Episode 2605

- [Narrator] On this Volunteer Gardener, Matt Kerske walks the grounds of Husk, Nashville, located on historical Rutledge Hill. It's here that berries, herbs, and vegetables are part of the landscape and the menu. Then, we'll help to get your garden tools in tip-top working condition. Plus, Jeff Poppen shares Long Hungry Creek Farm's main key to success, compost. Join us. First, where the landscape enhances the dining experience.

- Well, today I have the pleasure of finding myself at one of Nashville's most distinct restaurants. Located on Rutledge Hill near the heart of the city, Husk is a restaurant which adheres to the belief that local foods and farms matter. So I'm lucky enough to have one of the front-of-the-house managers here with me, Rory O'Connell, and fellow plant enthusiast, I might add. And we are standing at what I call the grand entrance to Husk, which just has a beautiful assortment of plants going on here. Rory, tell me a little bit about some of the plants here in the landscape, and how you might wanna use them here in the restaurant.

- Well, just these past few weeks we put in a hibiscus here, which is pretty much pregnant with blooms right now, just ready to explode. We're most likely gonna use that to make some really interesting vinegars. We use it as some garnish in the bar area. They're beautiful, great coral color, it's a nice pop for the restaurant as you kinda enter here.

- [Matt] They're just about to open up, and over here to the right here, we see we've got just a large swath of rosemary.

- [Rory] This rosemary is amazing. It's been here since the restaurant opened. It's so well established, it stays fresh all year long. Really fragrant. We use that in the bar area, and it's one of the best garnishes that we can really find here on the property for all of our drinks in the winter, in the spring, and right through the summer.

- Fantastic.

- It's really impressive.

- [Matt] Kinda bordering that rosemary, we have just large perennials of Baptisia here. Tell me a little bit about these beautiful--

- [Rory] We cut these back last fall, and this just has exploded this spring. All April and most of May, we use this as a cut flower in the restaurant. Did some beautiful Mother's Day arrangements, and it was spectacular.

- Well, scattered throughout the property, we have a mix of fruit trees that are just beautifully placed within the landscape, and being in an urban environment, space is at a premium. Here we're standing with some Little Miss Figgy fig trees.

- I know, I love that name. It's so great.

- Yeah.

- We just put these in a couple months ago. I don't think that we were sure we were gonna have any fruit, but they're really just exploding with fruit right now, tiny little figs that will get to about an inch in diameter, I think. Beautiful plant, and we've actually used the leaves--

- [Matt] Yeah, tell me about that.

- We used the leaf as kind of like a vegetarian rennet to make a cheese with goat's milk, that came out like mascarpone, really interesting and delicious. I did not even know you could use fig leaf in that manner, but you just crush it up and just add it to the cheese, let it steep, and it's fantastic.

- That is a really unique way. Everybody's always so familiar with figs, and using the actual fruit themselves, but doing a little bit more research, you can get creative with the leaf as well.

- Our chefs love to kinda play with the ingredients in the property, and find new ways to utilize almost everything, 'cause really, if it's edible, you can use it all.

- And one of the great things about this Little Miss Figgy fig tree is that it's compact grower, whereas most of your typical fig trees are getting up to the 10 to 15, even 20-foot range. We have this one beautifully tucked away. That's gonna only mature at around four to six feet, so you're really optimizing your space.

- It's perfect for the space.

- And getting to use it in the restaurant. And one of the first features of the landscape that you'll notice when you pull into this restaurant is the majestic trees in the front of the property. You have this large, 200-year-old willow oak.

- [Rory] I mean, honestly, Matt, when I drive into work every day and see that tree, it's one of my favorite things about the property. The fact that it was here when Andrew Jackson was living here in Nashville is pretty remarkable, it's just a spectacular tree, huge with beautiful boughs, Living at this promontory of the height of Rutledge Hill overlooking the city, it really is a landmark for the city and for the restaurant, it looks great in spring, when the leaves fall off in the fall and winter, it's illuminated at night, and it's just spectacular.

- [Matt] Fantastic, and the other thing about this kind of tree is that maybe, due to some of the construction that's going on around the city, it's developing a little bit of stress, working on this property, you've done a soil sample, and we've noticed that the pH of the soil is upwards of seven, 7.2 in willow oaks, we're starting to get a little stressed at that point, so we're working together with you on a program to help bring this pH down to really bring it back to its natural beauty. So Rory, one of the things I find so unique and fascinating about this restaurant is how the diner is almost immersed in this edible garden setting. Tell me a little bit about the layout of this area, and how you all use it.

- [Rory] For us to be able to educate our staff, as well as our customers by showing them how vegetables and produce are produced and grown, people really have no idea how cauliflower looks when it's in a garden, what these flowers are, and what there are cruciferous plants. How kale is grown, and so for us to see how to tend a garden, to show that to the staff, and for the guest to be able to explore this garden and really understand produce, is really, really useful, and it's an amazing tool.

- [Matt] Which I really feel also, it helps to bring value to the plant, to the whole process itself, that it's not just magically boxed in and it comes into the restaurant, but that really brings that diner home in a relationship to the food.

- [Rory] Takes some love, it takes some work, and it's worth it. Everybody always wants to know, what is growing out there? Are those grapes, are they vines? They're pear trees, this is the Espalier method, French method of growing fruit trees, fruit trees are really inherently weak, and by harboring them this way, it supports the bough, it also prevents disease and rot by letting air flow through the trees, it also buffers the garden, can shade the garden, and it maximizes your space, you can grow this in a walled garden, in a small backyard. It takes a little bit of work, we've had some help getting it to this place, it would take somebody who's very patient to do this at home themselves, but they're beautiful, and the fruit is delicious as well.

- [Matt] Yeah, and the food is coming on, and you can tell that the fruit trees themselves are just so bountiful, they're so healthy, you can tell by the color of the leaves that you guys are really taking good care of them.

- [Rory] We'll harvest those in the fall, and we'll make compote and preserve those for the winter.

- [Matt] Fantastic. Well, as we dive deeper into the property, we are greeted with a beautiful set of, or raised beds that are set in here, the concrete walkway, bordered with stones. Rory, tell me a little bit about this space and how you all utilize it.

- This is our herb garden, herb and edibles, we use this to grow mince and chive, chervils, parsley and nasturtium, strawberries down here at the other end. The line cooks and bartenders come out here daily to get their mise en place ready for the evening and for lunch, and it's beautiful as well, we have some flowering borage here, which is edible, really gorgeous spring onion in this second bed here as well, and the strawberries this year have been mostly for the birds and squirrels, although we've had a couple kids out here helping themselves to them. This is our first year putting the strawberries in, so we're allowing them to establish, but there's been some delicious harvest there.

- [Matt] Well, they're gonna take off like weeds and triple in size by next year, and hopefully, you get a little bit more for the restaurant, but tell me a little bit about the space in general, we're behind a beautiful historical landmark to the restaurant.

- The rear to the property here, this was the carriage house to the second owner of the property, Robert Dudley was the 51st mayor of Nashville, he was the second owner, he bought the house in 1887, this was built in, I think 1888, we use it as a private event space, can sit about 28 people, we can do cocktail parties for about 60, we do weddings here all spring and summer, it's a really beautiful space that we retrofitted with barn wood, and it smells a little bit like a rickhouse, there's a definite angel's share of bourbon, from the bourbon barrels that we have decorating the space.

- The smell of wood and fire's in the air.

- Which is pretty prevalent here at the restaurant all around.

- You really feel, I guess, this is kind of the area, to me, that you really kinda, kinda envelops the garden and the taste, and the closeness to agriculture, so, it's a really key spot. So within every good edible garden, we must have the pollinators to attract the beneficials. Rory, I see that we're standing amongst some Agastache, as well as some Amsonia, Agastache, this beautiful purple variety, I believe it's Blue Boa, that really attracts the honeybees to the garden, really kinda keeps the edibles getting pollinated and whatnot, so fantastic to see this. And also, you were telling me a little bit about, a little bit of a Lynchburg legend here that we have planted here over with this plant, tell me about that.

- There's a gentleman named Jack down in Lynchburg who has a famous whiskey, and every night, he'd sit in his porch, pour a glass of whiskey, grab a leaf of tansy from his yard, muddle that into a glass, and that was his nightcap, it's really interesting, it brings out almost a banana quality to the whiskey, and we're happy to have it here in the garden.

- [Matt] Wow. I really can't tell you how special it is for me to kinda, we're walking this property with you, I know it's kinda near and dear to your heart, 'cause you're here every day, but I feel it's kind of indicative about what Husk is about here with incorporating a little bit of the edibles, and as well as the tansy. Does that feel about right to you?

- [Rory] Yeah, we like to have a story for everything, each dish is a story, each plant here in the garden has a story, what we're doing here is telling a story, so.

- [Matt] That's great, that the diner really gets this full experience.

- While most green roofs do provide an environmental function for the buildings that they're on top of, there are also green roofs that can provide beautiful, functional living space for the residents of those buildings, and The Westview, in downtown Nashville, is a perfect example of that, where native perennials, shrubs, trees, and even a few fruiting plants provide a beautiful landscape, a place where people can sit out and enjoy nature all around them. There even are birds, bees, butterflies all the way up here on this beautiful rooftop. So Mike Berkley, from GroWild in Fairview, Tennessee, had the installation and maintenance contract on this property for a number of years?

- Oh, for about six, seven years now.

- Well, tell me about how the green roof kind of came about, and what your process was to get this going.

- Right, well, the initial investor in the building here wanted to put an all-native green roof up here. So he wanted to put trees and shrubs, flowering plants, everything that would attract butterflies and hummingbirds and the birds, and we did that, and it was well-designed out with using some trees that were a miniature size anyway, but also putting in some trees that we thought would work up here, even if they got some height to 'em. Fortunately, they stayed dwarfed because of the thin soil, and what we have, it starts off at the edge, six inches of soil, and goes up into berms of about 2 1/2 to three feet. Of course, this soil is typical green roof soil, it's a mineral-based soil, and what that means is that water, of course, drains off quickly, and you do want that for a green roof in some aspects, but what comes out of that also is your irrigation, you have to do a top-down irrigation instead of having a sub-irrigation system, a capillary mat and whatever, but you have to do conventional pop-up irrigation so that you can get a good soaking, because at 2 1/2 to three feet of soil depth, that's a long way for water to move.

- So there're a number of plants that look really good up here right now, one of 'em is this beautiful smoke tree that's behind us, and is this the native smoke tree?

- That's correct, this is the American smoke tree, a Cotinus obovatus. We used it up here because we wanted some fall color, and then also, the uniqueness of the tree, it's a rare tree here in the United States, but to give it that smoke feel, and the bark has been really neat on it too.

- [Tory] So I've also noticed oak leaf hydrangea up here, a lot of oak leaf hydrangea, which really is kind of coming into its own now in late May and early June. I've seen Amsonia, Baptisia.

- Bar none, the Tennessee coneflower's been exceptional, and it seems like every green roof I get involved with that wants native plants, that seems to be foremost the number one plant, and the uniqueness of the Tennessee coneflower being an endangered species and all, but it works, and the only drawback is is that you gotta place it where people from the east side of it can appreciate it, 'cause it's always facing, faces east! And it works well here, but the Sporobolus, the prairie dropseed, which is one of the few grasses that gives you fragrance, we use that in almost every green roof that we do, and that's been a good border plant for us, and great fall color. Also edibles, we put serviceberry in, which is in full berry right now, very delectable berries--

- [Troy] So that had white flowers early in the spring, so it gives you a season of bloom.

- Right, and we used a couple of cultivars so that we can get crosspollination so that we can, after the white flowering's done, we get the red fruit on these, and then the fall colors, pretty spectacular.

- So this really is a garden for all seasons.

- It really is, it was planned that way, we even have the late-blooming asters in here, which won't be showing much of anything 'til October, and that's great for the monarch butterfly coming through to refuel. So we've got summersweet in here for the dead of summer, we have winterberry here, so that you can see the red berries in the dead of the winter!

- [Tory] So Beverly, one of the incredible things about living here has to be this great view of the city, and this different perspective that you get than most people.

- Yes, those of us who choose to live downtown obviously love cities, love the convenience of cities, but oftentimes, you can feel sort of hemmed in, and we come up here often, those of us who live in this building, because we can see the capitol, and we can see even as far as the hills and the church spires, and Tennessee State, and Fisk.

- I noticed you can even see all the way over to the New Music City Center.

- And we can see the Ryman.

- Right!

- [Beverly] And one of the great benefits of living right here is that on July the 4th, when Nashville has those great fireworks, you know, we just sit up here. You can live in the city, right smack dab in the middle of the city, but you can still come up here, pick some blueberries or serviceberries and snack on 'em, or grill, we have a grill up here, and get to know your neighbors a little better, and just enjoy nature--

- [Troy] I even noticed some birds flying around, and--

- More and more we have birds, I think we have some nests, even, this year. We use it for morning coffee, and late-night drinks, and parties, and yeah, it's become--

- Just a really functional living space in a very urban environment.

- It's very important to us.

- [Tory] I'd say this green roof on The Westview is both beautiful and serving an even larger purpose.

- We're visiting Hart Ace Hardware on Harding Road in Nashville, Tennessee today, and we're gonna talk a little bit about something that's very important to gardeners: you're as good as your tools. What's the most important thing with keeping your tools up and running?

- Well, you wanna be sure you have sharp tools, and clean tools, and if you, I'm not the greatest at cleaning my tools, 'cause I brought some of mine in today to show you really what should be done, so kind of a do as I say, not as I do, but this is a, if you wanna buy good tools and take care of them, they'll last you a very long time.

- What is a good tool?

- Well, there's different varieties of the mechanisms of tools. Like in a hedge trimmer, in a lopping shear, like I have right here, these are, excuse me, these are examples of compound lever action tools where you have two pivot points, and these are all made of very good-quality steel, solid wood handles with nice grips, a nice cushion, there's a lot of just different features that provide different benefits on every kind of tool you look at. But what I like about the compound action, and we've sold these same types of tools for well over 30 years since they first started coming out, they have two pivot points, so you can get a lot more pressure with a lot less push, you can get a lot more cutting action with less push, so if you wanna cut a larger piece, you won't have to really bear down and get it to cut it. But then again, the tool won't do anything if you don't have a nice, sharp face there.

- Well, before we move on, let's talk about a nice, sharp face. How do we achieve that? If we've chewed up some stuff we shouldn't have been chewing up.

- Well, and every tool is a little different in how you sharpen it. This is a pruning shear, it's an anvil pruning shear, so the blade actually cuts down into an anvil.

- Versus the other--

- Versus a bypass, where it acts like a scissor cut. So an anvil type, you only have one blade, and it's this blade right here, so you would wanna sharpen that blade, and typically, I would put it in a vice, and use a file to maintain the same bevel, and just sharpen this blade like that, and see, even just the little bit I'm doing is polishing a little bit, 'cause I haven't sharpened these in a long time.

- [Sheri] And so what else will we do to maintain these?

- Using good lubricant products, like a WD-40 that you can spray in any point that has a moving part, just a light spray in all those pivot points. And then also just on the blade. And that's something we'll talk about in a little bit, about when you wanna store tools, this is a great product for just putting on there.

- Let's talk a little bit about your shovel and your pick there.

- Okay. I brought my, this is a five-pound cutter mattock, and it has a wide cutting blade here, and a narrow vertical cutting blade on this side. And one of the things that I think is important to note, when you're sharpening tools, the sharpness that I wanna put, the bevel I want on this is gonna be really fine, and really slimmed down, tapered down, really fine. On a cutter mattock like this, I don't need a razor-sharp edge, I just need a little bit of an edge. Because if you get it too fine out, you'll just roll it back as you start hitting, 'cause you're digging in rocks and such with this, or roots. So with these, I use a big, like a 10-inch metal file, and you just sharpen down this way, I would clamp it in a vice, but you sharpen down at a pretty steep angle, 'cause you just wanna take the thick metal, and at the very end, just bring it down to a little more of a point.

- Is there any specific grid to this that you're using?

- No, this is just a 10-inch metal file, and that's a standard file that you would use in any sharpening situation. So on this side, I'd use a really sharp angle, whereas if I was doing that pruner, I'd be in an angle almost like this. So it's the angle of the bevel, you need a really heavy metal down to a sharp point. Same on the cutter side, and in this, of the mattock side, this is a little, let me give you a shot of this, this side, you just would keep flat. You don't sharpen both sides. On this one, you would sharpen, as you can see, the original grind.

- Almost like a bevel there.

- It's just beveled on this one side, so you would sharpen back this way. Now, on heavy tools like this, if you have access to a grinding wheel, that's a nice way to get it done quickly, and then fine-tune it with a file. Round bladed like this, and again, my shovel's pretty dirty.

- [Sheri] This is for digging, then? Is what you're saying, this is a digging shovel?

- This is a digging shovel, and when you wanna sharpen a shovel like this, you don't really do much sharpening, because you don't need it to be sharp, but you do wanna clean that edge up, again, I'd use that big file right here. I would take a big file, and just clean that edge up. Just so that it has less resistance when you're pushing it in the ground. But the big thing on this one is just cleaning all this up, this shovel needs to be cleaned, and then I would clean it with, I brought a couple of things that I would use, either, first of all, just take a garden hose. Best thing when you're done using it while it's still, the dirt or concrete or whatever is still wet, take a garden hose and rinse it off. If there's anything still on it, you can take anything you have, I just brought a piece of number two steel wool, you can steel wool it with water and that'll take the rest of the dirt off. You could take Scotch-Brite pads in the heavier grit, and those will take anything on, that'll take it off too and just clean it right back. And then, when you're ready to put it up, let's say you're gonna use it next week, you can still spray it with some WD-40, 'cause it'll give it a nice-looking sheen, and keep it nice, and keep the metal from absorbing rust, or collecting rust.

- [Sheri] And that's basically what the WD-40 does, the oil in that keeps it--?

- It's a rust preventive.

- Okay.

- Now, I've read some things about how some people store, let's say this little hand trowel, they make a little bucket up with sand, with oil in it, they actually put oil in it. Didn't realize I bent the tip on that. But you can just store your tools in that. You just take like a old five-gallon, or a one-gallon paint bucket, or a bucket you have around the house, fill it with sand, pour oil in it, or squirt a lot of WD-40, just make it a oily mix, and just store 'em in it.

- What's some of the other goodies you have over here for us?

- Well, I bought, naval jelly is the good old standby, when you have rust, and that's been used forever. You could paint that on that rusty surface and it'll take that rust right off. For wood handles, boiled linseed oil is what you'd wanna rub down this handle with, to protect it, 'cause wood dries out, and that's when wood goes bad, when it's dried out, so if you can take it and just rub it down, put some on a cloth and rub it down, a caution to that, though, don't ever leave a rag of boiled linseed oil wadded up and put anywhere, you need to open it up and lay it out to dry, 'cause it's a combustible item. So be very careful with linseed oil. 3-in-One oil is just a good penetrating lubricant to use in any kind of a position like on your tools, if you want a heavier-bodied lubricant, that's a great one. 'Course, WD-40 is the old standby. But this is a, it's not new, but it's one that's been around for a while that I really, I use it a lot, I really like it, it's called, it's made by Permatex, it used to be called Extend, it's a spray that actually turns rust, it bonds it back to the metal, so, I don't know how fast it'll work. But if you spray it on something like that rust, and just let it sit for a while, when you come back, that rust will be black, and it will actually be bonded back to that metal.

- Thank you very much for instilling the importance of maintaining and keeping our tools clean, and, so that they may be useful for us for years to come. Thanks, Frank.

- My pleasure, thank you for coming today.

- Gardeners know the value of good compost. When I'm giving a little talk to gardeners, and I ask, who has a compost pile? Well, almost everybody raises their hand. But how do we know when the compost is ready to use? Let's look at some compost piles. The composting process requires heat and moisture. Now, a lot of people call compost this stuff that they find in their kitchens, this is vegetable scraps from my kitchen. Tomatoes, onions, eggshells. This is not compost. This is vegetable scraps that can become compost, but we'll have to add them to some manure and hay, and green chop and things like that, to make the compost. I use a more traditional method of dealing with my kitchen scraps, I feed them to our pig, or our chickens. An easy way for the home gardener to deal with vegetable scraps is just have a trench alongside of your garden, and put the vegetable scraps in it everyday, and kick a little soil over it. At the end of the year, you'll have better soil there. We can recognize three distinct phases in the composting process. In this compost pile that was made a few months ago, we can still see pieces of the manure, and the hay. It hasn't really changed a whole lot, it's starting to break down, and starting its process, but this is what I would call a phase one compost. This pile here is what I would consider a phase two composting. It was made about five or six months ago, and has been turned one time. This compost still has visible hay and manure, but it's lost that smell, and it's starting to break down into something that resembles good compost. Now, if I needed it, I would use this in crops that were heavy feeders, like sweetcorn, or maybe some winter squash. Here, we have a pile of compost that's ready to use. All traces of the original materials are gone, and everything is crumbly and falls apart at the slightest touch. Good compost has a earthy, woodsy smell to it, and besides the breakdown process, there's also been a building-up process of humus formation. We're trying to enliven the soil with a humus. So when this is put on to our gardens, a lot of the microbes in here will go out into the garden, and incorporate this really quickly. So as the compost breaks down, there's also a building-up process, as microbes move in, and earthworms digest some of it, and it becomes not something that's just completely broken down, but an enlivening process has happened with live beings that create humus. And once we have humus, we have the foundations for really good soil. Another test is how the compost responds when we put it onto the garden soil. A mature compost, along with minerals, and the good tilth and cover crops, creates a live humus that really wants to become vegetation. When we keep the weeds out and plant our seeds, this soil is gonna grow something no matter what. Good gardening is a combination of a lot of things. When we use mature compost and get our soils in good shape, and have a little luck, we're gonna have bountiful bowls of quality produce.

- [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.