Episode 2641

- [Narrator] Do you desire to grow nutritious food but don't have the patience or the outdoor growing space? Microgreens could be just the crop for you. Indoors, soilless, and just a couple of weeks from seed to salad. David Cook visits with a basement farmer who grows these glorious greens year-round. Join us. First, farming for beginners.

- Okay, in the last few years there's been a great interest in people wanting to grow plants, not just for aesthetics but for consumption and here we're not dealing with a large-scale farm operation, but we're dealing with a homeowner who's growing, actually, what we call a microfarm operation, and we're going to see if this is adaptable for homeowner use. And it's very interesting what we're growing. So we're growing a large amount of plants, we're doing it in a micro-setting. And I'd like to introduce Charlie Crawford who is the, I will say, owner, operator, producer, farmer, entrepreneur.

- [Charlie] It is considered a farm. It is a microfarm, you are correct in that, and it's, you can take any leafy green plant or herb that you want and use it as a microgreen. And the beauty of it is, it's ready within anywhere from seven days to 15 days. It's packed full of nutrients. Four to six times more than your average basil plant would have, or arugula or kale that you were gonna cook.

- [David] We're actually below ground, aren't we?

- [Charlie] We are, it is subterranean. Not entirely, but it is below ground. It is in my basement. It seems to be the perfect room to control the environment because I can control the humidity, the airflow, the air conditioning or the heat, which I generally don't need much heat at all. It's all about keeping humidity and the temperature in the right level. But you can also do that in your windowsill at home.

- [David] These are just tiny little plants, and I know they're growin' their true leaves probably pretty soon, but if you look at these right here, these--

- [Charlie] Just sprouted.

- [David] Just sprouted, so technically we would call these sprouts.

- [Charlie] Right, right.

- [David] And they may have a little cotyledon, a seed leaf.

- [Charlie] Right.

- [David] And now you've advanced to a more different stage here.

- [Charlie] This is actually the first true leaf, the cotyledon right here, and it will get to a bigger stage where it has a secondary leaf structure. And we do have some of that here. But back to the nutrient, all seed already have packed in them all the nutrient that plant is gonna need. And so, that tiny little seed in this tiny little form means that all that large plant nutrient is in this tiny little package. So I would think that would be a great reason for any health-conscious homeowner that likes salads and fresh product to wanna grow it in their windowsill. It's a lot of fun, you like get the advantage of going, "Wow, I put that seed in there and look at it now. "It's full, it's ready to go." Your friends will be impressed.

- And this happens in a matter of weeks, right?

- Oh, radish, radish can be ready in seven days.

- Wow.

- Daikon radish, seven days. Arugula, 10 days.

- [Charlie] And that's to a height about this tall.

- [David] And it's a, I would call it a living concentrate. The nutrients are really packed in there and concentrated.

- [Charlie] Mm-hmm, in a space this size, you could grow six different varieties or even eight different varieties.

- Wouldn't venture to guess how many seeds you've put down in that small area.

- Oh, I, I don't know. I really don't.

- If we had our camera, if we had our cameraman shoot above this, he could say, "This is 10 acres of land we're viewin' but actually, it's not, it's just so many square inches.

- [Charlie] Yes, yes, and I really don't have an answer for that, David, because some things I plant thicker and some really thinner, because they do better thinner. They get a bigger leaf structure quicker, but we won't go into that.

- [David] Let's move over to this tray over here. Charlie, what I see here and basically what I don't see here is soil, so this is, looks like a soilless medium, but I am familiar with this product but I don't think homeowners would be, and it appears kinda heavy right now.

- It's wet.

- Okay.

- It's wet, it's been--

- How can it absorb so much moisture?

- Well, because it's very porous. When they make it, it's rock and chalk, it's ground together, it's heated to 3,000 degrees and they blow air through it and makes it fluff up like that and that's how it's able to let the water just flow through it. And yet, it retains nutrients as long as you treat it before you start growin' in it, which means you have to soak it in a bath of water that has a pH level of 5.5. Because this has a very high pH without soakin' it.

- So more alkaline.

- Yes, yes.

- Okay, if someone's gonna start rockwool, and do you find this readily available?

- It is. There's a horticultural version made by Grodan. It comes in slabs or squares, or blocks, actually, and you can cut it down to this size.

- Okay, very good. And you're just gonna drop your seed right on top of this?

- I'm gonna sprinkle them on just, you know, at different levels of thickness and mist it, put it in somethin' with a lid on it until it germinates and then once I start to see that first germination, I'll move it over here into the light.

- [David] Okay, so the first step is you got to pre-soak this.

- [Charlie] Yes.

- [David] And make sure the pH is adjusted down to the ideal growing range, and so this may have a tendency to be more alkaline.

- Yes.

- High on the pH scale, so you can adjust this with some acidic solution?

- Yes, yes, I just use a simple pH Down.

- Okay, very good.

- And I adjust just the water down to a level between 5.0 and 5.5, and that'll bring the pH of this product down to where it will be able to take up nutrients and distribute 'em.

- Excellent, okay. It appears that the roots are readily growin' right through this rockwool. Can we see an example of root structures?

- Yes, I have one right here. This is some daikon radish.

- Wow, look at that.

- And it has a really healthy root system. It's comin' right out of the bottom of it. You can see, this is just where some just was on the side, and everything in there is goin' through that rockwool just like that. Straight through it.

- Know what I find amazing? These plants are really crowded in here, and so this is, this is what I call really high-density planting, but I don't see any plant that looks like it's nutrient deficient or--

- No, it's very healthy.

- It doesn't mind havin' a close neighbor, and I think that's the advantage of usin' this product called rockwool, which is spun in the same process like makin' cotton candy. So, I know that rockwool, even though when it's really saturated with water, has a really a lot of pore space for oxygen, so this seems like an ideal growing medium for what you are doing.

- [Charlie] Yes, it does. 'specially since there's so much moisture in this room, it does dissipate readily. And I'm afraid if there was soil, the moisture would linger in here more.

- Yeah.

- Don't you think it would because the oxygen doesn't flow through moisture like it would, through soil like it would this.

- And a lot of soil, even what we call, what a homeowner would buy as soilless media, you gotta be careful that fungal spores don't move in. You know, fungal spores are floatin' in the air all the time but I don't seem like I can diagnose any disease or any problems in this.

- The reason I chose rockwool, the biggest reason, I looked at everything. I looked at coco mats, hemp mats, Sure To Grow mats, there's a BioStrate mat, it's kind of a, almost a cardboard-like product.

- A lotta options.

- Yeah, there is a lotta options, and for me, moving this around, takin' it to different establishments, this was the best source because I can pick it up like this and it stays firm.

- Seems secure.

- Whereas the other things, they did a good job of growing, but they were too pliable and I would've had to have left trays there in the restaurant with 'em and this is just a cheaper version. I'll just take this in and put it on that restaurant sheet pan, just like that, and it's win-win for everybody. And I spend less money on propagation trays, growin' on these sheet pans, so. It is a farm, and nothing's perfect. Mother Nature's not perfect.

- [David] These are livin' organisms.

- [Charlie] And even though I'm trying very hard to keep the environment right, it's not always optimal to do that, and so you sometimes, there'll be some mold or there might be some dampening down and we just take that product and move it outta the room so it doesn't spread to anything else. And sometimes it's actually related to the seed itself. I've had some kale seed, no it was cabbage. At one time, you may recall, that that had some issues with it.

- [David] Well, you know, a lot of mold that people see, if a homeowner chooses to do this, you know, a harmless mold called penicillin mold, which is very common in your home, you may find that growin' on your plants but that's not like a deadly pathogen.

- [Charlie] Right.

- What about your lighting? I know you didn't want these to go through any type of bloom stage, but I wonder if you didn't have these nice grow lights, could a homeowner put some of these into a window and maybe get sufficient lighting?

- Absolutely, absolutely, or even that if they wanted to add a little bit of extra light, just go to Home Depot and get a T8 fluorescent fixture. A shop light. You know, they're $35 and you can grow under that. It doesn't have to be a fancy T5 growing light.

- These are T5s?

- These are T5s.

- These are a little more expensive, more broad-spectrum with regards to light that mimics the sun, true sunlight.

- [Charlie] And you can also buy fixtures at Home Depot that are T5s.

- [David] Mm-hmm.

- [Charlie] They don't have the nice reflector but as a homeowner I don't think you would need that because you're just doin' something personal. You can put the light closer and it would have the same effect.

- I noticed your lights are pretty high up here. Are these plants havin' to really stretch or anything?

- No, not at all. Not at all.

- [David] Charlie, what I see lookin' over all your operation here, I see a variety of colors and textures, and different leaf shapes and forms, and it appears that you're growin' quite an array of varieties. Is there certain varieties you like to grow, or is it just unlimited what you can grow here?

- [Charlie] Well, I'm growin' these varieties based on what the chef's needs were and what I thought I wanted to try. But I don't think everything can be done as a microgreen. Such as tomatoes, peppers, things like that. The closest large plant that you can do as a microgreen would be corn. You can do corn shoots. They're quite flavorful, but you don't grow them in light.

- [David] Oh, oh very interesting.

- [Charlie] They're done only in the dark. And these seeds are, I get asked a lot about the seeds. Are they special?

- Yeah, are there special microgreen little tiny seeds?

- They are not special microgreen seeds. They are listed in a catalog under microgreens, but they're no different than just a packet of seed that you would buy at the big box store of basil or arugula or kale.

- So I could go to about any store, or order seeds out of the catalog, and I don't have to ask for microgreen seeds.

- [Charlie] No.

- [David] But I'm sure catalogs are going to--

- [Charlie] You would choose the variety that you wanna grow and I would suggest goin' online and selecting a seed supplier that's reputable like Johnny's Seeds or True Leaf Marketing, and you can buy in quantity which is much more economical than goin' to a big box and buying several packets of seeds.

- [David] Yeah, little packets are very expensive.

- [Charlie] They're $3 a packet, sometimes $4. And a pound of arugula seed is about $22. And you can also buy it by the ounce or half ounce. They have it many ways, so that's how I would suggest buyin' it if the homeowner wanted to grow microgreens for their own nutrients.

- [David] And I could not think of a better way to get kids, children, interested in growin' plants, learning about botany, the natural world.

- [Charlie] Right.

- [David] And then consuming.

- [Charlie] Well then, especially with kids, you know, you show a kid to plant a seed and they watch it grow, they get so excited and then they wanna eat it and share it, you know.

- And this is like a forest here.

- Right.

- This is not just a single plant.

- And this is something very simple that--

- Look at all this here.

- That anyone, that anyone could buy.

- This is just packed in.

- [Charlie] This is a red mustard, it's real easy, it doesn't even take any heat to germinate.

- [David] Looks so dense I think I could sleep on that.

- [Charlie] It does, it does, and that's the first thing everyone wants to do when they see these, they want to touch it because the texture's so cool.

- Well, they look delicate so I think people will treat 'em as a delicate organism and it's a young plant.

- And we're talkin' about delicate plants now, this can be watered from the top because it is very, very firm.

- Okay.

- But if I was watering something like this. This is Tangerine Lace. It's a marigold, it's very dainty.

- A marigold.

- If I watered, if I watered this from the top it would beat it down, so I would just turn the tray to the side and water it from the side, just along the edge, it would do just fine. Homeowner could do that as easily, and they would know what needs water from the top and what would do from the side.

- [David] I'm impressed.

- [Charlie] Thank you.

- [David] I think this is the new wave in producing plants. This week we're havin' a tremendous amount of rainfall. Could you imagine, you couldn't even get into your garden outside, maybe not for a month.

- [Charlie] No.

- [David] Thank you, Charlie.

- [Charlie] Thank you so much.

- [David] This was a great pleasure.

- I'm here in Nashville, Tennessee, in the Richland-West End area at the Craighead House, and the house and gardens are about 200 years old. We're gonna take a walk around the gardens and look at the design. So here we've got the entrance to the Craighead House. It's actually very subtle and just kind of a side entrance. It's a nice brick patio with flanking with hellebores and anemones. I'm here today with Steve Sirls. He's the owner, and actually you're the full-time gardener, aren't you?

- I am the gardener, Phillipe, yeah. I'm the one.

- So tell me about the history of this garden and house.

- Well, this garden has been here for over 200 years, and the history from the standpoint of the garden, the garden went with the house, and basically what they would've done is grow their food. Vegetables, herbs and different things for all the family members that lived here. And then it changed as, you know, grocery stores became popular and we could add perennials and boxwood and different things.

- Yeah, I see some really nicely clipped boxwoods right here flanking us.

- Well, we have to keep those clipped back because if we don't, they'll overtake the sidewalk.

- Sure, so you've got shade gardens and vegetable gardens and sun gardens. Well, let's walk around and look at some of these different areas.

- Okay.

- [Phillipe] We're here in the sun border, and I see all kinds of things from herbaceous perennials to evergreens to shrubs. Looks like you've got a wonderful mix of different things.

- [Steve] We do have a mix, and the mix is on purpose because that gives this border, which is full sun, blooming power from basically March all the way through October and November. First frost.

- Yeah, wow, that's wonderful and it's really full, and I love that you've left a lot of the seed heads and things on the plants.

- [Steve] Well, that's to feed our friends the birds. They love to pick the seed out and spread those around for us so we'll have volunteers everywhere.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, and that hibiscus looks, even when it loses its leaves and it's still got those pods, it's real fun and architectural in the winter.

- [Steve] Right, it really is a beautiful, beautiful plant.

- [Phillipe] So this combination right here is really beautiful. It looks like some bog sage, and is that a verbena?

- [Steve] White verbena, yes.

- [Phillipe] White verbena? Yeah, and the cryptomeria in the middle. Just that pale blue and the white is really stunning.

- [Steve] I love the way things happen like that.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, it looks like the bees are really lovin' it, too. I'm here in the middle of the border with this hydrangea Pinky Winky, it's just a sun-loving hydrangea. There's also really pretty white althea, I think it's Diana, perennial hibiscus and then this big tall rudbeckia and then a Japanese maple right here in the foreground. The height of this combination is just awesome and it really works both sides, you know, viewing from the house and viewing from the street. So you get kind of a screen from the street but the street, people walking on the sidewalk also get to appreciate it, which is wonderful. This is a neat little tree with some seed pods on it. Tell me about this, Steve.

- [Steve] Phillipe, that's a pink buckeye and the beauty of it is its, of course its bloom in the springtime, but now the fruit is setting and everybody that walks through the garden thinks that it's a pear, but... It's a buckeye in that little pod.

- [Phillipe] And how big will that tree get?

- [Steve] That tree is probably medium height. I'm not really sure, 20-30 feet tall. It's probably in the wrong place, but I just love it when it blooms.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, it's really--

- [Steve] And it takes sun, shade. Extremities.

- [Phillipe] Cool. And this salvia right here, that's really spectacular. It's kind of a magenta.

- [Steve] Magenta, and it blooms all summer long 'til first frost, and it's called Wendy's Wish.

- [Phillipe] Wendy's Wish, that's really nice, yeah. So, Steve, this is an enormous hackberry that we're standing under, and it's really full of plants at the base of it. You know, people say you can't grow anything underneath a hackberry, but it is completely full.

- [Steve] It is a large hackberry. That hackberry's probably a hundred years old and it's the winner of the Big Old Tree contest through the Nashville Tree Foundation. Everything under this tree is something that blooms from December the 15th until December the 15th, which gives me great pleasure because we start with the Hellebore foetidus that starts December the 15th and you have that wonderful blooming power there, and then on down to the mahonia, which gives you the green in the winter and then hostas for the summertime, and perennial Begonia grandis, which is one of my favorite things and you can tell by the dark red on the back of the leaves how wonderful the plant is.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, that is wonderful. Yeah, so you've really got somethin' goin' on here. Not only are you growing something here, you've got something blooming year-round.

- [Steve] Under a hackberry. Proves everybody wrong.

- Steve, this is an interesting little water feature. Did you build this or was this originally part of the house?

- No, this was excavated in 1950, in the 1950s, and this is the site of the original brick kiln where all the brick were fired to build the house.

- Wow.

- [Steve] And we found brick molds in there and we have some of those on display in the house.

- [Phillipe] Cool, really neat. So is, and is this house on a historic registry?

- [Steve] It is, it's on the National Historic Registry and it's just been inducted into the Archives of American Gardens through the Smithsonian.

- [Phillipe] Wow, that's really, that's really interesting.

- [Steve] Yeah, we're real proud of that.

- [Phillipe] That's a nice little treasure that a lot of people in Nashville probably don't even know about.

- [Steve] Exactly.

- So where did you learn a lot of this history from?

- Well, there're many books by Sarah Foster Kelley in Nashville, who is a descendant of the Robertsons, and they lived here at one point, and I have also gone to the Library of Congress in Washington and looked up maps and different periodicals that are written and are still on display about this house and the 350 original acres.

- Wow, so you've tried to make it kind of as historically accurate as you could, with a modern twist.

- As possible, with 206 years, it's really tough to get everything very accurate.

- Sure.

- And researching the Smithsonian project, we found a lot of things that we're adding to that history as well.

- [Phillipe] So, Steve, I can also tell with some of these newer plants and pots and everything that you, you really add your personal style on it, because it is somewhere that you live.

- It is, and I love it, and I really love sharing the garden with people. And most of these containers are things that I'm experimenting with, seeing what they're gonna do, enjoy the color, use 'em in different parts of the garden. When one thing dies, I can replace it with this.

- Sure.

- It's just sort of a great little place to sit in front of the vegetables and watch it all happen.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, have you tried to stay within the historical plants?

- I did try, but that's just impossible because there aren't enough things, and I, you know, I have a plant habit and when you have a plant habit, you have to experiment with just about anything you see, and see what happens for you.

- You mean they didn't grow these bananas back 200 years ago?

- [Steve] I doubt it, they weren't here from Japan then. But they're hearty bananas. They come up every year.

- [Phillipe] Awesome, yeah. So, well again, I just want to thank you so much for showin' your house and garden to us.

- [Steve] You're welcome.

- So, you're in a hurry for some dried herbs. I've got a quick and easy method for you to dry those. You go and pick out your favorite herbs, take a section of your newspaper, and the wind's playin' a little havoc here, open it up, lay 'em single layered. And then, I like to close a section right on the top. Place them in the trunk of your car, go to work. Not only will your herbs be dried perfectly, your car will smell wonderful.

- I have some shiitake mushrooms here, and they are good. And they're also a lot of fun to grow, but it takes a lot of patience to start with these little plugs and end up with these wonderful mushrooms. And to show us how to do it, all the steps involved, is Darry Huntsman, a Master Gardener with Davidson County Extension Service. He's gonna show us how it goes. So, Darry, you've got power tools, you've have these funny plug-lookin' things, and you have a log and various other tools. What're we gonna do now?

- Well, these funny plug things are spawn plugs. It has the mycelia of the shiitake mushroom. And we're gonna end up with this mushroom right here, with about a year's worth of inoculation. Okay. Use an old drill, 5/16, drill some holes. Here's the fun part. Take a plug, like this. People've asked me, when you do this are you destroying the mycelia, how do you feel about it? I feel a little bit bad about it, but actually, it's getting in there, 'cause we have the grooves of the mushroom goin' into the logs.

- Well, Darry, I have never seen these little plugs. I certainly don't see 'em in my regular garden store with just the regular stuff in it. Where do you get these?

- [Darry] This came from Fungi Perfecti out of Washington state, and also there's a place locally in Tennessee, the Mushroom People with the mushroom farm in Summertown, Tennessee. These people right here. Mushroom People, Summertown, Tennessee.

- So you can get these wonderful little plugs from various sources, including Mushroom People here in Tennessee, which is a great local source, and then you have, well, it looks like wax, there.

- [Darry] This is cheese wax. What I'm doin' here is I'm daubin' on cheese wax onto this log and I'm sealin' in the mycelia, keepin' it out of harm's way of anything that's in the air or any other foreign somethin' that'd be bad like insects or other fungus. So what I wanna do is inoculate these logs just with the mushroom of the shiitake. Just the shiitake itself.

- Well, and interestingly enough, this is a very clean process. Let's see, you had gloves on, you had washed off some with alcohol to begin with. What is that all about?

- I'll try to sterilize the strand of mycelium by takin' this drill into rubbing alcohol, keep it like that once in awhile so any foreign contaminants that're gonna land on this, I don't put it into the log and have this pick it up or destroy it. Or get in its way with it. I'll have gloves itself if I'm picking up something. Just wanna handle the log itself with it. And after the log is pretty much taken care of, like this, I wanna label and date it.

- [Julie] And how many plugs are you eventually going to get in a log this size?

- [Darry] 25 to 30.

- [Julie] And how many mushrooms will that produce?

- [Darry] Five to 10 lbs, at least.

- [Julie] How long are you going to need to wait before the next stage?

- [Darry] Depending on the log. Oak logs, real dense logs, take at least a year, year and a half. Other logs take between six months to a year. Hopefully this log right here, which is a hackberry log, will take nine months.

- [Julie] So I see in the stack logs, the rick of inoculated logs, I see one that's turning white on the side. Is something going wrong or what?

- [Darry] No, that's fine. That's the mycelia coming through the sapwood and the cambium layer of the log where they feed off the sugars.

- [Julie] And eventually, will that whole log be filled with this?

- [Darry] This whole log gets filled with mycelia. Then it's time to fruit it.

- Then we'll be able to have mushrooms come out of any area of the log, possibly. Okay, well what is going to make that happen? You said you're going to put it in water.

- Yes, put this in water. When this soaks for 24 hours or overnight, it deprives it of oxygen so it starts to fruit out little mushrooms. You rest the log for an additional eight to nine weeks before you do it again. If you take your ricket or you take your logs and disperse 'em around a little bit, every eight or nine weeks, you can start another flush and have continuously havin' shiitake.

- [Julie] So I know I've heard of such things as commercial shiitake growers, and I guess that's what they're doing, then, is working things through in a cycle where they're soaking and harvesting and resting, and soaking and harvesting and resting for a period of time until I guess that log finally runs out?

- Until the log is completely rottened out.

- Oh, fantastic, well it's a really interesting type of business, I imagine, now doing it out here, I see that we're in a shady spot and I imagine that's an important place to keep the mushrooms growing?

- To keep the shiitake mushroom growing, you need about 80 to 90 percent shade. Like this is a great area 'cause it's, 'cause you see a little green on the wall, you know, a little moss here, it's very cool. And also you have to be very attentive to it. What it is, it's the deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and they say voles. I don't know how a vole gets to it, but they say maybe a vole will get to it. But uh, pretty much, shiitake hardly has any problems with any pests at all.

- [Julie] Well thank you, Darry, so much for having us out here to learn more about mushrooms.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org or on YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener channel. And like us on Facebook.