Episode 3322

- [Lauren] On this "Volunteer Gardener," Tammy Algood sees how interesting and beautiful a backyard can be, on a tour of the many wonderful spaces created by a visionary with an artists' touch. Bamboo is a well-used plant here, both as a backdrop and to create a hidden pathway that leads to another garden space; plus, there's a spectacular water feature. Then Phillipe Chadwick sees how productive raised beds can be for growing a substantial vegetable harvest. And Marty DeHart lends insight into some common plant problems. Join us. We'll see how thoughtful and imaginative improvements to the backyard space can make it a place you'll wanna spend a lot of time.

- When this gardener closed his art gallery, he transferred all of that passion to his yard. The result is a masterpiece. Burton Dye, what a pleasure to be, here at your home, in your beautiful garden.

- Well, I appreciate the opportunity to show it to you.

- We're here in Murfreesboro, and you've created a little rock paradise.

- [Burton] Well, I've enjoyed it. Sometimes, I wonder what I was thinking when I did all this to try to keep it clean, but I enjoy the sound of the stream. I've enjoyed the Smoky Mountain stream since as a child, so I can sit back here and listen to the stream as if I was in the mountains. I know it's a minute comparison to those streams.

- [Tammy] But nice and calming.

- [Burton] Right, right.

- [Tammy] And this was nothing.

- [Burton] Nothing. I brought in all these rocks here, and some of the large ones... I rented that Dingo walk-behind thing to place the big ones, and most of those I did with a rock dolly that I own.

- [Tammy] And your vision was that this was kind of a wet area anyway: "So why not take advantage of that?"

- [Burton] It was the one corner I thought I could do something like this.

- [Tammy] Is this what started the madness?

- [Burton] The gazebo started it. We had the gazebo first. We bought the gazebo that has the screens on it so we could get away from the mosquitoes. And then this was the next idea, I think.

- [Tammy] Got ya. So the paths that you've created, you laid all the brick.

- [Burton] I laid all the bricks. They're on the sand. They do good till the moles and the roots hit it. I've redid, think, all of 'em twice from, heh, the moles and the roots.

- [Tammy] So you've got pea gravel. You've got larger gravel. You've got bricks. You've got rocks. You've got stepping stones. You've got it all.

- [Burton] Well, quite a bit of things.

- And the path leads us to your bamboo, so let's look at the bamboo, and you can tell us about how you've become a bamboo expert.

- Okay! Well, okay, heh.

- [Tammy] You've got a shade garden, and we typically think of green, but you've got lots of color back here.

- Well, I've got some, yeah. This used to be in the sun, and I had some blooming plants here. But the shade has sorta taken over, so I've gone to ferns and hosta. And course, I bring in an annual impatien or something to give a little color here, and I have to use the pots back here 'cause with established trees it's hard to get around their roots. And then I have moles back here also, so I've used the pots, and I make the pots add a little bit of height and texture to it.

- [Tammy] And like you said, it's hard to dig a hole when you've got a root ball that's all over the place with established trees, but I like how you use these pots, because they add texture and-

- [Burton] You know, over a-

- interest.

- few years, I've found some interesting pots that I think are quite attractive. And some of 'em are cheap, and some of 'em are not so cheap, but the color... Some of 'em are pottery, and they, you know, I think, add some artistic flair to it.

- Then we transition to your bamboo, so talk to me about bamboo because that's sometimes a scary word for gardeners.

- Well, it is. You know, there's a lotta leaves from it that you have to rake up, but you can control it. When you cut a bamboo, it never grows in that spot again. It doesn't keep growing, like a privet bush. So you can control where it goes. I mean, if you're too close to neighbors, it could be a problem, getting in their yard. But we kinda cut it back, and let it grow where we want it to grow.

- [Tammy] And when does it send up the new sprouts?

- [Burton] It starts usually here in the sunnier areas about the end of March and maybe through mid-May to the end of May. And then it doesn't sprout after that till the next year.

- [Tammy] So during that time period, you'll just be vigilant about clipping back.

- [Burton] Right, yeah, up through May, we would cut back where we don't want it. I started out doing it to add some privacy over here at the time that fence wasn't there, and I added it. And I always thought bamboo goes by stream. You know, I grew up in Almaville, and Stewarts Creek run by our house there, and there was bamboo all along the stream there, so I've always liked bamboo for that reason.

- [Tammy] But you know what? It really is pretty.

- [Burton] Yeah, it is.

- [Tammy] Is this all the same type of bamboo?

- [Burton] The yellow is. I've got two kinds. There's one that's dark green and this yellow. And then I've got another green one that gets larger that's over in the other area. In the spring when it puts up a new shoot, the leaves are shrouded, but this thing, we say it look like corn shucks, you know, and there's these big things look like a corn shuck fall off, and you have to pick those up.

- [Tammy] I love it. I love it. Let's walk through your path because, yet again, you've created a beautiful little shady path here. And the bamboo is kind of the guide.

- [Burton] Right, right, it forms the path here and over there too. We've cut it out and saved what we wanted to, to form a path through there.

- How do you know if bamboo is dead?

- [Burton] Well, it loses what color its got and sorta turns gray, heh. It lives for several years, but it gradually... You lose some of it.

- And all of this guides you to another whole part of your garden that is just as beautiful!

- Well, thank you. Yes. This corner back here, there's a bench. It's usually pretty peaceful and secluded. You know, I do get some road noise back here at times, but if I pass around this way, I usually have to stop for a minute or two or longer on that bench and look around.

- [Tammy] You've utilized your hostas here.

- [Burton] And I miss... There used to be blue all along here with the hydrangeas, but the flash freeze a year and a half or so ago killed 'em back to the ground. And so far, I've only got one that's bloomed this year, but hopefully, they will come back or something.

- Well, and you've compensated for it beautifully.

- Well, yeah, I've got the... The daisies add some. Of course, some of the trees need a little more sun, but you go with what you have.

- You know, this little bamboo, it is like a little forest-

- [Burton] Right, I guess so.

- [Tammy] in the middle of your yard, and I love how you got little cutouts over to the side so you can hide.

- [Burton] Right, yeah, yeah.

- [Tammy] Because you have so much sun away from the bamboo, you've got, really, your native bloomers over here.

- Right, yes. Yeah, I love coneflowers. They're my favorite flower, and one of the reasons I like 'em is because the blooms last so long, you know. I like daylilies, but I think a bloom oughta last longer than one day sometimes, so I've been setting these out. I haven't had real good luck with some of my coneflowers. And then I've got the Becky Shasta daisies there. They're really reliable, and they keep coming back each year, and I like those.

- 'Cause every garden's gotta have some color, right?

- Right, right, yes.

- So you've anchored your flowers with these trees, so tell me about your pride and glory right here.

- Well, I've got... I wanted to do some little-bit-different-type conifers than you see some places. I think this is a form of blue Atlas cedar. I've got a columnar Norway spruce, and I think that's also, maybe, a columnar, a Norway spruce, I believe. And these I thought last year... After that flash freeze, they just didn't put on much new growth, and I was concerned about several of 'em. They looked so thin, and I was afraid they were, maybe, on their way out, and that's why I tried to expand over here. If I lost these, then my path would be one-sided, so I've added three small ones here just in case. But then this spring, all the stuff that didn't flush out last year seems like they put on double flush this year. I've been encouraged that they all look so much better this year than they did last year.

- [Tammy] So you've expanded. And then they came back and said, "Okay, I'm still alive."

- Yes, and I added over here. I brought in some dirt and put here and added these smaller... I think that's a deodar cedar and two columnar Norway spruce. And that gave me a little more room to set some more plants to get some color.

- Absolutely. It's beautiful. And again, this is something that you created. What's your vine that you've got growing?

- That's a periwinkle.

- [Tammy] I love the little purple blooms in the spring.

- Yeah, it blooms here. It must like this area, 'cause, you know, now we had ground cover; I mean used to put mulch; but now... You know, and very few weeds. Sometimes, a privet bush comes up through there or something, so it seems to be happy here. Even though it's got some sun, it's... I think it sorta likes shade.

- It's a perfect ground cover, isn't it?

- Yeah, and it's always green and nice, and you know, Diane trims it back off the rocks sometimes so it don't grow all the way down here.

- Yeah, it does like to spread. And you've got more color here, and I love your lighting so that you can enjoy it even in the night, and your petunias look beautiful.

- [Burton] Yeah, they're doing pretty well.

- [Tammy] So everything's kind of anchored around rocks.

- [Burton] Right, I like rocks, and they don't die on me. They stay with me, so.

- [Tammy] That's really pretty. Thank you for showing us your beautiful yard.

- [Burton] Okay.

- You have turned the palette of this garden into something spectacular.

- Well, thank you.

- Thanks for having.

- Okay, appreciate the opportunity to show it to ya.

- [Rene] Hi, Phillipe! Welcome to my garden!

- [Phillipe] Hey, good to be here, Rene.

- [Rene] I'd love to show you around if you're interested.

- Yeah, please. Let's go in.

- [Rene] Sure. Let's take a look.

- [Phillipe] Got some real healthy asparagus plants here going.

- [Rene] They are healthy, even though they're a little bit windblown right now. They don't seem to stay upright, even though I try to tie them together with some tie wraps. That did not work.

- They definitely wanna flop.

- But they're happy. They're happy either way.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, but your strawberry plants are right on time, you know.

- [Rene] They are, yeah. For early May, they're... They're producing pretty well this year. I have a few varieties. I've got some everbearing and then some June-bearing.

- [Phillipe] And do you treat them as perennials?

- I do treat them as perennials. All of these were actually transplanted from my old garden up in the field over here, so I've had these guys for a few years now. And of course, strawberries make runners. I will divide them each year, but I keep the original ones, and if there are empty spots, I'll fill in with runners or I'll make new strawberry beds and give it away to people.

- Yeah, well, they definitely look happy. So it looks like you've got onions over here.

- [Rene] I do. I have some red onions. My husband is a huge fan of 'em. The first row here are actually from some red onions that I had last year that kinda got forgotten in the bottom of a box.

- [Phillipe] As they do, yeah.

- [Rene] They sprouted roots, and I can't throw anything away with healthy roots.

- [Phillipe] It looks like someone's been grazing in here. I see you have a fence.

- I do have a fence. I have a fence to keep all the big critters out: the dogs most of all, the rabbits, the deer. But you're right. Somebody has been grazing on these, and that's my youngest son.

- Oh, really? On the onions.

- He comes in here, and he will just pick off big old fat chunks of onion greens, and he will walk through the garden and eat it like it's candy. It's the funniest thing, but it's good for him.

- Right. That's wonderful.

- So if that's how he gets his vegetables, then-

- You know what?

- I'm not complaining.

- That's great, yeah. And looks like your peas are just starting to come into bloom here.

- [Rene] Yeah, the peas are starting to bloom. I'm very excited about that. And these are sugar snap peas.

- [Phillipe] Okay, wonderful.

- I've tried a variety of different peas before, and it seems like the family prefers the sugar snap, so I didn't even bother putting anything else in, except for those ones.

- [Phillipe] And what have we... Chives here?

- I have some chives, and these chives are old. They are also from the original garden in the field. And then I've got some carrots as well.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, so the root crops do pretty well in here?

- Root crops do really well in here. I've had a lotta success with carrots, surprisingly, 'cause I wasn't really sure how that would work with the raised bed only being a certain level. But I've had some monster carrots come outta this, and the kids just love it 'cause they're really big and fat and tall. So yeah, it works just fine. I've had beets in here.

- Wonderful, yeah. I see a huge plot of potatoes. Can we go look at that?

- Sure, absolutely. Let's go.

- [Phillipe] So yeah, it looks like you've got some really full beds of potatoes here.

- [Rene] I do, yes. Then they do well in these raised beds?

- [Rene] They do really well. It might be surprising to some people that you can grow potatoes in a raised bed, but I've done it for a couple of years in a row now, and it's been very successful. I have tried growing potatoes in a big, 55-gallon plastic drum, where you-

- [Phillipe] Kinda the mounding thing.

- [Rene] Mounded up, and the actual potato plant ended up being taller than I was. And when it came time for me to harvest it, I dumped everything out, and I was disappointed by the amount of potatoes that were in there-

- [Phillipe] Really?

- being that I had mounded it up and everything. So I get a lot of potatoes in the raised beds like this. Even though I don't mound it, because there's not really enough space or room to build it up, you do get a lot of potatoes out this way.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, what varieties are we growing here?

- [Rene] I have Yukon Gold. And then I have some russet potatoes.

- [Phillipe] Your greenhouse is beautiful. Can we take a look at that?

- Thank you. Of course, yeah.

- Yeah, let's go in there.

- Let's go. Sure.

- So we're here in your wonderful... Homemade greenhouse?

- Yes, it's completely custom-built by my dad and my husband.

- It's awesome.

- I have been bugging him for years for a glass greenhouse, and all the windows in here are repurposed.

- Great.

- I had gone to window companies that would otherwise just take it to the dump and throw 'em out, and I took 'em. And here they are.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's perfect. I love it.

- Yeah, and it allows you to start... I see a bunch of melons here.

- [Rene] Yeah, we love watermelon. We love melon. They're gonna go out in the field whenever they're grown up.

- Okay, right, 'cause they probably get way too big for your raised beds.

- They do get big. I've had 'em in the raised beds before, and some of 'em did okay; some of 'em didn't. But they tend to get out of control and grow over everything else. And then they get into the grass part, and I have to lift 'em up or mow around 'em. It's a lotta work, and if they don't produce, then it's all for nothing, so they're going out into the field this year.

- That's good. It's where they've got space to ramble when they really take over.

- They'll be happy there, so. But I'm also growing my sweet potatoes over here.

- [Phillipe] Oh, right, that sweet potatoes.

- [Rene] Right here, my sweet potato, and it's making its little babies that I'll pick off and put out in the field when it's ready.

- I was gonna say. They're out in the field too?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, they definitely get huge and need some space to go, so.

- Sweet potatoes are a lotta fun.

- Wonderful, yeah. So you've got a really nice orchard started out here.

- [Rene] Thank you.

- [Phillipe] What kinda trees do you have?

- [Rene] I have a little bit of everything. I've got three different apple varieties. I've got pears, peaches, plums, cherries-

- [Phillipe] Wonderful.

- apricots, some grapes. You know, I wanted an orchard. I wanted everything. and I bought it all at once, stuck it in the ground without having a clue of what I was doing, but I've definitely learned through the years.

- Right, right, well, a saying I always hear is "the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, so go ahead and do it now."

- I know that saying. Exactly. Yeah, they take a while to get established. My apple trees actually bloomed for the first time this year.

- Oh, wonderful.

- And they've got little baby apples on 'em, so I'm super excited about having apples finally after waiting for so long.

- [Phillipe] Well, I've had a wonderful time, and you're a very enthusiastic gardener.

- [Rene] Thank you so much. It was wonderful having you here, and you guys are welcome to come back anytime.

- 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 an 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 almost invariably gets powdery mildew. Against these dark green leaves, you can see how striking those white spots are. Really shows up, and 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 kinda 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. Nother plant that can get powdery mildew is crepe myrtle. Lemme move this out of the way. You can see this white, this fog, 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 varieties of crepe myrtles are incredibly susceptible to powdery mildew, and it's 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, that are very popular all over the South do tend to get powdery mildew. Nother plant that gets it, bingo, yellow squash. That's a vegetable. If you can see the... And you can feel it, too. There's a kind of, 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 it 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 ya 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 lotta rose products. Roses get powdery mildew, too. If you are an organic gardener, a lotta people will tell you to use bicarbonate of soda, which is basically baking soda, sodium bicarbonate. But better are things like potassium bicarbonate or ammonium bicarbonate, which you can buy; they're widely available, names like bicarb 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's 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 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 kinda 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's called impatiens necrotic spot virus, or INSV, and it's spread by thrip, western flower thrip in particular, which is this tee-nincy, 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 kind of 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 downy mildew. I talked about powdery mildew. Downy mildew is a completely different disease that is affecting impatiens. If you see, your impatiens, the leaves start to cup, the edges roll over downward, and then they start dropping leaves like crazy, they quit blooming, and they look kinda scraggly, turn over whatever leaf remains, and look for a white kind of velvety 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, spray 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 Leland 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 Leland 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 help your plants fend it off. And I'm speaking to you now after an incredible dry spell in the summer heat and no rain. That's when it tends to show up, after the plants have been drought-stressed. If you keep your Leland 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 Lelands, and I don't wanna lose 'em, but I don't wanna 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 we have to talk about, and I hope you find it useful. Tune in next week 'cause we got a whole lot more.

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