Episode 2449

- [Voiceover] Having a garden that supports butterflies can be rewarding for you, and of course beneficial for these pollinators. But what if space is limited? Julie Berbiglia finds a plant pallet suited for the task. And, we'll head to the farm where Jeff Poppen mixes up a batch of barrel compost that will give life to future crops. Stay tuned. First, providing plants that serve the needs of butterflies for all life stages.

- Well, the columbine, and the phlox, and the foamflower, they're all so beautiful this morning, and I know that they attract butterflies. Well, I only have a small space for a butterfly garden, so I also want to do it with natives. And know what, I found the perfect place to learn about it. It is right here at beautiful Cedars of Lebanon State Park at the Nature Center. Rita Venable is our wonderful expert in butterflies today, and this garden has been here for about five years, and they're continually adding to it to make it much more welcoming every single time to all the fantastic butterflies. Now, one thing that I just am delighted by is this beautiful phlox.

- [Rita Venable] Butterflies, many species of butterflies use a lot of different kinds of phlox. This one is Phlox pilosa, and it's kind of a spreader, you can see. But, it's really important in the spring in particular. They have a lot of nectaring plants early spring for butterflies. Because we rely a lot on our trees, like Eastern Redbud and all, we don't have a lot of herbaceous plants that bloom this early. So, we're talkin' this starts in early April, and will go on through for quite a few weeks. And it just provides wonderful nectar, not only for butterflies, but for moths as well.

- [Julie] Wow, and it's such a beautiful plant, and such an impact if you only have a small space.

- [Rita] It has in that pink, that vibrant pink just pops in your garden. This is the wafer ash, and it's actually the host plant for the Giant Swallowtail that you just saw nectaring on that phlox over there. It's a combination of nectaring plant and host plant. This is kinda like living in an area where you have fast food restaurants, and you have your home right here. Your hospital, and places to have babies. So, it works great. Also, back here is the spicebush, which is a native shrub, and it's the host plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail.

- [Julie] The spicebush, is it going to fit in a smaller space?

- [Rita] Oh yes, absolutely. It is a wonderful dry shade plant, and a lot of people ask me, "I don't have a lot of sun, what can I plant for butterflies?" This will go into the shade, it's an understory tree, and it's native, and the Spicebush Swallowtail lay eggs on it, and the caterpillars curl up inside a leaf, and they mimic a little snake and they turn green, and then they come out. And it's a wonderful experience. And here we have a beautiful Pawpaw tree which still has a few blooms on it right there. You can see the red. And our state butterfly, the Zebra Swallowtail, uses this for a host plant, a place to lay its eggs.

- [Julie] This is what the common milkweed looks like when it's coming up.

- [Rita] Right.

- [Julie] Looks almost like something I might pull out, but I know it's very important plant for butterflies. And then of course it gets bigger, and bigger. Now, it's a beautiful plant, and I love it when it goes ahead and goes to flower. I know the monarchs need it. If I'm in a really small space, though, are there any pros and cons I need to think about?

- [Rita] Well, the pros are that this is probably the best milkweed we have in Tennessee for monarchs. It has all the glycosides in it that will protect them from predators. This milkweed patch is very established, and that's why you're seeing it coming up, and this is what it does. So, I would not put it along a fence between yourself and your neighbors, unless they're butterfly friendly and they want it there. Also, it's very, very hardy. Which can be a good thing, or not so good. But, it grows almost on any conditions, it's just really, very hardy. You can see this one is growing right between two stones right there. And then, some are right outside the stone things. But they are fabulous nectaring plants. Those pink heads on this, if you ever smell just get right down, put your nose in it. And it's such a heady, wonderful smell. It should be a perfume. It's so great.

- Wow.

- It's very sweet, and you can see why the butterflies are attracted to it, not just monarchs.

- [Julie] Well Rita, in small gardens, a lot of times we have these beautiful boulders that have all these great cracks and crevices in 'em, and I'm wondering when it rains, they collect some nice water, but it disappears in a few days. Is that going to be sufficient for my butterflies needs?

- [Rita] Yes, in fact, it's a good thing that it disappears in a few days, Julie, 'cause you want it to. Because of the issues we have sometimes with standing water, it is better that it goes ahead and evaporates.

- [Julie] And I guess the message here is to keep it really natural, so we'll avoid pesticides.

- [Rita] Yeah, that's key. Just avoid pesticides, make sure your plants are neonicotinoid-free, and then enjoy your garden.

- [Julie] Well, oh my gosh! Speaking of enjoying the garden, I see a beautiful butterfly over on that vine, let's go see what she's doing.

- Sounds great.

- [Julie] So I see a gorgeous butterfly right here, tell me about the plant and what it's doing.

- [Rita] This is the Pipevine Swallowtail. When you see a butterfly with her abdomen curved like that, she's probably laying eggs on this pipevine, which is Artistolochia tomentosa. And people used to use pipevine on lattices on their porches. A long time ago, it was a porch plant, and it blooms a little pipe that comes out of it. Some people are trying to bring it back for that use, but you can't. It will climb on a lot of things. What I like about out here, Julie, is what they've done with this design. They've used the beautiful stone here, and the wood going up, and then this gives a nice vertical height to the garden. Plus, the Pipevine Swallowtail obviously is utilizing and enjoying it. Then, after she lays eggs, she can go down and nectar on some of the phlox or the verbena, or other things that she enjoys here to keep her energy reserves up. This is one of the most important butterflies in Tennessee. They're actually six mimics of this butterfly, because it's so poisonous to predators, birds and lizards and things like that. To be able to see a female laying eggs is just great.

- [Julie] Well this makes a fantastic splash, and I could see in a small garden this being a background plant for us.

- [Rita] The Black Swallowtails lay eggs on this, as well as they do give it a beautiful-- Give your garden a beautiful touch of yellow about this time of year. It is in the Carrot Family, and you can tell 'cause it's got an umbrel right there, very similar to Queen Anne's lace.

- [Julie] Beautiful. And for those of us that like purple, the Wild Geranium here is incredible.

- [Rita] Yes, yes. I just love that deep pink color, and it is a wonderful nectaring plant for different species of butterflies. They really like to nectar on that. And it stays small, kinda like that. And it's sort of medium shade, too; a little dappled shade. This is sort of a dappled shade garden and as the trees begin to fill out and throughout the summer, it'll become more and more shady, and that's what these like.

- [Julie] Well Rita, I see that she's gone, and so we can look at her eggs, which I think is important so that we don't end up accidentally knocking them off of a plant because we don't know what they are.

- Yeah, that's a good idea. If you gently lift it up like this, then you'll see the cluster of eggs. They're usually about 10 to 20 in a bunch, and they should come out probably within the week, depending on temperature, rain, other conditions that we might have, but that's the next generation right there. We saw it all this morning.

- [Julie] That is so exciting, and so then the young will stay on this plant, and eat their way to maturity?

- [Rita] Yes, yes they will. This is it, and they will stay together when they're little. And then when they're about half-grown, or maybe a little more, they will start to separate out, and then they'll be more solitary, and they are eating machines at that point. And they are just all over this eating, eating eating, and it's so fun, especially for children to see the whole life cycle of this butterfly. And then they may or may not stay on this plant to attach their chrysalis to something. They may crawl away; they go into a walk-about phase, where they walk off.

- [Julie] When we put in a host plant, we need to remember that we are going to get these little eggs on it, so we don't wanna spray it or brush off little things we're afraid of. And we need to realize that the plant getting eaten is something that we need to really appreciate, and not fight.

- [Rita] Right, that's why you put it in there. So it will be eaten.

- [Julie] And for all of us that want to take advantage of our small spaces by brightening 'em up with nature's little flying flowers, well go visit your Nature Centers to get some great ideas. Look online for our beautiful book, and this summer, enjoy your pesticide-free flying flowers. And maybe you'll get to see one laying eggs, too. Well, thank you so much.

- [Rita] Thanks for having me.

- Gardeners know how little we know. We get the soil in good condition, we sow our seeds, and set out our plants, and then we just stand back and watch in awe as the miracles happen. What in the world is going on beneath our feet that creates all of this magical growth? Today, were gonna explore the invisible helpers, the microbes responsible for life. Microbes are the ones that grow our crops, and we can grow them. We are not who we think we are. 90% of the DNA in our bodies does not belong to us, but our separate beings called microbes. They help keep us alive and healthy because we're their host. All of these microbes inhabit the soil, but they're invisible! We don't see 'em, and we oftentimes don't think about 'em. Biologists have named over 100,000 different species of bacteria, and 25,000 different species of fungi, and they're still counting. Each species plays a very specific role in nature. With this great diversity, all we can say is, "The more the merrier." As a gardener, I love compost. Compost is where the microbes multiply, and these microbes are so helpful for the garden. But sometimes, gardeners don't have enough compost for what they need, and so we make compost tea. When we stir compost in water, and aerate it, the microbes multiply. So we have to put this on the ground right away. We have a special recipe for a great compost-for-compost tea that we call barrel compost. First, we gather five bucketfuls of fresh cow manure. Cow manure is very special. Grass has been in the cow's digestive system with the four stomachs for 18 days before it comes out full of flora and fauna. Lots of different species of very beneficial soil-building microbes. Because calcium is all important in helping to move other nutrients around in the soil, we'll have to add some calcium to our manure, because manure comes from the cow, but the cow withholds the calcium and uses it for making bones and milk. So we'll add about half a pound of ground up egg shells to our manure pile. In old-time biodynamic farming, we generally try to get all of our materials from off of the farm. But rock dusts are an exception. This basalt comes from Massachusetts, where they have mountains of it. It's an instant clay that has lots of trace elements in it. And it has minerals that we don't have here in Tennessee, so we'll add about two pounds of basalt. Now, we have to set to work and stir it up real good. So we just go through this whole pile, mixing it up, chopping it up, and sort of moving it from over there to over here. Barrel compost stems from research done in the '50s, when people were very concerned about radiation. Experiments were done trying to find out what kind of elements helped dissipate the negative effects of Strontium-90 and Caesium-137. And calcium-rich soils resisted those effects more than granite soils. So it became apparent that it would be a good idea to have calcium in a certain live forms in our soils. And egg shells being a live calcium, because they've been through a life process, were chosen and so was the basalt rock. Barrel compost was used on farms since then, but it wasn't until the unfortunate accident at Chernobyl in 1986 that a lot of radiation was released over central Europe. When scientists were flying over, taking pictures of the contaminated land, they noticed a few spots where there wasn't any radiation. When they drove up to those places, they found that they were farms that had been using barrel composts. Barrel compost is called "barrel compost" because originally, it was made in an old whiskey barrel. We would put the barrel half-buried into the ground, take out the top and the bottom. Well, my whiskey barrel went the way of all wooden products, with the help of microbes again, and so when I rebuilt it, I used brick. This is nine bricks around, and nine bricks deep. For 30 years, I've been making special humus-rich compost preparations, according to the indications of Rudolf Steiner. This is manure which has been buried in a cow horn over the winter time. This preparation is made from yarrow flowers. These were sown up into the bladder of a stag, and this preparation works with potassium and sulfur. After we sow it up into the stag bladder, we hang it in the sun for six months in the summer, and bury it for six months in the Earth. This really helps the compost to have lots of microbes that help fix potassium, and help the potassium as well become mobile, so that our plants can get it when they need it. This preparation is made from chamomile flowers sown up into the intestines of a cow. This works with calcium and sulfur, and helps to enliven and stabilize the nitrogen in our compost. This preparation is simply a stinging nettle. This is a plant that you don't really want to brush against, it will sting you, but it is very nutrient rich. You can eat stinging nettle leaves in the spring, they're a good tonic for helping get the blood going after a cold winter. And this one is just simply buried in the soil, surrounded by peat moss. To help the plants resist diseases, we take white oak bark from the majestic White Oak tree. And we grind it up, and then we stuff it into the skull cavity of a freshly killed cow. And this one is buried into a very wet, moist spot. All these preparations stay buried for a year. This preparation is made from the beautiful little yellow dandelion flowers. You can almost still see the dandelions in there. And this preparation works with silica and potassium, and helps the plants to become sensitive, and draw into them what they need. And then the last one is the juice of valerian. We simply take the valerian flowers, press out the juice and ferment it. And this works with phosphorous. Here's what it turns into after a year in the pit. This is barrel compost. Teeming with invisible life, and visible life, too. In a teaspoon of soil, we can have a million bacterias, but we can also have a billion, and of course that's what gardeners want, because the microbes are so vitally important. So we'll take a handful of this, that has all those microbes in it, and we'll put it into a bucket of water. Now, we'll set about and stir it up, because water and air are what microbes need to propagate, and we can actually propagate four to five hundred times in number of these bacterias and fungi inside this bucket of water so that there's way, way more that we can put on our fields. After 20-minutes of stirring, I'm done, and I take a whisk broom, and dip it in. I can sprinkle this barrel compost mixture up on an acre of garden. I like to do it in the evening as the dew is falling, and the dew will keep everything nice and moist, and help distribute it through the plants and through the garden soil. We still have to add compost, and minerals, grow our cover crops, and be gentle and thorough with our tillage. Then, with the help of the herbs, and manure and basalt, and egg shells in our barrel compost, we can stand back in awe and wonder and watch as the mysteries of nature unfold.

- If you have looked recently at the USDA Hardiness Zone Map, you may notice a little bit something different about it. With 30-years worth of data in their background now, a lot of climates across the country have actually warmed up just a little bit, and Tennessee was one of those. We went from Zone Six-B, here in the Nashville area, to actually being declared Zone Seven-A right now, and I'm here today at Cheekwood with Phillipe Chadwick, and there are some plants that we may be able to grow just a little bit better in our climate now, and have more opportunity to grow as perennials since, technically, our data is warmer now. Tell me a little bit about the plants that you're holding, and then we'll talk a little bit about these.

- Well this is Salvia "Wendy's Wish," and a lot of the taller, larger Salvias could potentially be perennials. There's Salvia leucantha, that's a great fall-blooming one.

- Right.

- And then a dry site on the Southern side of your house where it's gonna get some protection in the winter.

- Sure.

- Maybe some extra mulch, it might be a perennial.

- Right.

- And it's worth trying; it's all about having fun.

- Experimenting--

- Experimenting.

- And seeing what comes back.

- [Phillipe] And some of these kalos are really great. This is a Mojito one. You're holding Blue Hawaii, and then Elena. And again, with some extra mulch, they may come back. It's all about trial and error.

- [Troy] Right, and I will tell you, now we obviously had a really mild winter this year, but this elephant ear, the Colocasia Elena that is here actually came back in my garden this year completely unprotected.

- Wow.

- Right out in the wide open, so that was a fluke. We normally don't have a Zone Eight winter. But we have been declared Zone Seven-A now, which may give us a little opportunity to do what we, in the industry, refer to as "zone pushing." And I am probably the ultimate zone pusher. You know me for many years, and you know that I love tropical plants, and I'm always kind of testing what's new. One group of plants that actually has turned out to be quite perennial is this plant that's sitting on the ground in front of me. And this is a Hedychium, or one of the butterfly gingers. And this group of plants, in general, is quite hardy and some hardier than others, but I have several varieties of this now in my garden that come back even in a true winter, and will be perennial. Sometimes they don't sprout until the early to mid part of May, once the soil has really warmed up. But these will flower late in the summer, starting in late July or August, and flower all the way through October with big clusters of sort of butterfly or moth-like flowers that range anywhere from white, to pink, to yellow, to kind of apricot colors. Extremely fragrant, really great additions to the garden. You know one of the other groups of plants that we haven't mentioned yet are the bananas, and how hardy some of those are. What's your experience been here with bananas at Cheekwood?

- [Phillipe] We've had some really good luck with Musa basjoo, that's one of our favorites. And we've had it for ten years plus, and it's come back as a perennial every single year.

- [Troy] Right. And that's a plant that grows really fast and gets really big.

- It does.

- So you do need some room for it. What about fruit on bananas? Is there any trick? Will they fruit in our climate?

- Well, bananas need 12 to 15 months on the same stalk.

- Right.

- Growth from the same stalk. So if you have...If you protect the stalk through the winter, and it continues to grow from that same stalk, you will probably get fruit that winter, but if it suckers out from the root system, it's just gonna grow leaves again.

- Right. So if you like to experiment a little bit, and push the limits of what you can do in your garden. As you know, tropicals are some of my favorites, and certainly, they're used a lot out here at Cheekwood.

- [Phillipe] They are.

- [Troy] To bring bold color, bold texture into the gardens. And a lot of these that we've mentioned today, I think really have a good chance with some extra mulch in the winter. A little bit of protection; the ability to come back. So Phillipe, thanks for hangin' out with us and showing us a few of these cool plants.

- [Phillipe] Thank you. You're always welcome.

- [Troy] And hope to come back and see you again soon.

- [Phillipe] Sure.

- [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.