Vault: Fred Wiche The Weekend Gardener Hot Summer Special

Editor Joe Federle and Doug Profitt take you back to the Vault to the Fred Wiche Hot Summer Special where our beloved weekend gardener answers questions about how to care for you plants and lawn in the extreme heat.
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Fred Wsy, the weekend gardener. Hi everybody, I’m Doug Proffitt, along with our chief archivist Joe Federly as we are bringing you a look back, and this is really something, Joe, that our viewers have been writing me about emailing. I’ve had several, uh, to start before the, uh, warm weather came in, can you bring back some of Fred Wsy’s old stories? And I will say that, uh, because I’ve been here so long now, Joe, and I was here as a high school intern, the single most popular personality we’ve ever had on this station. Was Fred Wishy. Nobody else nobody else comes close. We’ve got a lot of big names. He even has a caricature of himself. I mean, that’s well beloved. Fred Wishy, we’ll get into him in just a minute about what his original career was a top political reporter who came to us from Chicago. But when he did the weekend gardener, I would go with him as he would walk through the Kentucky State Fair. The man couldn’t walk through the fairgrounds. People were always stopping him. So what’s the treat that you’ve unearthed come out of the ground for us, uh, today, Joe, as you know we used to do this. Specials and they’d be calling specials, people would call in if it was live sometimes they were pre-produced and this is one from the last week of June 1994, which is great for us because the same advice that he gives you at that time, even though he passed away in 1998. The stuff he gives the advice that he gives is still applicable right now, so this will help you know how to get your grass to where it doesn’t die. Uh, he said he talks about he’s like a lot of people, if you cut a lot of people like to lower their length of the grass during the summer months, so it looks like a golf course, I guess, but that’s the worst thing you can do. You have to make sure it’s a little bit longer, otherwise it’s gonna kill off the grass and the weeds will take over and that’s a crab grass is a problem. Well, think about why it’s so popular time. There was no Google. Right, and people were, people love their gardens in Kentucky. Anna. Fred was on the air giving this simple advice. He gets stacks of mail. He wrote books. He was phenomenally popular. This was the YouTube of the day. Now you wanna find out how to do something to watch YouTube. Well, that wasn’t available. People watch The Weekend Gardener, and he told you everything you need to know. I think even talks about roses and uh what happens to the roses. Roses, the very first story he did for the Weekend Gardener when they launched the franchise in the late 60s. I’ve seen it. It’s really neat. It was about with a woman off of uh Westport Road near where the current Walden school is. He went to her house and he did the piece. So we’re gonna talk about Fred here in just a minute, but first, Joe, what, what does this date back to? — This special that you unearthed
— this is from 1994, June of 1994, and this is good because it was all pre-produced. I don’t think there’s any live phone calls in this, but you’re gonna like this because it’s something you get to see his farm and of course in Shelby County or is it Simpsonville. Uh, that’s where his farm was, which still exists to this day. I pass it sometimes you can see the Fred Wy Pavilion right there on the main street there downtown Simpsonville, and you can see, uh, everything. You’ll get to, it’s cool because you’ll get to see him give this tour. There’s a tour bus of people, they get off the bus and he says, Hey, welcome, and he gives them all sorts of really good advice about how things grow, what to do with the grass. And it’s called the Weekend Gardener Hot Summer Special. Now he says in it this is the last one of the spring series, so I guess we had a series of spring specials that we did every, every season we did it. I’ll tell you about the advice I still follow to this day. We’ll talk about that right after this. Enjoy this special from the WHS 11 archives. Hi, I’m Fred Whi, the weekend gardener, and welcome to our red hot special. Would you like that title, I think it’s apropos for the weather conditions that we’ve got outside right now. Well, this is the final show of the spring season, and we’ve got something very special for you today. Now that the hot weather has really arrived, what about plant stress during this weather? And you’re going to be joined by a group of gardeners from all around Kentucky. They’ve just arrived by bus. This is the final tour that we do of our farm for this season, and so we’ll be right back to help the people unload and tell you more about tonight’s special. So stay with us. Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardener’s hot summer special, is sponsored by Kroger, America’s favorite floral shop, and by Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, helping add value to your home. Well, while our guests are getting organized and getting set for our tour, I thought I’d take a minute here to talk about one thing that we all have in common just about no matter where you live, and that is the lawn, and lawns this time of year with the weather conditions uh that we’ve got, well, they’re gonna start turning tan color because they need water. They need water very badly. Now there are a couple of options. First of all, with your lawn this time of year, don’t scalp it. I don’t know why people do that, but I see a lot of people lowering the lawnmower height in the summertime and cutting very, very short. Uh, you’re going to ruin the grass that way. #1. #2 is weeds love that. Then they have no competition from the grasses and with no competition, your crab grass is actually going to take over the lawn. So we continue to mow at the same height we did in the summer in the springtime, that is 2.5 to 3 inches in height with the taller grass that’s going to shade the soil, and what moisture is there will remain there for a longer period of time. Then also, the taller grass is competition for crab grass, and you’re apt to have less crab grass. And what about weed control? Well, I wouldn’t do any weed control this time of year. As a matter of fact, be very careful of chemicals anyway. And you don’t want to apply chemicals to anything in particularly lawns when the temperature for most chemicals is over 85 degrees. So really leave the chemicals on the shelf. Now one of the reasons why we call. Uh, the fescues, the turf type tall fescues, the most adapted grass for the state of Kentucky is that it’s got a root system that is much deeper in the ground than bluegrass. I learned this during the drought of ’83 and that was the granddaddy of all droughts. That was the one that here on the farm, everything turned brown. It was a nightmare, a horticultural nightmare. July and August that year very little rain, constant temperatures over 90 and even several days over 100. We had an area here on the farm where we had bluegrass and where we had the fescues. The bluegrass died. The fescues were all tan in color at the end of that summer, and I thought for sure that they were gone. But Doctor Powell at the University of Kentucky said to me, Don’t be a faint heart, he said, as soon as the weather cools in September and we get rain, it’s gonna come right back, and you know it did, it absolutely did came right back and all you had to do is fertilize in the fall of the year and everything was fine. So with that, don’t do any fertilizing now. Wait until the fall of the year to fertilize, and this is why I guess fescue is called the environmental grass, because you’ve got that option. Now if you’ve got a lot of water, if you’re living in an area where it is not restricted, you can go ahead and water. And you’ll have green grass all summer long. Or if we do get into water shortages or if you don’t want to pay a high water bill, then your option with fescue is no water, just let it go and by letting it go, it’s gonna turn the tops will turn that tan color, but the roots will be fine. And if a grass like that can survive and be revived after the drought of ’83, I think it can take anything as far as droughts are concerned. And then when it comes to watering the lawn, well, you know, there’s one thing about uh watering a lawn and one little simple implement that you might want to test your lawn with and that’s a screwdriver. What’s a screwdriver got to do with watering the lawn? I’ll tell you about that in just a little bit, but right now I wanna check in with our meteorologist Chuck Taylor. I wanna see how long this drought that we’re in right now, this mini drought, how long it’s gonna last, what’s in store for us for the next week, for the next 30 days, Chuck, Fred, we have some good news. Things are changing. In fact, it looks like our mini drought may be coming to an end. You know, over the past week, many areas have seen quite a bit of rain. Isolated heavy thunderstorms have produced several inches of rain in a few places and even at the airport during the past week, we’ve seen almost a half inch of rain and yesterday many areas got a good soaking rain. And as far as temperatures go, well, it’s definitely cooling off. Earlier in the week we had readings in the 90s. Yesterday, temperatures were only in the 70s and 80s, and today it has been quite. Well, the reason for the change and the reason I’m optimistic over the next few days at least, is the fact that the jet stream that was running well north of here has dropped down. That means a series of cold fronts will be moving through the region over the next few days, and as the fronts move through, they will be bringing us more showers and thunderstorms and also it looks like with this new jet stream pattern we’re going to see cooler temperatures. So I think at least into the middle part of next. Week we can look forward to periods of rain and cooler temperatures by the end of the week. Some of the heat may be returning, but I think as far as our mini drought is concerned, it’s just about over. So that is good news. Back to you, Fred. Well, I see all of our guests are off the bus and they’re getting organized, ready to take a stroll through the farm, through the acres here on our farm, and we’ll join them and be right back with that portion of the program, but first these messages. And now back to Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special. — This
— is, uh, just a little demonstration that I put together and believe me it’s, it’s a demonstration because on the farm here we do not water lawns, grass. Um, all of our water, uh, comes from a cistern, and it is very valuable, and we irrigate, uh, crops here on the farm and other planting materials from an irrigation system from the lake. So I just set this up, uh, today to show you, uh, a couple of different, uh, techniques of watering. Ah, first of all, when it comes to watering, if you are watering gardens or lawns, now this time of day from 4 in the morning until about 10 o’clock in the morning, that is the time to water. One reason for that is that it’s cooler, you’re going to get less, uh, evaporation. There was a report from Purdue last year that I thought was very interesting that, uh, if you are watering during the heat of the day, say 2 or 3 in the afternoon. That you from an overhead type oscillating sprinkler, you actually lose 30% of your water to evaporation when the temperature is 85 and the humidity is, uh, say 60-70%. So you’re gonna lose less at that particular time. Also, in the, the nighttime hours, you want the plant material to be as dry as possible because then you have the less likelihood of diseases. That can a lot of people said, Well, how much do you water? First of all, you never sprinkle when you do water water deep water plant material to the depth of about 1 inch of water and one way to determine that is to set up your, your sprinkler. I’m assuming this is the overhead type, uh, sprinkler like this, and then you put a a coffee can underneath the ark. Turn on the faucet full blast. Look at your watch. See what time you did that. Periodically take a ruler and measure the water in the coffee can. When you reach 1 inch depth in the coffee can, turn off your sprinkler. That area of the gardeners received 1 inch of rain, and then look at your watch. How long did you take, did it take to accomplish that? That’s going to depend on a number of things the volume of water coming out, the diameter of the hose, everything else. So from there on. Then you know that that’s all you have to do is just turn it on for 10 number of minutes. Now when it comes to A lawn. How do you know whether or not uh you, you’ve got some good subsoil moisture? Our extension aid in Jefferson County had an article in The Courier, and I thought it was kind of interesting because I’ve never heard this before, but you can tell how deep the moisture is with a screwdriver. Believe it or not, a screwdriver. All you do is take that screwdriver and push it into the ground. Now, as I said, we haven’t watered here, so I’m not going down very far, but, uh, about 1 inch, and then you, then you hit solid clay. So you know that your soil moisture is only at the surface and only goes down to about 1 inch. So then you would water until you can drive that very easily without much pressure at all to the depth of about 5 to 6 inches, and then you know that you’ve got, uh, uh, moisture down that deep. Now this is not the most environmental friendly way of watering anything I’ve set up over here. A soaker hose that is really the best way to water because then you can water any time of day that you want because the water is coming out from underneath that hose, the bottom of that hose, and it’s going directly into the root system of the plant. Soaker hoses is the way to go. OK, now let’s move around and uh we’ll begin in the back with the uh the Japanese garden, uh, a plant for shade. A shrub that is to me one of the most outstanding that we have here in the farm. It’s called Luohe, L E U C O T H O E. and this is tricolor. A nurserman talked me into putting them as kind of a screening around the heat pump. Last winter, first of all, they get white flowers, fairly fragrant white flowers in the spring of the year. That’s evergreen where Aelia that I showed you in the front is deciduous, but that’s evergreen. Now last winter, it was some 20 below zero right there and those plants were above the snow line basically and not one single leaf was damaged. They totally came through the winter unscathed. And they give you good color and as you notice they’re kind of a weeping form so there’s nothing that that is rigid like uh if you had uh for instance uh taxes that a lot of people use. So Luofi, I think it’s just an excellent plant. We raise plants every year that we get from a lot of different companies, uh, Goldsmith in California, Ball and uh Vau for instance, and they send us their introductions for the next year. Next year I guess is gonna be the year of the petunia because just about everybody sent petunias. Now these here, particularly the white, I, I’ll tell you one thing that happened here. We had to water yesterday. Uh, I didn’t want to water this bed, but we had to. Now, notice the blossoms. The blossoms look bad. Now that’s what happens to petunias if they get wet, and they’ll be like that for a couple of days. After a rain. Have you ever noticed the way the petunia blossom does not look good after a rain? Well, that’s the reason. Now the blossom here is much better really than than what you’re looking at right now. In addition, these are from Vaughan Seed Company. What they are breeding for now is the low growing bushy petunia. This particular, um, variety here is called the carpet series, meaning low growing, low mounting. So at the end of the season we’ll evaluate it to see whether or not they’ve accomplished what they’re going for. A lot of people are familiar with the Petunia, pink petunia that was called Summer Madness. Well, that was from uh Ball Seed Company 11 years ago. They developed that, but it was a sport and they thought they knew how they could generate a lot more varieties from that, but they were never able to do it. That one of Summer Madness was just the best of the whole Madness series as far as, as, as I’m concerned. But now they, all these companies are coming out with new ones and what you’re looking right at right here is uh the one that’s called uh Carpet Series. Where you’re standing right there, uh, that ground cover, uh, is kind of interesting because we saw that in England, uh, quite a bit. That’s Wintergreen. And that ground cover, uh, a lot of the, uh, uh, early settlers brought from Europe, from England, and in the, uh, summertime you can see some of the blossoms right now, bell shaped blossoms, light green color. The leaves turn a mahogany color in the winter and, uh, the, the white flowers are red berries. In the winter time you can take that leaf and crush it. And you, it smells like wintergreen. That’s where the early settlers got the wintergreen from with that particular plant. We’ll tell you a lot about, uh, different shrubs as we go along, particularly for fall color. This is one of our favorite. This is the oak leaf hydrangea. There’s one you’ll see back in Catawpa Park that the blossoms are a lot better than this one, and that was one called Snow Queen. But, uh, nice color right now. I, I like the leaves, the leaf form in the fall of the year it turns a mahogany color, so you have excellent fall color from the oak leaf hydrangea. No, no, there are no berries on the oak leaf hydrangea. Now, we’ll go over to the rose garden. If I had only one rose in the whole garden, Jenny would say it’s got to be double the light. That’s her rose right there, the 1977 All America. Yellow roses are very popular, but as the late Charlie Dawson, who used to live here in Simpsonville, told me for years, it’s very difficult to raise yellow uh roses here. Well, this is the 1994 All America Midas Touch, and it has done very well. We’ve had it here now for 3 years. It’s been excellent and I think it’s one of the best of the yellows so far. Behind it is secret. Uh, when it first opened up, uh, it is, uh, with, uh, well and orangeish pink color along the, uh, the petals, and a lot of people were very enthused about that. Here are the two all Americans that you’ll be hearing about next year. These are the 1995. All Americans, their floor bundas, uh, orange apricot in color. The disease resistance is supposed to be excellent. Their names are Brass Band and Singing in the Rain. We’ll continue with the tour of our swallow rail farm right after these messages. And now back to Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special. Japanese beetles are already here. If anybody who doesn’t know what a Japanese beetle looks like, I’ll show you what they look like. Um, your 7 is the most effective control for Japanese beetles, but what a lot of rosarians are going to now is taking the buds off of all of their roses for July and the first part of August. Don’t let them bloom. That actually will strengthen the plant and it’ll give you better, uh, blossoms this coming fall. But if you don’t want to use chemicals and the thing with the Japanese beetle, it flies 5 miles a day, uh, it, it is in here constantly in the blossoms of roses, so there is an alternative. Just don’t let the roses bloom, keep the Japanese beetles totally away from them. But won’t they just tender new leaves? Well, they’re not attracted by the, uh, the, the scent or the color. This is one of the things we don’t know, and we’ve had a lot of people out from major universities because where you are right now is the epicenter of the Japanese beetle explosion over the past 3 years. As you’ll see later on, we’ve totally lost all of our fruit crops for 3 years in a row from the Japanese beetle. No one anywhere had them worse than we have had them here. And what is it that attracts them? A lot of people said color. A lot of people said flowers, uh, scent, no, because as you drove in, uh, you drove by crab apples. We’ve got many different cultivars of crab apples, including this one right here, Burgundy, uh, that is has a dark leaf. They’re supposed to be attracted to a dark leaf. They’re attracted to one in particular called Prairie Made that has a, a, a, uh, just a green leaf, a grayish green leaf. Why that one? We don’t know. We really don’t know yet exactly what attracts them, but I’ll show you one thing that does attract them, and that’s one of our favorite shrubs, particularly in the winter time. And this is Harry Lauder’s walking stick. Harry Lauder’s walking stick. is an excellent, excellent plant for the winter garden. Um, because all of the branches are contorted the way they grow, it’s excellent. But if you stand here and you look. What you’re seeing right now and this just happened this morning. You see the way these leaves are being skeletonized. See that? That’s the Japanese beetle. And there they are. There’s your Japanese beetles. Last year we had to spray this shrub almost every other day, and there was a carpet of Japanese beetle carcasses underneath here that was probably 1 inch thick at the end of the season. So one of the things that uh entomologists are saying with Japanese beetles is try plant material that is resistant to it. So this is one I would not recommend, but this is one I would recommend. Here is one of the best shrubs for fall color Fothergilla Garden eye, and you notice the Japanese beetles never bother it at all. No, no bother whatsoever. Uh, these little cones here on the top were white this spring, a bottle brush type white blossom, very, very sweet, and then in the fall of the year you get excellent color with the, uh, uh, these leaves will turn a yellow, orange, red all in one leaf. It’s almost a rainbow of fall color along the way. I’ll point out a number of different ornamental grasses. Uh, ornamental grasses are becoming very popular because of what they do to the garden. Right over here behind the bench, uh, this is rated by the University of Kentucky as the best of the ornamental grasses, feather reed, feather reed grass, because probably because it develops its plume very early right now. Excellent, excellent color. Right beside it is a very small penisetum and that one is called Little Bunny. So they come in a number of different Um, forms as well as colors. Now, the burning bush for the fall of the year is very, very popular. This is a burning bush, believe it or not. This burning bush has been here for 10 years. It’s never been pruned. This is as big as it gets. There was a nurserman here many years ago, Rudy Haigh, and he found this as a sport, but in those days. I understand it was somewhere in the 40s. Nobody wanted dwarf plant material, so there wasn’t a market for it, but Buddy Hubbock at Bernheim heard about it, got one, took it to Bernheim, propagated it, and it’s been there for about 30 years. Good for all color, but this is as big as it gets. It’s called Rudy Haigh, and I understand it will be on the market next year. Because, uh, it is being, uh, developed by growers down in Tennessee. So if you’re looking for again a small plant, uh, in that wingeronymous, that’s it. Some of the other plants for heat and humidity. Right here are two of the recent All America verbena. Uh, peaches and cream is the, uh, uh, the top one, and, uh, inspiration is, uh, the one at the bottom, uh, imagination, uh, that was the all America for last year. Uh, excellent plants again for heat areas. This is another of the ornamental grasses, Miscanthus sinensisurpiens. It has red, uh, foliage in the fall of the year, reddish, not bright red, and, uh, sort of pinkish red plumes. All right, now if, uh, if we come this way, you can go around either way. Once again, um, this, I want to tell you just a little bit, uh, we’ll try to move as quickly as we can about this particular berm because until a week ago this past week, this entire berm was nothing but. Pansies, nothing but pansies. Those pansies, and we have, I’ve left a few here. This is a new series from Ball called Bingo. I want to see how they do in the summer heat, just these two. But believe it or not, those pansies were planted last October. And this is the thing that I’m trying to get across to people. If you want spring color, magnificent spring color, you can’t beat pansies. Tulips, daffodils last for a short period of time and then they’re gone, and you’ve got the green foliage forever until they die back. But pansies, and now I know after this winter that pansies will survive and they will bloom in the spring of the year even with subzero temperatures. They’ll come right back and bloom. They were magnificent. Now what we have done is we put in the All-Americs for this year. Just two weeks ago, so that’s why, you know, maybe come back in the fall of the year and we’ll all evaluate them together. In the back is the Rudbeckia, black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia. Uh, most people are familiar with Goldstrom. It’s a nice fairly large, uh, flower on it. Well, this is Indian summer. This is next year’s All America plant. What you’re looking at right here is what you’ll be reading about next winter. That one we saw at Ball Seed Company last year at their trials. They that one had a a blossom larger, much larger than Goldstrom, an outstanding plant then. In the petunias and these are the petunias for next year, the All America’s chiffon, it’s again a a celebrity but uh chiffon morning uh large blossom, very nice pink ones, but the one that I’m really interested in this year to watch develop is this first row. This is called um purple wave. It develops horizontally along the ground, not upright. Horizontally, where we saw them at Ball Seed Company in August, you know what the gallon of roses looks like? Just an absolute carpet of roses. Well, that’s the way this looked last year. A ground cover of petunias, 6 inches high, and you see, uh, several people said, how come you left so much space because they will grow 3 ft in width. So you will have a gallon of blossoms. We’ll be back with more Fred Wishy, The Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special right after this. And now back to Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special. Well, just about all of the grapes were killed at ground level because of the sub-zero winter, but, uh, this is the old Concord, and, uh, the Concord actually is producing a few grapes. If you’ve got grapes, there’s one thing that I would be very careful of this time of year. And that is this little creature. I’ve just taken off a leaf. This is the Japanese beetle. Uh you know the Japanese beetle, it is. It is a very pretty beetle actually. Uh, metallic green with a bronze wing cover and the back end of it back here you see these white dots uh that’s what differentiates that beetle from anything else. There’s no other beetle that has that plus it is small as you can see now it will eat some 300 different plants and one of the things that it loves and why I’m saying this, it loves grapes. Now if you’ve got grapes they’re under severe stress because of the winter. And you want to protect that foliage you don’t want that foliage to be eaten by a lot of insects that’s just gonna set it that much farther back so you can use uh any insecticide that you’ve got that’s labeled for edible plants, particularly if you’ve got grapes developing but protect the plants from the Japanese beetle. Uh, asparagus, that was one very promising crop this year, asparagus, and, uh, now is the time you let them go. Uh, one individual said to me, uh, they planted, uh, 2 years ago the new all-male asparagus, and, uh, what they thought was the new all-male asparagus would not have fern like growth this high that that’s what the all-male asparagus is all about. No, the all-male asparagus prevents this. These are your seed pods developing now this is the female one here. These are the old time asparagus so with the new uh all male, the big thick asparagus that uh a lot of people are going to, that’s what it means but you’ve got to let this go now because this fern like growth that’s producing the food for next year’s crop, so you leave it just like it is as a matter of fact, uh, if you had very thin spears you could side dress it at this time. Using like 1/3 cup of ammonium nitrate for a 100 ft row, uh, you could do that or any fertilizer that is high in that first number, the higher the nitrogen, the better, but leave that top growth go even until the fall of the year after it turns brown in the fall of the year. Well, that’s the time that you can cut it back, tomatoes. Well, so far, uh, the tomatoes are looking pretty good. This is, uh, last year’s All America called Husky Gold, and this, these two here are this year’s All America. They’re called Big Beef. Now they’re setting blossoms, but I had a lot of calls from people who said, uh, the blossoms, the tomato plants were full of blossoms, but, uh, all the blossoms fell and no tomatoes developed it. Well, that will happen to tomatoes when the temperature goes over 85 or 90 degrees, the pollen becomes sterile, so we’ve got to wait for Mother Nature to adjust and give us cooler temperatures. These tomatoes here are set in mulch. That keeps the soil uniformly mulch. Now if your tomatoes develop blossom and rot, that’s where the bottom end of the tomato develops a dark leathery scar. If that happens, one reason for that is a deviation in soil moisture or a lack of calcium in the soil. If you know your soil pH was all right, well, then mulching keeps that soil much more uniform, and that will prevent that from happening. But tomatoes, uh, uh, generally, as I said they, they like hot conditions, but, uh, not when temperatures, uh, go over 90. 01 other thing, uh, I’ve had some calls from people who talked about the leaves of tomatoes curling that will happen sometimes under extreme heat. The tomato leaves curl. They’re just trying to get out of the sun like you would on a hot day like this. So if you see the leaves curling but there are no signs of disease on it, don’t worry about it. Uh, you probably go out at night or early, very early in the morning you see the leaves nice and flat, uh, fertilize them with uh any fertilizer as soon as that, uh, first tomato sets and I like to use something like, uh. Oh, something is high in that first number, the phosphorus, um, one thing that this will probably be a very good year for if the weather conditions continue on the hot side are your melons, watermelon and cantaloupe. There is a formula that I’ve talked about for a long time that came from Dick Roberts at the University of Kentucky on how to make cantaloupe sweeter. And that formula involves spraying the plant now is it starts to run with uh Epsom salts and uh boric acid. Uh, you can get that at uh garden centers if you’re interested, uh, not garden centers, uh, drug stores usually will will carry that and if you’re interested in it, well, uh, just send me a stamp self addressed envelope and I’ll tell you exactly uh how to uh apply it and at what ratio. We’re getting into the period of summer when people start thinking about a fall garden and fall gardens do very well here. Well now is the time to plan for that fall garden and when it comes to broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower, well, uh, start your seeds anytime about, uh, the middle of uh uh July and uh then as far as, uh, planning is concerned, garden centers will, uh, carry them. Uh, your plants for broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower in, uh, uh, oh, last part of July 1st part of August because this is what happens to the early crop. You see, it’s already gone to seed. uh, this broccoli here, uh, for the most part is ruined. And this happens as far as I’m concerned every year that I try to raise it in the spring of the year. When the weather turns hot and humid, it bolts, but believe me, broccoli is much better when you plant it in July and August carry it through the hot parts of summer, but then, uh, go ahead and, and, uh, uh, plan it for a fall crop because when you harvest broccoli in, uh, the cool weather of late October and early November nutritionally it is much better than it is today. Well, that’s our vegetable garden, but what about the professional vegetable growers? How are they keeping their plants well watered and in a good productive stage? We’ll visit with one in particular in southern Indiana and we’ll be right back with that portion of the story after these messages. And now back to Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special. Driving through the rolling hills of southern Indiana, you see a lot of farmers out in the field looking toward the sky. What they’re looking for is a sign of rain because here there’s been very little rainfall so far in this growing season. The matter of fact, where I am right now is Deondiana. And uh Brian Churchill is uh the farmer that’s uh growing right here in this area. Brian, uh I understand your number one cash crop as far as your farm is concerned is sweet corn. Uh, how is the sweet corn been going this year? Right now it’s not looking very good. We got started off with such a cold early and wet spring, uh, that the corn had a hard time coming up and surviving. We started our plantings on April 9th, which is real early for this area. Uh, and then we plan every 10 days in order so that we can have fresh market sweet corn all season long up until Labor Day. Uh, this year our corn crop is, is probably the worst that it’s been in several years. Uh, it got off to a bad start and it just has not improved much as the seasons went on. Well, how much rain have you had here? We had about a half an inch here June 2nd before that it was extremely dry and since then with this 90 and 95 degree heat. Uh, it’s just not the plants cannot take this much longer. The corn, we’ve got a lot of corn, sweet corn is starting to tassel out at knee high. Uh, it should be at least 6 ft high. Uh, when we get ready to start harvest, we’re gonna have little immature ear that cannot pollinate in this heat. Uh, our early sweet corn, I’d say at this point is at least a 50% loss. We’re hoping that the later planting corns will help make up the difference. But that’s what we’re hoping for. We’ll see what Mother Nature gives us, and now I see something else here in the in the cornfield that looks kind of odd looks like something left over from Halloween or a kite of some kind. What is that? That’s uh an earworm, uh, uh, pheromone trap is what it’s called. It catches a corn earworm moss that flying at night and they’re sucked up in the bottom of it by bait that’s put on the bottom. They continue to fly up and they get in the very tip of it. Up there and they cannot fly back down and then we count the number of earworm maws that are in that trap each night and when it reaches 5 per night then we start applying insecticides after the silk has come out on the corn we do not apply any insecticides until the silk is showing. Last year by using this trap we probably saved at least $2500 on insecticide spray overspraying every 5 to 7 days depending on the temperature. So by using this trap it’s, it’s one of our main keys we we’re growing this year 35 acres of fresh market sweet corn. Uh, that’s all that’s a lot of handpicking and if we can save 3 applications of insecticide for planting. Of that it’ll amount to a lot of dollars in our back pocket plus we’re providing a better product for our customers uh that we were not expecting them to respond as well as they have to that you know they’re aware that that farmers do not like to apply pesticides. It’s something that we do because we have to. So that if we by using these traps and scouting our fields closely we’re going to apply less insecticides which will enable us to in the end make more profit but also provide the customer with a much better product uh good news for the farmer and the environment now your, your second largest cash crop, uh, on your farm, you, you told me is cantaloupe. Uh, we’ve heard the story about the corn, cantaloupe, watermelon, things like that. They like hot weather, don’t they? Yes, they love hot weather, of course they’re adapted for southern, more southern growing conditions. But the watermelon and cantaloupes that we grow are all grown on black plastic mulch, and they’re still attracting a lot of water to that mulch, and a cantaloupe and watermelon plant will go close to 4 ft deep for water and even in our soils, this clay-based soil, there’s still plenty of moisture that far down, but your, your shower based crops like corn and tomatoes even. They cannot stand this heat much longer. Uh, the melons seem to be doing excellent. We’ve got an excellent fruit set coming on this heat has not affected it like it has on the tomatoes. We had our early fruit set on them. And then the second fruit set that that should be looking good now is just not there because of the heat when it got over 90 degrees, the, — the tomatoes just quit setting and
— you’ve got a, a water shortage, uh, to a degree here in this part of Indiana. How are you watering, uh, your crops, uh, underneath that black plastic? Yeah, we have laid down plastic T tape is what it’s called. It, it’s like a road drip or it works the same as a soaker hose would that you could apply at home. Uh, it, it allows the water to go in slowly and be absorbed on down into the soil rather than putting on top of the soil and evaporating and that way we can also saturate the soil all the way down. We’re on Ramsey water here, so our, our water bill gets fairly expensive and we are on a water restricted use which means we can have up to $2500 fine for wasting water. Uh, — but we’re not using that much water here
— and how are you able to save this way compared to overhead? Well, the cost of the insulation was, was massive, uh, about $800 for 2 to 3 acres worth of, uh, T tape to, to water this way where if you were overhead you would have to build a large reservoir. Uh, you’re talking thousands of dollars, so this is a once a year system we’ll go through and tear it up and and put all new down next year, but it’s still by far much cheaper investment than than the other type system. So the farmers continue to look toward the sky for rain as you heard, it has affected the corn crop, at least the early corn, but when it comes to one of the most famous crops from Brian’s farm, the seedless watermelon, I tell you right now it look everything looks to be in good shape. We’ll be right back with more of tonight’s special, but first, these messages. And now back to Fred Wisy, the Weekend Gardeners’ hot summer special. Well, we’re just about at the end of uh the tour that we had Senior Citizens East, a great organization, 20 years old, is that organization that old? That’s what they tell me boy, 20 years we aren’t that old. No, just the organization we don’t know, well, it’s, uh, as I said it’s been kind of a kind of a hot afternoon, but I guess everybody has survived so I thought, uh, you know, before we get back on the bus uh the air conditioned bus. See if anybody’s got any questions, Lil. Yes, I have a question about a rhododendron that we’re hoping to kind of prune, and I’d like to know exactly how so that I won’t, you know, it and it didn’t bloom this year. Well, one of the things with, with the rhododendron is, uh, if you prune it, uh, say cut it back to a manageable size, it probably, and here’s where my golden rule the gardening comes in. You never tell a garden so it can’t be done. But it probably wouldn’t bloom next year because it can develop all vegetative stock. So if you have an overgrown rhododendron that you want to cut back to put it, get it more manageable size, about every 2 to 3 years, uh, you take 2, let’s say it’s got 5 canes, take 2 of the canes and cut them down, uh, to a point just above a leaflet where a leaflet is formed, you’ll see there a dormant node. And uh then the next year you do 2 more then the next year you do the last one and that that way you will have uh uh blossoms the next year. OK fine thank you. Uh yes, I have a question about the bag worms on my blue spruce tree. What’s the best remedy and when should I spray it? Oh well, that’s one of the problems that I think we’re gonna have this year because we had a lot of the uh the bag cocoons that overwintered. And really to me here one of your best controls is a biological control. It’s uh BT for short uh Baxilla syringences is sold under the trade name like Diopel and Theracide, a lot of things that you can use, but those uh are totally safe to man in the environment Dielhuracide, and I would begin that now. Most people wait until they see the bagworms late in the season, and if you wait until August, uh, those are mature insects. And they’re just not, uh, you know, really they, they’re not eating that much at that time and they’re very difficult to control so the best time to control them any insect is when it’s very young and actively growing and actively feeding and that’s right now so that’d be the time. My name is Bob. I have my tag on. It fell off. It got wet and fell off, fell off, yeah, but I wanna know about roses. I have a lot of problem with the, uh, black spot, uh, disease on the leaves, and, uh, I treat them, uh, sometimes as much as twice a week. And I wonder if it’s the variety of roses that I’m uh trying to grow if they’re more susceptible to that or just what do you feel I need to do? Well, your old roses and uh we’ve got uh a collection that we were just starting over here in this fence post of some of your old roses they are disease resistant. I’ve never sprayed them with anything uh, they’re not insect proof. Then there are some newer varieties of roses, uh, like this year’s All America, uh, that we’ve had for 3 years. Uh, that one is, uh, Midas Touch, and it has been uh very disease resistant in the future, uh, for Flora Bunda, uh, you might consider next year’s All American Brass band and singing in the Rain because they are rated, uh, very good, excellent as far as disease resistance is concerned. So the first thing would be picking a variety that’s resistant to disease and the second thing I think is rotating between fungicides and getting the fungicide application on early, you know, a fungicide is a protective coating that prevents the disease from getting there once the disease is there, you can’t eradicate it. And uh some people are trying the new biological controls that uh uh made of baking soda. Uh, I have not tried it. Uh, I would like to, um, I’m using up the last of the fungicide they got right now. If anybody wants a copy of that, I’ll be glad to send it to them. It’s made of baking soda. Outside of that, I think it’s just rotating between uh Funin X and Dacanil is what I use. I wouldn’t use Faltan in this weather. Faltan will burn. Beamil that that’s another one of the good ones. OK, and not a single question by Japanese beetles. Well, we’re gonna take a short break here and we’ll be right back after these messages. Well, that’s our red hot special for this Saturday night. I kind of like the title. I think it was very apropos for this particular day when we had the group out. Uh, we do this periodically in the spring of the year and, uh, this is the last tour we’re doing for this year. We do it in the spring of the year because, uh, uh, we don’t wanna do it when the temperature is 90 degrees and humidity is 90%, which is not supposed to happen in June, but anyway, it did. As we look back on some of the highlights of this show, remember, if you’re watering, don’t sprinkle, don’t get out every night with a hose and sprinkle things. You’re gonna just get the surface of the soil wet, and that’s gonna drive the root system closer to the surface of the soil will dry it even quicker. So when you water water every week to 10 days in water deep. Japanese beetles, they’re here. They’ve just arrived this week and uh 7 is still the best control that I know of. Uh, but, uh, there are some organic approaches new on the market, and we’ll be talking about those as the season goes along, so that wraps it up, uh, for our last show for this spring, and we’ll see you sometime in the fall of the year for another version of, uh, these hour long shows, so. The senior Citizens East Organization, thanks for coming. We’ll see you soon. Have a happy trip home. Thank you. Fred Wy, The Weekend Gardener’s hot summer special is sponsored by Kroger, America’s favorite floral shop, and by Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse helping add value to your home. From our archives, I really hope you’ve enjoyed Fred Wisy, the weekend gardener, once again, uh, again, even this year here in 2025, I started getting emails from people. Can you bring back the Fred Wishy stories? We haven’t seen a lot of those and, uh, the great thing about having Fred in the building, Joe, is that when I was starting out gardening, I’d be able to see him in the hallway. Hey Fred, how do we keep the weeds away from my tomatoes? And he said, put the tomato down then take old newspapers and put it around to keep the weeds down, but enough. For the available to water the tomatoes. I still do it to this day, and tomatoes love it. You talk about iconic. I mean, 27 years ago I think he passed away in 1998 and he was still working here and he was still doing his specials his calling shows, and he passed away in 1998, decades later. People still talk about him. Well, think about his remarkable history. Fred was one of the first employees in the Channel 11 newsroom when the station went on in the 1950s. They brought him down here from Chicago. Fred Witchy anchors our 6:15 report, a complete and comprehensive film report on today’s happenings in Kentucky. And he was a political. Reporter, hard news reporter, he, he covered breaking news. — He was out on uh crime news and then and
— carried — his own camera around his film camera in the
— late 60s, he came up with the franchise. He wanted to do the gardening reports uh because he became the farm and garden director. That was a big deal and the current farm and garden director, a man named Barney Arnold had retired. But, but the farm and garden reports didn’t apply to everybody in Okolona and in Linden and in uh Portland neighborhood, not your casual gardener, so they said, why don’t you do gardening advice? And he, he wasn’t an expert gardener, but he learned to be one. That’s the son of a good reporter. You learn what you need to learn, and he did a great job at it. I mean, I remember, I, it’s funny, do you remember him being a straight reporter not before the Weekend Gardener part? Because for me, I’m growing up as a kid watching the station and that, but the Weekend Gardener uh reports really started blossoming through the 70s. I mean, that’s what he was known as. I mean, I grew up always seeing him live on the 5:30 with you and Gene. He do. Calling shows I think um it’s something amazing that he’s still there through all the decades is just a weekend gardener, and I mean I didn’t even know about the first act of his career here until later when I started working here looking at the archives. Well, for a while they had him doing both because they weren’t sure about this, and they would park the weekend gardener on Friday at 6 p.m. is when they originally aired, of course, right before the weekend and uh so Fred would do hard news during the week and sometime some some way he found a way to shoot a gardening story. And then the feedback was so amazing, the station said you just should do this full time. He covered all sorts of cool stuff like at the fair. That was his time at the fair. He went to each specific part of the fair and talked about everything that was agricultural. He talked about, I think one particular year in the 80s, it was really bad for tobacco that year in this special, he talks about the drought of 1983, apparently that was a big deal and he was so on every single thing that affected flowers, plants. I mean, everybody loved him because he’s so knowledgeable. Well thanks Joe for listening to our viewers and getting into the archives and finding what they really wanted to see for a while. We’ve got a lot of Fred’s stories still here at the station and we, we promise we’ll bring them out. All right, well, — there’s plenty more to choose from for Joe
— Fedly. I’m Doug Profit, and uh we hope you’ve enjoyed this, uh, reliving of Fred Wishy’s great time here on WHAS TV from the WHS 11 archives.