Episode 3401

- [Announcer] One element of a good garden design is repetition of plants, as it creates a rhythm. April Moore tours the home garden spaces where the deer do roam, so plant choices are made with that in mind. These selections are gorgeous and combined with shrubs, trees, and even a water feature. Longtime grower Sheri Gramer knows gardening and learning go hand in hand. She visits with a gardener who has created a well-organized space for growing vegetables and herbs that is both productive and demonstrates good gardening practices. Come along. This gardener loves being outside, working in garden spaces around her home, and now her efforts have been recognized for contributing to the overall beauty of Cheatham County.

- Taking the Tennessee Master Gardener training is one of the best ways you can expand your gardening skills and create a beautiful garden, and today we're here with Carol Green to talk about the beautiful garden spaces she's created.

- Good to have you.

- So this is beautiful. Tell us a little bit about the planting scheme here and especially that very unusual lamb's-ear. I'm fascinated by that.

- [Carol] Okay, well, so the lamb's-ear has the fuzzy leaves as texture, and then the catmint gets purple flowers through the summer. And when I bought the lamb's-ear, a label said, "Pairs nicely with the catmint." So I put that together and smells beautifully. And then I added the yellow lantana just because, you know, purple and yellow go together, and the lantana, the deer don't eat it.

- [April] It looks beautiful with the mum as well. Like that all is really nice color pairing. And you've also got texture and fragrance and summer interest because the catmint blooms in summer. Really, really pretty. And the grass, I wanted to ask you about the grass as well.

- [Carol] I just knew it is called fountain grass. Someone gave it to me. And you just divide it every couple years.

- [April] So you start out with what, just one?

- One, mm-hmm. I start with one catmint, one lamb's-ear, and one fountain grass.

- Wow, well, you've done well.

- And now we've got probably 500. You've done well with your division, that's for sure.

- Thank you. I bought one lamb's-ear about five years ago, and I learned that I loved it too much, 'cause I killed it, and so I had to learn how to grow it. And so I learned that it doesn't like to be watered overhead. It likes its roots to get a good drink, but it likes to have soil that, you know, won't retain the water. And it does need to be divided periodically, but it's called-

- That's probably why yours is so vigorous, because I don't divide mine nearly enough, so that's beautiful, and it's really tall. I mean, I find that a really beautiful plant. I would love to have that. So Carol, this is a really pretty little water feature here, but what I think I love about this, you have this slope, then you have these really pretty ornamental grasses and shrubs, evergreens, so you're gonna have winter east interest, and then you have these really nice flowers in front. So tell me a little bit about what all you've got here and how you ended up with this many plants.

- Design wise, and here's the benefit of the Master Gardening program, that you learn so much. And I would say most of us are just lifetime learners. We love gardening, we love things of beauty, and we love to figure out how to make 'em more beautiful. So I had planted Leyland cypresses all down here, like seven of 'em, and then two years ago, a storm took 'em all out.

- Oh.

- And so we're like, "Well, what do we do now?" And so we just, you know, took 'em all out, and then I started dividing my fountain grasses and added a Norway spruce to match that Norway spruce, and then added a green giant here.

- Oh, yeah.

- And one thing I did learn as my gardening education became enhanced is that most gardeners make this problem: they plant everything too close.

- [April] Yes .

- [Carol] So instead of putting five green giants in a row, I just put one there at the backdrop of the waterfall

- [April] And those will get quite tall. Tell me a little bit about these flowering plants you have in front of that shrubby and grass background.

- Okay. Well, I've got Shasta daisies. So they start getting white blooms in June. I've got Bugleweed in the front here. That spreads and it gets purple flowers in April. This is spirea, and it gets the pink flowers in the spring. So, of course, most of them are perennials. And then I usually have lamb's-ear all along the rock edge. I've got, you don't see 'em, but they're bulbs, you know, so I get-

- [April] Oh, I bet that's pretty.

- Yeah, all along the edge.

- [April] And I see your catmint you've divided and moved here.

- And the catmint, yes.

- [April] So one thing I wanted to say is that I love how you've been dividing and using these same plants over and over because it gives the design of your garden are really good cohesion, and the mistake I often made is I'm like, "Oh, I want that and one of that and one of that and one of that," and then everything's crammed packed, and there's no rhythm. This is a really nice example of the rhythm you can achieve by using a few really good plants and just reusing them. It's a really good idea.

- Right, and of course, the ones that I use are the ones that deer don't eat. We met a lot of deer here, and I feed the deer, but I've learned what the deer don't eat and it's lantana, marigolds. They don't touch the daisies. They don't eat the lamb's-ear. So I just have a lot of those, you know, like half a dozen plants.

- It's a good strategy. It's a good strategy. So we've got one more spot here that I'd really like us to take a look at, and I'm assuming this is a three-season bed, that you always change this out, but right now, you've got this really nice fall decor, fall themed, and so many of these plants are blooming in summer and in fall. It's really quite nice. So talk a little bit about some of what you have here.

- Okay, well, this has been evolving. Okay, so about three years ago, Sue Proctor, a master gardener in in the area, posted that she started a wildflower bed. So at that time the push was to, you know, have curb appeal. I thought, "Well, what can I do with the curb?" 'cause this was all Bermuda grass. So one thing we've learned in the Master Gardening program is how to deal with Bermuda grass. So I decided I wanted to get rid of the grass here and put in a wildflower bed. So in the spring through the summer, this is all wildflowers.

- Oh, nice.

- It's totally different. And so, of course, all the wildflowers died, and I needed to just add something that's gonna last through the season, so I've got my marigolds that last well into the fall, and you've got the Lantana, of course, the lamb's-ear, and then the pansies. I had never grown pansies in my whole life.

- Oh.

- Just two years ago I learned about pansies. They're cold weather flower. And just to go out on a dreary winter day, a cold day, and see flowers in the garden.

- I've seen during an ice storm, the ice melted away, and there was a little pansy propping up its head. They're great to start from seed too, so definitely one of my favorites.

- Okay, I have to learn how to do that.

- Oh, it's not hard. You'll be fine at it. You've got all that training. I just wanted say thank you, Carol.

- You're welcome.

- For letting us come and visit your garden. It's really, really pretty.

- Well, thank you.

- And you should justifiably be proud of what you learned

- Thank you.

- in the Master Gardeners and also what you've done here 'cause it is really pretty.

- Well, I have to add that I was never really trying to, you know, win an award, but one day I came out, well, I gravitated out to the garden because my dad, who lived with us for 11 years, passed away, and I just went outside, and I never came back in. I just started gardening, and one day I went out on the front porch, and there was an application.

- [April] Oh.

- [Carol] Underneath my gardening gloves.

- Oh.

- And that's how I learned about the program, and I've been in ever since, six years.

- [April] That's awesome. That's a great story. Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Now I know Carol isn't one to brag, but I think she should brag a little bit about this award-winning garden. And Fred Norquist is here with us from the Cheatham County Master Gardeners to tell us a little bit about this award and how it started.

- Thank you so much for coming out today, and I wanted to thank Carol for letting us tour her beautiful property. She's an amazing person, gas been a great supporter of the award. She has won the Mayor's Award, as you can see.

- [April] That's nice.

- [Fred] So I joined the Master Gardeners in 2018, and my wife is from Huntsville, Alabama, and they have a Huntsville Beautification Award. And so when I joined the Master Gardeners, I just thought it was incredible. Every time I'd go down and see her parents, we'd spend at least one weekend a month there, I thought, "How pretty this city is." And you know, there'd be an auto parts store that had landscaped. I mean, doctor's offices and hospitals and subdivisions, and I just thought it was great that so many different businesses and different places had this award, and they'd gone to the trouble and really made the city a beautiful place. So when I joined the Master Gardeners, I wanted to bring this award to our county. You know, we have codes which is supposed to keep people from littering the property and doing the worst of things, but I wanted to do something that encouraged the best of things. And my hope is, is that a neighbor sees her wonderful work and the award encourages her to keep working on it. And we currently have over 20 awards spread across the county. We started in 2018. Our five-year-award-plus recipients have a legacy award

- Wow.

- that hangs underneath. Now we have several of those.

- Nice.

- And then I wanted to also thank our municipal leaders, the county mayor, and we have three of our town mayors that have sponsored the award. And so each one of them has a Beautification Award, Mayor's Award, and they actually choose a winner every year. We're sponsored. Of course, we're Master Gardeners, which is sponsored by the University of Tennessee TSU Extension Service. Sierra Knaus is ours. And so you can contact Sierra Knaus at the Cheatham County Master Extension Service, I should say. And then we also have a Facebook page, that Cheatham County Master Gardeners has a Facebook page, and people could contact us on there and get more information. I'd love to talk to people about how to bring this award to their county, how we got started. You know, how do we judge properties? How do we put together the people? How do we get the word out? I know Carol mentioned that she had an application under her gardening gloves, and I'm such a weirdo that, you know, I'm that guy who knocks on the door.

- I wonder how that happened.

- "You have a really beautiful property." So I knocked on her door, and there was no one home, and I just left an application on her doorstep and left. So anyway, six years later and we're still at Carol's property, so.

- That's a fantastic story. I love that.

- Well, she's so passionate about gardening. It's so wonderful to share that with her, and I think that's the greatest part about gardening, is the people. Everybody would say the flowers and everything, but truthfully, I think it's the people. I love people, well, most people, but it's so fun to share, you know, flowers and stories and just with people that share your interest and wanna make the world a little bit prettier.

- Well, I really appreciate your own efforts, that you've kind of glossed over, in getting this program started and the work you're doing to keep everybody enthused about it. I think it's a fantastic thing, and thank you so much for telling us about it.

- Well, thank you guys for coming. I just can't thank you enough for spreading the word about the program.

- Thank you.

- We're in Warren County, McMinnville, and we're visiting Jaime Wynne today. And Jaime's relatively new to Middle Tennessee, and she is like most of us, gardening and learning at the same time. I wanna mention all your beautiful signs here, Jaime. I love the handmade look to this.

- [Jaime] Yes, that what I do in my winter months when I don't have anything to do.

- When you don't have anything to do. I notice a lot of home gardeners would be envious of your fencing here, obviously, to keep the deer out.

- Yes, yes.

- [Sheri] And do they still jump over and eat things?

- [Jaime] No, I haven't had really any problems so far with any animals other than birds and maybe a few rabbits every now and then.

- [Sheri] Your squash is looking very good this year. Any secrets? Have you learned anything?

- No, not really. Just about moving your crops around. And last year they were on the other side of the garden, and this year I guess they're pretty happy where I put them.

- I hear chickens in the background. What kind of fertilization do you use?

- I use all the chicken waste in the garden. I have a pile over there, and during the winter months, I throw it all in the garden and then it's all tilled in.

- [Sheri] And so how many hours are you out here? I see it's freshly tilled.

- [Jaime] I'm out here several hours a day picking weeds. Weeds are probably my biggest challenge.

- [Sheri] Well, your garden is very neat and tidy, that's for sure. I'm impressed by that. And so you've had some challenges with the corn as well?

- [Jaime] Yes, I do think maybe that was my fault, on the first rows. I don't know if I let my seeds sit out too long before I planted them. That's part of my learning experience.

- Well, gardening, if you stop learning, you stop growing, and if you stop growing, you stop gardening. So I think that's the only way, trial and error. I noticed behind me you have some kind of beans growing up that beautiful fence behind us.

- [Jaime] Yes, those are my green beans and crowder peas.

- [Sheri] I understand you love to grow potatoes. Can you tell me why?

- [Jaime] I love digging them up because it's like a box of chocolate. You just don't know how many you're gonna get.

- You are very proud of this broccoli, and I can see why. It's just starting to come to head. Tell me about your broccoli.

- Well, last year I planted it. It did terrible. The bugs ate it up before I could even take a hold of it, and that's a whole nother thing I'm learning, is about the bugs. But this year, for the most part, they're popping up. I think they come up overnight, but they're doing pretty good, so I'm very happy about that.

- Do you have a mentor anywhere that's helping you learn about your vegetables and how to combat the insects and fungus and all that good stuff?

- Well, I took a Master Gardeners' class, and I did get a lot of information. It was a little overwhelming, but I did learn a lot from that.

- [Sheri] I noticed you have marigolds planted at the end of each rail. Does that serve a purpose?

- The marigolds supposedly deter some of the pests, and I did try to plant them in between some of the plants as well. And I had heard radishes as well. I did plant a few radishes in between.

- Did you do that in years past as well or is that something new?

- No. No.

- And do you think you've noticed a difference?

- I do think I've noticed a difference with the marigolds, definitely.

- Well, that's good for other people to learn, yeah.

- [Jaime] These are my cucumbers.

- [Sheri] And these are the tomatoes you were talking about. They're kind of short and squatty this this year?

- [Jaime] Yes, they're just not producing, and possibly my soil could be too dry right now, but even when I put them in, we had an abundance of rain, but I'm not sure. I really don't know.

- Well, that's how we learn. You mentioned that you can and freeze. Are you self-taught with that as well?

- Yes, I am. I do a lot of internet research and a lot of experimenting.

- [Sheri] It's very inspirational for people that have never tried it to hear somebody admit that they're learning as they go, so perhaps they'll be encouraged to try it as well.

- [Jaime] Yes, I mean, it's really fun in the wintertime, and you go in the pantry and you pull out some stuff that you had grown and canned. It's really fun. I can a lot of tomatoes. I make pasta sauce.

- [Sheri] Great. And so what do you freeze then?

- [Jaime] I mainly freeze my beans. The crowder peas are big thing. I froze my eggplant, squash, zucchini, for soups and stuff. I dice it up and then put it away.

- Great, and I noticed you have one of my favorite things here, a little plot of herbs. And this is new for you this year as well?

- Yes, a friend of mine gave me a whole bunch of different herbs, and I've been experimenting with them, still learning, but I do use them. I actually cut 'em up a lot of times and put 'em in my chicken coop, and you know, of course, I cook with them too.

- [Sheri] And I see a volunteer sunflower I just passed. He's gonna be a big one.

- Yes.

- And some zinnias and some other stuff, fun stuff. Well, I just wanna tell you, thank you very much for inviting us out here to your little piece of Eden. It's gorgeous.

- Thank you. Thank you for coming.

- And I want you to know that other people and other viewers will really appreciate the fact that they're not the only ones struggling with things, that it is really a learning process. Thank you for inviting us today.

- [Jaime] Thank you.

- Today I thought it would be a really good idea to talk to everybody about common plant problems in the garden. I wanna talk about things that you're most likely to see in a typical garden with people who like plants. First I wanna talk about powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is one of those diseases that shows up on a huge variety of plants. I mean, everything from dogwoods to crepe myrtle to vegetables. And I've got some examples here. I wanna show you what to look for. One of the most common plants that you see with powdery mildew is Manhattan euonymus. People plant this all over. It's a reliable evergreen. It takes hard pruning without dying, but it's, you know, almost invariably gets powdery mildew, and against these dark green leaves, you can see how striking those white spots are. Really shows up in the parts of the plant that tend to be in more shade seem, in my observation, to develop this more. And between powdery mildew and euonymus scale, which this plant also gets in spades, this plant usually gets some kind of issue over the summer. It is controllable. In a terrible, terrible case, it will even defoliate this shrub. You'll see the leaves drop off from the middle and the top of the plant, and it can really do a number. Even if it doesn't kill it, a bad infestation can seriously weaken the plant, which powdery mildew does for everything, whether it's a dogwood tree or anything else. Another plant that can get powdery mildew is crepe myrtle. You can see, let me move this out of the way. You can see this white, this fog like on these buds. This plant's about to come into bloom. That's powdery mildew. It will compromise the flowers, and that's a bad thing. Some crepe varieties of crepe myrtles are incredibly susceptible to powdery mildew. And it is really smart, if you're thinking about putting crepe myrtles in your garden and in your landscape, to research and buy powdery-mildew-resistant varieties. There are many, and the United States Arboretum has come out over the last 30 years or so with a pretty extensive line of crepe myrtles of every color you can think of, and everything from dwarf to tree size, that are powdery mildew resistant. They all seem to be named after Indian tribes, like Chickasaw and Lipan and Muskogee and Natchez and things like that, some of the most popular crepe myrtles found in landscapes today. Seek those out. They don't get this problem so badly, and their blooms are usually not compromised by it. Some of the older varieties like watermelon red and such, they're very popular all over the South, do tend to get powdery mildew. Now the plant that gets it, bingo, yellow squash. That's a vegetable. This, if you can see the, and you can feel it too, there's a kind of a like a little velvety gray-white film over this leaf. That's powdery mildew. And you can see the yellow blotches starting. The mildew affects how the plant photosynthesizes and eventually kills the leaf, so your plant declines, and my experience with this is unchecked powdery mildew will take down squash plants. So what do you do about powdery mildew? Well, if you aren't an organic gardener, there are plenty of chemicals out there that are available at garden centers and whatnot. Look for chemistry called chlorothalonil. That works. Triforine, that works. It's found in a lot of rose products. Roses get powdery mildew too. If you are an organic gardener, a lot of people will tell you to use bicarbonate of soda, which is basically baking soda but sodium bicarbonate, but better are things like potassium bicarbonate or aluminum bicarbonate, which you can buy. They're widely available names, like bi-carb and stuff like that, because they don't have the sodium in it, and sodium is toxic to plants. So if you use too much, you can really fry your plants. And that is a good organic remedy for powdery mildew. A lot of times that stuff is more preventive than curative, but if you get on top of it, as soon as you see it early in the season, and you stay on top of it, you can really control powdery mildew in the landscape. Now I wanna talk about Impatiens. You can see this is a kind of stressed out six pack here. It's kinda late in the season. This guy's been sitting in the six pack too long. But Impatiens are probably the most popular. I think they've surpassed petunias as the most popular bedding plant in American gardens. And there are several relatively new problems with Impatiens that you probably need to be aware of, and this plant shows one of them in fairly good detail. It's not terrible yet, but it's starting. If you can see this kind of ring-like discoloration on the leaf there, and here's another one, good one, and you can see the tissue is starting to die. It's becoming necrotic. This is a virus, and there's no cure for this. It is called a Impatiens necrotic spot virus, or INSV, and it is spread by thrip, Western flower thrip, in particular, which is this teeny-eensy, little cigar-shaped guy that feeds in flowers, and is a vector for a ton of bad diseases, including tomato spotted wilt. If you see this, typically when it really spreads and the plants get stressed, they drop all their foliage, they look lousy, and you have to rip 'em out. Like I said, if you can try to control the thrip, which isn't easy, you can kinda take care of this. I've noticed double Impatiens in particular get this disease pretty badly. Spider mites are always a problem with Impatiens, especially in super hot summers. They're easy to control with insecticidal soap or horticultural oil, but be careful when you spray any of that in the heat and in the sun. You can get phytotoxicity, which basically means it's poisonous to plants. So do it only in the cool of the early morning or the very late evening. Another thing that Impatiens are now getting, and I'm starting to see it in beds around Middle Tennessee, and this is brand new, is there's a kind of downy mildew. I talked about powdery mildew. Downy mildew is completely different disease that is affecting Impatiens. If you see your Impatiens, the leaves start to cup, the edges roll over downward, and they start dropping leaves like crazy, they quit blooming, and they look kind of scraggly, turn over whatever leaf remains and look for a white kind of velvety cover and coating on the underside of the leaf. That's downy mildew, and a good fungicide will take care of that. But in the landscape, we usually don't notice these things until it's pretty well advanced, so just keep an eye on your plants and, once again, sprays wisely and not in the heat of the day. I wanna talk about, changing gears completely, there's a ton of this around. This is a piece of Leyland cypress, and the end of this twig is dead, and I found one that's showing how the disease progresses. This is Seiridium canker, and Leyland cypress get this. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when, unfortunately. It's very rare that a plant escapes getting this disease, and once it gets it, it's toast. There is no cure. And it gradually starts with one branch and then another branch, and then the whole tree turns brown, and you take it out, and it's really sad. It can happen fairly quickly. But here's a really good tip. Although this is incurable, you can really help your plants fend it off. This disease shows up, and I'm speaking to you now after an incredible dry spell in the summer heat and no rain, that's when this disease tends to show up, after the plants have been drought stressed. If you keep your Leyland cypresses well watered through dry spells, they tend to fight this disease off much better. And believe me, it's really the only recourse you have, that or not planting 'em. If you're wondering, "Oh, I love Leylands, and I don't wanna lose them, but I don't want to go through all that trouble. What else can I put in?" Green giant arborvitae is what I tell people. It's a great plant. So that's some of the things that we have to talk about, and I hope you find it useful. Tune in next week 'cause we got a whole lot more.

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