Episode 2511

- [Narrator] This well tended and tidy community garden of Del Webb at Lake Providence holds more than 70 raised beds. Each one a unique as the gardener. We'll take you on a tour. And Tammy Algood shares her husband's passion for growing orchids. Stay tuned. First, growing and learning with neighbors.

- Well I've seen some impressive community gardens in my day, but I gotta say, the one here at Del Webb is pretty special. I am literally surrounded by a sea of raised garden beds that are carefully tended by the active members here at the Del Webb community. And I'm here with Patty Hoag, who's the president of the garden club. Patty, tell me a little bit about the history and the structure of this community garden.

- We started this in 2009. We had a vision by our then president Greg Hill and he knew that there were so many gardeners moving here, so this land was not developed, and he got permission to build the first 34 beds. And that's where it all began. When you get here and you have a smaller plot, or a smaller piece of land, you know you wanna grow your veggies and I was excited when I found out there was one right on our property.

- Absolutely. This place is huge, it's absolutely gorgeous. Tell me a little bit about why you think this garden's so special to the residents here.

- [Patty] The first thing is it's our happy place. You can't come here without the birds, and they may eat a few of our crops, but we have some bunny rabbits hopping around, it's just a very peaceful place. We have an herb bed. Anybody that lives here is welcome to come out and snip herbs for their recipes. We have a cutting bed of zinnias and snap dragons, sunflowers

- Kind of like a cut flower garden?

- [Patty] Yes.

- [Matt] Oh nice. Well I'm here with Dick Fankhauser, one of the resident gardeners here. Dick, tell me a little bit about why you enjoy this garden so much and what it means to you.

- Well, when we were looking in, I was retired of course, and I had had a garden in the past when I worked. But I never had enough time to weed the garden, whatever, and so I had a lot of vegetables that really didn't do very well, and here they had these beds.

- [Matt] Tell me a little bit about what you're growing here, and how you're using it.

- Well, one of the things I'm most proud of is I put kale in there, and I do some juicing and a lot of people around here do, and I found that midsummer it started to burn up and it died. So I thought, well I'll try again in the fall, and I did that. And in the fall it came back very nicely. It was best they say after two or three freezes

- Sweetened it up a little bit.

- Yes, it takes away that bitterness. My wife's got some recipes that you massage the kale and make kale salad, which also sweetens it up. So there was five to eight families that I was taking kale to for their juicing and what not. When they were building in the community, they had this scrap when they were doing their concrete. And a number of people learned from one of the guys how to make a nice cage of that that holds up tomatoes nicely. This is the Cherokee Purple, and you can see there's a young one there. With all the rain this year, I don't know if that's hurt this or not. Haven't had as many tomatoes on the vines this year, but they are still blooming, and I expect to continue to get some good crops. Had a number of yellow peppers. And this is a mild yellow pepper. It's a banana pepper.

- So then tell me a little bit about the garden beds here and how everybody's responsible for their own.

- Well, the beds are on a sign up basis, first come, first serve. And you get a full bed for $50.

- A year?

- A year, and then you get a half bed for $25, if you want that.

- Okay, very reasonable.

- But the piece people are expected to maintain their own garden, and they're to be respectful of others' gardens. We pick from our garden, not his garden or her garden.

- And the size of a full bed is?

- [Dick] 24 by 4.

- [Matt] Wow, that's a really large size bed. And I even see that you have, just to make sure, that everybody keeps up with their own garden beds, they have names and numbers on each garden plot.

- [Dick] Yes.

- [Matt] I bet that really helps out, keeps everything organized.

- [Dick] And you get to know the people around you. And in a community this size, you wouldn't necessarily know everyone's name, with their name on there you do. And we say, I shouldn't be picking out of that one, or they shouldn't be picking out of mine, but there's a lot of trading that goes on because when my kale's in, people may not have their squash in yet.

- [Matt] A little bit of bartering going on.

- So once I've given enough kale away, I end up with some acorn squash or something to pay back for that. The thing that I enjoy most probably, is talking to some of the gardeners about the methods they use and why their tomatoes are so much bigger than mine, or more colorful, or whatever. But there's a lot of heirloom things put out here in the gardens.

- A lot of varieties of old...

- Right, so that's different from what you're going to find in the grocery store. And I think all of us are very pleased when that first tomato comes off our plant rather than getting one out of the grocery store and seeing the difference in the taste of those.

- [Matt] Nothing like a home grown variety.

- [Dick] That's right.

- [Matt] Well that's fantastic to hear about the amount of community involvement that and the relations that goes on within this garden. Well Dick, everything looks so lush around here, I bet you got a couple secrets there that you're just dying to tell me.

- [Dick] Well there's not much that I've learned on my own, but with this many community gardeners working together, you learn a lot from a lot of other people. One thing I've done, was I used to bury a fish in with the tomato plant and then plant the tomato. And it really produced some nice tomatoes. Here we have a lake and a lot of people fish, and they put Tilapia in it each year so that they can eat the algae. But Tilapia is, a lot of people know, will not last though the winter. So they will die out, but the gardeners also the dead fish that have died and bury them in their gardens. And something that I think the American Indian used to do with their gardens. We also get from the community, we get chips, wood chips that we use between the beds, which cuts down the mud, but we also buy a couple truckloads of mushroom mulch. It is no longer good to grow mushrooms.

- [Matt] Right, it's just a byproduct of the mushroom industry.

- [Dick] And we end up putting that over our beds at the early part of the season.

- I can really tell a difference in the health and the vitality and the vigor of your garden beds here, so whatever you're doing, it's definitely working. So I'm standing at here at one of the resident garden beds and I just love what they have going on here and the creative use of space in the bed. You can see the transition of crops, everything from the lettuce, the beets are starting to kinda finish out for the season, and we're transitioning into some summer crops like the bush beans here, and then I also see some summer squash and cherry tomatoes near by. But I love what they're doing with the fencing here. About how it's kind serving a dual purpose, I think, in my opinion. One to try and keep any of the critters away, but also at the same time to allow some of the beans or the squash or the cucumbers to kinda grow up along this fence. Really maximizing that square foot. And that's something I always try to encourage a lot of gardeners at home to, to tell them that gardens really don't require as much space as you might think. You can get really creative with some cheap materials and you'd be surprised on what you can really harvest out of small spaces just like this. Another area that I'm so excited to see here at the Del Wood community gardens is the fact that they have a little bed just for pollinators. And as we all know, pollinators need our help. And this one in particular has a whole host of plants. Everything from butterfly bush to bee balm to pintos and salvia. Sunflowers in the back there. Even to this fennel here. Which fennel is a fantastic host plant for the monarch butterfly. And it's just so great to see that they're supporting the pollinators in this community garden, and that it really helps the fruit set and the production of any garden, when you're able to plant some flowering plants along the border. And you'll just be much happier that you did. And so will your vegetables. Well, as we saw here today, not only do many hands make for light work, but they also help to create a sense of purpose and connection. And one of the things I love about the community gardens of Del Webb at Lake Providence is how they use their extra produce. And here we have a little market stand where they provide it for any of the other residents here that can't make it to the garden, and any extra after that is donated to the Mount Juliet Food Pantry. So great things to see as we continue growing here at Del Webb.

- So we're here at the greenhouse, actually at my house. And George Kilgore, my husband, loves orchids. And so we have a lot of orchids, as you can see here. But George, what I'd like for us to do today is just show people that might receive an orchid as a present how to take care of this once they get it home.

- [George] This is a very typical phalaenopsis orchid. Phalaenopsis are low light users, that's why they make such a great house plant, because we can put them in our house which is normally low light, and that's why they will continue to bloom, if they have buds and stay in bloom about three months.

- [Tammy] So when they get this, obviously it's already going to be in bloom. So they can pretty much leave it as they have purchased it and they don't need to repot it or anything else while it's in bloom. They just kind of need to put it where they want to on their dining room table or where ever and enjoy it while it's in bloom, right?

- [George] Once an orchid is in bloom, you definitely don't want to repot it, until after it completely falls, all the blooms completely fall off. Then you can actually repot it, if you feel like it needs to and what is the indicator? The indicator is what we call air roots. And you can see on this plant here the green tipped air root that's coming out. Then that's an indicator that it's going to be time to replant or repot this orchid because it's going to continue to put out more of these and it's gonna be time to actually put it in to a larger pot if all the conditions are right. And you're basically going to water this plant once every three weeks, believe it or not. More orchids are killed by over watering than under watering. So it's very important that you keep this moss just moist, but not wet.

- Okay, so when you say water, what do you need to do? Do you just put this in a sink and water it, or do you avoid any of these little insides, like you would a Bromelied? How would you water this plant?

- [George] Exactly, you're gonna take this to the sink, or take it somewhere where you can actually pour water in this. You wanna use lukewarm water. Fill it up to the top, let it drain out. Basically just shake it and put it back where you had it. More orchids are killed by too much TLC.

- We like to mother an orchid.

- Exactly.

- [Tammy] Okay, so this is a very common flower that they would find in the store, but you've got some that are a little more unique. So let's look at those and they're all still orchids, but let's look at those and compare those to this one.

- One of the great things, again these are Phalaenopsis, they're low light users, so we're actually going to keep these on the northern side of our greenhouse. So when that southeast exposure in our home. But as we move around, we're gonna be looking at some other orchids that are high light users. Now these are what we call the Cat Lily orchid. This is, if you remember back, maybe in the 50's and 60's we actually had the corsages so that we go to the prom and that always a big deal, to make sure that you had an orchid corsage. So for these to be put in our home, you're going to have to have artificial light, or you're gonna have to keep them by really a southwest exposure window and I'm gonna tell you in our home, they're really hard to, in most cases, to get to bloom on a cycle. Most orchids are only going to bloom one time a year, because they've got to store food in order to set that bud so that they will actually bloom. But here again, that orchid there will only last about three weeks in bloom. Now keep in mind, an orchid is a tropical plant, okay? They grow in nature in trees, either at the tops of trees, get more light, or down just a little bit lower under a very heavy canopy, so that they're not getting that direct light. This is how they grow in nature. They will attach themselves to the side of a tree, to the tree bark. These are actually are mounted on cork bark, which kinda simulates this is what they would look like in nature. If we do this, and an orchid is an epiphytic, meaning that it's an air plant. They don't have to have soil, they don't have to have moss, they don't have to have bark. You can attach them to really, anything. Provide them with a little moisture, a little sunlight, roots will continue to grow and they will attach themselves to that surface and pick up the nutrients from your water, from your fertilization, from the decaying of that material. But if you're going to do this in your home, you'd really want to make sure, especially put this where you can take it to the sink, and all you're going to do it mist it. And you're just gonna mist the roots, and it's attached with that, we talked about the orchid moss it's attached with that. You're going to mist this on about an every other day. And so these require just a little bit more care as far as getting them to attach themselves and then getting them to bloom. And species in which this orchid right here, this bloom of this orchid here, this is a species, meaning that this is exactly what it looks like in nature. And they really like to be attached to a surface. They don't really do well in pots, so if they can have this type of growing environment, they really do well.

- So sometimes on these you see a little bit of yellowing in the leaf and particularly like that. And that's nothing to be concerned about, right?

- [George] Not at all. Orchids reproduce the leaves from the bottom portion of the plant, so what they're going to do is actually put out new leaf growth. From here, they will actually shed these lower, older leaves, they'll turn yellow and they'll fall off. Don't panic, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But however, if it begins to die up here in these young leaves up here in the top around the crown right here, then there's some issues and you may or may not be able to actually save the plant.

- [Tammy] Okay, so George, we don't typically think about orchids being a kitchen product, but this one is, right?

- [George] Most definitely, believe it or not, this is your vanilla orchid. When this orchid actually blooms and you actually take the pollen from one flower to anther and produce that pod, you're actually producing that vanilla pod to use in vanilla extract. But a vanilla, this is a vanilla orchid, and most people don't really realize that vanilla is a orchid.

- [Tammy] Okay, so you have to pollenate this by hand. You're not depending on bees for this, you're doing it?

- Exactly because kind of very uniquely. When this blooms, it only stays in bloom about 24 hours. So you really have to be on top of your game in order to take the pollen from one flower to another in order to get that pod that will be produced. So it's a wonderful plant to have. This one we actually had to take from another cutting because it tried to take over the greenhouse. Because it is a vine, and it will grow quickly.

- [Tammy] What we have here then, is a beautiful plant that really doesn't need us and we don't have to say that very often about flowers. But it really doesn't need us other than to just enjoy it. So, George, you've obviously got a talent for this. We love seeing all of these different types of orchids, and blooms, and it is quite stunning and thank you for showing us a little bit about how to care for orchids once we get them home.

- [George] And I do want to remind you that if you'd like to know more about growing orchids, the Orchid Society of Middle Tennessee does meet at Cheekwood on the third Tuesday of every month. It's a great way to come and learn about orchids and orchid growing from a lot of people from all over the country. Most all the states have orchid societies. You can kinda google that information in regards to where your society meets throughout the country. But also, the American Orchid Society, the AOS we call it, you can to their website and they can really give you that information in regards to where those societies are, the information about growing orchids, the technical information. There's just a whole host of information at the American Orchid Society.

- I have to tell you it's a pleasure to be in Midtown, right in the heart of Memphis with you, Mike Minnis, and well I wanna walk into this garden area. And we're walking on your walk path. Give me an overview of what we see in this area, and how you're utilizing it.

- Well, there are medicinal herbs on this side, fruit trees are in the middle, and over on the far end we have garden beds that we have a variety of fruits, mainly watermelon, canteloupe, tomatoes, cucumbers.

- [Annette] And so, prior to this you had no gardening knowledge, so you were a hands on learner. You're experiencing this as you go, along with the young people that you're putting into this garden. You're teaching them how to use their hands, and we as gardeners all of us know that there's therapy in gardening.

- [Mike] Yes it is.

- [Tammy] There's nothing like it, and I even know that we might live longer, too. Mr. Minnis, I can tell already I like the ground I'm standing on, and you have a formula for this, and you have a way of getting it worked, don't you?

- Yeah, we've developed a process that works for us. So, they say if it's not broken, don't fix it.

- That's right. And you gotta good help.

- Yeah, yeah, these youngsters tend to have their priorities straight and they're starting to enjoy being out here in the elements.

- Yeah, well what are they doing for you now?

- [Mike] Well, right now, this is called double dig, where they go down in to the dirt the first 6 to 8 inches and extract all of the roots from the grass and weeds. And then they take the pitch fork and dig down another 6 to 8 inches loosening the soil up. And then put the soil back, whereby you have loose soil so that once the plant starts growing, the roots can develop and be very healthy.

- [Tammy] And I can tell that you got good help. These are good guys, aren't they?

- [Mike] They're good guys.

- [Tammy] Well I'm glad you got 'em.

- Me, too. We saw a need where children can be engaged in an activity that's positive. They procure a stipend of income and they learn something that they can possible utilize for the rest of their lives, eating healthy.

- Well, and I know that you've received a distinguished service award from the juvenile court system in Shelby County, did you not?

- Yes m'am.

- Tell us about that.

- It's an honor, first of all, but more importantly, it's a result of our interactions with the children. And hope that they don't recidivate and go back into the penal system in any way shape, form or fashion.

- [Tammy] And I believe you've had a perfect record?

- [Mike] So far so good.

- [Tammy] So you're goal is seeing results. Just like putting the compost in this ground, and I commend you and it just really fills my heart to overjoyed to know that you saw a need and you had a vision and it's in the three year process right now. You transformed this commercial lot. Okay, I want you to tell me why do you have the sunflowers here?

- Well, it started off, when we first got this lot, as with others, we put visqueen over it, that is clear plastic, so it can get rid of any toxins that might exist in the soil. And then we planted sunflowers to absorb any additional toxins that might be in the soil. Well, what has happened, we added additional compost to the soil to enhance its viability and as a result, we grew to like having the sunflowers.

- Okay, Mike, do you have a 12 month crop plan that you put into effect?

- What we try to do is get three crops per year. We get a spring crop with some of it we recently harvest. Plants that are conducive to the springtime like your spinach, and arugula and things of that sort. Now we're into our second crop which is a lotta your beans and tomatoes. These are things that are more conducive to the warm weather.

- [Annette] What is the poundage that you think that you harvest out of this small area in a season?

- [Mike] We get a couple of tons.

- [Annette] That's a lot of food.

- [Mike] Well, some of it is the high water content crops like watermelon and canteloupe and cucumbers. We have some Armenian cucumbers that are as long from my elbow to my hand.

- [Annette] Goodness. Well, do you have any pest problems in here?

- [Mike] Sure we do. That's one of the reasons for the flower garden. To attract beneficial insects that like to eat the pests.

- Okay, Mike, I've got a question for you. Am I seeing Queen Anne's lace blooming? What is this?

- Well, we obtained heirloom seeds to start with about three years ago, and every year we would let certain of the carrots go to seed, so that we can reutilize those seeds the next season.

- Okay, I'm learning something. So the Queen Anne's lace is considered a wild carrot. But these are really carrots that you eat, and you say this is a purple carrot?

- [Mike] That's correct.

- [Annette] And you can harvest that seed from that bloom.

- [Mike] Yes m'am.

- I didn't know that now then. So knowing that, you've got, I see the carrots in here. What's over there, then?

- Well, this bed is purple, that was our, your orange Nantes. Then we have what we call Amarillo Yellow. Next to that's Kuttiger White, on the end we have Tonic Red.

- So once that carrot has gone to seed like that that carrot is no good, but all these down in here.

- Are still edible, yes m'am

- And so, do you designate these rows these rows the same direction, or do you do the same process.

- These have continued to remain in this direction particularly because of the irrigation system that's set up over here, along with the swell on the back side.

- All right, Mike, you collected carrot seeds, what else to you do to help manage your finances with collecting other seeds?

- Well, as I indicated, this is our second crop. Some of our first crop is hanging over here. After we harvested it, these are collard green seeds.

- [Annette] Yeah.

- [Mike] That we let winter over, and during the spring time, they started to bloom and we've since pulled them out and replanted. These are spinach seeds, and next to those are arugula seeds.

- Well I have to say that I admire wholeheartedly your concept of what you're doing to enrich the lives of others, but you're also producing in this area something else. You have a desert, a food desert here, don't you? With no fresh vegetables.

- [Mike] Yeah, that's of a major concern, to the extent that people tend to have a better quality of life when they have access to good, wholesome fresh food.

- [Annette] Freshly picked and done. So in that vane of thought, you grow certain type of ethnic foods, don't you?

- [Mike] Yeah, we have some, we call, culturally appropriate foods that are indigenous to the population. Things that people have enjoyed over the years. Their grandmother, great-grandmother and now they still enjoying some of the same things.

- Well, I know that there's story after story in your repertoire of memories of how that you, most of all, enriched the lives of young people and this is a byproduct of that.

- That's right.

- And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can't tell you. I want to cry because I admire what you've done. And you see a need and you've had a vision and you filled it. Thank you for allowing me to come into your garden.

- Well, I appreciate your coming, and I could tell you that no amount of money could buy the joy that comes from the end result of seeing these children.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at VolunteerGardener.org or at YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener Channel. And like us on Facebook.