Episode 2603

- [Narrator] An empty backyard can be a terrific asset to new homeowners. Matt Kerske sees how a family's desire for growing edibles, and a play spot for their growing child was realized in this updated outdoor space. Plus, we'll tour a vegetable garden in a guy's basement. What? Oh yes, a microgreen production garden. Join us. first, a gathering space, a play place, and space to grow.

- Well, today I'm excited, because I get to walk through a newly-renovated backyard landscape where the homeowner had some challenges, and with a little bit of creativity, was able to come up with some solutions to a backyard that was a bit of a blank slate, had some drainage issues, but also accomplish certain hardscape and landscape features that fit within her budget. Well, I'm here with the homeowner Kristin, where we're at the backyard, the home is about 10 years old. Kristin, we're surrounded by some new elements here, and tell me a little about them, and what you wanted to try to accomplish for your family here in the backyard.

- [Kristin] We wanted a place where we could relax and entertain as a family, I've got a kid and a dog, and so we were looking for a flat space, because the yard is sloped, we needed a nice, big space where we could put chairs or a table.

- [Matt] You had the landscape crews install a bit of a patio, a fire pit right here, for some entertaining, even got a little bit of blueberries off to the side for a little edible treat. And then over here, we even have a nice four-by-eight raised bed already teeming with vegetables, tomatoes and peppers, I see. You guys plan on using that around the culinary kitchen?

- [Kristin] Yeah, we love the garden, we've always had a garden in our backyard, and so we really wanted to incorporate as much as possible the edibles, so the blackberries, the blueberries, and have 'em really accessible to us when we're in the backyard.

- Right, right, right, completely makes sense to me, coming right off the kitchen space, coming off the back porch, and also, you're looking to do a little bit more storage underneath the deck.

- [Kristin] So all of this was basically eroded soil after years of rain coming down through the deck, and so what we wanted is a place, a raised sort of area that would connect, and allow us to put a shed there, for some additional storage, so that's the next step in our plan, but then just putting the gravel down helps a lot with keeping the soil from becoming just a big mud pit.

- Right, right, so you are able to take an unused space that was eroding, that was dirty and messy, and really, just with some nice terracing of some six-by-six and some railroad ties, able to really turn into a very functional space, and be able to add a shed later, I love it. And so Kristin, behind us we got a spot for the kids. Tell me a little bit about why this is important to you and how you went about it.

- [Kristin] We really wanted this to be a family-friendly backyard, and so we installed the play set, and wanted a safe space for her to land if she falls, which she does a lot.

- [Matt] But you've given ample room here with the playground mulch around the whole play set area, and you used a type of mulch which is great, a commercially-certified play soft mulch, it's available at a few retailers around town, and installed usually in the four to six-inch rating, so it's nice and soft, you can take a tumble or two, and still keep the kiddo safe. So we're walking along your back fence line here, and we're staring at some really large privet hedgerow here. Tell me a little bit about what the original landscape plan called for, and how things changed around a little bit.

- [Kristin] Yeah, I think we had talked about removing all of this and putting in some new trees, but really, once we looked at the budget, I don't think we could make it work, and plus, I think one thing that we had talked about is, even if we put new trees in, you would lose a lot of the privacy that these existing shrubs provided.

- And you bring up a really great point about how taking a look at a large project has a lot of budgetary constraints sometimes, and you gotta be creative a little bit, where as opposed to removing these 15, 20-foot hedges, you kinda clean them up a little bit, give them a face lift, trimmed up the undersides a little bit, had a playable space underneath, increased your square footage of your yard, and just kinda feeling it out, and if the budget were to allow, down the line, you can always do that. So Kristin, we're looking at more edibles here, some fruit trees around the patio, talk to me a little bit about these installations.

- [Kristin] Yeah, I really wanted some edible trees to go with the vegetable garden, so we picked out a variety, a couple varieties that would work together.

- Yeah, absolutely, and Liberty is a great cultivar for the southeast region, handles the heat, the humidity, the drought, and just really a good old overall apple tree for our region. We're talking a little bit about how you're using some of this space underneath the deck, we got a four-by-eight planted here, and tell me a little bit about what you have growing in.

- [Kristin] Got some beans in the back, got some onions, and some peppers, and some cucumbers.

- Sounds great, everything's off to a really great start, got a little bit of caterpillar damage eating the collard greens, pretty typical for brassicas around this time of year, maybe a little bit of diatomaceous earth, or BT sprays, an organic option to try to control those, very much at a controllable state, they definitely don't have to take down the crop at this point, little organic solution get you fixed up right. And then over here, we got some blueberries. Some southern rabbiteyes. Have you been able, chance to eat some of this fruit yet?

- Yeah actually, my daughter was grabbing them right off the bush, so she's already a big fan, so they're doing really well.

- [Matt] Yeah, they're great, they look very healthy, nice dark, green leaves. I'm sure when at time of planting, added a little bit of a soil acidifier, which is really needed, you want the pH to be somewhere in between the six, 6.5 range for these, being southern rabbiteye, again, they're really great for our region's heat and humidity, and there's two varieties planted here, which will be a powder blue and a climax, and just great for pollination purposes and picking for many years to come. Looks like everything's growing in, we've been really fortunate to have some rains come in, but I always try to help and tell people that hey, that first year's very important, get all the new plantings watered in really well, get a good soaking once or twice a week, either with rain or a garden hose, but looks like you've been doing a great job, everything looks really healthy, so great luck in your success.

- [Kristin] Thank you!

- Well, can you imagine having a gardening business where you are selling your fine produce to high-end restaurants, but you have no weather, and no soil problems? Well, let's find out how that happens. Every garden, of course, is about the gardener, and our gardener today is Charlie Crawford, with CC Garden's microgreens, hi Charlie!

- Hi Julia, nice to meet you.

- Well, okay so this is the soil, I understand, and it's a little different than my soil.

- This is the soil used here in the micro farm, this is Rockwool. It is a growing medium, but it is also a insulation product. I chose to use this because it is soil-less, it doesn't require any washing once you plant in it, and chefs love it, because I can bring this right into the restaurant like this, and they don't have to worry about any sort of contamination whatsoever. So basically what I do with this product is I soak it first in a high pH volume bath, such as this right here. When it's done soaking, I'll bring those up, and I gently squeeze some of the water out of those, 'cause you don't want anything too wet. Alright. Then I bring it to a temperature-controlled propagation mat. Some heat mats underneath that, just to make sure it doesn't get too hot. Okay, I will set up the whole room with those, literally 112 squares of those in this room twice a week to do this.

- Well, this is the original no-till farming, I guess.

- Right, right. At that point, I've selected the seed for what variety I'm going to be planting at that moment for that particular grow cycle. Today, it's kale for this here. I gently just tap on the bowl, and propagate those seeds onto the top of that Rockwool, much like peppering your scrambled eggs, hopefully you like pepper.

- [Julia] So there's no worrying about depth, you're just covering the top.

- Just covering the top, don't wanna get it too thick, but don't want it to be too thin either. After that, just a light misting. I'll cover those seedlings, those seeds, soon to become seedlings, and there. This kale will take approximately two days to germinate, and I'll know it's ready because those little dark spots will now have little white hairs all over them, and the start of a leaf. And when it gets real pronounced, which isn't long, it will look similar to this right here. When it does get that first pop, we call it, when a seed first lets go, and it has that leaf, I'll move it over under the light. I'll take it off of those trays, and move it onto one of these, mist it some more, and just proceed to water it. Every day, we water. What we have here, this is a combination of basil Genovese and opal basil. This is four days old. This is opal basil here, and it is about 2 1/2 weeks old, it's ready to go out the door. This is another blend of basil, and its older version there.

- Well now, these are different from our old-fashioned sprouts, which were generally, I guess, just two or three days old, maybe, when we would start eating them.

- Correct, and the biggest difference in microgreens and sprouts is, sprouts are grown in a soil-less environment literally, no Rockwool, no nothing, just a warm, damp environment. You consume the whole root, and the small amount of leaf that's there. Microgreen is definitely grown in soil, or Rockwool, or coco, and you harvest it when you get the first true leaves, the first true cotyledon, is what they're called, and that's when a microgreen is ready, generally anywhere from one week to three weeks.

- Well, there's something very familiar I see over here, Charlie, and I just can't believe that in all of these beautiful microgreens that you're trying to grow carrots.

- Mainly for the tops. Chefs love the carrot tops, 'cause they taste just like a carrot, and they're beautiful.

- Mm! Now, that is really fresh.

- Yes.

- Now, some of these other things that you have here, well, the basil, of course--

- Isn't that wonderful, how that smells on your hand? You just wanna put that on your pillow.

- [Julia] That is just fantastic. Now, when it comes to harvesting, well, you don't have to do that, do you?

- No, that is one thing this farmer does not have to do. Harvesting, for me, is loading the van with trays, and orders, and invoices, and going out on a run, usually takes about 2 1/2 hours any given day to do that run.

- Well that's not so bad, and when the chefs get this beautiful bunch of microgreens, how are they going to deal with these? What do they use them for?

- [Charlie] They use them on many things, pizzas, salads, lovely fish dishes. This particular product here, tangerine gem is excellent on chocolate ice cream.

- Oh, I bet it is, so they're getting this fresh growing product in their store, how long can they keep it?

- They can keep it probably about a week becfore they'll use it all up, or before it meets its usability.

- So they'll just take it and snip it off, and you'll have--

- And most chefs will use it all before the end of the week.

- What a great product, just snip and have your fresh greens right there.

- That's right.

- Right next to the plate, this is fantastic. As you plant these, do you already have orders for them? Do you already know what you've sold?

- Yes, I do. I have a list of all of the restaurants I service, as well as what they're ordering, I have a flowchart that tells me what I need to plant every week before their order. Planting's done twice a week, and deliveries are done five, six days a week, all over Nashville, some restaurants are twice a week, some are three times a week.

- Well, let's talk about then some of the varieties that you're growing here, because I see all kinds of beautiful green leaves, but I don't always recognize them at this stage, so what do we have?

- Alright. This is thyme, everyone's familiar with thyme. As an adult plant, it's real woody and real tough, but as a baby, it's very tender and very flavorful. We also have red-veined sorrel. This is broccoli. More basil. I have some mustard, this is a Ruby Streaks mustard, it's a very favorite one there, very flavorful, very colorful, chefs tend to like a lot of color.

- [Julia] Well Charlie, tell me a little bit about the growing conditions here.

- [Charlie] We are using horticultural brand fluorescent lights, I have several fans going, two dehumidifiers, a window unit air conditioner, all just to keep the temperate, the humidity, at a certain level, which is around 74 degrees, and 50% to 55% relative humidity.

- [Julia] Now, there have to be some sort of special issues that you deal with here that's different than regular gardening.

- There is, there's one thing in particular, and it's called damping down. That's where something gets too much moisture, and it fails. Some things that are susceptible to that is this basil here. Because it's so dark and it's so dense, it's hard for air to flow through that, so it actually could hang on to moisture longer than it should, and will start to wilt within, and then it will spread, so if I see that, I'll have to remove that square. I don't have many issues with pests, per se, occasional gnats, which they're gonna come in anyway, but they don't last long, because everything goes out the door really fast.

- [Julia] As a very innovative entrepreneur here with a very different type of gardening, where did you get all your inspiration? How could we learn more?

- Well first off, garden's always been a hobby, and I took the hobby and sort of went a little bit further with it. When I came across this article in this Growing Edge magazine about microgreens, and it really made the light bulb go on in my head, and gave me ideas of how to approach this, where the market was, and this was my inspiration.

- [Julia] Well, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful garden with us today. I'm sure it's a lot of fun throughout the year, and it really gives all of us more inspiration and another idea for gardening, maybe the easiest way I've seen yet.

- [Charlie] Well, thank you!

- Have you ever wondered how the trees that you buy actually make it to the nursery? We've come down to Jackson's Nursery in Lexie Crossroads, Tennessee, and I'm here with Ray and Cindy Jackson, the owners, and Ray and Cindy are gonna show us how a tree is grafted. And not all trees are grafted, but some of our more popular things, like Japanese maples, and any number of things can be grafted and produced in the nursery, and tell us a little bit about that grafting process, and why you graft, over growing things from seed, or something like that.

- Well, when you graft, you're trying to get a clone that you wanna produce, so.

- So you're producing exactly the same plant, almost like you were growing it from a cutting, but with some trees, like Japanese maples, they're kinda hard to grow from cuttings and get them to root.

- Absolutely.

- So you graft them onto another plant.

- Right.

- Another Japanese maple.

- You graft them onto a seedling understop. And what I'm gonna do right here is I'm gonna cut this, this is what I wanna produce, this is a tamukeyama. And I'm gonna cut it on both sides, like that right there. We're gonna do a high graft. We'll actually come down like this, stick this in there, make sure everything's lined up good. And alright, I'm finished, now Cindy's gonna wrap this with a rubber band to hold the cambium layers together good and tight.

- [Troy] So after you've slipped that branch into the cut that you've made, you basically just tie it tight with a rubber band, and those two pieces will grow together, and eventually then, you'll cut the green top off?

- [Ray] Right, we'll do this in January, and then a little later on, after all this is calloused up good, we'll cut this off right above here. Now, you don't wanna cut it down here to start off with, because this will die back to the next node, and kill your graft.

- And may kill your graft.

- [Ray] So you wanna leave a set of eyes for a while 'til all this gets sealed.

- [Troy] Has healed and really growing.

- [Ray] Now, the other choice is to have a low graft, and a lot of people like that, because they wanna run that up a cane. So we're gonna graft that down here really, really low.

- [Troy] So you're cutting it basically the same way you did before.

- [Ray] Right.

- [Troy] Slip it right in there the same way, and then rubber band that together.

- [Ray] Correct. And a lot of people will run this up a cane.

- Right, so once this is healed and drafted together, then you'll put a stake in it, because tamukeyama actually is a weeping variety, so if you were to leave this unstaked, it would be a very low-growing plant, so you'll actually cut this off, and take this and stake it up to whatever height you want it to be at maturity, I guess?

- That is right, Joel.

- And then let it, and let it weep and grow from there.

- Yeah, we'll put a little cane in here and run it up that cane.

- So you can make it two feet tall, or you can make it five feet tall, just depending on how high you stake the main leader up. Trees like the Japanese maples, a lot of your dogwoods are grafted that people would find in their nurseries, and it's the mainstay of the way that so many trees are propagated in our nursery business.

- Much mulch magically makes my maters mulch more manageable. Many materials make good mulches, but we mostly use old hay. We roll up over 100 rolls of hay every year, and the garden gets what the cattle don't eat. Besides supplying carbon, a mulch keeps the soil soft, moist, and weed-free. We use a four-pronged potato hoe and a pitchfork to peel off layers from the roll. Then we flip the inner Tootsie Roll over, and place the layers of hay between the plants, about eight inches deep. A tomato will rot if it touches the ground, but not if it lays on hay. July here on the farm offers lots of pretty flowers, and these yellow Peter Pan summer squashes. The squashes really like a mulch, because it keeps the ground underneath loose, friable, and moist. We pick the summer squash daily, so that they don't get big. When a summer squash produces a mature seed, the desire to reproduce dwindles, and then the plant quits producing. Square bales are much easier to deal with than those big round ones. Here, we're taking books of hay, and laying them down between our early celery, and a later planting, which will come on in the fall. This Swiss chard has been cut several times this spring, always springing back with more leaves. The mulch will keep the ground cooler during summer, and the Swiss chard will come back and supply us with many more cuttings of leaves next fall. Cucumbers also love a mulch to lay on, because they're less likely to rot when they're laying on hay rather than laying on the dirt. We want to keep them in a state of wanting to produce seed, so we always pick them, and keep them from making a real big one. I like to let the ground warm up thoroughly before I lay a mulch down on these heat-loving plants. Mulching makes the garden prettier, especially around the flowers. I like to lay it on thick enough, maybe eight inches to a foot deep, where it will last all season long. If some weeds do sprout up, we simply grab some of the hay, and throw it on top of them. Any organic material can be used as a mulch. Leaves are particularly good, especially I've they've been mown over and cut up some. Leaves can often be gathered in the fall, already bagged up on their way to the landfill. You just have to drive around and intercept them. Leaves make a particularly valuable mold on them as they rot, because the trees are gathering up minerals from deep down in the soil. Raspberries in particular love to be mulched with leaves. The folks clearing around electric lines produce mountains of wood chips, and are happy to pile them up on the nearest organic farm. Wood chips have tannic acid in them, so we like to let 'em set for a while before we use 'em, to let the tannic acid leach out. Blueberries love acid soil, so we mulch them with wood chips. They're shallow rooted, and appreciate the moisture that the wood chips conserve. Most garden crops love a more neutral pH, so we let the wood chips thoroughly rot down for several years before we use them on a plant like sweet basil. Wood chips and rotten sawdust encourage fungal activity, visible as long, white fibers on the wood chip products. Wood chips have a high carbon to nitrogen ratio, hence, they can rob nitrogen from your soil. We only use wood chips where we've applied plenty of biodynamic compost to the soil, so that it has enough nitrogen to not only grow the crop, but help rot down the wood chips. Here, we are experimenting with an inorganic mulch, black plastic. This is 2.5 mil thick, and it's keeping cantaloupes, Crenshaws and casabas weed-free. Melons are hard to weed without stepping on the vines. We laid old boards down to hold the plastic in place, and then cut holes five feet apart, and made the hills to plant in. The watermelon patch had the holes dug, composted, and healed before we laid this six mil plastic down. I think this was easier than putting the plastic down, then making the hills like we did in the cantaloupe patch. Look how weed-free that is. We only had to weed right around the little holes, rather than trying to keep the weeds out of the whole field. We plan to pull that plastic up as soon as the watermelons are harvested. I'm not too crazy about having plastic in my garden. Watermelons love the warmth and moisture that the black plastic provides. Here it is, the beginning of July, we're already starting to see some watermelons forming. Mulching is an integral part of most organic farms I've visited. It keeps the weeds down, and the hot sun and drying winds off of the soil, which then stays loose and moist underneath. The organic matter eventually decays to form humus, to feed the soil's live beings, who will help to grow next year's crop. Much mulch makes a more merry garden full of carbon.

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