Episode 3308

- [Narrator] On this "Volunteer Gardener" Annette Shrader visits with a self-described plant collector who set out to design a garden next to the house. She wanted a space that was cohesive, had some symmetry and a bit of formality. Then she got to work. It's absolutely beautiful. Then, Tammy Algood, visits Granddaddy's Farm in Estill Springs where mum is the word. We'll learn how to care for this autumn favorite. Plus, a lesson on bokashi composting. Join us. First, deciding where to put the plants you love is the most exciting and rewarding part of designing your own garden space.

- Woodlawn, Tennessee, a beautiful location. There's a gardener here. There's a new garden and what she has done and created here is a painter's palette. Rebecca Britt, you're the gardener that had a plan. And you have a history I know that. So tell us, when you started this, what was the end result that you were hoping for?

- Well, when I started this in 2015, there was nothing here.

- A blank slate.

- [Rebecca] A blank slate, tabula rasa. I'm just a collector of plants, always have been, but I didn't want it to look messy. And so I started just sketching out a design that had some symmetry, some formality to it, so it wouldn't just look like chaos. And so I started with just the circular bed here with four paths radiating out. It would be paths that would be easy to get to. I could get to any part of my garden at any time. I could push a wheelbarrow through it without any trouble. I started with this circle right here. And then forming the four paths that go out from it.

- [Annette] They radiate, don't they?

- [Rebecca] Right. They radiate out from it just like the sun. And I chose this Little Gem magnolia to put in the middle, because it's gonna be green year-round and it's not gonna get enormous.

- [Annette] Exactly.

- [Rebecca] It's gonna stay small.

- [Annette] It'll have the fragrance of an evergreen.

- [Rebecca] Yes, so I keep this middle bed kind of minimal. And in the springtime there's a lot of daffodils and tulips that I encircle it with. So in the summertime, I keep it relatively bare with the St. John Wart.

- [Annette] I see those.

- Yes, so there's the liriope. And then just kinda filled in everything outside of that. And it's just a garden that has a lot of room for expansion whenever I need to.

- And so you chose the limestone gravel. Was there a reason for that for your paths?

- [Rebecca] I have been very fickle with the pathways and a lot of trial and error. I started with brown gravel, decided I didn't like that. Even used kitty litter at one time, which gave a nice little, soft crunch. And then this year just kind of filled in with some more. I just like the gray better than the brown. It just gives a little bit more contrast.

- [Annette] So you left the kitty litter under there.

- [Rebecca] It's under there. Lots and lots of kitty litter.

- Let's choose a path and go down it, because you've got many wonderful plants in here and I want us to show as many as we can.

- [Rebecca] Sure, okay.

- [Annette] Tell us about some plants in here. Back there, that is the zinnias?

- Zinnias, yes. Those are the zinnias, the cleome, and the celosia. They're all volunteers. Volunteer annuals that just kinda re-seed themselves every year. The zinnias, I specifically pick the dwarf, or lilliputian varieties because I found that the traditional zinnias get so tall.

- [Annette] Oh yeah.

- [Rebecca] They kind of overshadow everything else.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] They fall over. So I just prefer the dwarf variety of the zinnias.

- And this lovely cleome is gonna emit some fragrances sooner or later when you brush against it. And then the celosia right here. I love that burgundy color in all of this. And I love this purple plant right here.

- The pincushion flower.

- I love that.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- [Annette] It's such a bright, fresh color.

- I like to make flower bouquets. So a lot of my choices in the garden are flowers that I can incorporate into bouquets to give to others.

- [Annette] Yes, and let's say it's next door neighbor is such a complementary that cone flower right there.

- [Rebecca] Yes, uh-hmm. There's a couple of different cone flowers throughout the garden. So again, pollinators, of course, are something that I look for. We have 60 acres here that are in specifically a conservation reserve program for pollinators. So just like to attract the butterflies and bees.

- [Annette] Now, which butterfly prefers that orange plant over there?

- [Rebecca] Oh goodness, which one doesn't? The swallowtails, of course, love them. Later in the summer, early fall, the monarchs will come through.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] This orange butterfly weed, along with a lot of milkweed is naturally occurring back here on the farm in the fields. So I thought, well-

- [Annette] Well sure, it's your land.

- [Rebecca] Let's include it in the garden.

- I agree.

- And bring some of those butterflies and bees here.

- [Annette] Okay. And I noticed that you also have some lambs there and it has a particular purpose for you, doesn't it?

- [Rebecca] Well, the lambs here, of course, is drought tolerant. It can take the heat. It's a nice ground cover. A lot of people will remove the stalks to encourage the leaf growth, but I've noticed how much the bees love the flowers on the stalk. So I intentionally leave them.

- [Annette] This naturally caught my eye, an agapanthus. So where did you get one that's hardy for us?

- [Rebecca] I don't know. I found it at one of our many Mennonite run nurseries in the area.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] That's where I get a lot of my plants because they are very healthy.

- [Annette] Yes, they are.

- [Rebecca] Homegrown plants.

- [Annette] Yeah, and then I see something I missed. I missed that you have strawberries.

- [Rebecca] Yes, with so much rain, this was not the best strawberry spring, but, yes, I have a raised bed over here and this one over here of strawberries. Again, through trial and error, I learned not to put them right into the ground because they will quickly take over, spread and take over the garden.

- [Annette] Right.

- [Rebecca] So I keep them confined to raised beds.

- My ear is bringing me to a turning point, but I love your fountain.

- [Rebecca] There's a frog in there.

- [Annette] Oh, a frog in there.

- [Rebecca] He's swimming around in there right now.

- [Annette] Oh, he's just chilling.

- [Rebecca] Yeah.

- [Annette] And the rocks you've surrounded this with are locally harvested, aren't they?

- [Rebecca] Oh, of course. We have a couple of creeks and springs that run through our property. So every single rock you see in this garden, I specifically picked and brought back. Whenever I'm down there at the creek, I look for rocks that are fossils, or just good flat rocks.

- [Annette] You sure you're not my child?

- [Rebecca] I'm a rock collector for sure.

- Me too. Now then right here, this, of course, is a crepe myrtle.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- [Annette] You've got something interesting winding its way. Tell us about this.

- [Rebecca] That is a native clematis. You can see some of the kind of bell shaped flowers.

- [Annette] Oh, over here.

- [Rebecca] Yes. Some of the blooms are on there.

- [Annette] In there?

- [Rebecca] Uh-huh. I'd always been told you can't just take a miniature rose and stick it in your garden and expect it to live. So challenge accepted.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] And it has been here for several years now and is very happy.

- [Annette] And has never really tried to grow bigger, has it?

- No, it has stayed small.

- [Annette] It is truly a miniature.

- Yes.

- Okay. I see some bright eyes right here. What is this?

- [Rebecca] It's just a multicolor daisy, but isn't that pretty?

- [Annette] It is.

- [Rebecca] I like daisies. And so I just noticed this one was unique.

- [Annette] It is.

- [Rebecca] Not your traditional Shasta and Montauk, and so I just decided.

- [Annette] The foliage is also interesting.

- [Rebecca] It is.

- [Annette] The ferny-like, I like that.

- [Rebecca] It is, it looks different.

- What would you call this rose?

- [Rebecca] This is a petite knock-out. Of course, you can see that it is between blooms right now.

- [Annette] Exactly.

- [Rebecca] But one thing I love about it and makes it unique from all the other knock-outs is even when the blooms are finished, they stay on there and then they keep a firm grasp on those stems. And as the color fades, they still kind of retain some interest.

- [Annette] Beauty, and you know what, a second bit.

- Now I do have the one behind it, the sunny.

- The yellow one.

- Yes, the sunny yellow knock-out because I love the smell.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] It's the one knockout that actually has a scent and it's a beautiful lemon kind of scent.

- [Annette] Yeah, that's true. Okay. I note that you do have quite a bit of lavender. Now you are successfully growing that here?

- [Rebecca] Well, it depends on which types you purchase.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Rebecca] You have to look for some that are gonna be cold hardy for our typical winters. This is a Spanish lavender and it does well. It's much more cold hardy than maybe the French lavender.

- [Annette] Well, and you know, you do have a mulch here that does help you in preserving them over the winter. This pine straw mulch is very good to give it some extra protection in here. All right. Further up here, I see that you have a beautiful Althea bush. The big purple there.

- [Rebecca] Yes, that is blue chiffon. Did not love all of the rain that we got this spring. You know, it likes the dry heat.

- [Annette] Yes. Well, right under its beautiful blue chiffon bloom I have a plant that I love, your agastache.

- [Rebecca] Yes, agastache. I chose that particular one for the color. It's just very unique.

- [Annette] Yes, it is. All right. And then I'm gonna choose another flower. It's a short one. It's right here. The short balloon flower.

- [Rebecca] Yes.

- [Annette] And, you know, they are the prettiest flower and many people have the tall ones, but this one literally is like a little balloon and you can just almost sit and watch. There's one right there ready to pop. They just open just like that.

- [Rebecca] It is, and that one I've had for several years. And it has stayed about that size.

- [Annette] Yes, it does.

- [Rebecca] And as long as I deadhead it, it just keeps producing.

- [Annette] It does. And at the end of this beautiful row, I can't help but note how vivid and bright your tall summer phlox is there.

- [Rebecca] Yes, it is tall. And so I try to put it at the back of the garden. You'll find it in just about every bed of this garden. Butterflies love it. It can do well as a cut flower in bouquets.

- [Annette] Absolutely.

- [Rebecca] I do have to work hard to keep it under control and keep it from spreading all over the garden.

- [Annette] Well, and you know, that's a good thing too, but I do note that this one seems to not have the powdery mildew.

- [Rebecca] No.

- And it's because the shiny leaf surface, it's a different, I don't know, but I have a native one that's like that, that the butterflies really love. And this is just a beautiful collection of color and variety that's in this quadrant of your garden.

- [Rebecca] Well, thank you.

- Tell me two plants that maybe you couldn't live without. What would they be?

- Well, definitely the daylilies. This time of year, this big orange is kinda the king of the garden.

- [Annette] It is.

- [Rebecca] When you walk into the garden, your eyes are immediately drawn to it. It doesn't need a lot of deadheading. As I've collected the lilies, we talked about planning to fail and failing to plan. Some of the trial and error has been labeling them by their official names. I started out carefully labeling all of them with a sharpie. And then realized a year later it was gone. So, everybody wants a division, a clump of some of my daylilies. And so I've taken to just calling this one Big Orange. Every garden needs some white in it to give it some pop.

- [Annette] Exactly.

- [Rebecca] These make beautiful cut flowers for bouquets and just look at the number, the amount of blooms. And it has an extended bloom time. When I purchase, I'm always looking for extended bloom time and re-bloomers.

- [Annette] Right. This does re-bloom?

- [Rebecca] Yes, it does.

- [Annette] Okay, and, you know, the bud count. Also, I like the height of the bloomscape too. It's not intrusive.

- [Rebecca] That's right.

- It is shorter so I concur with you. I would definitely say I would choose these two. Rebecca, what a pleasure it has been to walk your garden and see what you laid out and how you've accomplished your goals. It's fabulous. And I'd say you would be a five star garden.

- [Rebecca] Oh, well, thank you.

- [Annette] Thank you for allowing us to walk your paths and pick your mind and see what you've done here.

- [Rebecca] I've enjoyed your visit.

- [Annette] Thank you.

- [Rebecca] Thank you.

- Mum's the word, literally, here in Estill Springs, and I'm visiting with my longtime friend, Andrew Dixon of Granddaddy's Farm. And this is mum heaven.

- [Andrew] Yes. We are in peak season right here at Granddaddy's Farm as well. And the mums are just looking wonderful.

- [Tammy] And, Andrew, you start these.

- We do, so 1st of June before we get, 'cause we're busy on the other side of the farm, too, growing wheat and we pot on the 1st of June. They come to us four-inch rooted cuttings. This is our mid-size and there's three plants in here. This is our small, there's just one plant over here. And then our jumbos in the back, those actually have five plants in those.

- [Tammy] Oh my goodness.

- [Andrew] They are big.

- [Tammy] Exactly.

- [Andrew] So we pot 'em there the 1st of June. We set 'em right here on the bed and we would pot 'em under the tree out here, get the whole family and the neighbors out. And we go to potting, we can do 'em all in a day, and then the irrigation waters 'em and fertilizes them and we just keep maintaining 'em until they get nice and big and full.

- [Tammy] Okay, so Andrew, when you pot these, do you pot them all in the same pot so you know which size, so they don't get re-potted.

- [Andrew] Sure.

- [Tammy] They're in one pot.

- [Andrew] Yeah, so we pot 'em under the tree, set 'em right here where the customer's gonna pick 'em up and purchase 'em right here on the bed.

- Gotcha, okay. So you say this is your mid-size, but it's pretty large to me.

- Yes.

- And if I were to purchase this, what tips could you give me because you're obviously a mum pro at this because I want to extend the life of this as long as I possibly can when I get it home. So give me some tips, some care tips.

- Yeah, so first thing when you're selecting a mum, you wanna make sure you've got, like this one's a perfect stage to buy it. You've got some blooms, so it's good and showy right now, but then all these others are just now coming in. So you're gonna get a long life out of this. And with good maintenance care, you can go all the way through Thanksgiving without any trouble and they should 'cause you need to keep 'em for Thanksgiving as well. So when you get 'em home, they love full sun, but they can do the part shade as well. And you don't have to over water 'em, but they need a little water. If you're in full sun, some water once a day is good. Don't worry about putting a saucer underneath it so they could have good drainage. They don't like to sit in water, but if you are gonna be gone for a few days, you might sneak one under there to give them a little more life out of it, but yeah. And there's no need of, a little bit of Miracle-Gro is okay, but don't overdo it because we're wanting the plant to reproduce. And, of course, fertilizer is gonna promote vegetation and the flowers are the reproductive of the plant. So we want to see the flowers at this point, so.

- [Tammy] So all the plant knows to do is to bloom and go to seed.

- [Andrew] Right.

- [Tammy] So once you've got, there's not even any on here, but once you've got a bloom that's starting to go down, do you cut it off, or?

- You can, and it's up where, you know, your front step, or something you wanna be good and showy, yeah, just snip them off, or kinda take your fingernails, and just pinch it off or pop 'em off. And that's just fine to do, so. That way you can start seeing your new growth underneath 'cause down in here you see all those little bitty ones. They're not even thinking about showing any color yet.

- [Tammy] Right.

- [Andrew] But they're gonna shoot on up and replace those too.

- [Tammy] Okay, so if I've got a spent bloom, am I snipping it off just below the bloom, or do I go down further than that?

- [Andrew] I would just go right below the bloom. So you just go right there and then that way you're gonna see these others coming back too.

- Okay, got it. Okay, so now let's just say that we've gone through the season and now I'm starting to think, gosh, that was so beautiful. I wanna plant this.

- Sure.

- Well, mums are perennials, so, and you're good to plant 'em, but my recommendation is you need to plant it as soon as you get it. And if you can get 'em the 1st of September, go ahead and get 'em then, plant them then, water 'em in real good, but, Tammy, if you wait 'til Thanksgiving and it's brown it's dead. You're not gonna resurrect it. You might get lucky a couple people, but plant as soon as you can. That way you can start getting a root system before winter sets in, so.

- [Tammy] And do you need to mulch these?

- [Andrew] It's personal preference, but everyone's got their own opinion. I tell people, depending on where you're planting 'em. If they're on your main walkway and you're seeing all the time, I would snip the top off once it dies and then mulch it so it looks nice and pretty. Just don't mulch too deep, but if it's not, if it's out in the back somewhere, if you wanna just leave it, it's okay too, and snip it off come spring because some folks think that you snip it off, you could set disease and stuff in over winter. So it's kind of personal preference and where you've got 'em placed at.

- Got it. Okay, so you said full sun, but if it's getting some shade, does that affect the bloom?

- Okay, so one thing we've noticed mum's bloom based on day length. That's what triggers 'em, kinda like soybean planted on the farm. And we've had some customers where they said that, well, my mum never bloomed and the only thing we've connected was they bought it when their buds were really tight, 'cause we've got the rows marked, and if we did a good job with planting, we know what colors are where, but if they left their plants on their front porch and if their front porch lights were on all night long. Well, the mum thought it was still daylight. And so that's why I would buy ones where they're starting to show a little color, then you ain't gotta worry about that.

- [Tammy] Got it. So there's no reason to have to turn it, or anything like that, just let it do its thing.

- [Andrew] Yep, and you turn this pretty side towards you so you can enjoy it.

- And, Andrew, thank you for saying that about the saucer because I'm one of those, I don't like it, you know, running all over the place when you water it. So if you do that when you water, then just pick up the saucer and leave it on.

- Yeah, and that would work. And then otherwise it's just not sitting in water and a saucer could collect the runoff afterwards. And once you start seeing the water running through the pot, if you're watering every day, this potting medium's gonna be soaking it up. Now if you let it get good and dry, if you forgot a couple days, you might need to water a couple extra times in a row throughout the day so you can start absorbing that water again.

- And when you water, do you do it underneath here, or do you do it the lazy way up here?

- So however you wanna do, but that's a good point too, because here at the farm, our irrigation, everything is drip through the bottom because the dryer we can keep the foliage the less likely for disease. So, yes, you can come down through here gentle not to break anything and pour straight in. These mums are wrapping around the pot really good. That's kind of hard to come from the bottom, but yeah, just try not to, you don't have to water the whole foliage. Just we wanna get to the dirt.

- [Tammy] Beautiful. And honestly, they are the biggest, healthiest mums I've ever seen in my life.

- [Andrew] Thank you.

- [Tammy] Thank you for this.

- [Andrew] You're welcome.

- [Tammy] Thank you for letting us come and have a little tutorial from the mum king.

- [Andrew] Oh, thank you.

- [Tammy] Thanks Andrew.

- [Andrew] Anytime, thank you.

- Well, if you don't have room for outdoor compost piles, you might be interested in, well, the fermentation side of getting some nutrients for your plants. Jim Semmens, tell me all about this method of bokashi composting.

- Well, at the Master Gardener class we had the normal composting, but then David Cook introduced us to bokashi, which is a Japanese fermentation process where they've been taking their table scraps and making a liquid fertilizer and they've been doing it for 600 years.

- Well, and that's your goal here really is to get the liquid fertilizer?

- Yes.

- All right, well let's get started. So one thing we need to know is it just doesn't come out of nowhere. You need to start with something.

- You start with your table kitchen scraps, okay? Mostly vegetables, but, actually, bokashi, you could put meat into it if you wanted to, but you need a culture to activate and break that stuff down. It's the same culture that's in your septic tank, or in the P-traps that breaks that kind of food and stuff down.

- All right, so we have our stuff. We have some kitchen scraps here, and now you've got a bucket you've made yourself. Can I see what that looks like in there?

- Yes.

- [Julie] So it's got a top on it to keep it anaerobic, or no air in it.

- [Jim] It's an airtight top. And then you put something down to push it down airtight.

- [Julie] I see you've got the culture on top of there and you have all of your different scraps.

- [Jim] Well, you take and mash it down.

- [Julie] Oh, and that's getting the air out.

- [Jim] That's getting the air out of it then. And then if you put the new stuff on it, you take the culture and it doesn't take a lot. Okay, we get pretty quick with it here. You mash it down and you could kinda chop these up if you wanted to. This is a tablespoon, and you really don't need a whole tablespoon, you just sprinkle some of that culture and that's gonna get activated and then you put your airtight seal on it.

- [Julie] Well, I can hear the liquid down in there already.

- [Jim] I'll show you. This converts those vegetables to a liquid fertilizer in between two to four weeks.

- [Julie] Well, let's see what's in the bottom.

- [Jim] Well, let's see. I actually started this on the 6th of June and we're now on the 24th. Check that out.

- [Julie] Wow.

- [Jim] I mean, that's what you want. And you don't need a lot, actually, to use it. I'm gonna put it back in its original bucket here. And if you look on the bottom, this is kinda like a double boiler system.

- [Julie] So you have holes on the bottom here?

- [Jim] Yes.

- [Julie] So that you can sit it down there and collect the wonderful fertilizer that's coming out.

- [Jim] The dilution rate is 50:1. So if you had a five gallon bucket of water.

- [Julie] So 12 ounces for five gallons.

- [Jim] A gallon to 55 gallons of water is also approximately 50:1.

- Fantastic. So I could just take this gallon, throw it into my rain barrel, my 55 gallon rain barrel, and with a pump, spray it out as some fantastic liquid fertilizer. Well, Jim, thank you so much for telling me about bokashi. I look forward to learning more about it and know what? You can compost too, especially with this great fermentation method. So learn more about it.

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