Alright, Mr. Jim, I see we have some plants on the table here.
- Yes, we've brought a few that are just really easy to grow, low maintenance plants.
- Easy, low maintenance?
- Easy to grow, as long as you get the green side up, they'll grow.
-Alright.
- So we're gonna talk about a few of them.
Alright, the first one we've got over here, this is an Oakleaf Holly.
I like this one because it makes a good corner plant.
It's only gonna get about eight to 10 feet tall and it grows conical, so you don't have
to do much trimming.
Now, like most, like me, I grew up before I grew out, they do the same thing.
So you have to do a little tip trimming to thicken them up, but it's a great plant and
it's one of the few hollies that is both male and female, so if you got it, it'll produce
berries, even without another one around.
It's a really good plant and it's not, although it looks sticky, it's not.
You can put your hand in there and not come out bleeding.
So that's a good plant for a corner.
The next one we're gonna talk about here is an Abelia.
Used to, the Abelias were large, leggy, ugly looking plants, but they've done so much in
hybridizing now.
This one is Kaleidoscope.
This one, bright green foliage in the spring, and then as the season progresses, you get
pinks and yellows and it's gonna max out around four feet, but there are new low ones, there's
Twist of Lime, Twist of ORange, Twist of Lemon and you kind of gather what color they're
going to be by the foliage, but they're really a huge selection.
They bloom most of the summer.
They're really, really a good plant and you don't have to do much to them.
- And usually when I hear about Abelias, bees.
Bees hang around.
- Yes, they do.
If you want to bring bees to your garden, it's good.
It's not a plant I'd put by the pool.
It is a good plant.
The next one is a native plant, the Yaupon Holly.
Now this is a dwarf one and this is a male.
It doesn't produce berries, but it's a great foundation plant, background plant for perennials.
If you let it go, eventually it will get five or six feet tall, but it'd be a very long
time getting there.
One or two trimmings a year and you can keep it at two or three feet or whatever you want,
but nothing bothers it.
It's good drought resistance.
You just can't have a more dependable plant and there's so many variations of the Yaupon.
Some are tree form, some are weeping, there's a new one called Scarlet's Peak that grows
like a telephone pole that's a very heavy berrier.
They're just a remarkable group of plants.
- [Tom] Quick question for you.
- Yeah?
- How can you tell a male from a female plant?
- Well, only when it's in bloom, is the only way.
If you look at, catch it when it's in flower, the flower looks like a tiny Dogwood flower.
If you look in the center and there's a hole, that is a little boy.
If there's a ball in the center, that's a female.
- [Tom] Very good.
- But you gotta catch them in bloom.
If you see a berry on it, you know that it's a female and any Holly will pollinate any
other Holly, as long as they're blooming at the same time and that's the key.
If you have a deciduous Holly, you gotta make sure you have the right male otherwise you
won't have berries.
Nandinas are another one that was an old time plant that people liked to cut the berries
at Christmas, grew six feet tall, got leggy and ugly, but there are hundreds of varieties
now.
This is a new one called Lemon Lime and it's absolutely beautiful.
It only gets about three feet tall.
There's one called Harbor Bell that only gets about six to eight inches and produces berries,
which a lot of the dwarves don't.
So there's a world of new ones in blush pink colors, bright reds, oranges, they've just
done a whole lot with Nandinas and again, you have no issues with them at all.
No insects, no diseases, they're just really a great plant.
- No insects, no diseases.
How 'bout that.
- You can't get one any better than Nandina.
The last one we're gonna talk about here and it's something that a lot of people don't
think about for foundation planting is a blueberry.
They're great plants, good fall red color, they're gonna get about six feet tall.
You trim them once a year, but you don't have to do that till about year four or five and
you get all the berries.
Now these are Rabbiteyes, they're the ones that are best suited for the south.
See, you need to have at least two and preferably three varieties to get good pollination, but
it's a wonderful, wonderful plant.
Very few insects or diseases bother them.
In the shade, the plant looks a little better, but it doesn't berry as much, but if you put
it out in full sun and you'll get some red color during the growing season, you'll have
all these berries, one for the kids next door, one for the bird, one for you, but it's really
an under-looked plant.
Memphis has an evergreen mentality and they have trouble planting things that are gonna
be deciduous in front of their house, but they miss out on hydrangeas and blueberries
and so many really cool things.
- I like the evergreen mentality, how 'bout that.
- They do, they do.
You know, so many people go, does it die in the winter?
Yeah and it's born again in the spring, hallelujah!
Deciduous doesn't mean bad, it just means it drops it's leaves.
- Now let me ask you this.
So how do we prepare our soils for these plants we're talking about?
- Well, the most important thing is loosening.
Most everything that we grow here that we like, doesn't grow here naturally.
It likes less heavy soils, better drainage than we have, so that's the key.
Plant everything here high.
Dig no deeper than your container and we want it to stick up about like this because when
we have, like last night, heavy, heavy rains, we want to have part of that root ball exposed
to air so that it doesn't drown.
So many plants won't tolerate that for long periods of time and even though the plant
may actually die in that water, you may not know it for several months.
It'll sprout, look good and then along about June, it dies and you blame your husband.
It died three months earlier, you just didn't know it.
Loosening soil is most important, twice as wide, mix some organic matter in there, but
don't overdo it, 15, 20% like you all were talking about earlier is about right.
- Now, let's talk about, how about pruning?
Especially like the Yaupon Holly.
We get that question all the time.
What's the best way to do that though?
- Well, it depends on what you want.
Most people take plants like that type and shear it--
- [Chris] Yes, over the top.
- And that's okay.
If you were to let it grow, it would be more natural, open and airy, but with things like
that, just trim them and you can do them pretty much anytime, but you wanna stop about the
first of July.
After that, the new growth is not likely to harden off for winter and you get some burn
back in it.
So anytime from March up till then, you can trim it as much as you want.
Now, you know, things like Hollies, like the Oakleaf there, you want to trim from the inside
usually, reach down in there if you've got a place that's open and let it rebreak and
fill back up through there.
With blueberries, what you'll do is, about year five you'll start, you'll see some canes
down in there that look like birch trees.
They've begun to split and have bark, loose bark on them, take out three or four of the
oldest ones, 'cause about five years is all you'll get a good production out of a cane.
- [Chris] I was gonna ask you that, okay, five years, okay.
- And then, let them re-sprout back up through it and just once a year, right after you've
harvested the fruit then go ahead and cut 'em back.
- Now about the blueberries, what about the Sphagnum moss?
I've heard that, you put it in the hole?
- Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the Sphagnum moss.
Now they do like a very low PH, you know, four and a half to five, and they're real
happy at that, even more acidic than azaleas.
So that's critical that you get them in that range to get good production and usually you
can add a little aluminum sulfate or something like that.
If you ever go to a peat moss bog up in Canada, nothing grows there but peat moss and pine
trees, so that kind of tells me something.
Mother Nature has done a really good job at just showing us, hey, look, we put leaves
and sticks in the ground, don't argue with her.
Do what she wants you to do.
- [Chris] That's right.
- The problem I had the first time I planted blueberries, I didn't do my homework and I
grabbed every blueberry plant they had at the place I got them from, not knowing there
was a difference between North and South blueberries.
- Well, there are.
Now, the high bush, you'll see Southern Highbush offered sometimes here and in fact, University
of Georgia is introducing a lot of new varieties.
They are self-pollinating, so you don't have to have but one, but it's kind of a misnomer
because Highbush don't get as tall as Rabbiteye, but they're just not well suited for our poor
drainage here and our hot night soils.
You'll have much better luck with Rabbiteyes.
- Mr. Jim, good stuff, man.
- Hey, glad to do it, Chris.
It's always a pleasure.
- Alright, thank you much.
For more infomation >> Riverdale | Inside Riverdale: The Outsiders | The CW - Duration: 2:09. 
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