Episode 2543

- [Narrator] There's a rhythm to the growing seasons at Long Hungry Creek Farm, with pairs of crops going in and out of the fields together. Jeff Poppen explains that it's all in getting the timing right. Plus, Annette Shrader towards a backyard that's layered in interest from spring through winter. This and more, so stay tuned. Timing is everything.

- Gardeners feel the seasonal rhythms in the garden dance just as a musician feels rhythm in their body. I find it useful to group the vegetables in couples or threesomes as they enter into the garden and then go back out of it. Peas and lettuce start the spring out every year. I like to rough plow the spring garden in the fall. Get the compost on it, and maybe even where I plant peas, I'll throw a mulch down that I can just pull away so that I can get that pea seed in the ground early. About the same time, mid March, that we're planting pea seed, we get the first cold frame ready and sow lettuce that will then be transplanted out into the garden in four to six weeks. In early spring, potatoes and onions are on my mind. These are other crops that we prepare the ground in the fall with deep tillage and just let it sit over winter. The freezing and thawing over the winter really pulverizes the soil and makes it nice, way better than we can do with any kind of tillage. Around the spring equinox, I like to get the onions in the ground, and within a week, I wanna get that acre of potatoes planted. By April 1st, we want to plant potatoes' frost tender cousins. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are carefully planted one seed at a time, two inches apart, in furrows about four inches wide. These heat loving sweet potatoes have a layer of fresh horse manure put underneath them that we dampen and compress. Then when we plant the sweet potatoes on top of some sand on top of that horse manure, it heats up and sprouts up the sweet potatoes much quicker than if I didn't use the horse manure. A seed packet of carrots or beets will say to plant these in the spring as early as possible as soon as the ground can be worked. I disagree. If I plant my carrots real early, it takes three weeks for them to sprout, and there's lots of weeds that will sprout and fill that land up with that I have to tend. If I wait until, April 11th I think is when these were planted, the carrots sprout up within a week and I can get in there and till them so much quicker. We spent a little more time this year sowing the seeds very carefully so that we didn't have to thin them later. So the carrots then are already far enough apart where they don't need to be thinned out. By the end of June, they're ready to eat, and they will certainly have caught up with anything that was planted three weeks earlier and required a lot more work. The wide leaves of beets shade out the weeds better than the thin foliage of carrots. But even though the carrots require a little more work, they're worth it because they're much sweeter and they don't get themselves into a pickle like these beets do. The next group is a threesome that stays in the garden all year round. Celery, chard, and parsley are cut and come again crops. We plant them early and just take the outer leaves off of these plants, and they come back from the center, and we'll be harvesting celery, chard, and parsley way up into December. You take out the outer leaves of these, and stalks, and then this plant then will put more stalks out from the inside. Celery is started a few months before we plant them out in early April, but the Swiss chard and the parsley are direct seeded. Mid April also sees the lettuce getting transplanted, along with another seeding of lettuce for setting out later. All of these March and April crops in the garden are frost hardy, so we don't have to worry about a frost with them. We keep the soil around them well stirred to hold in the moisture and keep weeds from sprouting while we patiently wait for the ground to warm up so we can plant all the delicious summer crops. Tennessee weather varies so much from year to year that we can't just follow a calendar. The dates for this dance depend on how the soil feels and how warm it is. When soil is 55 or 60 degrees, it will take a little while for a cucumber to sprout. But if we wait 'till that soil gets to 65 degrees or 70 degrees, that cucumber seed will sprout up in a few days. That way, we can get through the crop with one less hoeing and weeding and less cultivating because our crop has a jump on the weeds. First week of May is a perfect time for planting corn. Corn comes in all colors, from the yellow and white and bicolor sweet corns to the rainbow colored corn that the Indians grew or popcorn. I like to get the ground ready in late April, but then let a rain fall on it and the weeds start to sprout, and then I harrow over it, or in a garden you might just rake over it, and then plant your crop. This is called a stale seedbed when we get the ground ready but don't plant it, let those weeds germinate, stir the soil again, maybe even a couple of times. And then a stale seed bed gets rid of a lot of the weeding problems later, and then when we do plant, our crop comes up with no weeds. The big threesome now are the summer squash, beans, and cucumbers. All three of these crops go in the ground at the same time, they bear in about two months, and then they peter out again in about three months. We make another planting of these around the first of June, and then again around the first of July. And that way, we can keep the produce coming in all summer long until the fall's first frost. In mid May, all danger of frost has passed and it's safe to set out the tomato patch. We plant three rows, and then we transplant two beds of late lettuce, followed by three more rows of tomatoes. This way, by the time we are harvesting the tomatoes, the lettuce has already given us heads and their beds become a road for access to bushels and bushels of tomatoes that we don't wanna carry very far. Late May is perfect for the watermelons and the winter squash. We have a row of beans in between 'em because they sprawl so much. This couple loves the soil to be so hot that they just jump right up and out compete the weeds. Watermelons require more hoeing because their leaves don't shade out the weeds like squash does. But their sweet, slurpy fruits are well worth the extra effort. Early June finds us in our last garden to plant, the sweet potato field. Her partners are peppers, some eggplants, okra, and maybe a little late summer squash. These plants love hot weather. They're very tropical. They don't even want the nights to be cool. If we plant early, they just get all weedy, so we wait 'till June when the ground is not only warm but feels hot. And then we put the sweet potatoes out and the pepper patch. By October, it's time to plant the other couples for their winter covers. And this would be wheat and peas or rye and vetch. These couples are a grain and a legume. They grow well together during the winter, make growth in the spring, and then get turned into the land to improve it. And then we plant the summer garden again.

- Well, there are all kinds of gardens out there, but did you know that there's a type of garden that is specially designed to catch and filter the rain? Indeed, you could improve the water quality in your neighborhood streams with these lovely scoops of gardens. And to tell us more about it, I have McKayle Houghton with the Cumberland River Compact. Hi, McKayle.

- Hi, Julie.

- Well, tell me about this garden. It certainly is different than what we see. Well, it's just scooped into the ground.

- It is. It's about eight inches deep. It's one year old this spring, and it's designed to catch the rainwater from that downspout so that the water flows into this rain garden and takes about 24 hours to sink in, and we've planted it with all kinds of native flowering perennials.

- [Julie] Well, it is indeed beautiful. And I know a lot of times people think about different kinds of gardens they're not sure what they can grow there. So what are some of the plants that we have in this garden?

- We're in partial sun here, so we've got wild geranium, foamflower, Coreopsis, which is happy here, and some Salvia. And then I noticed a Memorial Easter lily right there that the homeowner added to the garden. They dug down about eight to 10 inches into the ground, created this bowl shaped garden with a flat bottom and made sure that the water would sink in. There's a percolation test that you perform on rain gardens where you dig a hole about 10 inches deep and you fill it with water and you time how long it takes for the water to infiltrate. And you repeat that to mimic a few days of rain. So after the bed was prepared, then they did that to make sure that they didn't need to amend the soil. If the water doesn't sink into the ground, then you want to amend your soil with compost or sand to create those voids for the water to sink in. Typically, the rain can come from a downspout. Sometimes, if people are on a street with no curbs, they're catching water from the street, so you can also build a rain garden to catch storm water that's coming onto your property off the street. Or you can direct a rain barrel, the overflow hose of a rain barrel, into your rain garden. So all of that is beneficial so it's not carrying all the pollution into the small neighborhood streams.

- [Julie] Well, we're in the beautiful 12South neighborhood here in Nashville. Which creek is this benefiting?

- [McKayle] This is in the Browns Creek watershed, and Browns Creek is a tributary to the Cumberland River. Browns Creek is an urban stream that is impaired and polluted with most of the urban pollution that is possible. So metals from cars, animal waste, fertilizers, herbicides. All of that is washing into Browns Creek.

- [Julie] So every little bit of that water that we can get to be filtered naturally through the earth is going to definitely benefit the water table and the creek around here.

- Yes. The idea is to slow the storm water down and give it time to sink in. We built one at our house this size, and it was sort of a Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon project for two people. And then the great thing is that if you build the garden bed, so if you dig the hole and then you wait for it to rain and you watch how the rain flows into the garden, you can tweak it. If you don't get it quite right, you can dig a little deeper in one area that makes sure that the water is flowing in. This year, we're working in the Mill Creek watershed, organizing volunteers to build rain gardens there, and that's because the federally endangered Nashville crayfish lives in the Mill Creek watershed, so we're trying to keep that stream as healthy as possible so that that population continues to thrive there. The second neighborhood that we're working in is in east Nashville in Boscobel Sewer Shed area.

- [Julie] Well, it's just fantastic to see these rain garden, McKayle, and I thank you all in the compact so much for your efforts in doing it. And to learn more about rain gardens and whether or not you might be able to apply for one of the special rain gardens through the Cumberland River Compact, please visit our website at VolunteerGardener.org

- It's not often that I have the opportunity to stand and look out over such a vast example of what any gardener would love to have in their landscape. Ron, I'm just gonna give this over to you. Tell us your story.

- Thanks, Annette, and it is just such an honor to be on your show, the best garden show on TV as far as I'm concerned.

- Thank you.

- We started our landscaping here actually during the flood of May, 2010. I remember it well. It was a challenge to try to keep the water from going down to where the house was. And when we looked at the lot, and we just fell in love with it, primarily because the first thing you notice is the upward slope of the hillside, and the second thing you notice is these majestic oak trees. It provides a frame, even though we're in an urban setting, it provides a framework that just gives you that feeling that you're some place you wanna be. And then third, because of the proximity of the hillside and the trees to the house, we can, what I'd like to say, bring the outdoor garden indoors and enjoy it all year long just by looking out our patio door and the windows. And so what we tried to create here was a feeling of ambiance and a wooded home site, and then we started adding things and getting some ideas, and then we're here filling in with our waterfall and the flagstone patio and so forth.

- Well, plant selection is key to all of this, whether it's in color or structure, texture. So what about your selections of plants?

- [Ron] Well, we went to a lot of, you know how it is, you go through these garden shows in the spring and you get all pumped up and you see something. "I wish I had something like that." So we got some ideas over the years by going to them, and then I started out, with the hillside as it is, we had to have a waterfall here. And so we put in this double waterfall.

- [Annette] And when you say, "We," you literally did this.

- [Ron] I designed the waterfall. I had help putting it in. The rocks were too heavy for me. I'm getting too old to do that. So I had help with that. But everything you see that's green over here, the trees and everything, my wife and I planted ourselves. So we put in the waterfall. We did the flagstone patio, which comes from the Cumberland Plateau, directly from there. I love Japanese maple trees. They're just so compact and they change colors throughout the season. And then we complement that with what I call the hardscape, the boulders and the rocks, and we put it all together. And then, as far as plant selection, tried to keep the color going all year long so we add some annuals.

- [Annette] That's key, isn't it?

- It's key to keep the color going, 'cause in the spring, you got lots of color in the perennials and the blooms, but then you have to keep helping it along throughout the year so that you have that color that we all like.

- We don't get tired, look tired.

- That's it.

- Well it's definitely not tired around here, but my eye just captured a hummingbird lighting over there on the limb of that tree with those shiny leaves. That's your favorite tree?

- [Ron] That's my favorite tree. That's called a Chinese fringe tree, a Chionanthus retusus, and it's a different kind of tree in that most of the time you see blooms coming out before the leaves. This one is different. The leaves actually come out first, and then the white blooms come out after that, and it's just like a sea of cotton in the spring, and they last for like four weeks, so it's my favorite tree.

- [Annette] Well, I noticed that you have a number of perennial, bulb perennials, but what do you have in those?

- [Ron] Well, overall, we try to do various things.

- [Annette] Dahlias.

- The dahlias, the tubers for the dahlias. Of course, what you don't see now, we've got a lot of daffodils, a lot of tulips that come out. And so we have this sea of color in the spring that we're waiting for, and then as those go away, we start planting our annuals. So yeah, it's kind of a mixture of things that we have here. And of course, we like the shrubs, the green, the colors that blend in, the greens and the purples and then come the yellows. And then, of course, in the spring, these Japanese maples are just as purple as those purple hearts, and they are just absolutely beautiful.

- [Annette] I can only imagine.

- [Ron] And it's just wonderful to see.

- [Annette] I like the laurel pendulums that you have there, have that same richness. What did you take into consideration about placement of evergreen or deciduous shrubs and trees?

- Well, we started out with the height and just the texture first of getting the larger plants in here. And that was the Japanese maples and the Chinese fringe tree. And then from there, we went to things like the yews and the green colored one that stay green all year long. And then what I wanted to do was filter in the color of the purples and the yellows. And then, as you see in the waterfall, I love plants that grow over into the rocks--

- The cascading effect.

- The cascading effect, and it makes it look so natural that way. So you see some moss and you see creeping jenny.

- [Annette] I see a Cotoneaster.

- [Ron] And a Cotoneaster. It just keeps going over with the little orange berries. And so then, after you got all that, you just fill in with some color and what you think is best that goes with it.

- [Annette] Those are your exclamation points.

- [Ron] You got it.

- [Annette] And the commas are something else.

- [Ron] You got it.

- [Annette] Okay. There's a lot here in this garden, and viewing it from the top is wonderful, but I'd like to go maybe to the ground level.

- [Ron] Let's do it.

- Ron, this is a beautiful example of how you can intermingle some wonderful plants for color and height. Let's start right here with this rose collection.

- This is a little shrub rose. It's called a coral rose because of its color. And it's good, low lying. It doesn't spread very well, and you can trim it up good. And then as we move up from there, of course, the chrysanthemums add some fall color.

- [Annette] Wonderful color.

- [Ron] And then you get into the various kind of dahlias.

- [Annette] My favorite things, dahlias.

- [Ron] That's a mystic dahlia. You've got the floodlight.

- [Annette] This one is floodlight?

- [Ron] No, floodlight is the yellow one.

- [Annette] Oh, the yellow one, oh.

- [Ron] And then that's a Thomas Jefferson, that's the purple one. And I forget the name of the pink one over there.

- [Annette] It's just pretty. Now this is new and different looking. That's beautiful. But you know, the colored foliage on this one is a nice blend of--

- [Ron] I like the yellows and the different hues that we have, and then as you move up, you get into the hydrangeas. Annabels are my favorite hydrangea. Obviously, they bloom white in the spring. But I leave 'em go into winter because it gives some character.

- [Annette] And birds like to nest on them.

- [Ron] They love it over there. So the leaves will fall, and I'll just leave them there and cut 'em back in the spring.

- [Annette] Well, let's see. One, two, three, four. On the fifth floor up here.

- [Ron] On the fifth floor, we've got the lime glow Japanese barberry, and it's a green throughout the summer, and then as you start getting into the cool nights, you get these little reddish crimson color, and then it'll lose its leaves. But I like the shades.

- Well, I do, too. That's beautiful. And then I love the luster of the holly you've got back there.

- That's called a dwarf Burford holly, and it stays green all year long. It's just a real bright green luster that I think complements the colors as we go up the hill. And then that leads over to--

- [Annette] The seventh floor and that Japanese maple up there.

- [Ron] That is a favorite Japanese maple. It's called a Shishigashira, Acer palmatum, and it loses its leaves in the fall, but soon after all of the other Japanese maple starts losing its color, it's gonna start its show. And not only does it have great texture, but it's gonna start turning a little yellow suffused with little red and crimson in there, and then the bark is absolutely fantastic. It's a green bark. None of the others I see have that bark. It just stays green all summer long and all winter long, and it'll grow to about 10 or 15 feet, and maybe about 10 feet wide. I'm not gonna let it grow that big 'cause I want it more compact to complement everything. And then, of course, the canopy over here of the oak trees just frame everything, and it's just something that we were fortunate to have.

- And you know, today is a day unlike many. We don't get 'em like this very often. But I'm just looking. Perhaps this is a white oak tree over here, the color of that bark against that blue and then the blue sky, and your eucalyptus?

- That's a Eucalyptus cinerea. And we planted it this spring, and look at it grow.

- [Annette] Now, is that going to be something you've gotta protect?

- [Ron] It's good down to zone seven, so I'm gonna mulch it real good and cut it back some and see how it goes next spring. It kind of got out of hand going tall, but I just loved it so much. The fragrance is so great.

- [Annette] I think it's refreshing to see hybrid tea roses in your garden. Do you have a long love of those?

- [Ron] We do. My wife likes to cut 'em and bring 'em indoors, and for September, not too bad. They're still hanging in there.

- Well, but you know the biggest show is actually October, so they're getting ready.

- They're getting ready.

- And over on the other page over here, I see some butterflies fluttering around, and I think zinnia is one of their favorites.

- [Ron] Oh yes. Zinnias, these are the tall zinnias, kind of provide a backdrop to the perfusion zinnias, which are orange all year long. And we have lots of cutting from this. And then leads over to, one of my favorite plants, again, is the purple hyacinth bean plant.

- [Annette] And you know, that is so effectively used that way because I've had it sprawl across the fence and everything else. But I love how it looks like a standard tree almost under there.

- [Ron] And you know who likes it, too?

- [Annette] I bet I know.

- [Ron] Butterflies.

- [Annette] Oh, I was just gonna say--

- [Ron] They love to go on that thing.

- [Annette] Thomas Jefferson did, too. It was his favorite.

- [Ron] Thomas Jefferson, right.

- It was. Well, this is just another page in this wonderful garden, but I know there's a few more little places I wanna go.

- Let's do it.

- Let's go. It's wonderful to have the freshness of this green grass, but it's a wonderful prelude to this backdrop you have up here. And tell us how you've effectively accomplished this color for this time of year.

- [Ron] Okay. Well, the grass, at this time of year, is starting to come out again pretty well. As far as the color over here, again, we have some perfusion zinnias that are low lying and maintain their color throughout the year. And in between, we have some angelonia. And the great color with the blues and the oranges, and then you lead up behind that with the Celosia. Gives a little yellow flavor, a little taller. And of course, the centerpiece right here in the center is our dahlias, and the dahlias, that's a floodlight dahlia, and you can see the butterflies all around it. They love it. The birds come over there and light on 'em. And then in the back, we have the green arborvitae and the Elaeagnus. So we have a wall right in back of that. But--

- [Annette] It's not a wall.

- I wanted to hide the wall with the green, so we had a little frame and put it together and decided, "Okay, we'll put the ends with the knockout roses," which--

- [Annette] Are looking great--

- Perfusion.

- [Annette] You did a good job. I didn't see that wall back there. It's very obvious that Mary and Ron have injected their personalities into this garden. You're creative, and I thank you that you had the chance to share all this beauty and knowledge with us today.

- [Ron] It's really my pleasure, Annette, and as I said before, Volunteer Gardener is the favorite show and garden show on TV, so it's my pleasure for you being here.

- [Annette] Thank you. We appreciate that.

- [Ron] Thank you.

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