Episode 2807

- [Narrator] On this "Volunteer Gardener", we're growing outside the norms. Nashville has the largest green roof in the southeast. It's atop the Music City Center, and features four acres of sedum plants and beehives. This beautiful lettuce is thriving when it's 100 degrees outside. That's what controlled environment agriculture can do. And Julie Berbiglia helps demonstrate lasagna gardening. What? Better stay tuned. Let's learn about the sustainable features of the Music City Center.

- Drive down any street in Nashville, and it's obvious that our city is growing exponentially. Six years ago our new Music City Center opened, and I am here today with Renee Barker. And Renee, when this Music City Center was under development, even in the planning stages, there were plans for a green roof. Tell me a little bit about the green roof here, and what we're seeing, and also what it does for the building.

- Sure, so we are a LEED Gold certified facility. And part of the design and construction process was to build a green roof here.

- Right.

- This is just over four acres.

- Wow.

- And it was designed to mimic the rolling hills of Tennessee, so that's why--

- So that's why you see this waviness up here.

- [Renee] Below us is actually our big exhibit hall space.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [Renee] So the green roof helps insulate that wide open space. Helps us save on heating and cooling a big empty room.

- [Troy] Right, so for our viewers, if anybody attends the Antiques and Garden Show of Nashville.

- [Renee] Right.

- [Troy] Or anything else here, but that's kind of one of the things that's near and dear to our hearts. You are actually under this green roof. As far as the variety of plants that are up here, it's mostly sedum.

- [Renee] That's right, we have 14 different kinds of sedum.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [Renee] Just to make it interesting throughout the year.

- [Troy] Sure.

- [Renee] Looks a little bit different. Different flowers.

- Right, right.

- [Renee] But we also have some clover up here.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [Renee] That found its way up here accidentally, but we learned that the bees actually really like clover.

- [Troy] Yes, they do, that's absolutely correct. How deep is the soil and everything in here?

- [Renee] This is only about two inches deep of soil.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [Renee] Sedum is a really low maintenance, low growing plant.

- [Troy] Right.

- [Renee] So we don't have to mow up here like you would a yard. We kind of just manage the weeds and take care of it.

- [Troy] And how are the weeds managed in a situation like this?

- [Renee] We do have people that come out here and hand pull the weeds. Since the bees are so close by, we don't want to spray.

- Spray or do anything like that, so really sustainable. I mean in every sense of the word. And the building as well. The architecture, the construction of the building is such that you're using stormwater?

- That's right.

- Right?

- [Renee] This green roof system is part of our stormwater catchment. When rainwater falls through here, it's collected in an underground cistern that holds 360,000 gallons of water.

- [Troy] Right.

- [Renee] And from there, it's piped throughout the building for all of the toilets and urinals and for our landscape irrigation.

- Okay, well you mentioned beehives. Now we're going to join Mike Brent, who's the beekeeper here at the Music City Center. The last place you might expect to find beehives is in the middle of downtown Nashville. And not only are we in the middle of downtown, we're on the roof of the Convention Center with Mike Brent. Mike, show us what you have going on up here at the top of the building.

- Sure, shortly after the Music City Center was built, they put four beehives up here. And I'm with the Nashville Area Beekeepers Association. And they ask us to help mentor some of the staff here in getting the hives started, and checking the hives, and helping them out with them. So that's what I do. I'm not a employee here or anything.

- Right.

- But I come down and help the staff.

- Sure.

- As they do that. So we've got four hives. We're gonna open up number four here.

- All right.

- We didn't name them, we just numbered them one to four.

- Yeah.

- And like most hives, you'll find a brick or a rock sitting on top of them. It's unusual that you get enough wind that it's gonna lift the top.

- Take the top off?

- But it does happen, and especially when you're a hundred feet up in the air like we are. You've got wind swirling sometimes in a storm or whatever. So like most hives, well there's a screen on top to keep other bees or other insects from coming in. There's a feeder that is sometimes used, especially during the earlier and later part of the season, to feed the bees and help give them a little bit of a headstart during the season. You'll feed them a mixture of sugar water, that they will use. That gives them energy to build out comb and things like that. They don't use it to make honey. That's the nectar that they gather.

- [Troy] Sure.

- But so you'll see when I lift this up, there are a lot of bees. This is probably the strongest hive up here. We've got three boxes here. The bottom two are what we call brood boxes. That is primarily where the queen lays eggs, raises bees, you'll find the baby bees growing in there and so forth. And you'll also find honey in there.

- [Troy] Right.

- That they use for their nutrition and pollen.

- [Troy] Okay.

- The honey's their carbohydrate, the pollen is their protein.

- [Troy] Is their protein, sure.

- And then the upper boxes are what they call honey supers, which is what we steal from them.

- Yeah.

- When I open this up, since it's pretty overcast this morning, there are not many bees out flying around, but when I open this you're gonna see a lot of them start to come out.

- There they are.

- Wondering what are we here? What are we doing? Why are we bothering them? Bees are not aggressive, they are defensive. You can see what we call the capped honey, where they have have put a wax capping over it. Once they have put the nectar in there, and they fan it. They get it down to where it's honey, which is a lot thicker than nectar. And they just have to dehydrate it some. And then on down in these lower ones, you will see honey that's still being evaporated some from the nectar that's not quite capped yet. So that's what you're primarily gonna find in the top box, is just frames that look like this. That are got have honey either still being produced, or that's capped. This side, they don't have any of it capped yet. But if we were to take out all these frames, you'd see the same thing in this top box.

- [Troy] Any unique challenges involved in having bees up here versus down on the ground?

- Not really. I mean you would think that there might be challenges of where do they go to find nectar? And, you know, in the concrete jungle of downtown.

- [Troy] Right.

- [Mike] But we've had an analysis done of their honey. You'll find that at least in the last couple of years, it has primarily been clover that they have found somewhere within a couple of miles of here.

- [Troy] Wow.

- [Mike] I'm not gonna pull out a frame since they're getting so active because it's so cloudy and stuff

- Sure.

- And we'll talk about that a little bit after I close it up. If this was sunny this morning, it's still so cloudy and overcast, they'd be out flying in and out, working, going out looking for nectar, looking for pollen in various areas. Typically, a bee will fly as much as two or three miles if they have to to find a source of pollen or nectar. Here, they're finding a lot of stuff pretty close by we've determined.

- [Troy] Well, as Nashville does continue to grow, I think it's important for all of us to be environmentally conscious. And the Music City Center is leading the way here in Nashville. We thank them for letting us come up on the roof for this spectacular view of the city, and sharing the bees with us today.

- So before we go in, we gotta get some hand sanitizer. Clean our hands. Really important to clean our feet too, 'cause they don't want them bringing any external parasites or anything like that. So this hydroponic garden clearly makes a really great use of space as far as packing density and what you can grow in this small space. How many different varieties of lettuce are you growing here?

- Currently, we have 13 different types of lettuce that we grow, and that's all harvested twice a week. And then packed here, put in a walk-in cooler, and then put in our delivery truck that we drive around Nashville twice a week.

- Awesome, yeah, I'm here with Jeffrey Orkin, he's with Greener Roots Farm. This is one of his newest projects. I think his second location.

- Correct.

- We're here at Southall Farms. Yeah, this is a beautiful greenhouse that we're in. And so you kind of corrected me a little earlier and said this was kind of hydroponic, so explain to me about your process.

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, so both of our locations, we exclusively grow hydroponically, so that means that there's no soil involved at any step of the process. So and this specific type of hydroponics is called raft hydroponics. So what that means is these are styrofoam rafts that are floating on the water. And so you can see there's no soil anywhere. The roots are coming out of the bottom, and they're floating in a nutrient solution and the plants take up the nutrients that they need. And what they don't need is just recirculated in the system. So for that reason, hydroponics is often touted as a really efficient use of water.

- [Phillipe] Right.

- [Jeffrey] We actually use about 90% less water than conventional agriculture because of the fact that it's being recirculated.

- [Phillipe] Right.

- [Jeffrey] The plants use what they need. There's very little evaporation in this system, so mostly transpiration occurs.

- [Phillipe] Right, yeah, there's not a lot of exposed water to the sunlight.

- [Jeffrey] Correct, yeah, exactly.

- [Phillipe] Which helps a lot with it.

- Yeah, there's 10 rows of rafts here. And this entire mix goes into our most popular Nashville blend, which has all 10 of these lettuces, that's like a--

- Wow.

- Just to your point, it's a really pretty mix of lettuces.

- Yeah, very colorful.

- Yeah.

- So how long has this been growing in this solution? What's your time frame?

- Yeah, so from seed to harvest on most of these varieties is about 40 to 50 days. However, the first two weeks of its life is not in this big finishing pond.

- Okay.

- [Jeffrey] So we start the lettuce in these 10 by 20 trays in our vertical farm, and then they're grown there for two weeks. And then they come here and were transplanted into the higher density spacing that you see at the other end of the pond.

- [Phillipe] Yeah.

- [Jeffrey] And then this is our finished spacing, so we've got 18 heads in a two by four raft.

- [Phillipe] Wow, talk about square foot gardening.

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, exactly, yeah, and we're pulling almost 2,000 heads a week.

- Wow.

- And just over 800 pounds a week. So between the two facilities, last year we did 14 tons of produce from the previous facility. And with this facility and the other facility, we'll probably do over 30 tons of lettuce in a year.

- Wow.

- So it's a very efficient process.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I do have to ask you, having grown lettuce myself at home in the ground, how do you keep these from bolting?

- So a lot of that is just climate control.

- Okay.

- Controlling the water temperature.

- Okay.

- We have artificial lighting in here, we have a sensor that you can see that's hanging out just at the plant canopy. So the whole greenhouse is controlled by a fancy computer system.

- Gotcha.

- [Jeffrey] And we say, "Hey, we want this much light everyday." And if we're not getting enough light, the lights come on.

- Right.

- [Jeffrey] And that's a great way if it's hotter temperatures, we can dial back the amount of light that we want the crop to get and that'll slow down the growth rate and--

- Right.

- [Jeffrey] Decrease the chance of bolting.

- [Phillipe] So what's the causes of bolting I guess?

- [Jeffrey] I mean, normally it's stress, so it's the plant trying to produce seeds so that it can survive as a species.

- Okay.

- [Jeffrey] And so if you can reduce stress factors, oftentimes for lettuce in the soil, that has to do with heat.

- Right.

- [Jeffrey] It could have to do with nutrient deficiencies and other things. So again this is controlled environment agriculture, oftentimes called CEA, and that's the whole shtick with CEA, is that you're manipulating all the factors in order to produce the best product year-round.

- Right, it shows.

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, I mean it's 100 degrees outside right now, and we've got beautiful lettuce growing so.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- [Phillipe] So this is kind of how they start?

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, correct, so we start the seeds in something called rockwool, which is like cotton candy of rock. Spun rock that's heated up and then shaped into this shape.

- Methodical process, yeah, I mean it is.

- Very uniform process as well.

- [Phillipe] So you have a really advanced computer system that controls the lighting and the temperature. Is that the same for the water and the ponds?

- That system doesn't control that, but we do have this Bluelab system that monitors water temperature, pH, and the nutrient salt levels. It's called electrical conductivity.

- Okay.

- And so it's literally just measuring a salt level, and we know ranges that are appropriate. And then in addition to that, we do monthly water tests. So we'll send them to a lab, and that will give us a full panel of all the micro and macronutrients.

- Wow.

- That's another one of the really cool aspects of hydroponic farming, is we're able to do that on a regular basis. And that means that literally every month we can say, "Hey, we need more calcium," or, "We need more potassium," or "more nitrogen". And we have the ability to adjust for specific nutrients instead of just some kind of a blanket treatment.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- What is the main source of fertilizer for these that you put in the water?

- We use a more conventional bagged fertilizer. They're all designed for hydroponics.

- Okay.

- However, a very common, if we need magnesium, we use magnesium sulfate, also known as Epsom salt.

- Sure, yeah.

- It's not like we're pouring crazy stuff in here.

- Right.

- But they're designed for hydroponics, and they come in a powder form in a bag, and then we mix them with water.

- Yeah.

- So we have kind of a custom solution that we've perfected over the past five years of being in business.

- Cool, yeah.

- Yeah.

- One of my favorite questions to ask gardeners is I see the yellow pads out there. Obviously to catch flies and whatnot.

- Yeah.

- What are some major issues that you've run into that you found good solutions for?

- [Jeffrey] Yeah, we use sticky traps primarily for insect identification.

- Okay.

- [Jeffrey] However, thrips are one of the largest issues in a lettuce farm.

- Right.

- And they love yellow sticky traps. We don't spray any pesticides or herbicides, and so we have to do other control methods, and that's one of our go-tos. We do also introduce beneficial insects.

- Oh, cool.

- And so there are, for example, if we do see aphid populations that are outside of our comfort zone, or thrip populations that are outside of our comfort zone, we can introduce either a parasitic wasp or a mite that will then go after the problem insect.

- Oh, wow.

- And it's really quite fascinating.

- Yeah.

- They're so small that you can't see them at all, but you'll just notice the insect populations dropping down. So yeah.

- That's very cool.

- Very cool.

- Yeah, so still staying in the natural processes?

- Yeah, exactly.

- But in a controlled environment at the same time.

- For sure.

- So it's really understanding how nature works.

- Yeah.

- To be able to control it. So we're here at these fish ponds, is that what you call them?

- [Jeffrey] It's our aquaculture system.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Aquaculture system, and what do you use this for?

- So we are growing hybrid Striped Bass for the purpose of selling the fish for consumption.

- Oh, wow, okay.

- So this system is not being used to create fertilizer, this is not an aquaponics greenhouse. It's a hydroponic greenhouse that also raises fish. We've spent nearly six years perfecting hydroponics, and this is our first time growing fish. And so we didn't want to complicate trying to connect those two things. This is two different living systems and--

- Yeah.

- Connecting them together is a little bit difficult so.

- So do we get to feed them?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Okay.

- They're hungry.

- Yeah, oh yeah.

- This is really cool, so you get these in as I guess as little baby fish?

- Yeah. They come in as fingerlings when we got them in January. They were like a 10 to 12 gram fish. And we've actually been working through getting the system working correctly, but they're already up to about 55 or 60 grams.

- Wow.

- And we're gonna harvest them to almost a two pound fish.

- [Phillipe] What are some of the other fun things that you would say about hydroponic gardening?

- [Jeffrey] It's a really rewarding way to see things grow quickly.

- Yeah.

- Especially if you have your nutrient recipe dialed down. I know for a lot of people that want to get into gardening, and you're in the back yard, and things aren't working out well because you don't have enough sun, or you didn't actually pay attention to your soil quality.

- Right.

- This is a much easier way to have a successful first go around. Now granted, there's plenty of errors that can happen along the way. But it is nice coming in on a 100 degree day, and seeing several thousand heads of ready-to-eat lettuce that are just perfect in the summer.

- Yeah.

- I didn't go to school for this. I'm a landscape architect as you know.

- Yeah.

- [Jeffrey] So a lot of my knowledge was just gained from watching YouTube videos, trying things, experimenting. Another very first Volunteer Gardener in 2013 was in my little experimental lab so.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, it was in a closet space that you had.

- Yeah.

- [Phillipe] Packed full of stuff.

- [Jeffrey] At the top of a building in downtown is where we started in 2013. So it's come a long way.

- Yeah. So lots of trial and error.

- [Jeffrey] Exactly, yes.

- To get here.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- [Phillipe] Thank you for doing this and showing us the farm.

- Absolutely.

- It's beautiful.

- Thanks.

- [Phillipe] It's comfortable, and it looks enjoyable.

- Yeah. Come back anytime.

- Yeah, thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- Well it's always fun to learn yet another easy way to garden, and I've been this lasagna gardening book, and it talks about doing a garden in 45 minutes, and I have Pat Lanza with me today. And together we are going to turn this space into a garden, with just a few simple materials, as fast as we can. I'm ready to get going.

- Me too.

- How do we start?

- This is the way we start. We're just gonna cover up the ground, with wet newspaper, and cover that up very quickly with some of our organic materials.

- All right.

- So let's start with our bucket, and open up the paper, and cover up the ground. Don't dig it, don't rototill it.

- Well, this just appeals to me already, because of the idea of going straight over the weeds and the grasses.

- But this is all natural material.

- Well, and I like the way that it looks like so far you just can't go wrong. It looks like even the messiest of us can do this first part at least perfectly right.

- Absolutely, there are no mistakes. You can't make a mistake.

- So we've got wet newspaper, which helps to hold it down, and I imagine gives this a nice basis for our worms to maybe come up and get a little moisture there?

- Exactly, the earthworms absolutely love this. They're gonna come up underneath the ground, cultivate as they're going. And then eat the newspaper. Eventually, you will see them right on top of the ground, 'cause they will have eaten through. Now this is our first layer. Let's cover the cardboard. Because this constitutes a path. You could use cardboard under your gardens, but I like this way better.

- Fantastic, well I've got some pine straw here. How about we go with it? So we just dump this on the path?

- Yup.

- Fantastic. Plenty of neighbors that go ahead and rake this up in the fall. I'll have to make sure to run down and grab it before the chipper service comes. Nice free ingredient here if you've got pine trees.

- And it's actually pretty. If you had bark chips that you might like to put on your path instead. But I'm a great believer in using what you have.

- All right next layer.

- Next layer, let's cover the newspaper, and this case we're going to use peat moss, simply because we have it. You don't have to use peat moss. You could use any other organic material. You could just use leaves or grass. But let's use a layer of peat moss.

- All right, so if I had compost that I've been making I could go ahead and use that?

- Yup.

- Fantastic, so if I was too lazy to run out to the store.

- That's it.

- Dig around the yard.

- At this point, we just want to cover the paper.

- Now what if I had really bad weeds? Could I use cardboard first?

- You could.

- All right.

- And wet it down really good.

- Okay.

- We didn't wet our cardboard down, although we're going to. But if you were using cardboard as the base of your garden, it's best to wet it down. So once we have all those corners, so that there's no paper showing.

- Ooh, what now?

- So let's add grass clippings.

- Oh, okay, so I'm beginning--

- Green grass.

- To see the lasagna here.

- Yeah. The lasagna layers.

- Which I think is a wonderful term for gardening. Well and it also reminds me very much of composting that you're layering in the brown carbon and the green nitrogen.

- Exactly, now I normally would use one part of green grass clippings, to four parts brown. Leaves, chip leaves, or the peat moss constitutes a brown. So this is like nitrogen to carbon.

- All right.

- So let's give it enough to make it a whole layer. And cover up all our peat moss.

- And again, the idea is sort of like with making lasagna, do you just want to cover up each layer?

- Exactly.

- At a time and then you know you're done?

- And you could do it from a standing position. I just throw it in there, a lot of people that just can't bend over. Well it's okay, you can just throw these things down. I like it to look neat. So let's put on another layer.

- All right, should we use more compost?

- We could use a bag of this wonderful compost.

- All right, let's use some compost. Well this is great, easy to do, and I've notice that sometimes a garden stores have bags of compost that have broken open that they sell cheaper. And you can get a little savings that way too.

- Well I have been known to take my pickup to the garden store in the spring. Or late in the fall. And they would actually almost pay me to take it away because they were cleaning up. So those split bags are just fine.

- Fantastic.

- And I've paid as low as 50 cents a bag.

- Wow.

- If the split wasn't too big. There's nothing like having a roll of duct tape in your truck too. That kind of tapes the bag up 'til you can get home. And once we've put on that black layer, let's put on another brown layer.

- All right, so our lasagna's building higher and higher and higher.

- It is, we're going to have several inches. We wanna have enough inches when we get done here to plant our plants, and that's why we call this a garden that can be done in 45 minutes. Once you have your material together.

- All right, so we have the ground with weeds. We weren't scared of it. We covered it with wet newspaper, and then on top of that,

- We used leaves.

- We've got the leaves.

- Peat moss.

- Peat moss.

- Grass clippings, compost, more peat moss. Now we're gonna use more grass clippings.

- Fantastic.

- 'Cause this is what we have. And that's the secret. Using what you have.

- Oh, well and you get out there and mow the lawn, you've got grass clippings.

- Yup.

- Got compost, got leaves. And now on top, what is going to be our--

- The prima layer. We've been saving the best for last.

- Oh, these are beautiful. This looks like some wonderful old leaves that have been all ground up and sitting around. This is beautiful.

- If you don't have wood ashes, and most people don't have wood ashes today, use some agricultural lime. And just sprinkle it on. I remember, "Look at that earthworm, "and those leaves, look at that."

- We already got one in there, fantastic.

- But this will just take a little bit of the acid out of all these leaves. And the leaves are probably oak. And they've been chipped up fine, but they're still very acid.

- All right.

- There's the cheese, on our lasagna. You know it takes six months for lime to activate, so if you do this every six months by rote, just like a farmer would, you'll have a more neutral soil base. Now we need some water. Let's get everything evenly moist.

- All right, so we get the paths nice and moist.

- Make sure it gets all the way down to the cardboard to hold that in place.

- All right, that way especially when it's nice and breezy in the spring it's not gonna blow away.

- Yep, and if you happen upon a treasure trove, like some compost or chopped leaves, put them all on your garden, so it's not a done deal. This is a work in progress.

- Now what's the best time of year to start a lasagna garden?

- Today. When you get the enthusiasm, when you say, "I can do this." You start it right then. It doesn't matter. If it's not actively snowing or sleeting, which is uncomfortable, then you need to go out and start your garden. You have all this stuff. Or you certainly have some of it.

- Well let's get plugging. What would you like to start with today?

- Let's start with the tomatoes. And put them in the back.

- Oh, and these are fantastic. These are those biodegradable pots too.

- Just look, we're going right down through all those layers, right down to the newspaper. Can you imagine a plant root trying to go into hard packed soil? But in this, this plant is gonna think it's died and gone to heaven. Because the roots can go right out into these layers, and you push out all the air pockets. Take off the lower leaves.

- Now, putting in these pots, putting in these plants here that are already grown is fantastic, it's easy. What if I wanted to start some things from seed on this bed?

- Well here's the deal, you just take this and press it down to make it firm. Firm it up, that pushes out all the air. And gives you this little base to plant seeds. Sprinkle your seeds right along the row here. And then take some of your layers, and sprinkle back on top. As these seeds come up, just continue mulching around them.

- And there you have it, less than 45 minutes, a beautiful garden. Lasagna layers, a little bit to drink here, and we are done for the day. Thank you Pat Lanza for teaching us the secrets of natural gardening, lasagna gardening. I call it just plain easy garden and tons of fun. Thank you so much for joining us today to show us this cheap, easy, and beautiful way to garden.