more blue concentrated on that tail portion, the swallowtail.

That's why I call it the swallowtail.

They've got that extra little swoop there on the back.

And so they have a lot of blue right there.

So that can be a fun way to try to identify males.

And people think that they're two completely different butterfly species from one another, but they're not.

It's the same.

They're both eastern black swallowtails.

They just look a bit different.

Male and female, so that's fun.

- Yeah, I learned a good lesson there.

How about that?

- Yeah.

- Ms.

Twinkle and Mr.

Mark.

Yeah.

And the males are flashier.

- Enjoy those caterpillars.

- Yeah, enjoy the caterpillars.

- That's a sign you're gonna have some really cool butterflies happening.

- Yeah.

- And I hope you've got some pollinator plants to support 'em with nectar when they get mature.

- Very important pollinators, they are for sure.

All right.

Yeah, beautiful butterflies at the end.

And again, she said the males are flashier.

Like that.

Celeste, fun as always.

- Yes.

- Fun as always.

Thank you so much for being here.

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 familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about raised bed gardening, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

Or you can watch past segments on our YouTube channel, Family Plot Garden.

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

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]