Episode 2803

- [Announcer] On this episode, Sheri Gramer visits the picturesque Allenbrooke Farm in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Farmer Dan shares farming methods that increase the beneficial bugs and reduce those who do damage. Julie Berbiglia tours a garden that is landscaped to accommodate gatherings, whether they be large ones or intimate ones. Then Phillipe Chadwick takes us through the Betty Brown Tree Trail. Stay tuned. First, a farm where the views are as much of the draw as the organic produce. We're in Spring Hill today at the beautiful Allenbrooke Farms. I think quite possibly this is the most picturesque farm that I've ever visited. Not only are they doing vegetables, they also are branching out into flowers and other things. Dan's enthusiasm and passion for what he does is simply infectious. I'm here with Dan in one of his beautiful farm fields. I have to note first the soil. How do you get it looking so rich and beautiful?

- We are very heavy with cover crop, so that's a big part of my rotations is I do cover crops for a year on every garden before we plant a cash crop in it, and then we fallow it out to get weeds out and cover crop it again. This is some Minuet Napa cabbage over there. I like that variety 'cause it's a little bit smaller, so you don't end up with these giant, huge heads that maybe one or two person can't eat by themself.

- [Sheri] Yeah, and we must say that you are a CSA as well, so you are farming for a lot of people, so.

- [Dan] Yes, ma'am, and it's good when the vegetables fit in the baskets, and sometimes those big Napa cabbages tend not to.

- [Sheri] And so in front of me right here?

- [Dan] This is some Toscano kale or dinosaur kale or lacinato kale, has a lot of different names. It's just your standard, big, green kale. It's good for juicing and that sort of thing.

- [Sheri] And right here in front of me?

- Red Russian, and this is my favorite. It's a little bit sweeter. It's good in salads and raw. I love this one. This is curly green kale. This variety is called dark boar. Really prolific plant. Makes really nice, curly, green leaves. Just a great all-around kale. Everybody likes the green curly stuff. I typically, for my CSA, will harvest the day before, seeing as how we just have one a week, and that's on Wednesdays, and they're all day long. Sometimes I'll do just a little bit the day before so I've got enough for the first people that come through, and then we'll harvest fresh that day for everybody else.

- I notice there's no critter bite marks on anything. What do you do for pests?

- [Dan] My pest management is a little bit different than everybody else's, I guess. I typically don't spray any pesticides out here, so with the fields of cover crop and trap crops I plant around, a lot of--

- [Sheri] What is a trap?

- Well, a trap crop is, I'll let the collard greens and the kales from the fall go to flower. A little bit left right over here.

- Is that the yellow flowers we're starting to see there?

- Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am. They've actually, a lot of the plants have made seed pods now, so it's almost time to get rid of it, but I'm trying to let it have every last second it can because I'm scared when I mow it down it's gonna come here. And as well as the cover crops, like buckwheat, they'll like to go there instead of here, and that really boosts up the predatory insect population. I feel like if you're spraying, you're killing them, and you're killing their food source. So the more they have to eat, the better they do. And then there's always the one-third rule of planting extra for the bugs , just in case.

- [Sheri] Dan, what else do have growing in this field here?

- [Dan] Well, I have some late potatoes, some mid-season potatoes, the three kales, Napa cabbage, Savoy cabbage, broccoli, some early Cone cabbage, some cauliflower, storage cabbage, collard greens, Swiss chard, looks like some romaine lettuce, and a little bit of kohlrabi down there.

- [Sheri] I know this is a family farm.

- [Dan] Yes, ma'am.

- [Sheri] It was your family's farm, and how long have you actually been thrown all the way into this, farming?

- This is, I believe, my eighth season full time, so eight-and-a-half years I've been farming full time as my primary job.

- And you're still smiling.

- Yeah, it's fun . I like it. It's kind of like getting to paint a new picture on a really cool canvas every year. I'm also starting flower operations. We have a wedding barn here, so I'm doing some flower experiments, and I've got a half acre dedicated to that, and--

- [Sheri] Will you take those to market, or is it gonna be a you-pick?

- This year, really I want them just for the pretty. If they're pickable, I'm sure they'll use some at the weddings, and my wife will figure out something pretty to do with them, but otherwise, it's really just a backdrop for the wedding photos.

- So, Dan, we're in almost the middle of May. I'm really interested in your carrots in the bushel baskets. Tell me about that.

- Well, it's just a little experiment I thought I'd do this year for the CSA. I thought it'd be neat if the kids at the CSA could harvest their own carrots. So it's just kind of an experiment I'm doing, and it's turned out pretty good.

- [Sheri] And they're deep enough so they can get a nice, nice, straight growth it looks like.

- [Dan] Yeah, they're getting a nice, straight growth 'cause they're not hitting any rocks or anything, so they should come out looking pretty nice, and I think the kids will really enjoy it.

- Yeah. Let's walk up here and see what else you have going on. I see tomatoes. Let's talk about these tomatoes here.

- Let's see what kind we got. So this is a Lebanese tomato. That first year of farming, my dad had a whole bunch of old seeds that he'd been saving, he was always a tomato seed-saver guy, that we found in his deep freeze. And this was one of them that I really liked, and I've grown it every year. It's really heat-tolerant, and it makes a nice little, kinda like plum salad tomato, but with a thin, pink Brandywine kinda skin on it, it's--

- So you're saving seeds every year as well?

- I save seeds every year off of basically every heirloom tomato I grow, because they seem to have more vigor as generations go through and be able to be more disease-resistant. Really nice little tomatoes. These are ready to go in the field.

- [Sheri] And so, when you plant them, do you plant them really deep like you're supposed to, or I've heard you're supposed to?

- Actually, I don't. We use a waterwheel transplanter, and we just shove them in the ground, and then, as we cultivate, if it's needed, sometimes we'll throw soil onto it to give it a little more support. But they tend to do fine just like--

- How long typically do you think that you harden things off before they go in the field?

- Well, it depends on the weather. A lot of times we like to put everything out on cloudy days or right before if we know we're gonna have a couple days of rain. So we can put them out on those days, and by the time the sun hits a couple days later, they're good to go. If we have to bring them out when it's really hot and bright and sunny, then we'll cover them and only give them a few hours of daylight the first couple days, and we gradually back it off until they can take the full sun without burning.

- Dan, I'm impressed. You're never bored here, obviously, because you go from vegetables to flowers to strawberries, and now you are doing what?

- Well, we are doing industrial hemp this year for CBD production.

- And you were telling me a little while ago that you started this from seed 17 days ago?

- 17 days ago, yeah. They're pretty vigorous growth. They're a feminized seed, certified feminized seed. Looks like they've already, I mean, seven, eight inches, and a good root ball already in just a--

- [Sheri] So from this point, how long will it take before you set them out in the field?

- [Dan] I'm hoping to get these hardened off and out in the field in about two weeks for a little bit of early crop, to try get maybe the little bit extra vegetative growth before they start to flower this season. And then I have some more starting for later.

- And you were talking about how you like to do the seeds and not cloning.

- Well, I've chosen to do a mainly feminized seed this year. There's been lots of good innovations in the seed over the past couple years, especially out of Colorado, so I'm doing a bunch from them. Apparently, the clones don't really have taproots, and that's something that I really want to have in our heavy soils to go down and catch the water. Yeah, so it looks like they're saying that one out of every 4,000 will be a male, so we might have 1.25 males in this whole batch.

- Wow, and so do you need the males?

- On CBD production, you want the males to go away.

- Okay, okay. I'm not familiar with that, so I was confused.

- You want only female plants so that they can make a flower rich with CBD oil for medicine.

- Okay. Thank you for sharing with our viewers your wide array of your interests and your farming techniques.

- Well, thank y'all for coming out, and come back anytime you want.

- Thanks.

- Well, Mark Sandler has a gorgeous lot. Now, it didn't start this way, but he's had 17 years, an interest in interior design, and he has created the most beautiful garden rooms that we're gonna look at today. Well, I understand the whole interior design concept and garden rooms, but how really does that mesh together, I guess, and how is it different?

- Well, I look upon plants as the furniture that's in the room. Of course, there is hardscaping and actual furniture, but the boxwoods sort of anchor the area. Flowers and the perennials, to me, are sort of like the accessories that are in the room. To really tackle this project, I sort of felt like I had to divide it into certain rooms, and with each room having a different sort of feeling, and what is the room, the area going to be used for. So when we moved here 17 years ago, there were only three mature trees in the lot. Everything else we've added. This area here used to be a driveway that was taken out before we moved in, but the dirt just was not good. I tried growing grass here, and it just wouldn't grow, so I put down the pea gravel because I think it stays neat all the time. And from this central area we added the pond, and most of the yard is shade, so I added a lot of the shade plants that you see. Hostas, of course, grow well, hydrangeas. The fieldstone was the first pond. We've had to redo it about three times. It's a work in progress. There's always, you make mistakes, and then you figure out what you have to do to fix them.

- Well let's go take a look at some of the other rooms going through here.

- Certainly.

- One thing that I notice is you have lots and lots of boxwoods.

- I like boxwoods. I like just the, to me, they're very architectural, and they have a long history in use in garden design in framing certain areas, and it helps sort of lead the eye and create hallways through the space.

- Well, as we come through here, and I love the way you have a gate leading us into a completely different room with a completely different feel. This looks like an outdoor party to me.

- [Mark] Actually, we had a wedding shower for my assistant here on Saturday night, and it was the perfect space. It was shaded and cool, and we were able to sort of set it up for entertaining.

- [Julie] Well, I love the way that you've used all this pea gravel, but I wonder, is there maintenance involved with pea gravel? You've got birds, you've got seeds dropping.

- No, not really, and that's why I put it down, because of it being very easy to maintain, and then I felt like I needed sort of a focal, so I created this rug over here using some reclaimed bricks. There was a patio on the other side of this tree, and as needed, I would dig up portions of the patio and use them. I had this design in a English garden magazine and dog-eared the page until I finally got to this space.

- Well, that is just a great example of stealing a good idea and making it your own. Well, Mark, you have a lot of things that were really going for you here once you recognized them, like this amazing tree. It's just really a great foundation, I guess, for this little room that you have here. Now, speaking of working with things that just sort of happen naturally, you have this wonderful table. I love the way it's got moss on it.

- That was totally unintentional. I bought it at a gardening store and put it here to sort of use as a seating area, and it just happened to moss up, and I don't really even have to water it or maintain it. There must be enough moisture in the soil that maybe wicks through and lets it stay green.

- Well, I love that idea of happy accidents

- Yeah .

- that work for you. Now you also, of course, have fences here because your backyards are sort of narrow next to each other, and one of the things that you've done here is solve a problem I think a lot of us have, which is, how do you make a fence interesting?

- [Mark] Well, there's a lot of fencing here, and I sort of needed a focal point for this area to balance the other side, so this is a gate that I built to give the illusion that you could go into another section of the yard. There's actually a chain-link fence on the other side of that if you open the door. But I use it as a spring and summer garden tool shed.

- I love that idea. I think I might steal it. Love your hallways. I really like the stepping stones coming through them and all the plant interest. So, what I want to know, Mark, is what is your secret for keeping all of this weed-free?

- Hand weeding, lots of hand weeding. I usually do it every morning before I go to work when it's still cool out, and I try to tackle a section at a time. If you maintain it and don't let it get away from you, it's pretty manageable.

- [Julie] Okay, well, oh my gosh! It looks like we've entered the formal dining room.

- [Mark] This is a much more formal area. This is a parterre garden that I put in. Again, I used some reclaimed bricks to border it and the boxwoods, and to keep it less formal, I put more casual plants, lilies and peonies, and in the spring there are tulips in this area.

- [Julie] Well, Mark, I have always wanted to have some sort of formal boxwood garden, but it's just a dream because the maintenance scares me.

- [Mark] It's not that difficult to maintain. It flushes out spring growth, and I trim it in the spring, and then there's another smaller flush in the fall, and I use my hedge trimmers, and I trim it in the fall.

- Well, it's always nice to have a piece of home in your own garden, especially when home is far away, like Connecticut with you. So I know you made a trip there recently. What kind of things did you bring back?

- Well, I grew up in rural Connecticut, and where my parents live and where I grew up there it's completely surrounded by woods that used to be the pasture land many years ago for the town of Windham where I'm from. And there are just stone walls that will just go on and on, so I brought back some of the fieldstones that are nicely mossed up with lichen. I also brought some native ferns. There are three varieties. Mixed them with some hostas and Jack-in-the-pulpit, which I absolutely love. I included those as well. Well, I added, so I put in the dry creek 'cause I sorta wanted a separation from a more formal area into a more casual area and built a bridge and created this sort of woodland gardens setting, which has a nice daybed for relaxing and a mixture of sculpture.

- [Julie] Well, it's very peaceful back here. Now, you just have so much going on, and you've done all of this yourself, right?

- [Mark] That is true, yes, a little at a time. That's why I try to tackle a section. This area wasn't here up until about the spring. So I add a little bit at a time.

- [Julie] So do you have any words of wisdom, any advice that people are maybe just starting out, try to envision this type of project?

- [Mark] I definitely had, I didn't draft or draw this out, but I have in my head, I had a game plan, so I sort of knew the different areas and knew the type of space I wanted and the type of plants to put in the spaces. Not to say that I haven't made mistakes, and you put the wrong plant in the wrong place, and it'll let you know if it's not happy, and usually then in the fall, I'll dig it up and move it somewhere else.

- [Julie] So take some tips from Mark. Take a long-term look at what you're doing, and tackle it one piece at a time. Thank you, Mark.

- [Mark] Thank you, Julie. Thanks for coming.

- With so much development and construction in downtown Nashville, there's so many things going on, and I'm here at a brand-new park that you may not even know about. It's next to the amphitheater, and I'm walking around the Betty Brown Tree Trail. I'm here with Vicki Turner, and she's gonna show us around and tell us about some of the trees. What is this one right here?

- Okay, this is a Persian ironwood. As the name indicates, it is originally from Persia, which in modern-day terms would be Iran, Armenia, and Turkey. It's a member of the witch-hazel family, so in the late winter it has a witch-hazel-type magenta blossom.

- [Phillipe] Cool.

- [Vicki] In the fall it also has very, very pretty color, and when this tree gets older, it will have an exfoliating bark similar to a lacebark elm.

- Yeah, very nice. So this is a really great meeting location too. I see lots of seating and benches.

- Yes, you're right. When Kim Hawkins gave a tour for the Nashville Tree Foundation of this site, she explained it as being "Nashville's front porch"--

- Yeah, it really is.

- Facing the river, and I think that just is a perfect description of what this park is, Nashville's front porch.

- [Phillipe] a lot of the seats are oriented to look at the river to connect to.

- [Vicki] Right. So this is a yellowwood. It is native to Kentucky, and it gets its name from the fact that the heartwood is actually yellow. It's one of the few trees that has smooth bark, so similar to the bark of a beech tree.

- [Phillipe] Yeah.

- [Vicki] And then it has very showy blossoms in the springtime--

- [Phillipe] Wonderful.

- [Vicki] That resemble white wisteria blossoms.

- This looks like a magnolia.

- You are absolutely right. This is called a cucumber magnolia. It is native to the South. It's one of our larger magnolias. This can get to be about 75 feet tall, and it's very fast-growing as well. What's unique to this tree is it has yellow blossoms. We're used to white blossoms with our magnolias, but these are yellow blossoms.

- [Phillipe] Mm-hmm, and it's also deciduous, right?

- [Vicki] Yes.

- [Phillipe] Which, where we're used to the evergreen ones, yeah.

- [Vicki] Exactly, and it is deciduous. You're correct.

- [Phillipe] Cool, so you've got a lot of really interesting species around.

- [Vicki] There's great diversity.

- I love the mix of different perennials and annuals that are interplanted throughout the whole park. That's really nice.

- Yeah, yeah. It's great to have the diversity of the trees, but then also with the plant material.

- Uh huh, yeah, so this looks like quite a mighty oak in front of us right here.

- You are right, Phillipe. This is an overcup oak. Just to give you a little backstory, oaks are either of the white oak family or the red oak family, and if the leaf tip ends in a bristle tip, it's in the red oak family. What's very distinctive about this tree is when it forms its acorn, about three-quarters of the acorn is enclosed by a lacy hull.

- [Phillipe] Oh yeah.

- [Vicki] That's very, very easy to identify.

- [Phillipe] And this multi-trunk, is this another magnolia right here?

- [Vicki] Yes! Phillipe, you're great with your magnolias. This is a sweet bay magnolia, and as you pointed out, it generally does have several trunks. What's interesting about this tree is that in the South it is evergreen, and in the North it's deciduous. And it has a tiny white flower that has a lemon scent. And then lastly, we have a blackgum.

- [Phillipe] And this has those red leaves in it right now?

- [Vicki] Exactly. The blackgum is actually in the dogwood family. It is also known as a water tupelo, and the word tupelo is Greek for swamp tree, so it also likes wet, moist soil.

- [Phillipe] And it's a brilliant red too. It's not just a dirt red, it's a--

- [Vicki] And it ends up being a brilliant red. When it gets a little bit older, the bark will sort of resemble an alligator skin, but now, when it's young, it's rather smooth.

- Mm-hmm, I love that there's a dog park downtown now. That's awesome.

- [Vicki] Yeah, long overdue.

- Yeah, very long overdue. So next to the entrance of the dog park is this, is this another oak tree?

- You're right, Phillipe. This is a white oak. We spoke earlier about the two oak families. This is firmly in the white oak family, and so rather than the bristle tips on the leaves, these are rounded lobes. This is really, the white oak is the royalty of the oak family. This is a tree that will grow slowly, but will live for several hundred years.

- [Phillipe] Wow.

- [Vicki] It can get to be 100 to 120 feet tall and that wide as well.

- [Phillipe] Wow.

- [Vicki] So it is a really magnificent, splendid tree when it is mature. Now the the timber is also very valuable. The wood of the white oak is impervious to liquid, so this is the wood of preference for whiskey barrels and wine barrels. You'll want to notice this interesting sculpture. The bends in the sculpture depict the bends in the Cumberland River through Davidson County.

- Sure. So running all along 1st Avenue right here, we've got a beautiful alley of, what are these trees?

- This is a London planetree, and this is actually a hybrid from an American sycamore and a Chinese sycamore.

- Okay.

- And actually, the hybrid is hardier than the parents, and normally with hybrids the seeds are not viable, but not the case with the London planetree.

- [Phillipe] Well yeah, I mean, this alley is very grand. I love to see that. And these will eventually arch over and touch at some point, and you'll get that nice shade.

- Oh yes, these trees will get to be a hundred feet tall.

- Cool, very cool. So I've got a marker here with our tulip poplar leaf on it. Is this your seal?

- [Vicki] Yes, it's also the Nashville Tree Foundation seal and highly appropriate because it's also the Tennessee state tree, tulip poplar.

- Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, I just love the size of this park and the trees. I can't wait to see them all grow as our city is growing.

- [Vicki] Right, and we can all enjoy the seasons change on the Betty Brown Tree Trail.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. The reason why we have this new arboretum is because of the Nashville Tree Foundation. I'm here with Pat Wallace, the current president. So tell me a little bit about the history of that and who she is.

- Betty Brown was the first president, founder of the Nashville Tree Foundation in 1986. Well-known Nashvillian, loved trees, loved her wildflower gardens, and she also actually, with Sandra Fulton, they created the first riverfront park, which was a very small park at the end of Broadway, but overlooking the river, and she had much grander ideas. And we are able to participate in this because of the memorial gifts that were made in her honor.

- [Phillipe] What other projects does Nashville Tree Foundation sponsor?

- [Pat] Well, we have two, what we consider big ones. One is ReLeaf Nashville Day on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. That began in 1998 when we had the tornado that came through the park through downtown and into East Nashville and took away so many trees. We raised a million dollars and kind of galvanized the community to replant, and so the first year it was in East Nashville. And it was something that people really liked doing, wanted to do again, so we've done it every year since then.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, yeah, wonderful. I think I've actually planted trees. I didn't realize that's what I was doing it with.

- Good for you ! Thanks, come again.

- Sure, yeah, of course.

- The other thing we have is a Big Old Tree Party, and what we're doing is taking a census of the oldest and largest of the species of trees in Nashville, and so it's kind of a contest. There's no big prize, but we have a gathering to recognize that every year on the last Friday of April.

- [Phillipe] Wonderful, yeah. As a native Nashvillian, it's wonderful to see the trees continuously being planted. I think one of the things I've heard is the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, so and you're doing that.

- Absolutely.

- That's wonderful. I specifically appreciate the work that y'all do.

- [Pat] Thank you so much for expressing that. I will remember to share it with our whole group.

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