Episode 2643

- [Narrator] Annette Shrader loves what she's seeing and learning in these prolific vegetable and ornamental gardens of this organic grower. You'll be amazed. Plus, Troy Marden finds no better testament to the beauty of native plants than this home garden landscape. Join us. First, let's learn about hugelkultur and trench composting.

- [Annette] When we first start to garden our first consideration should be the soil. Let's meet a gardener who utilizes several methods to build soil. All pretty simple and all using natural resources that most overlook. This is just not ordinary logs is it?

- [Tom] Well, yes, it's just a cedar logs and things I got to frame this. It's called a hugelkultur bed and I built this about close to five years ago. So this bed is about a little better than three foot deep. Even though the logs look like they just 18 to 20 inches deep, the ground--

- Comes down.

- Yeah. When you do lasagna gardening or hugelkultur garden, or hugelkultur gardening after a couple of years the ground loosens underneath and the ground will loosen. You'll go on down where it was hard ground and it'll just keep getting better and better. And this soil here is just like that.

- [Annette] I'm envious.

- [Tom] And you put aged logs in here and then cover it with a soil and compost. And those logs hold moisture so this bed never gets watered except when the good Lord waters it.

- [Annette] That's exactly right, it's just a replica of our trees and our forest. They fall on the ground and--

- [Tom] Exactly, I garden and try to grow things just like nature provided. I grow as organic as I can. I don't use any commercial fertilizers, no chemicals.

- Fascinating, so you've actually done some study. It just doesn't happen overnight that--

- I've got a library.

- That's exactly right. And you know, we talk about lasagna and we think that's food. It is, this lasagna is food for plants. Isn't it?

- That's right. The first thing, my motto is: you feed your soil, your soil will feed the plants.

- That's true. I know that you have a variety of summer, spring-summer, and now you're into fall with your gardening.

- Yes, we've got the turnip greens over here. See the beds of turnip greens. I'm still growing beans, green beans.

- [Annette] I'm a amazed at what I've already seen.

- [Tom] We've got carrots over here. We've got celery, we're just about gone on that. Of course we got the knuckle hull purple peas here.

- [Annette] Look at that.

- [Tom] That's called a knuckle hull purple pea.

- [Annette] That is very interesting. Knuckle hull. Okay, now then.

- [Tom] This is another type of green bean right here.

- [Annette] Oh, is that the Italian bean?

- [Tom] No, it's called, let's see which one I've got. I grow so many beans I gotta keep them... Uh, this is a soldier bean.

- [Annette] A soldier bean?

- [Tom] That's what they call it because when you break them open the inside of the bean will look like a little toy soldier.

- [Annette] Tom, give us a rundown on what you have planted, starting at the marigolds.

- [Tom] Okay, we got the marigolds, right on this side we have a row of two beans. Green beans, that's a second crop of those this year. Come right on up we got the dragon's tongue green beans.

- [Annette] That's new to me.

- [Tom] They're a beautiful real good tasting bean. Then we come back down I got Swiss chard, and then we got the Henderson small limas.

- [Annette] My favorite. And then all these peppers.

- [Tom] And then the peppers. Of course the winds kind of hurt them but we got these sweet peppers. These sweet banana peppers and red bell peppers, green bell peppers.

- [Annette] Yes, and then you've got...

- [Tom] And here are my second or third crop of summer squash.

- And you know what? I see not one insect. It's just beautiful. And I really love how you put this red dahlia down here. It's just so bright and the green of this squash is just aesthetically pleasing.

- [Tom] And it helps for beneficial insects.

- Yes, and now we're getting into to something I can say I don't really know that I've ever seen a crop of red potatoes in the fall.

- [Tom] I do this every year.

- [Annette] Okay, now when did you plant these?

- [Tom] In June, about the middle of June.

- [Annette] Okay, and you're gonna harvest soon? Can you gravel for them now?

- [Tom] Probably, well, they'll have little small potatoes in there now. You'll have a little that you can cook with your green beans.

- [Annette] Yeah, and are they blooming?

- [Tom] They have been blooming.

- [Annette] That's a good sign isn't it?

- [Tom] When you have blooms you got small potatoes.

- [Annette] Okay, now, you got all this richness going in here. How are you feeding the soil?

- [Tom] I don't use any chemicals. I use no commercial fertilizer. I do use blood meal, I use bone meal, and cottonseed meal.

- I know all about it.

- Okay, and I do use a lot of Epsom salt.

- Okay, then you do some trenching?

- Trench composting. That's where I'll take my food scraps that I use from the house, no meat, it's gotta be all veggies and I just make a trench in here. You don't have to have a big trench. I might have a four foot long trench and I'll put all this in and cover it up. In two weeks time you can dig down and it's done and dirt. You'll have millions of worms. I have tons of worms.

- [Annette] And nothing like that type, the worm castings for fertilizer.

- [Tom] I'll show you that in a little bit. I do worm farming too.

- [Annette] Okay, all right. And I know why you're gonna have successful carrots and potatoes because you've got nice loose soil. This right here looks to me like sweet potatoes.

- [Tom] That's just sweet potatoes and they're about soon to be ready to dig here pretty soon.

- [Annette] How do you store yours?

- [Tom] I dry them and I got an inside store. I like to wrap them in newspaper, each one.

- Each potato in newspaper?

- Yeah, each one. It don't take that long and it keeps them dry.

- [Annette] Well, I see you're a master of grapes.

- Yeah, we like, that's concord grapes and down towards the end I've got red seedless grapes.

- [Annette] Yeah, okay. You know, I can't help but notice the spotlight in this garden. Do you take that plant in the wintertime?

- [Tom] No, when I cut it down I'll take cuttings and give to people because they like, you know, you can grow them from cuttings. I cut it all the way down to the ground and I'll mulch it about six-eight inches of mulch on it or straw or anything like that and it's been there for about four or five years now.

- [Annette] Do butterflies and bees like that?

- [Tom] Yeah, they love it.

- [Annette] Okay.

- [Tom] The wood chips I get from the power company when they trim trees and everything and I use a lot of them. That's what I put in the pathways. I don't want to use it on these beds because they're still green and they'll pull nitrogen out. So I use them on the pathways. All here and all in the back of my permaculture garden back here. And then in a year's time I can take this and put it up on the beds because it'll be--

- That's right. You know, you got an advantage here. A lot of people when it rains they can't get in their garden. You are a very frugal gardener.

- Well, I try to be.

- You're taking everything from nature, putting it back into your garden and I see that feeding you.

- This is all kale. I've got two kinds of kale. I've got spinach right here coming up. Mustard green. Now mustard greens, I grow, we like mustard greens. We mix them in with our turnip greens and we cook them a lot of times.

- [Annette] That's good.

- [Tom] But mustard greens is a real good green crop. All this I grow, I try to grow so many greens and beans because it's good for your soil. It feeds the soil because it draws nitrogen out and this here's a green crop. Your beans will have nitrogen and puts it in the soil.

- I see you have these nice wires. Will you cover this with a cloth for winter?

- I might if it gets down so cold but after these gets up, I had this on here because I put shade. I also got shade cloths that I use, you know, mesh. I put that on when I first sow something to keep birds and squirrels from scratching around in them. See?

- Is this all lasagna or you have?

- [Tom] It's all lasagna beds with logs underneath it. This bed is probably about 30 inches deep.

- [Annette] Do you mind if I take my hand and go down into your soil?

- [Tom] Go right ahead.

- [Annette] I wanna just see because they say that...

- [Tom] It's like chocolate cake.

- [Annette] That's exactly right. When you got your soil right, all you gotta do is just take your hand and dig a hole. That is just black dirt, black gold, that is just beautiful.

- [Tom] I never use a rotary tiller. I own a rotary tiller but I only bought it when I bought this lot back behind me to break it up the first time. I got some hand tools I like to use a Korean hoe that I use.

- I've seen one of those.

- I got two of them. See, you can dig, I never, see?

- [Annette] Oh, I see. Can I take some home with me?

- [Tom] Sure you can.

- [Annette] Tom, before me what is this?

- This is my worm farming.

- How many worms can you get in this farm?

- [Tom] Oh, you can get probably a thousand or more. And there's probably that many in there. They make worm poop.

- [Annette] Yeah, I know, worm castings.

- [Tom] Worm castings. And it's just full of young worms and hard to catch them sometimes, they'll go all the way to the bottom. You can see them right in here.

- [Annette] Let me ask you this. After you can see them, do you take them and put them in your garden?

- [Tom] No, I just leave them in here to make castings. I use, of course I got a lot of worms in the garden that's making their own castings but I just like doing this. I will use this when I plant my tomatoes. I'll take a handful and put it in the tomato hole.

- [Annette] This just kind of decomposes doesn't it?

- [Tom] Yeah, they love old newspapers and stuff like that. And I use coffee grounds in it. And when I do my juicing in the mornings with my vegetables I take the remains of that and it goes right in there.

- [Annette] Well, let me ask you this. Is this something that you made up because it's riddled with holes.

- [Tom] Yeah.

- [Annette] And it's just a container for storage.

- [Tom] That's right. I bought that at Walmart.

- [Annette] And you just put all those holes in there.

- [Tom] Put little holes in there. One eighth inch.

- [Annette] So you put those same holes.

- [Tom] Yeah, put the holes around the edge, about an inch or so below the lid. These are one eighth inch. Now, I put quarter inch holes in the bottom.

- [Annette] And then, like today it's raining.

- Yeah, I put this over it. But they can breathe. The worms got to breathe. So they can breathe in that. And they like dark. That's why you want to get a dark.

- And you leave it right here all the time or do you move it?

- In the wintertime I move it in where it's a little warmer. They like 60 to 70 degrees. They told me that.

- [Annette] We're centered in the middle of...

- [Tom] A permaculture garden.

- [Annette] Okay, explain that.

- [Tom] Okay, permaculture is where you grow just like nature provides you or you grow a lot of different plants here. I have celery coming up here. I grow potatoes back over here.

- I see raspberries right here.

- Yeah, I got raspberries over here. Back in here and you grow just a lot of different varieties of everything. Flowers, plants, and everything. Just like you was out in the woods, right here.

- [Annette] So the permaculture, you don't really come in here and weed?

- [Tom] Yes, I have to do some weeding.

- [Annette] Because if you don't then the weeds will take over your plants.

- [Tom] This hasn't been weeded yet but I will be weeding it.

- So you're kind of saying let everything take its course.

- There's always a lot of birds. We have raccoons in here. We had deer in here. They like my blackberry plants over here.

- [Annette] I'm sure.

- [Tom] We have all kind of of animals.

- [Annette] It's a diverse.

- That's right. They stay out of my main garden so I built this for them. Of course I have roses here. We've got blueberries back over here. Blueberry bushes right behind here.

- [Annette] And I just see Buddleias, everything, I can't tell you what my eyes feasting on the candy of your garden.

- [Tom] Spring and summer this really looks good. A lot of color back here.

- [Annette] Right here, who could miss this.

- [Tom] The autumn joy.

- [Annette] And I love when the bumblebees sit on that. You have several of these huge beautiful Buddleias here. They're wonderful for your winged friends aren't they?

- [Tom] That's your butterfly bushes right here.

- [Annette] Right. Today, I have learned so much from you and it's just, I know how much more we haven't learned that you do know and I thank you because you are preserving your ground, your seeds, and yourself.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for your knowledge.

- Thank you.

- [Troy] It's no secret that spring is my favorite season of the year and I love the spring wildflower season in particular. There's certainly nobody better to give us some insight and a great garden tour of their garden than Paul Moore who is a locally known gardening guru here in the Nashville area. Was in the nursery business for a long time and got started in native plants how long ago?

- Well, next year it will be 30 years. That's when we built our house here on the hill and I wanted to experiment with just shade plants generally but then about the same time is when I discovered native plants through hiking and being out in nature.

- [Troy] And so how much of your garden is native?

- [Paul] I'd say probably about 99%.

- [Troy] Wow. Paul, your garden is full of all kinds of interesting plants. I mean, I see columbine in the background which apparently reseeds itself.

- [Paul] It does, prolifically.

- [Troy] You know, of course I'm a plant person first and one of the first things I noticed when I walked up this morning was this stunning group of trilliums. Tell me a little bit about these and how you find growing trilliums in your garden.

- [Paul] Trillium is probably one of my favorite of all the wildflowers and these are trillium sulcatum or I think they call them a Southern Trillium. These are variants. They're normally a real deep red and these variants have all these variety and mixture of colors. I just love the variety. Some trilliums are fragrant and in here they're growing with the bishop's cap, the little white flowers. A lot of times you'll see those naturally occurring in nature like that.

- [Troy] You know one of the things I'm always looking for in my own garden are alternative ground covers because I try not to plant English ivy and euonymus and anything that will climb a tree. I do have a little bit of pachysandra but it doesn't climb so it's sort of fair game. You seem to be using one of your ferns as a ground cover.

- [Paul] This is a hay scented fern and I just love how it's colonized this area. It's only been in I think this is the third year on it and it just makes a solid mass of green. I love the textures and the way the wind plays off of it and it's done remarkably well. It's actually coming up in the little pavers in between up there so it really likes this spot.

- [Troy] So, this is deciduous, it loses its leaves in the wintertime but it obviously is coming up now in early April and will be there until frost so you get eight or nine months of beauty out of it and then in the winter the bed can just be cleaned up but it's still there to hold the soil in place kind of on this slope.

- [Paul] Exactly.

- Paul, you have so many things to talk about. I mean, perennials and shrubs and all kinds of stuff but let's start right here with this beautiful fothergilla. Good plant all the way around for this area?

- [Paul] I love it. It's the bottle brush flowers early spring before the leaves come out. Honey scented flowers. Fabulous fall color, has really nice branching pattern. It's just one of my favorite woody plants.

- [Troy] I like it too and then right across the sidewalk from it you have one of my favorite spring wildflowers which is our little crested iris. I have a hard time growing this. Can you give folks and me too any tips about how to get this established.

- [Paul] Well, I seemed to for a long time but I put it on this little bank right here and it's getting a little bit more sun but I think the fact that it's on this little bank and exposure is helping a lot as well.

- [Troy] And I noticed when I do see it growing in the wild a lot of times it is on a little bit of a slope so take those clues from nature and kind of recreate them in your own garden then maybe you have more success. I also see growing through here a lot of some of our native gingers. Do you have more than one kind?

- [Paul] This is the desiduous ginger which will just make a solid mat and I have some of the evergreen ginger a little further up the path which I can show you.

- All right, and then back toward the back a little bit I see probably one of our most coveted wildflowers which is the big white trillium grandiflorum. Is that a hard plant to grow? Have you had any trouble getting it established?

- [Paul] It's just slow. That clump you're looking at over there is probably 10-12 years old.

- [Troy] So not necessarily hard, you just have to be really patient.

- [Paul] Really patient.

- [Troy] Another favorite little wildflower of mine is this little Jacob's Ladder. It sort of tends to scatter itself around the garden.

- [Paul] It's a great border edge too. It's got really nice foliage too.

- [Troy] So the little flowers once they're finished, the flowering stalks just kind of die off on their own and you have this nice little foliage left.

- [Paul] I like even the little seed capsules are attractive for a long time.

- Now we're entering one of your favorite parts of the garden with one of your favorite plants. So tell me about this little kind of tree shrub combination.

- It's called the leatherwood plant, Dirca palustris. I first heard about it when hiking at Big South Fork. There's an area called leatherwood ford and it's named after this plant. It has little yellow flowers in the early spring. It's already set fruit. You got berries that have already formed now. You can see it's very flexible. You can actually tie a branch into a knot. Native Americans made bow strings and sandals out of the fibrous bark. It's just a plant that no pruning at all is required. It just keeps this beautiful shape.

- Well, we've kind of come to this little end of the path but I know there's a lot more garden to see in front of us. So let's keep going.

- [Paul] Sounds great.

- So the garden has been here 30 years and obviously there are some areas that are really well established where you have big masses of plants. Tell me about some of the plant communities and things that you have out in this larger area of the garden.

- Well, this is the southwest side of the property and it gets really dry here so I just have the woodland path, got the easy maintenance plants like the Solomon seal, may apple, woodland phlox, let it just reseed, whatever survives here survives.

- [Troy] Right and a lot of our spring wildflowers are what we call ephemeral which is kind of a fancy word for meaning that they go dormant in the summertime. What does that mean for you as far as maintenance of the garden and that sort of thing?

- [Paul] Well, I go dormant in the summer too. I tell people I'm a fair weather gardener. I like to garden when it's beautiful in Nashville. When it gets hot I just water and maintain. But here I just occasionally pull weeds or lift some invasive bush honeysuckle or something like that and just let it do what it's gonna do.

- [Troy] Let nature take its own course. So now we're kind of in the main part of the garden. Is this an older portion? One of the places you sort of started?

- [Paul] This is where I started the garden in this area here. This area we're standing in is where all the trees were when they cut the trees down from the property and they were just pushed off down the hill.

- [Troy] So you've got big stands of things up here now after many years. Plants that have reseeded themselves like the celandine poppy and a beautiful stand of something blue up there across the garden.

- [Paul] That makes me smile every time I see that one. That's Collinsia Verna or blue-eyed Mary. It's an endangered species here in Tennessee. It's an annual that just reseeds and it just mixes beautifully with the other wildflowers. I just love it.

- I know that's kind of one of those holy grail sort of plants for all us plant enthusiasts but particularly for people who are interested in native plants. I see a lot of other things around here too. Not just perennials and ground cover type plants but some really cool trees and shrubs like Carolina silverbell.

- [Paul] Well, the Carolina silverbell I love the fact that it blooms really before the leaves come out. I love the bell shaped flowers. As the tree matures it gets this really pretty striated bark and it just reminds me of the smoky mountains. That's one of the main reasons I have that.

- [Troy] Absolutely, and then sort of over here to our right a really magnificent specimen of red buckeye. This is an important plant for the hummingbirds I understand.

- [Paul] That's the first thing that you see the hummingbirds go to. This one's been very prolific. It's done really well here. I've had lots of babies that I've took the seeds and just tossed into the woods that come up. So it's a really easy one to grow.

- Well, before we have to take leave of this beautiful garden, I wanted to quickly point out one more very large shrub that you have. This is the Florida flame azalea?

- Florida flame austrinum.

- Right, so this is a native azalea. One that grows naturally in our part of the world in the South East. Unfortunately people can't smell it at home but the fragrance is incredible as well as its beautiful flowers. So for good understory planting, I would assume because you have high shade here.

- [Paul] High shade and again, what I love about this too, the butterflies absolutely love this.

- [Troy] Right and it's an early spring flowering thing so the first butterflies are out, this is a real opportunity for them to start collecting nectar and being on the way to a good summer.

- [Paul] That's right.

- [Troy] Paul, I want to thank you for letting us come and see your beautiful garden. I've had the good fortune over the years to see it many times but I'm happy that everybody at home finally has had the same opportunity.

- [Paul] Thanks Troy, glad you could come.

- [Julie] Square foot gardening is such a cool thing. It just keeps coming back again and again. I'm with Shirley Lee, one of the Davidson county master gardeners at the demo garden at Ellington agricultural center where they have a beautiful and award winning square foot garden. So, tell me about some of the things you have in here.

- Well, mostly what I have left in here is what the deer and the rabbit didn't eat. Whatever they ate they ate and I planted something else in its place so I ended up with a lot of flowers. This is fern leaf tansy, which supposedly deters things. The peppers, they don't like peppers.

- [Julie] Oh well you have some beautiful peppers here.

- [Shirley] I have some beautiful peppers. I had several different kind of peppers because they don't eat the peppers.

- [Julie] You have a great variety of herbs and this something people think, I need some herbs and some vegetables and with square foot gardening you're really taking advantage of every square foot.

- I do, I don't do big plants. I'm real selective of the plants I put in here where it won't take away from the fact that I got so many squares so I'm selective what I put in like the tatume squash. Supposedly gets just a little bit big and then flops and runs all around the ground so I still have one square.

- [Julie] That's fantastic. You have here, well, some beautiful chard.

- [Shirley] Yes, yes.

- [Julie] Growing in this square right next to it, onions, what is this?

- [Shirley] That's a sorrel, a red sorrel. And it's just pretty more than anything. It's an herb but I don't use it for that much. It just looks pretty in here.

- [Julie] Fantastic, and more peppers.

- [Shirley] Carrots, of course.

- [Julie] And I understand you've already had quite a harvest out of here.

- [Shirley] Yes, we had the junior master gardeners here in June and come to find out they love to harvest and they harvested most of the things in the bed that were able to be pulled up. They enjoyed the harvest. The onions, the beets, the radishes.

- [Julie] We of course have tomatoes. You can grow them in a square foot garden.

- [Shirley] Oh you definitely can. You have to do the determinate. The ones that stay small. You don't really want the ones that get six foot tall and flop all over everything. But beans are perfect because they go up on this and the soil obviously is down to the point where it nourishes beans really well.

- Fantastic, okay. And then of course you have the nasturtiums which are not only good to eat but are really good pest plants.

- [Shirley] Pest plants, that's what that's mostly for.

- [Julie] Now, tell us a little bit about the theory behind this. I see that you have each square roped off.

- [Shirley] Yes, this was when I entered it in the contest the roping worked against me because in order to qualify as one the people that win, you're supposed to have a wood grid and then in the winter you pick it up and stand it up and put it back down. I felt like the string was more something that a child could relate to or a young person starting would be intimidated by having to build a grid which is easy. And then instead of having a backdrop that they wanted you to build, I just put sticks in because that's very doable for anybody.

- [Julie] Well, it's very versatile so you have each square, you plant one thing.

- One thing.

- In each square, I see people come out here to the demo garden at Ellington, they can see a chart of some of the things that you plant in a square foot garden.

- Right. It's fantastic, and what about the soil? Is it just regular?

- [Shirley] It's a mixture he recommends. But a lot of people you can just use a compost. But he recommends vermiculite to help with the water. And then the peat which loosens it and then two or three different kinds of compost. I use worm compost, anything I could find. I had five different kind of compost and then you mix it up on a tarp and just put it in here and you have to keep buckets of it with you to replenish. Then you keep a five gallon bucket of water near it because you water with a cup.

- [Julie] This is something that everybody should come out and take a look because even if you have a lot of room there may be a place where you want to experiment with this beautiful, easy, method of square foot gardening. So come on out to the demo garden at Ellington agriculture center and see what the master gardeners are doing with their square foot garden.

- [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.