Episode 2801

- [Narrator] There's a sense of accomplishment that comes with hybridizing daylilies. Annette Shrader visits with a gardener who has registered several. Troy Martin shares something special happening in the horticulture program of the Davidson County Sheriff's Office. Men are growing vegetables and lots of trees and gaining job skills. Join us. First, pollinating, trialing, evaluating, and finally, registering new daylilies.

- A recent conversation led me to Karen and Lyle Snyder's Jubilee Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee. And now the hybridizer, Karen. We're standing before something I believe is magnificent.

- [Karen] Thank you, welcome to Jubilee Gardens. This is a nice cross because it's very velvety, good substance, has good branching and bud count.

- [Annette] I see all that and you don't even mention, for me, what I see, my eye sees a depth. I see a texture, I see that it's not affected by the elements as much either. I would think this is a very desirable introduction and you're gonna name it what?

- I don't know, but I'd love you to have the honor to name it, if you would.

- Well, I'll think on that.

- Okay. Karen, in your process hybridizing, you have about three locations, don't you? So this is area two.

- Two.

- Okay, and why is that?

- Well, when I first start watching them lay and I plant them in a back in an area, and then if I decide that they're worth looking at again in subsequent years, then I bring 'em up to this baby bed, and then I watch 'em bloom the second and third year, and then if they're worth registering, then I'll plant them somewhere else and then empty this bed out. But it's always got something in it. This is one that is worth possibly registering. It has kind of a toothy, ruffled edge. You can actually see the deep lavender color on the edge as well as the yellow. And then it's got kinda like the pale peach edge. So that's one that I'll keep watching and possibly register in the future. There's other things interspersed. There's several different types of oriental lilies.

- [Annette] Well I particularly like the tall yellows.

- [Karen] Yes, those are the Orienpet, which are the cross between oriental and trumpet lilies.

- [Annette] Well, they're certainly beautiful. I'm excited about what I see as some of your creations, Karen. Let's talk about the tall one back there.

- [Karen] Yes, it's a beautiful kind of peachy pink double. As a hybridizer you have to watch them bloom for three years because they can change each year. And so you're looking for bud count and branching and of course the flower itself. And this is one that sometimes doubles and sometimes doesn't, so as it gets older it will probably double more.

- [Annette] I think I heard a interesting name you have thinking.

- [Karen] Blood moon is what I'm thinking about. We've had several blood moons lately and so that's kind of what I was naming it after and--

- [Annette] So you've had this going for over three years now.

- [Karen] Oh yeah, this bed's probably been here for eight years.

- [Annette] So these have been in this area three, four, five years maybe?

- Mmhmm, mmhmm, mmhmm.

- [Annette] Okay now you said somethin' interesting, you started with a seedling. And so you've taken a pod that grows on the top and then you will take it into your own seeding area and you start little babies.

- [Karen] Yes.

- [Annette] And that's done under light or whatever. And then you have them to a place that you feel that they're large enough to transplant, and then they come here. Well, I'm gonna regress just a little bit. I wanna know what led you to the starting point that you really wanted to hybridize daylilies, and the favorite ones, single, double, spider, what is it?

- [Karen] Well, I like gardening, I kinda got that from my mother. She was a gardener. And I like more the formal type gardens. And so I just bought a few daylilies, but then I started kind of researching online and started seein' all the big daylily hybridizers in Florida and we made a trip there, it's called the Daylily Mecca. And there is big hybridizers all over Central Florida and we went down in 2007 and I got bitten by the bug.

- [Annette] You fell in love.

- [Kare] Mmhmm, and it's so easy to pollinate and cross. You just have to keep the ploidy right. That means the chromosomes. Some are diploids, which these are.

- These are all diploids?

- Uh-huh, some are tetraploids, which means they have more chromosomes, so they're usually the prettier, bigger flowers. And so you just make sure, that's why we tag everything, so you'll know that you're making the right cross with the right ploidy. And so then in our zone, sometimes it takes a little seedling longer than it does in Florida. Like they can see it grow in the first nine months. Here, we can't, it has to take a whole year in the ground. So then that first year you'll see it bloom and then you just go from there. You have to watch it bloom for three years before you can register it, and then you just pick the ones, you pick it based on the bud count and the prettiness of the flower, the substance of the flower, and the branching and the scapes. A lot of people wanna call these stems, but they're actually called scapes. And they need to be strong and sturdy. Early blooming, mid blooming, late blooming, there's a few that will bloom continuously, but nothing.

- [Annette] Karen, your inspirational pieces and why?

- [Karen] Well, Barbara Mitchell is a good example. It's got very good substance and form, it has good bud count and branching, it's got tall, sturdy scapes, and the pink double that I hybridized came out of this one. So that was the good cross.

- {Annette} I like the green throat and the stripes, okay.

- [Annette] And then we have another.

- Yes, this one's called Southport, and I love doubles. Ruffled edges is big in the daylily world, and as well, this one has the carving, or etching, in the the throat. So you can see it's got the little extra petaloids.

- [Annette] Oh I do see that.

- [Karen] So this is another one that I would use for a cross because it is a tetraploid because it's just got more chromosomes and it's just a really pretty one so that's--

- [Annette] Makes it fuller, doesn't it?

- Yes, good branching right here, good bud count. Well, this is Ruby Spider. It's not really a spider form. It's big, it's really kind of almost what we call a UFO form, which are just bigger and this one even has a little bit of a--

- Twist.

- Twist to the petals, but it's just vibrant and beautiful and in a clump it's stunning and it just really stands out in a garden. Especially when you have a display garden. The one we're about to see it Jubilee Garden Fairy and it is taken, obviously, from some of the really pretty ones that we already saw out in the garden that were my inspiration. And it is a double and it's got a really pretty center, kind of the petaloids here are kind of starting to crinkle a little bit. It has increased as far as the number of fans, dramatically, just in the past year. You can see it does have good branching and good bud count.

- [Annette] And I think as people in their home garden, they do like to see those fans increase. And that means that they can move them to other places and that's as important to them, almost, as the bud count.

- [Karen] Yes.

- [Annette] Behind us there's a circle. Within this circle there are six parts. So you've utilized them each differently, so what is your concept of design and plants here?

- Okay, well I love the English formal gardens, and so this is really called a parterre garden.

- Yes.

- And we did six pie-shaped beds, they're 16 feet long and around, radiating out from the gazebo in the middle. And every other one we planted with the boxwoods and roses, and then every other one with the daylilies. It's like a little secret garden when you get in there under the wisteria that's on the metal arbor. But the wisteria, as it can, has pulled the arbor over.

- So that is--

- That's exactly right.

- [Karen] One thing that people need to remember when they're planting wisteria.

- [Annette] It will take it down.

- [Karen] It will. And I really designed it to have weddings because there's the arches that you come through there and to come under here and then go down through the rose tunnel and under the big pergola.

- [Annette] You're a wonderful gardener.

- [Karen] Oh, thank you!

- [Annette] And I thank you for the day that I looked into your eyes and we had a conversation. But we're no longer strangers.

- [Karen] No, we're friends!

- Fig trees are one of the best ornamental and edible trees you can grow in your landscape. I'm here with Jeremy Lekich of Nashville Foodscapes. Tell me all about this fig tree.

- [Jeremy] Yeah, so this is about 10 years old, this tree here, and it's on a southern-facing brick wall, which is a really good spot for a fig. As much sun as possible and thermal mass, right? So that's a brick wall, that's a stone wall, I mean really just any wall is enough thermal mass to really keep it goin'.

- I've had some die back on mine a few years back when it got below zero, but other than that, it's been really tough, which is fun. And you've got some of the fruit right there.

- Yeah, they're pollinated by microscopic wasps, so every time you eat a fig, you're eating a bunch of microscopic wasps, which sounds disgusting but it's actually incredible, and it means that there's some added protein into the fig. But it's an incredible pollinator. So all the flowers are inside the fruit. The male parasitic wasps don't ever leave. The females travel outside of the fig and go to other figs and go inside and work with the male wasps inside that fig to pollinate. And then you get this delicious fruit. They're microscopic so you don't see them, but that's why you don't see these big, beautiful blooms on a fig tree, because they're all inside the fruit.

- [Phillipe] Right, they just start off as these little kind of miniature figs and just kinda grow from there.

- [Jeremy] Yup, yup, and there's this little hole at the very bottom that you see and you can see it on this one too. That's where the microscopic wasps travel in and out.

- [Phillipe] Very cool. Well, one of the best trees as far as ornamental and edible that I think we can grow in this area.

- [Jeremy] Absolutely, my favorite variety, I've tested a lot of different varieties. The one that seems to be the best is Chicago hardy. Because it fruits on first-year growth.

- Wow, yeah.

- Which makes a big difference because as many people who have figs know, they will die back, especially in a hard winter. And so if we have Chicago hardy, the first-year growth starts producing figs right away, which makes it so that even in a hard year where the fig dies back, you still get good fruit set.

- [Phillipe] What's the pruning kind of techniques you use on these?

- Yeah so figs are almost always, at least here, gonna die back some in the winter. So I usually wait until early spring to determine how much has died back, and then I cut it right kind of where it's dead and where it's alive. And you can do that by scratching the branch here, and you can see how it's green underneath, that's the cambium layer. So if you ever wanna determine whether the fig tree branch is dead or alive, you can do little scratches up and down it to determine where it's dead and where it's alive. If it's dead, it'll be brown underneath.

- [Phillipe] Cool, yeah, so a nice compact ornamental edible tree. Don't forget about fig trees.

- Some carrots that we grew.

- What makes a feeder plant to grow together?

- Well some of 'em, when they're placed together, if you don't thin 'em they warp around. That is Swiss chard.

- How 'bout that? How 'bout that?

- Yep, that's Swiss chards.

- Gardening can take place anywhere. And sometimes we do these things on Volunteer Gardener that we call gardening for good, and today is one of those days. I am here at the Davidson County Sheriff's Office with Sheriff Daron Hall. And you guys have quite a program here for horticulture and gardening. Tell me a little bit about that.

- I kinda look at it like we're planting seeds in a lot of directions. We're trying to both provide for the community with a garden that is obviously behind the fences in some ways. We're also trying to plant some seeds in some of the men that are involved here. And allowing them to learn skills that when they get outta here can be productive in our community, and also give back. Obviously the produce that we get here, over 2,000 pounds a year--

- Wow.

- We're giving to the Second Harvest Food Bank. And so I think it's a win win win. We get a lot outta watching them see themself grow.

- [Troy] Of course, of course. And we're here in kind of a little demonstration garden area now on the inside of the facility, where these gentlemen have the opportunity to learn while they're here. Horticulture and some other things too, I understand. How does this particular program operate?

- Yeah so we have men who offer and are offered the opportunity to volunteer and come out and participate and any given day there's five to 10 folks working inside, as I always say, we're inside the fences. But this also grows outside, we have another garden on the outside that allows folks to go up and work with trees and seedlings and so forth. But really it just took off. I mean, several years ago, just asking men, do you wanna come get involved with this? You can see people, they see the growth and the produce and what's happening, but also a healthy way of living, maybe. We would like to see all of those things come about.

- Exactly!

- Unfortunately the environment in which jails and prisons often provide is a pretty negative place. You try your best, there's a lot of programming going on inside but to get outside and to see something, nature in itself, and really have, I think, an opportunity to see what's a better way of living. And like I said, we like to plant seeds in them as well. So to be honest with ya, the potential is there to do much more. We've really grown ourself into this exercise and the guys really behave, they do what they're supposed to do, they like to see it produce even in our community. So one of these days maybe carrying this all the way out into our community with folks who are about to themself, they're about to go back and live in our neighborhoods, so why not have 'em more invested in what's goin' on?

- Exactly. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to be with us and I look forward to seeing the rest of the facility.

- [Sheriff Hall] Well great, thank you for havin' us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Well we've moved up to the uphill facility here at the Davidson County Sheriff's Office Developmental Correctional Center.

- That's right.

- And now we're standing in a tree nursery with Paul Mulloy. Paul, tell me what you do here and how you help implement these programs.

- I'm the director of programs for the sheriff's office and we have a lot of programs and the horticulture program and now the arboriculture program happens to be two of those.

- Okay. So in this particular location we're actually in a tree nursery.

- [Paul] We are.

- [Troy] And this is part of your arboriculture program. And tell me what happens in this space. Obviously we have pots full of trees, some seedlings.

- [Paul] We do, we grow seeds and whips or seedlings to larger trees that you see in the back. And then once they grow to a certain caliber then we'll give 'em away. It's a collaboration with the Metro Tree Advisory Committee, the Nashville Tree Foundation, and then the Garden Club of Nashville.

- Oh, excellent!

- So we're losin' the canopy in Nashville.

- Yes, we are.

- An unforeseen, actually, impact with all the building. So what we're trying to do is help the community get our canopy back, and part of the effort is this.

- [Troy] And through tree-planting efforts by those other organizations, then these trees are given free of charge?

- Free of charge.

- To them to be planted out in the community.

- That's right. Right, and the UT Extension Office, Dan Harold and David Cook, they've been instrumental in helping us learn how to grow trees.

- Gettin' it started.

- There's a technique to it. So we go from smaller trees to larger and then back to the community. They learn anything from pH levels of soil to soil samples to seeds to seedlings and how to grow both produce and--

- And ornamental plants.

- For the arboriculture trees. That's exactly right, yeah.

- Fantastic, and in that way, when they are outside again, back in the community, they've developed a skill that they might be able to use.

- Right, these are employable skills. The sheriff's great. He says we don't make license plates 'cause nobody's hiring anybody to make license plates. But landscapers, I'm sure they're running low on staff, who knows something about how to plant a tree or work in the soil. So all of those are employable skills.

- Exactly. Well in addition to your nursery here, you've got another little vegetable operation that I wanna go take a look at.

- We do, sure.

- Let's make our way over there.

- Absolutely.

- [Troy] This, as the sheriff mentioned, the produce goes, much of it, to Second Harvest Food Bank.

- [Paul] We do, to the Farms to Families program. Second Harvest. In the last couple years, this garden, as well as the demonstration garden behind the lockup side, produced over 2,000 pounds per year of produce to Second Harvest.

- [Troy] So that's--

- Significant.

- A significant amount of food and we're growin' garlic and beets and some cold crops here, some collards and--

- Rice and potatoes, carrots.

- [Troy] Yeah.

- [Paul] And you see a lot of it, the weather's been--

- A little cooler, yeah.

- Not as hot as it has been and now it's really startin' to pop up. We have corn on the far side with squash in the middle and then we also put a new demonstration melon garden in.

- [Troy] Yeah, so down here on the lowest part of the property where those mounds are and it looks like you've got some irrigation running down there, you're gonna have a melon patch.

- [Paul] We are, watermelons and cantaloupes and such.

- Well that oughta up your--

- Up our poundage, for sure.

- Up your poundage, yeah.

- Right, we try to beat that each year so that's a good thing.

- Right, that's a good way to do it.

- It is.

- That's a good way to do it. So are there other models for gardens like this that you guys have been inspired by? Or are you kind of blazing trails here doing this?

- I think you see a lot of this at the prison level, but at the jail level, with the program and the extension office comin' in, and really teachin' the offenders everything about landscaping and gardening, that is unique. It's unique to the process. And also really, including the arboriculture, along with the horticulture, I think that's a unique part of what we do here.

- A unique thing that you're doing here in Davidson County in particular.

- Davidson County, right.

- Yeah, so another question, what about community involvement here? Is there an opportunity for community volunteers, or any way to support this program, whether it's through man hours or product or anything like that?

- I think we're open to the community in the jail in general. We have a lot of volunteers come in and nonprofits or different programs who come in and really help us with the offenders. And it's the same, it's true here too. If you wanna come pick weeds, we won't stop you. We could always use that here at this garden. And the Farm Bureau was a great assistance to us in the last two years. They've awarded us a grant the last two years that has really helped buy plants and seed and soil.

- Seeds and the sorta thing.

- [Paul] And all that, so.

- Fantastic.

- Yeah, if someone wants to help, just call us and I'm sure we can find something for you.

- [Troy] Thank you so much.

- Absolutely.

- Appreciate it.

- [Paul] No problem.

- Wood chips are extremely valuable not only for their fungal activity but because the trees have brought up minerals that have leeched deeper into the soil than our annual plants can access. The calcium and potassium and other minerals that are lower in the soil then come up through the roots and are in those wood products and eventually end up in the garden. When they're fully rotted, wood products have minerals and microbes in abundance. And the humus that forms in the garden will grow the healthiest crops. These products are organic matter, and organic matter is necessary to make humus, and humus is good for the garden. The problem with this logic is time. And the factor of time involved is about a decade. Over and over again in my garden consultations, I find wood products being used improperly. Garden paths and even plants are oftentimes mulched with wood chips or hardwood mulch which is far from being broken down enough to really be good for the garden. These fresh wood products release tannic acid and other acids, which are poison to the life of the soil. These should never be used green. Fresh wood chips have a high carbon to nitrogen ratio. There's 400 times as much carbon as nitrogen in this. So wherever you put this, it's going to temporarily steal the nitrogen. It'll take 10 years for this to rot down into something that's unrecognizable as wood chips. This pile of wood chips is two years old. But as you can see, it still has pieces of wood in it that you could burn. They're still hard, yeah. So this pile would still have too much carbon and not enough nitrogen, and consequently rob nitrogen from your soils. It probably wouldn't have the acids that are bad because they've leeched out by now. Here's what I like. This pile of wood chips is 10 years old and there is nothing visible of wood products in here. The carbon to nitrogen ratio is down to 20 to one where you want it and so it's not gonna steal nitrogen. It's gonna help your garden grow, it's a humus product, smells good. There's a lot of fungal activity in wood chips and the mycelium, the fungus roots, go all through these piles and when you put those in your garden, those microorganisms are really beneficial for creating good soil and a clay humus complex that'll grow really healthy plants. I like to add a little manure, especially if it's rotted, to the wood chip pile towards the end of its rotting process, and that adds that little extra bit of nitrogen and also lots of bacterial microorganisms that are also beneficial for making this clay humus complex. When we use wood chip products on our soils, we have to be sure and add lime too because wood chips have carbon and carbon is acidic. Many folks have access to sawdust, which of course is another wood chip, it's finer. And so it will rot down quicker, but still, you don't wanna use it green at all. All these wood products should be brown before we use 'em. The important thing to do for our gardening to be successful is for ourselves to create a live clay humus complex in our soils, and of course we can use the wood products once they're rotted, to do this. This field has had various rotted wood products over the years and it makes for a nice, crumbly, humusy soil. Humus is the black waxy stuff that coats these soil grains. And once you have your soil real loose and crumbly like this, there's lots of air in it. And so excess moisture can go through, but then when it gets dry, moisture can come back up. And so having the soil real crumbly and loose and humusy really makes for the healthy plants. Just give all of these wood products, the wood chips, the hardwood mulches, sawdust, time so that they fully rot and become digestible for your garden soil.

- [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.