Episode 2446

- [Voiceover] On this Volunteer Gardener we celebrate the cities trees. Matt Kerske follows The Nashville Tree Foundation as they measure up this year's entries in The BIg Old Tree Contest. Then, we head to Franklin to see how the wind rows comprised of leaves and grass clippings heat up to become a microbe rich soil amendment. This, and more, so stay tuned. First, the majesty of big old trees.

- Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's that time of year again. The Big Old Tree Contest put on by The Nashville Tree Foundation. It's a time when Nashvilleians submit their trees for judging to try and determine the largest most mature specimens here in the area.

- [Voiceover] 15, 17, 18, three. 18 feet three inches.

- [Matt] I'm here with Carolyn Sorenson of the Nashville Tree Foundation, the organization responsible for The Big Old Tree Contest. Now Carolyn, I'm really happy that a contest like this exists in the middle Tennessee area. Tell me a little bit about your involvement and the history of The Big Old Tree Contest.

- Well, we're the only non-profit that recognizes big trees, and we found the value in this and it started as a contest for school children back in I think it was 1986.

- Wow, it dates back.

- And our board decided that to know where these big trees are. It's just a fun contest, it's free, it's open to the public. And now we have a registry of 780 big tree winners of many different species.

- [Matt] Wow.

- [Carolyn] We have a deadline every year of April 1st. It's easy to remember.

- [Matt] Okay.

- [Carolyn] It's no joke. We collect the entries, we make sure that there is not a repeat winner. You can only win with a tree one time. You can enter it as many times as you would like. And we send the information out to a judge and he's a forester. He travels around and verifies the species and the measurements for us.

- Fantastic. And how long of a process does this usually take?

- [Carolyn] We try to turn the nominations and the winners around in about three weeks.

- [Matt] Wow.

- [Carolyn] Because we have a party.

- [Matt] Wow.

- [Carolyn] And the party celebrates the winners of the tree contest. It's called The High Tree Party. It's great, it's a fun little party. And it's celebrating high tea on Arbor Day. And we have it at four o'clock and we usually have it under the winner of a big tree.

- [Matt] Fantastic. And this is open to the general public?

- [Carolyn] It's open to the public. It's absolutely. We want the public to get engaged with these older trees that are in our community to learn that they are a great value for neighborhoods.

- Absolutely.

- And they can be areas of study, if you wanted to find out how many old Oak trees there are in your neighborhood, that have won the contest, you can go on our website and do the research and find that out.

- Wow. Fantastic. Carolyn, I'm just flattered that there's an organization out here that is paying attention and bringing focus to neighborhood trees. I think it really encourages a lot of homeowners to really value the importance of old growth trees.

- [Carolyn] We hope so. Trees, such as this, are very very old. When we plant a tree we know that by the time it gets to be this big, we may not be around, but we want to plant it for the next generation and the generation after that because the value of that is really it takes a long time.

- [Matt] It's almost priceless. It really is.

- [Matt] The value of time we're looking at and what trees do for just the ambience and the feeling, as well as some of the energy reductions in the neighborhood are just fantastic, the amount of studies that they're doing on old trees.

- Right right. They absorb a ton of storm water and they filter our air.

- That's right.

- And get rid of a lot of pollutants. And I'm sure as we can hear out here today you can hear the birds.

- [Matt] Right right. It really just sets a beautiful tone. Well I'm here with Will Worrall, a local Shelby Hills neighbor who has nominated this fantastic tree. And, Will? Tell me a little bit about why you chose to nominate this one.

- I nominated this tree because it's the biggest tree in our neighborhood. It's a beautiful specimen. It has all kinds of birds, squirrels, chipmunks. It's also potentially older than our nation.

- I can tell it's just kind of sitting up on this hill, overlooking downtown. It's just almost majestic on the location. And I'm sure you get to appreciate it almost every day.

- [Will] We do.

- [Matt] I imagine so. Well I'm here with Randy Allen volunteer for The Nashville Tree Foundation. Randy kind of acts as a tree expert for them and he goes around and helps them out with measurements of the different nominees in the category. Randy, tell me what we're looking at and tell me what kind of measurements were taken today.

- [Randy] This one is a very big Red Oak. I hadn't determined exactly the species yet.

- [Matt] Uh huh.

- [Randy] We just got the circumference a little while ago, which is the distance around the tree.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Then you need to get two other dimensions. One would be the width of the canopy. And all you do actually on that is just walk out to the edge of the canopy.

- Uh huh.

- The limbs are hanging right over your head. You go up to the edge, measure how far it goes to the other side of the canopy.

- Tip to tip.

- Exactly.

- Okay.

- And it should be an average of two two measurements like east to west, north to south. Then you have to do the height measurement which is the hardest for almost everybody.

- [Matt] Exactly, yeah. how would somebody go about doing something like an estimation of the height?

- [Randy] There's a few different ways you can go about it. You can go online and Google Biltmore stick.

- Okay.

- And make one tells you, it will tell you exactly how to make one.

- Okay.

- And it facilitates you getting a more accurate height. But another thing you can do is walk away from the tree, after you've got the canopy distance.

- Okay.

- You can walk far enough away from this tree is so huge, you would have to go 150 feet over there, say. And then you can hold up an object you can just, to simplify it, you can hold up your finger in front of your eyes and bring it back closer and farther 'til you've got the outside of the canopy lined up with one end of your finger. And like that, then you can rotate it like this and compare those two distances.

- [Matt] So that's what you historically see in large specimen type trees, they're usually wider than they are tall, is that right?

- [Randy] Exactly.

- [Matt] Fantastic.

- [Randy] Pretty simple, pretty easy.

- So we're here at another nominee for this years Big Old Tree Contest. I'm speaking with the homeowner Chad Truelove in the Oak Hill neighborhood. Now Chad, you've got some beautiful trees here, you have two that you're nominating for this year's contest. Tell me a little bit about them.

- [Chad] When we moved in five years ago we love the neighborhood, and we certainly love the house and these two trees. And I knew that we had a couple big trees on our hands.

- [Matt] Yep.

- [Chad] I thought that this was a Willow Oak, I did a little research and confirmed it. I knew this was a Sweet Gum.

- [Matt] Mm-hmm.

- And interestingly, when about the time I moved in I wanted to make sure I was caring for the tree.

- Right.

- And I had an arborist and preservationist specialist come. And I was inside and he drove in the drive and I walked out to meet him and he was already here kind of gazing up at the tree and he was speaking to the tree.

- Nice.

- He actually was, and I came out and I overheard him call it grandfather. And he continued to refer to it as grandfather. That was like his homage to the tree.

- So he knew it was something special.

- He knew it, I asked him how old he thought it was. I sort of thought it had to be at least 200 years old. But I'm not 100% sure.

- Uh huh.

- I asked him, and he said, "Well that tree "definitely saw the civil war."

- Wow. Wow.

- [Chad] So he was impressed with the tree. He was impressed with the Sweet Gum too. Most people don't really even take a second look at the Sweet Gum, because they see the Willow Oak, and it's so huge.

- [Matt] Right.

- [Chad] Clearly, whoever built this home very purposefully kept these trees, and especially that tree because it's rather close to the house.

- [Matt] That's right.

- [Chad] Unfortunately, there's two new homes up the street and there was a large Willow Oak on that lot, and when they demo'd the house, to build the two new ones, unfortunately they took out the tree. It might have been an offsrping of this tree.

- [Matt] Yeah. So Chad, we were talking about some of the energy savings that you're realizing from this gigantic Willow Oak being close to your home. Tell me a little bit about that.

- [Chad] Well you know, I do, these beautiful trees come with some extra work. I mean, they drop leaves, of course, they drop Sweet Gums. I probably rake up literally 800 to 1,000 gallons of Sweet Gum balls a year.

- Uh huh.

- And they drop their flowers and the cat gets in things.

- Right.

- And my neighbors see me working at it and they're always saying, "Is it worth it?"

- Right.

- And it's definitely worth it for the aesthetics of it, I mean, I enjoy the trees. But practically speaking, the shade that this Willow gives us it really helps us powerfully save on energy consumption. Our last home was half the size with only two people living in it. No trees in the yard. And this house is twice the size with twice as many people living in it. And our power bill in the summer here is half as much as it was at the last house.

- I believe it.

- Because of the shade.

- That's fantastic. And that's one thing that I always want to encourage homeowners around middle Tennessee area and beyond, to consider planting trees just because of the passive solar type benefits that it provides to the house. And you got lucky enough to enter it in to this home at the maturity of this level of tree and you're realizing just amazing energy reduction benefits. And we always say at the at our garden center that how important it is to plant trees at the very beginning of moving into a hoome so that you can even realize some of those energy savings down the line. So we have another nominee here in the Green Hills neighborhood. I'm speaking with homeowner Judy Wright. She's the proud owner of this beautiful Hackberry here behind us.

- Mm-hmm.

- Tell me a little bit about the Hackberry Judy.

- [Judy] Well, we moved here in 1990 and we've done everything we can to keep the tree going. We've cabled, made some cables up there. And we've reinforced this treehouse. But then our kids grew up and moved out. The year they moved out we got chickens.

- [Matt] Uh huh.

- [Judy] We didn't have an empty nest.

- [Matt] No no.

- [Judy] And now that we have all these chickens and all this gardening, all these kids come over. So now we've repaired the treehouse so that it works again and it's safe.

- Gorgeous, gorgeous little shade for your chickens here. And I even hear that you have a nickname for it, is that right?

- Oh, its The Giving Tree because it's given all, I mean. It just keeps on.

- Through the years.

- Through the years. And the limbs, you know, get weak and we take them off and we do whatever we can to keep the tree going.

- Sure. The spread on this thing is just massive for a Hackberry. And I love the story how it goes from having a two story treehouse for back in the day to a little chicken house right at the base of it. I love how the time continues and you get to appreciate it in a whole new way.

- [Judy] We do.

- [Matt] Well you've got a great spread here.

- [Judy] Thank you.

- [Matt] I can see the vegetable garden and the chickens here. And even with such a large massive Hackberry in your backyard, you still got some sun for your beautiful garden.

- [Judy] We do, thank you so much.

- [Matt] Well I've had a fantastic time checking out some of Nashville's beautiful mature trees here in the area with The Nashville Tree Foundation. If you want to learn more information on submitting your own tree, or to check out the awards ceremony, carry on over to the TheNashvilleTreeFoundation.org.

- [Voiceover] So we're here at Kelley's Berry Farm. And right now, John, we are in the middle of strawberry season.

- [John] The season's a little early this year. About two weeks early. We started I believe about the 20th of April. So we're about the last of April throughout May we should have plenty of strawberries.

- So we're gonna obviously you still have plants blooming.

- [John] Yes we do.

- [Woman] And producing so hopefully.

- [John] The blooms are probably three weeks away from being berries.

- [Woman] Got it. Got it. So you've got blooms and berries that are ripe, all in the same plant. So, which is fun. Obviously you grow plastic.

- [John] I do.

- [Woman] Tell us why you do that.

- [John] Plastic, that keeps the weeds down. And it warms up in the winter. It keeps the plants, you know, they start out earlier on the plastic.

- [Woman] Very good. And you've got grass here in your rows and the reason for that is why?

- [John] Well, the grass, in the winter time that keeps the rows down from the dirt washing away. Then it will come back and kill the grass and it would be a good firm walkway.

- [Woman] Very good.

- [John] For people to pick in and not be muddy.

- [Woman] And what's this variety?

- [John] This variety is and I've got, most of them are Chandlers, but this is a new variety we've tried and it does pretty good.

- [Woman] And you start with brand new plants every year?

- [John] Yes we do.

- [Woman] And the reason for that is it just produces better?

- [John] It produces a whole lot better. Plus they'll get diseased if you try to go two years, and they're just not very good. It doesn't produce much.

- [Woman] Got it. So the main thing is that if it's not completely red.

- [John] Yeah.

- [Woman] So this one's not ready yet.

- [John] That one more day that will be ready.

- [Woman] But this one is getting close, not quite there.

- [John] Yeah.

- [Woman] But you want to make sure that it's all red from the bottom all the way to the top.

- [John] To the shoulders, that's right. There's one that's pretty much perfect.

- [woman] Excellent, absolutely.

- [John] And they pull off easier when they're completely red.

- [Woman] And you don't mind people eating while they pick?

- [John] I've got plenty, you can eat it, sample what you're getting, maybe that'll get you wanting more.

- [Woman] And all of this is either you pick, or already picked.

- [John] That's right.

- [Woman] The fun thing is, because the weather's so nice, in the spring, is for everybody to come out and pick at the farm.

- [John] Yeah it is. The strawberries it's cooler is easy picking on the strawberries. The blueberries and the blackberries are in June and July and it's a little bit warmer. But it's still fun. Most people come early in the morning where it's cool.

- [Woman] Okay, so we're standing in the middle of 100,000 strawberry plants. And as much of a shame as this is, let's walk over to see the blueberries.

- [John] Sounds good.

- [Woman] Here we are in your blueberries and I'm not quite sure that I've ever seen plants with so many blueberries on them.

- It's gonna be a bumper crop this year.

- Yes. What's this variety?

- They're Rabbit Eye is the kind and the variety are, these are Climax. We've got Climax and .

- Okay, Look at this, this is beautiful because here's the little blooms.

- [John] Yeah about two or three weeks well about a month ago they were just solid blooms down through there.

- [Tammy] They had to be. And then here, or course, is.

- [John] The berry.

- [Tammy] The berries that are coming along. So, these are probably about how far away?

- [John] They're probably about three weeks away at least.

- [Tammy] Wow.

- [John] Maybe four.

- [Tammy] Wow. And these are, you know, I think that blueberries are the easiest thing to pick.

- [John] They really are. They don't all get ripe at once, but if you just kind of use your fingers.

- [Tammy] Tickle them.

- [John] Tickle them, the blue ones, the ripe ones will come off.

- [Tammy] Exactly, so I always kind of position my bucket underneath.

- [John] Okay, that's right.

- [Tammy] And just tickle the ones and they just fall off.

- [John] Yeah, if you just kind of rub your thumb on her, put them over the blue ones they'll fall in your hand and you can put them in your bucket.

- Exactly.

- So a lot of people put the bucket around their belt, and then you can use both hands.

- [Tammy] Oh, got you. And then put them in your.

- [John] That's right, then put them in your bucket.

- [Tammy] So these, do any special care for like somebody that wants to grow blueberries themselves?

- [John] Blueberries are kind of finicky. They're a little hard to grow. You've got to get the pH right. It takes like three or four years before they get to producing fruit.

- [Tammy] So how old are these plants?

- [John] These plants are about six or seven years old.

- [Tammy] Yeah, so that's why they're so loaded.

- [John] They're loaded, they're prime time.

- [Tammy] Any particular soil that they like?

- [John] They like the pH low, which means it's acid, it's a lower acid.

- [Tammy] Okay got it.

- [John] And it needs to be real fertile ground. It won't grow in clay or rocky ground too good.

- [Tammy] Got you. So you got yours pretty close together here.

- [John] They're about four feet apart, four or five feet.

- [Tammy] Well this is just beautiful and I'm telling you, this is going to be the place for blueberries. You're the largest blueberry grower in Tennessee.

- [John] I think so. We got over 15,000 plants.

- [Tammy] That's a lot of blueberries.

- [John] That's a lot of blueberries.

- [Tammy] These blackberries are absolutely beautiful in bloom. So you've got blooms here and then the berries are starting.

- [John] Yes.

- [Tammy] Right there. And that's just, again, probably about what?

- [John] That's about three weeks away. Three, probably three weeks, maybe four.

- [Tammy] And these are, have no thorns.

- [John] Correct.

- [Tammy] So you don't have to worry about that while you're picking. And what's this variety?

- [John] I believe this is Arapaho.

- [Tammy] I love it.

- [John] Arapaho are early variety, thornless.

- [Tammy] And you've got lots of bee activity here obviously. The bees are having a good time. What's your season for blackberries?

- [John] Well this variety, we've got two, three different varieties, and each variety goes for like two or three weeks. They won't all get ripe at once. For the first week it will kind of get started and the second week it's real and the third week it will be kind of winding down. And then another variety will kick in after that.

- [Tammy] Right. And again, these are easy to pick because basically they're just separate very easily from the plant.

- [John] They are. When they're ripe, rid of this dark black, they're green when they're developing then they turn red, and then they turn black.

- Got it.

- So the darker, you know, you want them jet black.

- So if they're not black.

- If they're not black.

- Don't pick them.

- No, don't pick them. They're not gonna be sweet. When they're completely black, that's when they're the sweetest.

- [Tammy] So don't short change yourself when it comes to berries. Come straight to the farm pick them right off the plant and you'll find that they're full of nutrients, and delicious, as well. So you know your farmer, you know where they're coming from. And in no time flat you've got a bucket full of berries that are ready to use as soon as you pick them.

- [Voiceover] What you're looking at here is something in the city of Franklin that turns residential lawn waste into a really rich product well, for their lawns and gardens. And it benefits the city. So today we've got Todd here to tell us all about this wonderful pile that is not trash.

- No, another man's trash is another man's treasure. This is something that we started in 2011. This is the brown bags, you can see the leaves in here too. We've always collected the leaves. What we found when we started the composting process, that leaves was around 80 to one nitrogen, we really needed that grass as 25 to one to get our CN ratio right for our composting process.

- [Julie] That's the carbon to nitrogen.

- [Todd] Carbon to nitrogen ratio, that's right. So we started collecting the Kraft bags. That's what these are called these are Kraft bags. You'll see all the names in here everyone sells them. As soon as this hit, everybody, we got such a major support from the city of Franklin citizens here, the big box stores are running out of them. They didn't know what to do.

- [Julie] All right, so I'm a responsible homeowner. I've got my paper sacs here. What can I put in them?

- [Todd] You can put anything in your yard such as hedge clippings, pine straw, straw, grass, and leaves. That's mainly our feedstocks of what we take here. Between October 1st and January 31st we'll actually do curbside leaf collection. Our leaf back trucks will go and actually remove the leaves from your lawn. That saves the homeowners a little bit of money they don't have to buy bags there'd be several bags if they had to bag the leaves up in these things.

- [Julie] So this process sounds really quite simple on the homeowners side. What has been your response from people?

- [Todd] We only got maybe 300 tons of these our first year. We average about right at 1,500 tons now a year of just Kraft bags, bagged grass, bagged leaves, year-round collection. A lot of our citizens actually have moved here. They've migrated here from towns that actually had compost facilities. This is relatively new in this area. There's only probably a handful of compost facilities actually in this state where when you go to somewhere else such as Atlanta, even up in states as Wisconsin, there'll be four or five in each town. So they're used to it. A lot of the citizens are actually used to it and they applaud us. We're one of the first small municiplalities of this size to open up a wind row facility of this nature.

- [Julie] Well this is a lot of composting material. How much does this really represent for the year?

- [Todd] This, this pack can hold 12,000 cubic yards we annually take in, it goes up. Last year we took in around 8,500 cubic yards. This year we took in about 86 to 9,000 cubic yards.

- [Julie] Wow, that is a lot of recycling going on with a lot of people out there.

- It is. It is a lot of teamwork.

- Now, this part right here. So, tell me about it because I know a lot of places you'll pull up to get some compost and that's what we're giving you.

- Right. Any time you go to a compost facility if you can physically see anything in there that you can recognize that is known as a feedstock. Such as leaves, grass, branches, weeds, Bermuda grass, anything to that nature it's not compost. It's not finished. It could be stable but that doesn't make it mature. There's a you need both. The row past this one it's done, it's finished. It's stable and mature. We're letting it cure. What that does is is that's gonna get rid of all your non-beneficial microbes that made compost. Now what the microbes that make the compost are not what you want in your garden keeping your garden growing. Because well, they like to eat. And they're going to eat your garden. So what we do is we cure it out then we screen it. Now you'll see in this industry we call them non-organics. The trash. Well, that sprouts to us in the Kraft bags by the citizens. We can't let them all. What we do is we screen it out. And we'll actually pull the debris out. So none of that is in our finished product our product is screened at a half inch.

- [Julie] All right, well let's talk about some of these temperatures here. Because I know the basics of composting is you get your green stuff, you get your brown stuff mix it all together you get enough air you get enough moisture and it heats up and microbes go to work.

- That's right, that's correct. I believe you've got it figured out.

- Well let's talk about the heat because you have this amazing thermometer here.

- And what we're showing right now is this one is actually really, it's a cold it's gone dormant. And that's probably just for the lack of nitrogen and the time of year. Right now we're floating at 96 degrees. On average, in the spring time, when we start getting our bad grass this same row will be around 142 degrees. Now with 15 days and five turns with our wind row turner will kill all your weed seeds and pathogens. We document, record, so I have temp sheets I'll sporadically go through here and check my temps on each row. I can tell you what the temperature was that day, if it had bags in it that day, if it rained that day. That's something that every composter, if you buy compost you need to ask that question as well, too. What do they do, how do they know they're getting rid of the weed seeds.

- [Julie] Well now so it goes up to 140 degrees why not just have it keep climbing, can you get it up much higher?

- [Todd] No. They're really finicky. If you get them to a certain temperature between 104, 132 and 145 is your ideal range. Anything over that you're gonna start killing off your good beneficial microbes and your row will go dormant. Then you have to start the process all over again. So what we try to do is is we try to keep the perfect blend of greens, nitrogen, and carbons. But, to build a proper wind row, you have to be 50% moisture rating, 35% which is free air space, and I got to have 10% oxygen. Got to have that to make that wind row climb up to that temperature.

- [Julie] Wow okay. So it gets up to that temperature how long is it gonna stay there?

- [Todd] It'll stay, what we call that temperature is the thermophyllic phase. Thermo hot. It'll stay there probably for around four to six weeks. Then it'll start dropping into what we call the mesophyllic phase. When your temperature's start dropping you know your compost process is actually working. Then it'll go down to the psychophyllic phase which this row is at right now. It doesn't mean it's finished though because you can actually still physically see material in it. What it is nitrogen back to it kick it right back up. Finish this row out.

- [Julie] All right. Well let's go take a look at some of the next stages and see how it starts to look as it gets finished.

- [Todd] That'll be just fine.

- [Julie] So this newly turned wind row now is about, what, three weeks or so?

- Three to four weeks away from being done, yeah.

- Okay, so I can see now that it indeed doesn't have all those big hunks of leaves in it that it needs a little screening to get rid of a few things in there. But, and it feels a little warm yet.

- Mm-hmm.

- From being turned. So it's going to finish out.

- It'll finish out in about three to four weeks. We'll screen it out. And then we'll sell it.

- [Julie] Well Todd, this is the final product and it's just beautiful. So if I come out here with a truck what am I going to pay for this great stuff?

- [Todd] You'll pay $20 a yard for it. We'll load trucks, trailers, and dump trucks.

- [Julie] Wow, that is a great price. Now, for residents, this is really a win-win because they got rid of their leaves in the fall and their yard clippings throughout the year and now they're getting this nice rich compost at the end. And they can start the process all over again. But what about for the city, what's in it for the city?

- [Todd] Well so far since 2008 we have diverted over 31,000 tons of material ending in a landfill. That's about an $800,000 savings in tipping fees and of loading costs alone. We started selling this in 2011 to kind of make up the cost of permit, fuel for our leaf back trucks. We've made about $35,000 just in sales.

- Wow, that's fantastic. Now, overall in terms of the overall waste for the city, what does that mean?

- Right now that's about 13% annually is what we save. It's around 3,000 tons in just leaf debris alone.

- [Julie] Well this is really fantastic stuff. And the fact that it's recycling, that it's saving some money for the city, and that it's going back into the earth to make it better than it was this is just a great win.

- [Todd] It's a win-win, you're exactly right.

- Now if you need to check around your city because you may have a composting facility in your town. And now you know the questions to ask. And if you don't, check around your neighboring towns because they might have something just as wonderful as they do here in Franklin.

- [Voiceover] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at VolunteerGardener.org. Or on YouTube at the VolunteerGardener channel. And like us on Facebook.