Episode 3506

- [Narrator] A cottage garden is designed with an informal, overflowing, and romantic style, and that's on display in this well-established home garden in Jackson, Tennessee. Annette Shrader learns about the top performers in this very diverse plant palette that features a bevy of colorful blooms. Hardneck garlic is a crop that gets planted in the fall, then has an eight-month growing cycle. It's a favorite here at Red Thread Farm. Jeremy Tolley shares tips on planting, fertilizing, harvesting, and curing this culinary treasure. And April Moore gives us a tour of her garden in mid-summer to see perennials with captivating blooms. Come along. This engaging landscape represents generations of passionate and knowledgeable gardeners.

- They say a garden is a reflection of the gardeners. I'm at the home of Sherry and Robert Caldwell. We are in Jackson, Tennessee, and we're about to walk through the gates of a true cottage garden. I think as we get ready to enter into your garden in the back, your cottage garden, you told me that perhaps your dominant plants are hydrangea.

- Yes. Yes.

- And I love... This is the year for these, isn't it?

- The rain.

- You think?

- I do think because hydrangeas, H-Y, water.

- Well, that's true.

- And I think that's their, you know, they love water.

- And according to this, you have some acid soil right here, don't you?

- Yes. Yes.

- [Annette] But you have a little girl pigged in every year.

- [Sherry] Yeah, I do.

- [Annette] Are these reliable bloomers?

- [Sherry] Yes. They have bloomed every year for about 20 years.

- [Annette] Well, and you're fortunate.

- [Sherry] Yes. Yes.

- [Annette] It's called location too.

- [Sherry] I guess, yeah. Yes. They like this exposure, I guess. It's a northern exposure. You wouldn't think that this would be their favorite because it's so cold in the winter. And they get the wind.

- [Annette] And that's true. And I know that you're a plant enthusiast because I can look at the varieties of plants you have.

- [Sherry] Yeah. Yeah.

- [Annette] And it's hard for you to go somewhere and not buy one, isn't it?

- [Sherry] Oh, yes. My destination is where plants are usually.

- I feel love standing under this arbor.

- And sister, you are loved.

- What are you covering it with?

- This is Carolina Jasmine.

- It's beautiful and a shade and green, but now, let's focus on, you've got a fence here. Why do we have a fence?

- Because that's typical of cottage gardening. All cottage gardens will eventually have a fence.

- Okay. And do they always include the plants on the inside or some inside and some outside?

- Some inside and some outside.

- Okay. Well, my first glance is that this is my first experience this year with Cleome.

- Yeah.

- [Annette] Now this comes back. You said you like perennials because they come back.

- [Sherry] Yes. Yes.

- [Annette] And I guess we call this a hardy annual 'cause it recedes, right?

- [Sherry] Yes. Profusely.

- Yeah, and you know, there's another fragrance here and it's coming from this beautiful... You call this?

- Asiatic. It's a lily.

- Asiatic lily. I think it's a cross, actually.

- [Sherry] Oh, do you?

- [Annette] Between an Asiatic and I think it's a tree lily.

- [Sherry] A tree lily.

- Yes, but I know this. The fragrance that anyone plants this in their garden, any lily, when you walk in the mornings, it's like having a bowl of some kind of luscious tropical fruit. The smell is so everyone should oast themselves a lily. I know a cottage garden has vegetables.

- [Sherry] Yes.

- [Annette] I see yours.

- [Sherry] Yes, tomatoes. Swiss chard. I like the taste, but I think it's beautiful and I just love to have it because of the color.

- [Annette] Well, I don't blame you.

- [Sherry] Yeah.

- And, you know, I like this cattle panel that you've put your tomatoes up here with.

- [Sherry] Yeah, that's been very useful.

- [Annette] Yes. And I see something else you're utilizing, your fence. You have clematis in here also.

- [Sherry] Yes, clematis here and there.

- [Annette] And here's one of it.

- [Sherry] It's one of my things I like to collect.

- [Annette] It grows well on everything. We visited with your beautiful vegetables, but I love this herb right here.

- [Sherry] Yes. That is apple mint and it's my favorite mint.

- Needs some iced tea.

- It does need some iced tea.

- I love that fragrance. And you know, you can put that in a little vase in your house and go by and pinch it and it just puts out that aroma in it.

- Oh, it does.

- Or in your bathroom. It's right in the bathroom.

- Exactly. Exactly.

- You can chop it up and put it in salads. It's wonderful in salads.

- This right here is lemon balm, isn't it?

- Yes.

- And it's in its blooming stage. And does that get rampant or is it-

- [Sherry] It is rampant.

- [Annette] Well, it's a good thing. I love the visitor in the boxwood. You're crying them lilies.

- [Sherry] Crying them.

- [Annette] They are so beautiful and they are very prolific in their ground where they grow. Now, I think you have some influence in your gardens from your grandmother.

- [Sherry] Yes, from both grandmothers and from my mother. That's Amsonia.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Sherry] And I have a lot of influence from my mother in my garden.

- [Annette] Was this particular plant from their garden?

- [Sherry] Yes, that's my mother's.

- [Annette] Oh, that's wonderful. I love your arbor cover here.

- Yes. That's a Jackson vine.

- And you know, I can't grow this, but you're growing it. And this is evergreen?

- It's evergreen.

- And you know, this is one of the favorites for bride's bouquets.

- Yes. Yes.

- I know. That's a Southern tradition.

- I've heard that.

- Well, let's come on through into this garden. I see differences already. I see over here, you have a different kind of hydrangea getting ready to bloom. This one is a...

- [Sherry] Limelight.

- [Annette] The limelight.

- [Sherry] Yes.

- [Annette] And that's gonna be big and beautiful and the whitest, I think, of some of the hydrangea bloom. And then this right here, this has to be a grandmother plant right here.

- [Sherry] Yes, that's my mother's as well.

- [Annette] That's the native tall flock.

- [Sherry] Yeah. Yeah.

- [Annette] It's beautiful.

- [Sherry] And look at the bees on it. There's bees on that side.

- [Annette] Oh. Okay. I see a new love you were telling me.

- [Sherry] Yes, the day lilies.

- [Annette] And you know what strikes me about these are the colors of the violet.

- [Sherry] Oh. Okay.

- [Annette] The pinks in them. And look how one color leads your eye to see another color in the garden. It's kind of like the same thing as a pathway. How you take the colors and reflect them and just move yourself along. Do you happen to have a particular one that you like there?

- Well, I'm loving this one. I wish I knew the name, but it's-

- You don't have to.

- Yeah, it's beautiful. This one has multiplied at the bottom and made more quicker than any other one.

- [Annette] Well, that's one of my favorites when they do that.

- [Sherry] Yeah. Yeah.

- [Annette] And I have to say that my, in this cluster, I would choose this purple one right there.

- [Sherry] Okay. Okay.

- [Annette] And look at the bud count on those. That's a sign of something that's gonna give you a lot of bloom for a month perhaps if our weather holds. No cottage garden would be complete without that beautiful...

- [Sherry] Larkspur.

- [Annette] And the color is terrific. And you know, the best thing about those, if you take those when they dry out, don't take them somewhere and spill the seed. Just take them, break them off, lay them on the ground, and walk on them. And you're gonna have them next year.

- [Sherry] That's true. That's true.

- [Annette] They come up in the winter.

- [Sherry] Yes. Yes.

- [Annette] I see something right here that interests me, Sherry.

- [Sherry] The toad lily.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [Sherry] Variegated leaves.

- [Annette] I'm not sure I've seen that before.

- [Sherry] Yeah.

- And you know, as I stand here, we're looking at this one plant, but then I began to look back and to see the depth that you have created here with your garden and how you've taken advantage... Yes, your slope is an advantage. Some people don't think that. But in doing so, every level is actually viewed by the viewer. Whoever's out here can stand in this spot and see what you created inside your fences.

- [Sherry] Yes. I've tried to terrace it.

- And I know that your choices of plants are wide and varied. And I've been noticing all of... We can't look at all of them, but I'm telling you to fill up this spot.

- Yes. Being a master gardener, it kind of goes along with the territory.

- Somebody created a love in you, but we already know.

- Yes, they did.

- It was your grandmother.

- Well, that was the beginning.

- That's right. I want to say there's a large spans of flowers right here, but I'm sorry, Sherry. I want to pay homage to this.

- Please.

- Poke salad right here. You and I both.

- Poke salad Annies.

- That's right. And you have to eat that. When birds comes up out of the ground, I've had enjoyed it all of my life.

- [Sherry] Yes, I have too.

- [Annette] I've even saved some in my own garden.

- [Sherry] Heck, I do too. I have it for the birds.

- [Annette] I love the echinaceas here. And these are very reliable also, and they'll come back for us, won't they?

- [Sherry] Yes, they do.

- [Annette] This is why we love echinacea, isn't it?

- [Sherry] Oh, we love it because the bees love it.

- [Annette] And you know they'll come back. And the yellow finches, once this is finished blooming, these turn into seed pods. And the yellow finch comes back and she enjoys all of that. It's just a beautiful plant and it fills in a lot of spaces. But you know, right here, I have something example. This is a tiger lily.

- Yeah.

- It's not yet bloomed.

- [Sherry] Right.

- I have people ask me all the time, "What's wrong with my tiger lily?" You see that? Those are little lilies. That's actually a bulb. You know, let me pull this one off. Let me show you something. See that?

- [Sherry] That's a bulb.

- [Annette] That could be planted down in the ground. That's why these are prolific in the garden and wherever they're planted.

- [Sherry] Yes. It's one of my favorite plants.

- This is a skyscraper tree, Sherry. What is this?

- [Sherry] The Kentucky coffee tree.

- [Annette] And does it do anything?

- Well, it doesn't produce fruit that I know of, but it drapes beautifully. And the leaf farms, how they... There are several leafs on each stem.

- [Annette] How tall do you estimate this tree to be?

- [Sherry] Possibly, 30 foot right now.

- And so it caught your eye because it's so, it's lofty.

- [Sherry] It's graceful.

- And graceful.

- Yes. Yes.

- [Sherry] The leaf forms.

- [Annette] Yeah. Anyone would want that tree in their yard.

- [Sherry] Yes. Yes. I think they should.

- [Annette] Everyone wants to know what these trees are.

- That's a magnolia. Medesimo.

- I don't know that.

- It has huge blooms.

- It has bloomed. And I see the seed pods.

- [Sherry] Yes.

- [Annette] But this is a beautiful tree for shade or just, you know, I would put this tree anywhere.

- [Sherry] Oh, yes.

- And then it's part of a circle here. We're involved with the very first boxwoods and what you started this garden with, aren't we?

- [Sherry] Yes. The boxwoods.

- [Annette] And you've had them 35 years, maybe?

- [Sherry] At least.

- [Annette] And you know what? They all are pretty much the same size, which tells me they haven't been affected one plant here or one plant there.

- Right.

- And within this circle, we're gonna move in because I know that this circle right here brings us to family, doesn't it?

- These peonies belong to my husband's grandmother. And I confiscated them off of the family farm.

- [Annette] And where was that located?

- Melissa's, Tennessee. South of Jackson.

- [Annette] Okay.

- [Sherry] And that's where Robert's family came from, Melissa's on Caldwell Road.

- And I suspect that he likes to come here when these bloom.

- He loves to get a quilt here in early spring and lie down in the circle.

- Well, I would too. And you know what? There's a song, "May the Circle Be Unbroken."

- That's true.

- [Annette] This is a wonderful tribute and I like your reflection ball there to how you can walk around this garden and see yourself all the way around.

- [Sherry] Yes.

- [Annette] That's a beautiful ending.

- [Sherry] Yes, that's a nice thought.

- I've stepped into this inner circle with you, Sherry, to tell you what an honor it has been to visit within the fence of your cottage garden. Your expertise shows, your plant choices show. But most of all, I've always said, I've never met a gardener that I didn't love. And I loved being with you in a particular location, but now you've opened up your heart to all of us and shown us that there's gardening in our lives. What would we be without it?

- [Sherry] Oh, we'd be starved, wouldn't we?

- We would.

- [Sherry] We'd be starved.

- It's been my privilege to walk and talk with you in your garden that you've cherished every plant that you've planted.

- Yes.

- And seeing your outcome and your vision.

- Yes.

- Of what you've created here with you and Robert.

- Yes.

- And I know he's proud also.

- He is.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you. Thank you.

- It's a beautiful crisp November morning at Red Thread Farm in Franklin, Tennessee. We're here today to plant our very last crop of the season, garlic. Garlic is a crop that is easy to grow in the home garden, but it requires a little bit of planning ahead and some thoughtful preparation. Planting garlic involves starting in the fall for a crop that you're gonna harvest next summer. In the mid-south, garlic is planted from mid-October to mid-November. That requires you to get started with ordering your garlic or saving garlic seed in advance. At Red Thread Farm, we order our garlic from a seed company every year to get really high quality garlic and to ensure that we always have enough that we can replant. But for a home gardener, if you grow garlic, you can save your garlic bulbs and then replant them every year. You just wanna make sure you're saving the highest quality garlic that you have and usually the largest cloves. The largest bulbs of garlic tend to yield the largest garlic in the summer. So you wanna make sure you're doing that. To prepare garlic for planting, you simply do what you would normally do in the kitchen by removing the skins from the garlic and then breaking them down into cloves, like these that we've already done. Unlike preparing it in the kitchen, you wanna make sure that you actually leave the skins on the garlic so that they can retain as much of that when you put them in the ground. That'll help preserve them to keep them from rotting or getting damaged by insects once they're in the ground. Planting garlic too early may result in our warm temperatures here in the mid-south to cause a lot of top growth to happen at the expense of a larger bulb. Planting too late after mid-November may result in a hard freeze, damaging the bulb before it has a chance to get established. So always stick to the mid-October to mid-November timeframe. There are two general categories of garlic that you can plant in the home garden. There's hardneck and there's softneck garlic. Hardneck garlic tends to like more colder temperature. It's hardier. However, it doesn't have quite the storage life that softneck garlic has. We grow hardneck garlic almost exclusively on our farm, and I think you'll find that's the case in most of the Southeast. Softneck garlic has a more flexible stem on it, thus the name softneck. And it is much more, has better storage potential than hardneck garlic does. Growing high-quality garlic in the home garden requires having really good soil. You're gonna wanna make sure that you have well-amended soil that's has a lot of organic matter, like this soil in our garden. As you can see, it's has a lot of compost applied to it over the years, so it's friable and very good quality. On top of that, you're gonna wanna make sure that you use a slow release organic fertilizer. Here on our farm, we use an organic fertilizer that consists mostly of organic feather meal, alfalfa meal, kelp, and other micronutrients. But you can find something similar quality at your local garden center. Just make sure that you get something that's slow release that can release nutrients to your garlic over the wintertime. A soil test can provide valuable information about your soil's nutrient levels, the pH, and other characteristics that can help you optimize for the plant's health. Garlic prefers slow release nitrogen sources like feather meal and blood meal, but also regular applications of compost is gonna help to improve your soil quality. The thing to keep in mind is the healthier the soil, the bigger your garlic bulbs are gonna be. I'm always fascinated by how a clove of garlic can be planted in the soil, and then 10 months later, we end up with a beautiful bulb of garlic filled with eight or nine or 10 of these cloves. It's one of the little miracles of nature. Remember to be sure the pointy side is up because that's where the green is gonna come out of the bulbs. We're also using our highest quality largest cloves first. So these are large cloves. This one is quite a lot smaller. At the end, if we have a lot of these left over, then we may take these and plant them really close together so that in early spring, we can have green garlic. One of the most important aspects about growing garlic over winter is to ensure that you have a good quality mulch on top of it. We like to use weed straw because weed straw tends to allow water to penetrate, but it also provides good insulation. The other benefit of having a high-quality mulch on your garlic is that it helps to suppress weeds. Since this is a crop that's gonna to be growing in your garden for 10 months, it'll sure save the gardener a lot of work to not to have to do weeding during that period of time. You want your straw, your mulch, about three to four inches deep all across over top of where you planted the garlic. And in a few months, a few weeks, actually, you'll notice that some of the garlic will start to come through. You'll have some little green sprouts that'll come through. Those green sprouts will stay there pretty much all winter. And then when the days start to get longer in the spring and the temperatures start to warm up, that garlic will grow very rapidly through the wheat straw. Leaves from your yard tend to be a really good mulch to use in the garden and we really like using leaves. However, when leaves are applied to the ground for a long period of time on top of garlic, they have a tendency to compact, and that can reduce the amount of water that comes through and can inhibit the growth of the garlic. If you're gonna use leaves in your garden, we recommend that you shred them before putting them on in such a thick manner. Once the fall planting and the mulching is complete, there's little left to do until spring comes around. When the soil begins to warm and the days get longer in early spring, you'll notice that garlic will start growing green tops. At this point, we spread the same fertilizer over the beds, but keep an eye out for weeds that find their way through the mulch. Garlic is unique in that it offers two harvests for the gardener. First, of course, you know, we're all waiting on the bulbs, but in the spring, you get tasty garlic scapes, which are the flowering part that comes off the top of the garlic plant. Scapes are the immature flower heads of garlic that can be cooked as a fresh vegetable that tastes very similar to garlicky green beans. Cutting the scapes also helps the plant put more energy toward making larger bulbs. So what I like to do is I like to dig one up and just test it and make sure that that garlic bulb is nice and formed there. And if you find that's the case, it's time to get them out of the ground. So when you dig the garlic up, be really careful with it. It's very fragile before it's cured, so make sure that you're very gentle when you pull it out of the ground or dig it out of the ground. And then for hardneck garlic like this, you're gonna leave three or four inches of the stem on, cut the other part of the plant, discard it, and then take some scissors and gently trim the roots. Now you don't want to do anything else with this plant until this bulb, until it has officially, you know, cured and it's ready for storage. So we like to cure our garlic on screened tables with fans blowing on them, kind of gently blowing on them. And then after a few weeks, usually two to three weeks, you'll find that the garlic, the skin has hardened, the stem is nice and dry and brittle, and it's time to clean your garlic. Once your garlic is properly cured, it's as simple as cleaning the garlic by removing the outer skins. They can be done with your hands very gently like this and you're gonna end up with a nice, pretty, white garlic bulb ready for storage. Growing garlic in the home garden is pretty easy as long as you follow a few simple steps and plan ahead. And I think you'll find that once you've had homegrown garlic, it's really hard to go back to the grocery store stuff. It's just delicious.

- It's mid-summer and it's that time of the year when gardeners start looking for plants to fill in those gaps that we get once the heat sets in and an excuse to be in the garden. And so today, I wanted to show you a few of my favorites from my garden. And one of them is these Japanese anemones, which are beautiful and will bloom right into the fall, but I will warn you, they do spread. What a dramatic color these are. And this is our native cardinal flower, Lobelia cardinalis. I grow it and I also grow its cousin, great blue lobelia, which is Lobelia siphilitica. And these things are wonderful this time of year. Hummingbirds will fly directly to them over your shoulder. Clearly a hummingbird magnet. And they're very easy to grow. I'm surprised more people don't grow them. It is a native and it will spread its around when it's happy. And really, all it requires is a little bit of moisture, so I planted mine near the bird bath in this low spot where it will get that. And then also, they do need a little protection from our real heat so they like a spot that's got a little bit of shade. This one gets sun in the morning and it also gets a little bit in the late afternoon, seems perfectly happy. I started with one plant and these are biennials, but they will clump out. You can divide those or let them just save themselves around, which these have done. You're probably familiar with black-eyed Susans or annual one Rudbeckia hirta, but this one is actually a perennial here and it's a native as well. The good thing I really like about it is like all black-eyed Susans, annual or perennial, it's basically care-free. This one, I cut it back in late winter. It just comes back every year. But another thing I love about it is it blooms slightly later than the annual black-eyed Susans. And it's a little bit more of a gold color. So if you want a one-two punch, plant your annual black-eyed Susans, then plant this beautiful perennial. Another one that I absolutely adore for its color, and particularly in this season of the year, is this one, black and blue salvia, Salvia guaranitica. And it's actually from Brazil, but it and its cousins, several of which I grow, are fabulous for color this time of year. And you really don't have to do anything. They are hardy here. A lot of salvias aren't. And so all you do is once the clump is expand, dig them up, divide them, and move them elsewhere. And as you can see, I've done that a few times in my garden. You're probably familiar with our Lucifer crocosmias as something you can get beautiful red color from in mid to late summer. But this is a different variety and there are several. This one is less likely to recede for one thing, but it's a variety called Tobias. And look at that little red face in the center. I love these little guys. They do need, like the Lucifers do, to be dug up every three years, and you split the little bulbs apart, and then you can just have multiple plants. But if you don't do that, each year the bulb puts on another little bulbet, and that one will be deeper in the ground and eventually it'll stop blooming. So just keep that in mind, but they're easy to dig up and then you can spread them around your garden like I have. This is a tall garden phlox, Thai pink jade. And I love it because it's such a tall plant. It's a real showstopper, great for the back of the border. And what a lot of people may not realize is tall garden phlox are actually generally hybrids of our native phlox, Phlox paniculata. And so not only is it a hybrid of native plants, but you can get it in multiple colors and it's going to be about this tall. It doesn't require any particular care. It just dies back. It's a herbaceous perennial. And then in the spring, it'll come back. I hope seeing these plants in my garden has inspired you to add a little bit more pop of color to your midsummer garden. Now all of these plants are widely available in nurseries, so you should be able to find ones like these or ones you like even better.