Episode 3508

- [Narrator] On this "Volunteer Gardener," Annette Shrader visits with a flower farmer who is a passionate grower and a talented floral designer. These raised beds are brimming with blooms of dahlias, zinnias, marigolds, and more. Once cut, they're available for purchase by the stem or bouquet at her farm stand. Then, Tammy Algood tours a backyard that was totally re-imagined. It now has stone walkways bordered by plantings, a sunken patio, and lots of trees. The pair of do-it-yourself homeowners excavated 39 tons of soil and installed more than 100 tons of stone to make their dream a reality. We'll learn all about it, so come along. The freshest of fresh cuts.

- Can you imagine driving down an old country road, and suddenly you put your brakes on because look at this beautiful old classic truck bed, but inside it, look at the beautiful flowers. I cannot wait to introduce you to the young lady that has started this business. I guess you can see there is a lot going on here. And it's my pleasure to introduce Jana Slagel. What is the mastermind behind you deciding that you were gonna grow in a field like this?

- I just really enjoy plants and I used to grow in my yard and now I've moved out here and I like to grow flowers.

- [Annette] So in that process though, you are using your flowers to sell to the public, right? So you had to know how to make a flower arrangement?

- [Jana] Yes, ma'am.

- [Annette] And so all that came naturally, didn't it?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well, I'm very intrigued with your field of dahlias that you have here. Now tell me how long and how you developed this area of these fabulous rows of dahlias, when did this begin?

- About six years ago, I started growing dahlias.

- But not in this location?

- No, ma'am. I just, this spring was the first year out here.

- So did you tell me this was a horse pasture?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well, you know, you had some things that helped you with this. You had good dirt, you had previous fertilizer.

- Yes, ma'am.

- But you had a little issue with water, didn't you?

- Yes, ma'am.

- So tell me about how you did this, your beds and everything.

- [Jana] So I got wood chips from ChipDrop. I signed up for the ChipDrop and they'll come and bring you free wood chips. And then my husband built me these beds and we got dirt delivered and we filled up all of these beds, and then I started planting within two weeks.

- [Annette] Wow. So you are known as the Vintage Dahlia. So absolutely this is gonna be your primary crop. So tell us about, say for instance, this. What kind is that and how did it get started?

- So this is anemone type of dahlia, and I grew this from seed. And like this whole bed right here is dahlias that I am trying to hybridize to get a special one. So at the end of the year, at the end of the season, I will cut the seed heads off and then next year, I'll start over to see if any of the dahlias that are special I'll keep, and then I'll keep those tubers.

- Okay, so it starts out as a seed that you order from someone.

- And then you have a little plant that you put in the ground.

- Yes, ma'am.

- And then you dig it out and it has a tuber.

- Yes, ma'am.

- That's amazing. Now see, these are mostly all anemones, aren't they, in here? The flat type, single, like they remind me of cosmos almost, don't they? I think I see this is a pretty one. What is that one?

- [Jana] So this is going to be a keeper this year, and I will dig this one up and save the tubers because once you dig the tubers up, it will be the same as the mother plant.

- [Annette] Okay, so they're actually unnamed, right? The plant itself doesn't have a name?

- No, ma'am.

- Okay, will you name it?

- Yes, ma'am.

- After your children?

- Most likely.

- That's a good idea. You know, there's a lot of things that can happen with dahlias. What are some of your best growing tips to someone that wants to do that, grow them?

- To stake them.

- To stake them.

- Because most of mine aren't staked. And some, I mean, they fall over so, they get so tall and they'll just fall over.

- [Annette] And so do you have insect problems?

- Yes, ma'am.

- What is the major one?

- [Jana] Cucumber beetles.

- [Annette] And this time of year, guess what? They don't have any cucumbers.

- [Jana] They're gonna be out here.

- Absolutely. These three wonderful rows with dahlias and your annuals, they're beautiful, but I know that there are some issues that you have come across with one kind of a dahlia that you do grow that's not necessarily what you want because you use your dahlias for flower arrangements, correct?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Okay. Well, is there an example, say for instance, in here, what is something that you might call out because of the way it grows?

- This one right here, it's just, it doesn't get very tall and the stem is very big.

- [Annette] I see that, it doesn't have, yeah.

- [Jana] Very clustered together.

- [Annette] Yeah. So that's not something that you will plant again?

- No, ma'am.

- Well now this in reverse, how about this one now?

- [Jana] Yes, ma'am. This one is a keeper.

- [Annette] They're so beautiful. And I love this one. The stem on this is very good for doing with your arrangements.

- Yes, ma'am.

- And look at that one that's ready to bloom over there. See, do you use those?

- I can't cut them until they're open.

- Oh, okay, so is that a ball, or are they all pretty much the same kind in here?

- They're all different. So this one right here is a water lily. And then I've got the ball types.

- That is beautiful. I see one right here. What's that gonna be?

- That's a ball.

- That's a ball. Isn't that pretty? I say that's what that's gonna be also. Goodness. What is your best time of the day to cut these?

- [Jana] Either early in the morning, right after sunrise, or late in the evenings.

- [Annette] Uh-huh. So this complete row of annuals started way back in the spring, didn't it?

- Yes, ma'am.

- What is your process?

- So all these in this row were all sewn right into the dirt in the spring.

- Right here?

- Yes, ma'am.

- You don't bring out a little seedling or anything?

- No, ma'am.

- So you just mark rows or do you just broadcast them?

- I use actually my hand and I just make rows and sprinkle it and cover it up.

- [Annette] What time of the year do you do that?

- [Jana] In the spring, early spring.

- [Annette] Early spring. Okay, so these are beautiful zinnias. And of course this year you don't have an issue with very much of the powdery mildew because precipitation has not been here. So if you have powdery mildew, but you've got to have a pristine leaf if you're gonna put this into a beautiful arrangement, aren't you? So what do you do if that does occur?

- [Jana] I usually will pull the whole bed out, and restart if I have enough time.

- [Annette] Okay. Tell me this. Approximately how long does it take from germination to where you see that little first two little leaves to bloom time?

- [Jana] I believe 64 days.

- [Annette] 64 days. So that means that probably the 1st of June that you might start to. Now, I'm very intrigued also that you have a beautiful bed of marigolds, they are a minimum of four feet tall, aren't they?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well, and that orange color, there we go again, we are in the fall. And I can see that being worked in to suit with all your dahlias.

- Yes, ma'am.

- And tell me, when you cut, do you save any of these seeds, or do you start with fresh seeds?

- [Jana] So this year I have saved over probably a five gallon baggy of marigold seeds from just that bed.

- [Annette] Oh, goodness. So do you sell those?

- [Jana] I will probably, whatever I have left, I'll sell.

- Okay. Well, on down through this complete row of annuals. I know I see celosia. So what does that do in a design? Does it make free-forming it or a filler? How do you use that?

- I love it as a filler because it adds character and texture.

- Okay, and then you have big zinnias, you have small zinnias, and then you also have basil that you use?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Am I corny? But I love this. What is this?

- This is broom corn.

- Broom corn. And there again, I see those colors and everything is, so is this something you sewed from seed into the ground?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Wow. And so if this is corn, you have deer?

- I do.

- Oh dear, you do. Do they really present a problem?

- [Jana] At the beginning of the year they did, but now I have put some stuff out and I haven't seen any.

- [Annette] Well do you want to share what it's worth? What do you use that, you've not seen them?

- [Jana] It was these little bags and it smelled like really strong of garlic.

- [Annette] Uh-huh. Well, they don't like, you know, liquid fence. It smells too. Now this is what I call a very great complimentary flower for everything you have here because it fits in with every color palette, doesn't it?

- Yes, ma'am.

- So this is an amaranth?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Wow. What is this called color-wise?

- This is hot biscuits.

- Hot biscuits?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well, goodness. Now that's really pretty. And that has a million seeds, doesn't it?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well you know there's some people that eat the grains of an amaranth.

- Really?

- Yes. And the purple is an amazing thing as far as complimentary colors and how they fill in this, you know, your dahlia is one shape, but these are another completely different color and texture, aren't they?

- Yes, ma'am.

- Well, I have to tell you that I know personally the kind of work and dedication you have put into this. Tell me this, if you had it all to do over again, is there anything you'd do differently?

- [Jana] No, ma'am. I would do it all over again.

- [Annette] And none of it was, some of it was trial and error, wasn't it?

- Oh yes, ma'am.

- Yeah. And I think you come up with the right combination from all that you've done. And I know you grow peonies and I know you do everything. And obviously you do because I recently learned that you have been granted an award from the Tennessee Small Farm, and the exact award was named?

- [Jana] Small Farmer of the Year in the Innovative Marketing category.

- [Annette] Well, Jana, I can tell you that you earned it all full force because from what you have done to satisfy your love of gardening that came from your grandmother. You've played in the dirt, you've tried your best to create and do with what you have and what you can add from others. But the fact that you've created a business to supplement the rest of your life, I think it's admirable, and I just cannot thank you enough. for walking this and hearing what you've done. And I salute you.

- Oh, you're preciou, thank you.

- And Montgomery County is proud of you.

- Oh, thank you, thank you.

- Thank you for the time.

- Thank you so much.

- A lot of people want to grow beautiful roses, and there is a lot of tips you can have, but there's one top tip. And Ron Daniels, Master Rosarian, can you please tell us what your top tip is?

- Well, when I first started here, the main focus was the soil. And I spent a lot of time and energy doing this. I have all amended soil. I use a product called Holy Cow Soils, which is a mixture. And then I keep that soil healthy. And I keep the pH right, and I keep adding organics to it. So that's very key in growing roses, and a lot of other plants, especially roses. And I like a raised bed because it drains better and it's easier to maintain. And like I said before, I'm tall, and I like rose to be up here, but soil is so important and so many people skip that part of it. It's very important in growing roses because I think some of the biggest complaints we have in the Nashville Rose Society is, well I planted it, did good the first year, the second year and planted in Tennessee clay. And the second year it's not doing when it gets out of that pot or it gets out of that first thing. it don't grow very well. So focus on your soil and that's the first thing we teach people in the Nashville Rose Society.

- [April] So healthy soil, healthy rose.

- You got that right.

- Excellent. Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- [Tammy] We're about to see a dramatic home landscaping project. It involved excavation and tons of stone. Jim and Will, the ultimate do-it-yourselfers, dreamt it, engineered it, and did the heavy lifting. They wanted us to see the finished project together, so let's go.

- [Jim] So these are floating rocks here. This is one of the last things they did. This has 20 rebars in it, it's not going anywhere. Good luck trying to push that over.

- [Tammy] Right? But they look so natural there.

- [Jim] Yes, that's everything in this, everything is planned to look natural.

- Oh my gosh.

- So this was, nothing grew here. I think a lot of people can relate to this. They have this kind of crappy piece of side yard between houses where it doesn't really get enough sun, the gutters are taking all the water away and it's too dry. Grass won't even grow. That was the spot. And we just put rock here. Everything sloped perfectly about one inch for every six feet. And because that's one of the first things I learned being married to an engineer is that you need to know where water is going around your house.

- [Tammy] Absolutely, absolutely. This is just, every little spot I look is another little thing of interest.

- [Jim] Check this out. This is the Bletilla striata, Big Bob, hardy orchid.

- You go, Bob.

- [Jim] It's a deciduous orchid, so you don't have to worry. It's not like high maintenance like an orchid. You just put it here and you can't let it get hit by frost if it's a late frost.

- [Tammy] Look at these levels, and these different little spots where you just want to stop.

- Do you know how hard it is to make a stone curve? Putting in sedges. Sedges are my new kind of favorite thing to landscape with. They have really great textures and different kinds of color. They're very low maintenance.

- They only grow so much?

- Yeah, and they only grow so much. You don't have to trim them. They look great in the winter. So I got a box full of like, I think 40 plugs of sedges coming in the mail here in a couple weeks, so I'll be busy.

- So you're just gonna intersperse them among all the-

- All the sedges everywhere.

- [Tammy] It's just beautiful here. It just keeps getting gorgeous.

- [Jim] Sensitive fern, ostrich fern.

- All your pretty shades. Oh, I think we're approaching the sunken patio. My heart is so happy right now. And you placed every single one of these rocks. And it looks, it doesn't look placed. It looks like it just was meant to be here.

- [Jim] That's what we were, I'm so happy to hear you say that because that's what we were going for.

- [Tammy] I mean, this is beautiful. Usually when I'm walking on something like this, it's a little wobbly. This is incredible.

- [Jim] We spent hours leveling every little spot.

- It's incredible.

- It was not easy, but it was important.

- And you know what? Aren't you glad you did now? At the time I'm sure it was like, okay, can't we just let this slide?

- Especially around July, it became a little tiresome, you could say.

- I guess so, I guess so. And then look at what we have here, oh my. This is where I would live.

- It never gets old.

- I would never leave this spot. And look, you got little things-

- These are, I am so proud of this area. These are all huge rocks that we hand-carved. You had to strike it and then you chisel it out. And these are all basically little horseshoe rocks built just for our friends, the trees, so that they can grow healthy and happy here. Underneath all these rocks is limestone fines, about six inches, I think, if I remember correctly, that allowed us to perfectly level all these stones around. This wall is sitting on a three foot wide by two feet deep steel rebar reinforced concrete slab horseshoe. The stone yard laughingly told us that, you know, we'll just put 30 tons of rock on just about two feet of a quarter inch stone gravel and you'll be fine. And we'll nix that idea because we would have, you know, a disaster on our hands is what we would have. So this wall hopefully is not moving anywhere. It's engineered. If we had a choice of engineering it, we over-engineered it.

- [Tammy] And you know what? I like how you got things growing with it too.

- [Jim] I can't even name all the stone crops.

- [Tammy] It's just beautiful, it looks natural.

- [Jim] Well, it's funny you should say that because this was inspired by all the national parks that we visited. We got married in Glacier National Park, and we wanted to experience a little piece of Glacier every day.

- Sometimes a fool's tasked to try and lasso Mother Nature, but you've done it by using her own things. And that's what I like about this. It just feels like a little cocoon of Mother Nature right here.

- [Jim] It's a fun spot because we're so close to downtown, you get both nature sounds and you get some city sounds. It's a dichotomy, but you know, sometimes it's harmonious, and it's kind of like, it's a perfect setting.

- [Tammy] And you've worked in a ton of trees.

- Oh yeah.

- So how many trees have you planted in this?

- I stopped counting after 70.

- Wow.

- [Jim] So we're surrounded by a lot of Japanese maples. So I just pack them in and pack them in because, you know, they will just kind of dwarf in size, the ones that would normally grow a little bigger, if you keep them packed in, they'll dwarf.

- [Tammy] And the foliage is just so gorgeous.

- [Jim] Right now, this is maybe the first, second best time in the season to experience the Japanese maples.

- [Tammy] It's an interesting space, Jim, because it feels big, it's not, but it feels that way.

- [Jim] I'm glad you brought that up because that was a part of the plan. That was a part of the design. We removed over 30 tons of soil here. So this was just a gentle slope down. I didn't realize it was gonna be 30 tons. We actually increased the volume of the space. Everything's hand-carved as well, including this bird bath. I just saw this flat rock and I was like, "That would be an awesome bird bath." This actually came at the end of the project. After we stopped moving rocks, I sort of became addicted and I was kind of like, "I need to work on something." And I'm like, "I'm gonna make a bird bath out of this and put it right here." But this was sort of one of the last projects that we did. And knowing that we wanted to put some kind of water feature here, it's a hundred gallon system and we just basically dug about three feet down. There's, I think 25 bags of concrete here. We had to use some ingenuity to form the concrete to the space perfectly. There was no wood form or anything that you could easily build.

- This seems like-

- Critter paradise?

- A wildlife habitat.

- Yeah, it is. By design, when we first moved in here, I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I was thinking more uniform rows of things. I was thinking actually just got a row of crape myrtles. Keep it simple, row of crape myrtles here. You know, crape myrtles are a southern kind of wonderful tree to be around. And Will's like, "No, like we need to do something for the critters." I think his words were bird paradise. We need to create bird paradise.

- I love it. I love it.

- I'm like, "Well, I really like that idea, but it's a little more complicated to do, you know, a bird paradise." And so from that point forward, we started planning the space for the critters and us in mind. So one of the wonderful things about this backyard that we absolutely love is we've got lizards, skinks everywhere. They're kind of fun to watch and scurry around. Will and I have become, you know, the birding people now, like watching the birds.

- [Tammy] Okay. So Jim, we're going from water to garden, which I love. Take me through this wonderful garden.

- These are my Taj Mahal of garden boxes. So when we first moved in, I had to have a garden. I've been gardening my entire life. In fact, that's what I got in trouble as a kid as on the farm. I would go and plant gardens where they shouldn't be. So I had to have... I had to have my garden boxes. And Will said, "Well, they're gonna be difficult to put a garden box here." I said, "Well how difficult can it be? It's just a rectangle." And he said, "Well it's on the side of a hill." And I said, "Well okay, so one side's gonna be a little taller than the other." Well, flash forward, we have, on one side, it is four feet, and on this side, it's one foot.

- It's really sloped.

- In four feet, it drops four feet, and then... These garden boxes have 16 four by four columns cemented, perfectly leveled in the ground. There's 120 lag bolts holding them together. There's reinforcements holding them together so the weight doesn't push them out. I lost count after 15 yards of soil.

- [Tammy] Because soil is heavey, as you know.

- [Jim] And you've got to have good, as you know, like, you can't have a garden without good soil. You have to start with good soil-

- You know, Jim, what you've done is you've made it easy on yourself because all I've got to do is reach over and garden. I don't have to even get down on my knees.

- We even put perfectly leveled stone on that side as well.

- Of course you do, of course you do. And you've got all your plants here ready to go.

- You want some tomatoes and peppers?

- Do you think you've got enough?

- Every gardener that plants seeds has...

- [Tammy] Do you have specific plants that are your favorite in this garden?

- [Jim] One of our favorite trees is this Virginia pine. A lot of people don't use Virginia pine in their landscape. I don't know why. I think it's just the texture or whatever, but I mean, it's perfect for the space. We have service berries for the birds. Everyone's like, "You can make service berry jam and stuff." It's like, well, yeah, if you can beat the birds to them.

- And good luck with that.

- They're for the birds. Our favorite tree has to be the Bigleaf magnolia. According to my grandparents, I knew, I grew up in Southern Indiana, and according to my grandparents, I knew every tree by name before I knew my ABCs. So I know all the trees of the forest. And so when we moved down here to Tennessee, there was a lot of familiars, and a lot of my, you know, trees that I knew. But there was this one tree that stood out to me that I'm like, "What is that?" It was on Fiery Gizzard at the state park here, just about an hour outside of town. And it just looked like an enlarged paw paw. And I'm like, "Well this, what is this? Like, this must be some kind of weird variety of paw paw I've never encountered before. I didn't know that." And I kept seeing it. I'm like, "This is no paw paw." And so I got to the books, and I found that it was the Bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophilla. And the leaves get this long and this wide. It's like an elephant ear tree. It's so impressive.

- It's appropriately named. It's perfect for your landscape, I love it.

- Yes.

- [Tammy] So tell me all about this.

- This is the Flintstone couch here. This was supposed to be, well, we didn't really know what to do with this space. It was kind of extra large and either it was gonna be a garden bed or a extra large path. We're like, "Well, we'll just put a bench here. How difficult could a bench be?" Famous last words. All these boulders are all irregularly shaped. They had to be perfectly leveled so that the sitting experience here is wonderful. It's the perfect height. All these things go into planting a bench. The whole project was built with love, but if you could talk to these stones, they would say otherwise.

- [Tammy] I understand. Jim, you have really combined hardscaping, landscaping, and gardening in one area. And it has just been a pleasure and a privilege to see it. Thank you so much for having us here.

- [Jim] I'm thankful for you to be here as well. So like, it's been a real treat to have you. The hardscaping's been waiting for you.

- I'm coming back.

- Okay.