Episode 3307

- [Narrator] On this "Volunteer Gardener," Rita Venable visits with a homeowner who began gardening during the pandemic. Now a native plant enthusiast, she's converted most of her existing landscape to good-performing natives. Biodynamic farmer Jeff Poppen uses a lot of compost. He's rewarded with plenty of good worms such as nightcrawlers and red wigglers that aerate the soil and provide fertility. But there's a bad worm that's now confirmed to be in 35 states. This jumping worm is destructive to soil health. Jeff talks to an entomologist to learn more. Doing plant research and being thoughtful about plant choices brings rewards for years to come.

- If you do even just a little bit of research on plants in the pandemic, you will find a huge increase in the interest of gardening in general. Corey Chatis bought her home in 2012 and she inherited her landscape. Now she has made big changes since 2021 and the pandemic. Corey, tell us about it.

- Thanks, Rita. Well I inherited, as you said, a lot of the landscaping and I'm in an urban neighborhood in East Nashville and so one of the things that's important is to make the landscape accessible right next to the sidewalk so people feel like it's still cared for and not untidy.

- [Rita] And you have done that with your beautiful sweetbay magnolias.

- Thank you.

- [Rita] Which are a host plant for the tiger swallowtail, I might add plus a wonderful fragrance and tell us about your coreopsis here.

- [Corey] This is a lanceleaf coreopsis, which if you can believe has been in the ground less than six months and it has just been super happy right in the front here and I have to say one of the great joys of transitioning to native gardening is people will come by my street and tell me how happy my garden makes them and that they look for its development over time. So it's wonderful.

- That's wonderful. And then in the fall, you have these fantastic aromatic asters.

- Aromatic asters. Yes, they are trying to take over the world, these aromatic asters but in the October-November timeframe, they are covered with purple blossoms and covered with these. It almost sounds like a hive, how much activity they have.

- [Rita] Oh, that's so cool and stuck in there, you have a little bitty wild indigo too.

- [Corey] I have two aiptasia in there, yes, that are a nice counterpart. They're trying to fight out for space but I also have some blue-stemmed goldenrod sprinkled throughout too.

- Oh, that's wonderful. What a show that will be in the fall.

- Yes.

- And it's a beautiful show in the summer too.

- Thank you.

- And in the process of changing all your landscape over-

- Yes.

- To your purposeful living as you have told me about, you have gotten two certifications here.

- [Corey] I do, I started off with the Tennessee Smart Yard which is a wonderful program where you get to learn a ton about soil and pest management and water mitigation. So I greatly enjoyed getting that certification which is free and then most recently, I just achieved the Wild Ones Native Habitat certification which was quite a rigorous process that I really enjoyed submitting myself for.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you.

- [Rita] Corey, so this all came about after 2021. Were you a gardener before this?

- I was not a gardener before this, much to my mother's chagrin. She is a wonderful gardener but I did not seem to inherit her inclination until the pandemic. So it started off when I had three mature Yoshino cherries in this backyard.

- Right here, right?

- Right here that were failing and I sadly had to take them out and since I had inherited all of this landscaping from the prior owner, taking those trees out made me realize that I could make my garden my own and so the first native plant that I put in was this wonderful bur oak there.

- Okay.

- And I then started thinking about what I wanted my garden to be and I started reading up on things and I discovered Doug Tallamy's book, "Bringing Nature Home" which was a wonderful inspiration to me about utilizing whatever land that you have to be beneficial not just to humans but to the environment and to as many plants and animals as possible and so that really was the catalyst for me to start thinking about converting my entire garden to native plants. So I started doing a ton of research into all the varieties of plants that call Tennessee home and started looking into what trees I might want to put in and what bushes and what perennials and I quickly became overwhelmed and realized that I am not a garden designer and I didn't need to be. So that is when I started researching native garden designers and I hired someone from outside of Chattanooga, Dennis Bishop, who then came on site. He drove up for the day and took all of the measurements and assessed the sun and the soil and everything and he drew a design plan to scale for me so that I knew exactly where to plant everything.

- [Rita] You executed his plan.

- I did.

- Yourself.

- Yes, I was the muscle behind the operation. I took out Nandina, I took out many different shrubs, privets and all sorts of other non-natives and cleared the beds and then purchased and put everything in myself, which gives you a great sense of accomplishment to know that you were the one who planted everything that's here now.

- Yeah, that's so cool.

- Yeah.

- That's so cool and I love your purple coneflower, which is kind of a signature species of the native plant garden.

- Absolutely.

- [Rita] It's just such a good performer.

- [Corey] Absolutely, yeah.

- [Rita] What else have you got in here?

- [Corey] Well, we have some mountain mint. This is hairy mountain mint, which I did not realize was gonna get quite that tall. So I wouldn't have put it in the front if I had known but lesson learned. I try to think of all of my planting as an experiment. I also have a couple of different varieties of viburnum. Those are the shrubs there.

- [Rita] Love that.

- [Corey] And you'll see we have some more of the aromatic asters back here as well.

- Gorgeous orange milkweed right here. Asclepias tuberosa, host plant for the monarch butterfly. Also a fantastic nectaring plant for just about anything, especially a lot of small butterflies and bees and you got a little bit of beardtongue right here.

- Yes.

- Which the bees also love.

- Yes.

- Fantastic. Oh my gosh, southern magnolia. I love it. Oh, and the fragrance is so heady. It's just fantastic.

- It is.

- Did you plant this?

- I did not. These two wonderful mature magnolias I inherited from the previous owner and I love them very much. There used to be a third which was over here and sadly during one of our bad storms, it toppled over and so while I was very sad about that, it gave me an opportunity to plant another native tree. So this is a black gum tree that will eventually become a pretty mature canopy tree and trees are just a huge priority for me in my yard. I love them so much and Dennis and I had many arguments about how many trees I could cram into my third of an acre.

- But you have a great shaded space back here.

- Yes.

- It's at least 10 degrees cooler probably than up here.

- Yes, it's wonderful to have this area back here. I can put more of the shade-loving perennials like the heuchera as well and I have some euonymus shrubs in the back that also like the shade.

- Now you told me before about your philosophy of ground covers is if it's probably less than 10 inches and it's not doing anything wrong, you're just gonna leave it.

- Yes.

- Because you don't have time.

- I work full-time and I don't do well in the heat and so I try to just manage my weed management in a way that's realistic and so if it's something native like a clover and it's not bothering anyone or crowding out the plants that I planted, I just let it be. It makes the bunny family that lives in my yard very happy. So I try to take a minimalist approach.

- [Rita] Okay, how is your soil here?

- [Corey] It's a pretty heavy clay soil but I've just adjusted to that. I tried blueberries the first year and it just was not meant to be. They don't do well in clay.

- They like the acid too.

- [Corey] Yeah, so in a way though it limits your choices in a good way so you become less overwhelmed with what will do well.

- [Rita] Yeah.

- And it's just trial and error but I haven't done soil amendment except for when I expanded the beds in the front yard. I did sheet mulching with some organic mulch. But that aside, I have just worked with the soil that I have.

- Okay. Sometimes the spaces between our homes and our neighbor's homes can be really awkward. I love the way you have used the red cedar here, the native eastern red cedar and the beautiful roses and the American holly back there. Can you tell us the cultivar names you used on each of these?

- Sure, this is the Brodie juniper and the reason that we selected that is that it does not get enormous like some of the native junipers do.

- Which will be 50-plus feet.

- Yes, and coming all the way into the yard.

- Yeah.

- And so Dennis' philosophy which I think is the same as Wild Ones is only use a cultivar if you really need to because there's an attribute of it that is the way it'll work within your particular garden.

- [Rita] Exactly and in a suburban lot, this is just what works.

- [Corey] Yes, and they've been really happy. They've been in for less than two years and are already doing really well.

- And it's a female, so you're gonna have lots of berries here.

- Yes, so many berries-

- Incredible.

- This year, yes.

- That's great.

- Yes.

- And the birds will love it.

- Yes, and so just to mix it up a little bit, I also have some native roses. Those are prairie roses that will soon climb up the fence and provide some additional screening and down here is an American holly and that too is a cultivar, it's called Satyr Hill and the reason that I selected that one is that it also will not get enormous and it will grow to fill this space but not get any larger to infringe upon the neighboring plants. One of the things that was important to me is to take into account the mature size of all of the shrubs and trees to make sure that I was setting them up to be successful and healthy even in their mature state.

- Exactly, now you've told me you talk to your plants. Do you talk to your trees too and your shrubs?

- I talk to all of them. I give them pretty much daily encouragement.

- That's great.

- I tell them how beautiful they are. I tell them what a good job they're doing and I'm sure my neighbors think I'm batty but for me, it's just part of the relationship, that I'm just so happy to have them in my yard and they give me so much joy that I try to give them some appreciation back.

- That's awesome, that's awesome. I think they feel the vibe.

- I think so, I think so.

- Anyway, you do. Okay, so this.

- This is, I think, it's hard to pick a favorite but this might be one of my favorite trees in the yard. This is a yellowwood tree.

- Oh, I love yellowwoods.

- [Corey] Which is not all that common and was sort of hard to find but it is beautiful in four seasons. When it gets a bit more mature, every other year, it's gonna have these wonderful white flowers. It hasn't flowered yet but I eagerly await the year that it does and in the winter when all the leaves drop off, the bark is this beautiful silvery gray color and it's very architectural in terms of how the branches form.

- [Rita] Gorgeous, and the one thing you inherited that you love and I do too-

- Yes.

- [Rita] Is your Amsonia here, I've never-

- [Corey] Yes.

- [Rita] Even at Grow Wild in Fairview, I have not seen one this big.

- Yes, this Amsonia.

- How did you do this?

- I did nothing, this just is doing what it wants to do and it's been a wonderful spring bloomer with those beautiful sort of bluish purple flowers and I've added one on either side just to further fill out the bed. But it was a perfect spot for it.

- Thank you so much for letting us come today. This whole landscaping garden is just gorgeous. We've so enjoyed it and I think people have learned a lot.

- Thank you Rita, I appreciate that.

- I always ask all my guests, what is your advice to either newbie gardeners or to any gardener?

- I think especially for newbie gardeners which I was just three years ago, I would say start small. Pick one small bed or even a portion of a bed and then look into what native plants will do well there. Just be mindful of how much sun it gets and what kind of soil you have and how much space you have and then pick a small assortment of native plants and go from there. They will bring you great joy and it's more manageable than trying to overhaul your entire garden at once.

- [Rita] That's great advice, that's my advice too. Even if it's just around a mailbox or just in a container.

- Start somewhere.

- Yes. And now you've gone from nothing to over 60 native plants in your yard, that's fantastic.

- [Corey] Thank you, more to come.

- Thank you again.

- I appreciate it. Thank you, Rita.

- An advantage to the biodynamic farming method where we use a lot of compost, cover crops, crop rotations and such is that the ground gets cultivated, but not by me. Look at this ground, how it all looks like someone's been in there cultivating. This has all been worked over by earthworms. These are earthworm castings that then crush and crumble and give the soil the best till that it could possibly have and also it hasn't rained in probably three or four weeks and you can scrape that topsoil down and look at all that moisture. Yeah, the earthworms really know how to make and maintain good soil. Again, the good soil helps them to propagate their species. That's what life wants to do. These lowly creatures are of the greatest value for the earth. In an acre of soil, there can be 50,000 earthworms and 10 tons of earth passes through an earthworm every year. This really makes good soils. Gardeners do everything they can to encourage earthworm activity. You can see the slickness on the earthworm, the slime that's on the outside of the earthworm coats their tunnels that go into the soil and those tunnels can go several feet down and when they collapse, that action is not dissimilar to what we do when we plow. But it's a lot more gentle. Earthworms are the best soil tillers and they don't have much of a sense of smell but they get by in the world through their sense of touch. Charles Darwin was a scientist in the 19th century who studied earthworms for many, many decades and finally wrote a book published in 1881 about earthworms and the formation of vegetable mold through the action of earthworms with observations on their habits. He noticed in his garden that earthworms lived under the rocks and brought up fine soil, which then caused the rock to sink down a little bit every year, about a fifth of an inch per year and it's this activity that happens in the digestion system of the earthworm where they have a gizzard and in the gizzard, there's lime and silica, the oxides of calcium and silicon that then neutralize these humic carbonic acids that help to break down the minerals in the soil so it puts them in a colloidal state so they're available for plant growth but don't leech out when it rains. You can see that slime on there. That's the greatest stuff for your garden and then you get all these little tunnels and these tunnels then have that little bit of slime on 'em. That's what really breaks up this clay and turns it into humus and we get these good soils when we add our compost and leaves and various things of this nature, organic matter onto the soil. Of course, they like a limey soil too. So we want to have lime in the ground and you can tell a lot about your soils. Now when I see earthworms that are small and skinny and pink, I know the soil's not very good. I like earthworms that have a lot of these colors in 'em and this shine to 'em. It tells me I got good soil. Earthworm eggs are omnipresent, probably through the activity of birds. So we don't have to add worms to our soil particularly. What we need to do is add organic matter, compost, chopped up leaves, old hay, rotten wood products, even a piece of cardboard laid down on the ground becomes earthworm food and in a matter of a rain or two on it and you'll lift it up and see earthworms underneath it. They're truly the greatest boon for the organic gardener and so when I think of my favorite animal, my mind goes from the lofty eagles down to the lowly, wonderful golden creatures of the soil, the common red wiggler earthworm. Now that I've shared with you all the beneficial results of earthworm activity, I'd like to share with you some of the negative effects of one particular species called the Asian jumping worm. Now when I first saw these in my compost piles, I thought I was growing these great worms that had all this energy. But a little research proved that they're actually not good for the ground. They seem to eat just the litter on the surface but don't make the earthworm castings that we find so beneficial in gardening. Here to help us understand more about this Asian jumping worm is Midhula Gireesh from the University of Tennessee. It's so nice to see you. Thank you for coming.

- Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.

- Yeah. So describe a little bit about what these worms look like. I know that they wriggle a lot.

- Right. So they can grow up to six to eight inches in length here and they are mostly darkly-pigmented and they have like a metallic sheen and they have a clitellum that is like very peculiar about them. It is like a milky white color.

- [Jeff] The thing that goes around.

- The white thing goes around.

- Yeah, the white band. So yeah, it covers the entire body.

- Not just the top.

- Right. So as their European counterparts, it's kind of erased and it's like pinkish clitellum.

- [Jeff] Okay.

- But this covers the entire body and like yeah, as the name suggests, like as you were mentioning, they are very active and they act vigorously when they are disturbed and you can see them thrashing. They produce cocoons.

- Yes, like regular worms.

- Right, and these are like darkly-colored again and like dirt-colored, which is very difficult-

- Hard to find.

- Exactly, which is difficult to figure out, right? And so when the temperature warms up in spring, like let's say when it hits like 50 degree Fahrenheit is when the cocoon starts hatching and it takes awhile to attain maturity, like 90 to 120 days probably.

- Three or four months.

- Yeah, and that is their life cycle. It's mostly animal.

- Yeah. But then they make more cocoons.

- Right, so yeah, then this continues and then the cocoons again over winter and they just like survive the harsh winter.

- Yeah.

- And again the next spring season. It's repeated, yeah.

- So where are people finding these?

- So it can be anywhere, unfortunately. It can be in your urban parks. It can be like in your suburban yards.

- Yeah.

- It can be like in your compost piles, like along the road. So it's pretty much everywhere, yeah.

- Yeah, and so this is not good for our soils then.

- Yeah, so what happens is it feeds on the most critical layer of the organic matter, the leaf litters and everything.

- Right on top.

- Yeah, as compared to the European or the nightcrawlers that is like common. So what happens, they reproduce like very fast. So it's quick and their feeding is really quick. So imagine it's like eating like a more faster rate. Like it's depleting all the organic matter.

- [Jeff] Right, so instead of turning back into soil-

- [Midhula] Yeah.

- [Jeff] It just makes more of these worms.

- Right, and their castings are mostly like ground coffee grains and yeah.

- So the castings look like ground coffee grains.

- [Midhula] Yeah, it's like dry and like yeah.

- They're not that moist.

- Right, it's not moist.

- Round stuff, yeah.

- It's like dry and like yeah.

- [Jeff] Wow, and so how are we gonna control these?

- So unfortunately, we do not have like a, eradication is something that we can do from our part. Like just stop spreading Asian jumping worms.

- And how are they spread?

- Right. So it's mainly spread through human activity. Like probably when we go for hiking and we come back with the cocoons.

- Get the cocoons on our shoes.

- Yeah. We are not very aware of it. So make sure that you brush off your boots or hiking boots when you come back and also make sure that the compost, if you are locally sourcing the compost, make sure that it is properly polarized. Solarized, sorry.

- Yeah.

- Solarized so that it kills the cocoons.

- [Jeff] What's the temperature range for these Asian jumping worms in the soil?

- So for the solarization, it's advocated at like around 104 to 140-ish, yeah.

- That will kill them?

- Right, so if it is in the sun for that long consistently for three days or so, that is going to take care of the Asian jumping worms.

- Okay.

- I mean the cocoons.

- Right, that'll take care of the cocoons.

- Yeah.

- And if you put some soap or something on the ground, can we bring 'em to the surface to gather them?

- Correct, so if you know if you have like an Asian jumping worm issue in your lawn or yard, like you can either use a tea tree meal so that it has saponin and that kind of you can just pour and this is not going to kill the worms but it will just like make them come to the surface so you can just see them.

- You can take 'em and kill 'em.

- And handpick or also you can pour some mustard. Like if you can use a mustard, ground mustard.

- Ground mustard?

- Yeah, and probably make it like add one gallon water and probably make a mix of it and you can just like pour-

- Put that on the ground.

- Slowly and that also kind of irritates them and you can see them thrashing. If you see a worm, it's like just put them in a bag, a clear plastic container and seal them and probably you can leave them directly under sunlight for a few hours and then probably it goes to the trash.

- So the best thing is just to get it in a bag and then either put it out in the sun or put it in a freezer or something like that that'll kill it.

- Yeah, you can put them in the freezer too. Leave it like for a few hours and then probably trash them, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Wow, well if people find them, should they let UT know about it?

- You can contact your local extension agent and probably you can report to them.

- Just to let people know.

- Yeah, exactly.

- It seems like a good idea.

- Mm hmm.

- Wow, and do they foresee this being a big problem in horticulture?

- So I mean yeah, they are there. Unfortunately we cannot prevent that spread because like they are widespread. Approximately 34 states already have them.

- 34 states already, huh?

- Mm hmm. That's so far that I know have already an Asian jumping worm infestation. So yeah, once this is a problem with invasive species, right?

- Invasive species can be a problem.

- Yeah.

- [Jeff] How long have they been around here?

- [Midhula] So it's dated back in the 1800s.

- Oh really?

- Right? Yeah.

- [Jeff] Oh okay, so they've been around for a long time.

- [Midhula] Right, right.

- [Jeff] But just not very many of them.

- Yeah, it's getting slowly spread.

- Slowly spread.

- Yeah.

- [Jeff] Well if we have pots that we've gotten nursery stock from and we want to use 'em again, how would we sterilize 'em?

- Dispose everything, the soil and make sure if you're reusing the pot, clean them really well and probably dip them in 10% weed solution and sterilize them really well and then probably yeah, that should be fine.

- Yeah, and just for the backyard gardeners, how's it gonna affect us?

- Right, so as I mentioned before, it's going to feed on the critical layer of the organic matter, the leaf litters and so it kind of depletes the nutrients and that will also affect the native plants to grow up, right? Like they are deprived of the essential nutrients that they need to survive.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Well we gotta have organic matter to grow stuff.

- Right.

- Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us.

- Right, thank you.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at VolunteerGardener.org and find us on these platforms.