Episode 2811

- [Lauren] Coming up, Phillipe Chadwick visits the growers at Green Door Gourmet to learn what experience has taught them about growing dahlias in our climate zone. Julie Berbiglia visits the teaching garden at Glen Leven Farms, and Tammy Algood sees how fruit grown in Tennessee is featured prominently in this sparkling strawberry wine. Come along. It's been said that, once you grow one dahlia, you're going to want more.

- I'm out here at Green Door Gourmet in one of their many flower fields, here with Sylvia Ganier.

- Hi.

- Nice to be with you.

- Great to see you.

- Good to see you too. We're gonna talk about some dahlias today, cultural aspects as far as growing, and needs, and pests. First off, I see this nice white net that you've got here.

- [Sylvia] Yes, the netting serves dual purpose. First of all, it helps you when you're laying out the grid of your garden to know how to space your plants, because dahlias need room to grow, especially if you want them as a cut flower versus a bedding flower. Also, they need support. They're tall, and lanky, and the blooms can be huge, like, dinner-plate size sometimes, and so you really want to make sure that you have structure.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, that does help. I hear a lot of them falling over, people having issues with that, and even breaking if they do fall over.

- [Sylvia] Yes.

- And I also see that y'all use a nice cover on the base of them, and plant in the cover. Does that help with water and all kinds of--

- It does two different things. As you see, we actually have our drip irrigation running along the top because dahlias like a dryer sort of moment. If they are too wet, the tubers are gonna rot, so you don't want to over-water your dahlias. This allows just enough water to seep into the holes, and it's great for weed suppression because, I don't know about you, but I'd rather have more time to cut and enjoy the flowers than to pull the weeds.

- [Phillipe] Absolutely.

- Dahlias don't like super hot. They really are a cooler climate. They're very popular in the mountains of Mexico, and that's where they were first kind of discovered, and came over to England from there in the 1700's, so they like a little bit cooler temperature, and this time of year, once we start getting those autumn days that are a little cooler, they're so happy, they just take off. It's fantastic.

- Particularly in our Tennessee area, most people know that dahlias are really a fall bloomer for us. They kind of grow throughout the summer. You get some sparse blooms, but in the fall is when they do the real magic, which is fun.

- Absolutely.

- [Phillipe] So I see these big, beautiful white ones right here, and they're very tall. These look really wonderful.

- And with those, just the design of the pin cushion is really gorgeous on those.

- Yeah, yeah, that is really nice. I see lots and lots and lots of stems coming out of there too. Do y'all kind of continuously pinch back on the plant to help it stem out?

- We do. We take the middle part at the beginning, the first sign of a bloom. That allows it to bush out, clump up a little bit more, and do side shoots to continue the blooming process. If I was trying to put more emphasis into the tuber, which are edible, I would actually not allow it to flower or bloom at all because I would be going for the root stock versus the flower bloom.

- Right, right, yeah. And one thing with them too is, deadheading/cutting them keeps them blooming more too so they don't put any energy into the seeds.

- It is cut and come again, for sure.

- Man, this dark one behind you is really stunning.

- And we have a beautiful, huge red one which you can see already bloomed out in the distance there, called Spartacus, and it's one of our favorite ones, and some of the folks that have come come and say, "Oh my gosh, what is that amazing flower?" They think it's a peony because it's so big, and full of bloom.

- [Phillipe] That's exciting. Have you found any good companion plantings with dahlias?

- [Sylvia] They typically like not to be crowded in with other things, and the one thing that you don't even want to put next to the dahlias, potatoes, because they have a common pest, as well as the tomatoes, so nightshades are not really the friends of the dahlias, so anything else that gives them enough room to spread out and grow is okay, that also can handle the slightly acidic soil, but not tomatoes or potatoes.

- You see them here and there in gardens, you know, two or three different varieties that tend to bloom really heavy. You'll see them mixed in borders of a mixed perennial garden. They usually fill really nicely, and they like to fill gaps, and then, of course, you get that big burst of fall bloom that not a lot of things do.

- Right, especially for the bedding style. There are some that are more cut-flower friendly, like the Spartacus, or the Sherman's Peach. Those do really well to branch out and make cut flowers, but there are also some that stay in this smaller, which we're looking at here, kind of culture that stay three to four feet tall versus the larger, the dinner plate. They get five to six feet tall as well.

- Right, right, yeah. So, as far as, in the late, late fall, when we start getting close to frost, now, do y'all cover these? Or do you actually dig and store?

- We have done both. In Tennessee, it's just like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get with the winter time here, so last year, we actually left them in because we had invested a lot of time in the ground cover cloth, also in putting in our netting, all of that, so we said, you know what, we're gonna run the risk. We're gonna leave them in for a year. We mulched super heavy, and we were very blessed that most of them came back.

- How deep would you say that y'all buried them, and what material?

- So, we used hay that was cut here from the farm, and we went pretty deep. I would say we were probably at at least eight inches of mulch. If you've got the hay, you might as well use it.

- Right, right, right.

- And we used hay versus straw because hay puts nutrient back in, where straw just works as a bedding, so we used hay for the nutrient value of what we were covering.

- Now, could somebody at home use just standard tree leaves, and just do a thick bed of that?

- If you are lucky enough to have leaves in your yard, compared to, also, a wonderful, sunny spot, leaf mulch is fantastic to use. This year, we're gonna dig. We're gonna dig because we know that, for every one that I dig, I can probably get six or so new plants out of. It will also help us rotate this area of the soil. That helps with disease prevention as well. We'll come back in, we'll give this a nice spring cover crop, probably, of a buckwheat or something like that to refix the nitrogen, and move the dahlia bed up to where you see some of those beautiful Mexican sunflowers, and the celosia, and that sort of thing up there, so that will be dahlias next year.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, wonderful. And we're gonna talk about storing.

- So, we like to wait until the first hard frost. Everything in the field will turn black. It's pretty weird. So then we want to wait two weeks before we start to dig, so those two weeks kinda give us some time to take down our netting, take down our t-posts, and then we start to label. We want to label every hole so that we know what we're storing, and so that we know what we're gonna be planting next year, so that gives us time to do that. Then we cut them down real low, and then, about two weeks after frost, we're gonna come in here, everybody, with a trowel, and we're gonna come right in here, loosen it up. Sometimes, a digging fork works even better, but this is here, what it looks like there, yep.

- [Phillipe] Nice little tubers coming off there.

- Yeah, and so we basically create a table with maybe a wire top on it, like wire netting, and we just spray them all. We want to get as much dirt off as possible without damaging the tubers, and we like to do this on a really dry, sunny day and we try to do it early in the morning so that it gives the dahlia tuber the whole day to kinda dry out in the sun, because we don't want to store them wet because, then, they'll just mold and mildew over the winter.

- Right, right, and this is actually not a box of cabbage.

- Correct.

- This is a storage box for y'all.

- That is a recycled box from our vegetable crew, and we go around and collect sawdust from some local furniture-makers that we know.

- So that's the biggest thing, is this, any additional moisture, I guess, you don't want on here, it kind of sops out into there.

- Exactly, exactly, and you could use perlite or vermiculite, but that's a pretty expensive material, so we use some free sawdust from the community.

- Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. Of course, you store them in a frost-free area. About generally what range of temperature would you store them in?

- We keep them in our cooler because we have one, and we put, I think, about 50 to 55 degrees.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so not too cool, but not too warm, just right in there.

- Yeah, yeah. You definitely don't want them to freeze, but you don't want them to be warm enough to encourage mold.

- Yeah, yeah. So maybe a garage.

- Yeah, garage is fine, especially if it's in this extra insulation here. Garage is fine, or if people still have a basement or a cellar.

- Right, a basement cellar, yeah.

- Those are good places, but a garage would be just fine, and I like to check on them throughout the winter. You should be able to tell, if you look in there and they're just looking very shriveled, then you know that they're kinda drying out, and you might want to bring them out on a sunny day and spray them down again, and then let them rehydrate, and then let them dry again, and then put them back in there in their boxes.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, well, that's great. So then, about what time in the season are we starting to really move them out, and then start potting them up, or replanting?

- So, they are good to go after the last frost, which, in our area, is April 15th, so I start getting the beds ready as soon as I can in March or early April so that, on that last frost date, April 15th, we're good to plant them out. I know a lot of people will pot them up before they plant them in their final bed, and so I think you can start doing that around March if you are able to kind of move those into a safe place if a frost is gonna come, but you just don't want them to freeze or frost, so that's the main thing.

- So, in the ground, y'all plant them directly from the storage into the ground?

- Yep, so this year, because a lot of these are two- or three-year-old tubers, when we start to get them out in March or April, we'll start dividing them. So, this is a small one, so it's not the best example, but some of these, you'll pull out, and there's just--

- [Phillipe] Huge, yeah.

- [Laura] Huge tubers, and from one plant, you could make probably eight new plants, so we like to divide right before we plant. In the fall, you're less likely to see these eyes, but in the spring, you'll see, they'll start naturally forming, even in the box, in storage, so it helps, you look for an eye, and then you know you can divide that section right there, so yeah, that really helps.

- For a medium amount of work, you know, as far as plants go, and you get this mass amount of flowers, everybody should be growing dahlias.

- Absolutely, yeah, and they come in all different shapes, and colors, and sizes, and varieties.

- Right, thousands, probably.

- [Laura] Yeah, and I mean, as soon as September hits, we start getting inquiries from our florists.

- [Phillipe] Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.

- [Laura] They just are so versatile, and come in so many of those colors that everybody wants, so they're a really good crop for us.

- [Phillipe] Well, thank you so much for sharing all this wonderful information with us.

- [Laura] Absolutely.

- The Land Trust for Tennessee has this amazing property that they love to share with everyone, including kids. It's out at Glen Leven Farm in Nashville, and I'm here with Jack Duffus to talk about what you do in the children's garden.

- We are here at the educational garden. We love getting to get people outside, learning about the plants, and how we grow our produce here. We love letting them get to touch seeds, and just feel how small they are to start, and then we get to get them out here, they can look at the herbs, and smell how the different plants have different smells.

- Well, let's take a look at some of the herbs you have in your wonderful garden.

- Got some wonderful mint right here that we let the kids get to smell, and wonderful to see their eyes light up when they get that rush of the mint into their face. We got some sage over here. We let them, once again, get to get down, smell. We ask them questions about, what's the differences between each of these plants? Do you smell something different in this one versus another one? And also, feeling. We're really trying to let the kids express the different types of things that they're feeling. Is it smoother, is it rough? So we just kinda work our way through the herb garden, letting them pick at different things. Over here, we have some rosemary. Once again, get to get down, smell it. This one has a real, real delicious smell. We got thyme, basil, and then we get down here to this lemon balm. Once again, rush of that lemon into their nose, and they really get to experience it. It's wonderful.

- Well, I love to take the lemon balm, and rub it on me when I'm in the garden, sorta keep the mosquitoes off, and you know, it just smells good. Okay, so you've got produce.

- We do.

- What are the kids learning about these plants?

- Well, they're learning, I mean, kids love corn, and a lot of them love okra too, and we let them go through. I let them try to find where the actual corn is coming from, so they get to kind of look around, feel them, grab ahold of it, squeeze it, see if they can feel the kernels in between the leaves. It's real fun to see them explore the plants.

- Well, and then okra. That must be a real surprise to them.

- [Jack] It is. A lot of kids love their okra. Typically, they like it fried, but it's a pretty delightful thing, and we got some real good production going on on these guys.

- [Julie] Fun, and they're so nice and fuzzy too.

- Mm-hm.

- Oh, now this looks like a treasure hunt over here.

- We do, we have some nice cucumbers hiding in here, starting to grow. We kinda let them peel away and see that. Cucumbers are always a pretty popular plant among the kids, so once again, it's fun letting them kinda discover as much as possible while they're walking through the garden.

- Absolutely. Let's see, so, what else do we have in the next couple of rows?

- Well, we got some edamame here that's pretty much ready to go. I need to harvest that pretty soon, and then we have a whole row of peppers, another half row of peppers, and then we get into our tomatoes, and these are some of my favorites, personally. I just love walking through here, finding a ripe tomato, you know, and go ahead, and eating that, calling that lunch. It's really fun, and the kids, getting to see the colors, they love seeing that bright red and oranges from the tomatoes. It's really fun.

- [Julie] Oh, it's like candy in the garden.

- [Jack] Exac--

- So, I like the way that you've even incorporated food growing on your fence.

- Yeah, exactly, so, before we enter the garden, we let the kids stop here right at this main gate, and we let them look around. What do you see growing around us? And, you know, it takes them a little second. They see the leaves, and I ask them, "What's on those?" And then they slowly start to see that they're covered in grapes, and their eyes light up, and we tell them about the grape vines, and how it started out as just two plants on either side of the gate, and how it just took over the entire fence, and really kind of gave it even more of a secluded look, and it's really cool to see how that-- Teaching them about how the vines use the structure of the fence to carry the weight of the grapes.

- Well, they're just gorgeous. Now, what variety are you growing here?

- These are just your standard muscadine grapes, and last year, the birds ate them all before we could harvest any of them, that are kinda right out there for them, but hopefully, we can get some this year.

- Well, and a great way to teach children that birds and animals enjoy the fruit as well.

- Exactly, and now we're coming to our pumpkin patch. We got some nice, bright orange pumpkins in here, and then, on the far side, we have our spaghetti squash. Love roasting a spaghetti squash, and then using the fork to turn it all up so it turns into a very fibrous-tasting, almost like you're eating actual spaghetti.

- Well, see, I knew spaghetti grew outside. And I'm sure the kids love that idea.

- They do, they certainly do, and once again, it's just a fun way to teach them, and once again, just like the cucumbers, they can kind of peel away the leaves so they can find the actual produce in there.

- What fun. Now, one of the other things I really like about your garden is that you're also incorporating a lot of other things here. You have some pollinator houses, and you have a beehive that they can look at.

- So, at Glen Leven Farm, we actually have a full bee sanctuary where we have four very productive hives right now. It's on the far side of the farm, but we bring over one of those hives into this garden during the spring and fall just so the kids can see it. We actually have a way you can open up the hive with them standing right there. We have an observational hive in the corner, and they get to see the honeycomb in there, and I point out the different parts of the bees. Once again, it's really important to teach them about the pollinators, and how important they are to that whole process.

- Well, I love the way that you're not just teaching gardening, you're teaching the whole cycle.

- Yeah, we really like to teach kids about the whole process, from soil, from seed to growth, to plant, produce, and then, what you can do with all the extra stuff that you don't need, like our composting system here. We have a three-bin system. We add material to this one, keep it stirring. You want good greens and browns. That's the woody part of the plant and the green part of the plant. Mix it in, and after a couple years, You get some really high-quality soil. We let the kids play around in it. You know, I'll stir it up, try to find some worms for them to see that those are the critters that are actually doing the hard work of turning it back into dirt.

- Oh, wow, this just sounds like so much fun. So, how do kids get involved in this?

- So, you can go to our website at landtrusttn.org. That gives you whole information about the whole organization, the nonprofit, but that's the best way to sign up for our field trips, and even if you just want to come out to the farm, we're not open to the public on a daily basis, but if you go to that website, you can find a way where we have you. There are special event where we have people out here, or you can sign up to come as a field trip.

- [Julie] Thanks, Jack.

- [Jack] Thank you guys so much.

- Beans Creek Winery in Manchester is in a modern building, right on a busy interstate, but when you walk into the building, you've got a charming way of old-fashioned methods for doing champagne with 100% Tennessee fruit. So I'm here with Josh Brown, who is the second generation winemaker here at Beans Creek. Josh, this is the most interesting process for making this sparkling wine, so walk us through it, because I know it's very time-consuming and labor-intensive.

- This is actually the second step of the process that we're seeing right now. First step actually takes place in the tanks upstairs through the initial fermentation. The process that we use for this champagne, but we can't call it that 'cause it doesn't come from France, is a secondary fermentation in the bottle where the CO2, carbon dioxide, is actually trapped in that bottle, and that's what gives you your bubbles from your sparkling wine. Then we do a process of bottle fermentation, to make it a sparkling strawberry wine.

- [Tammy] Okay, so tell us how you get the bubble in the bottle.

- Well, in the fermentation process, you have a sediment from the spent yeast cells, and in the bottle fermentation that we do with the strawberry, we have actually sediment in the bottom of that bottle, and that is the spent yeast cells from that secondary fermentation.

- [Tammy] Okay, I can see them floating around in there and settling at the bottom of the bottle.

- [Josh] Yes, now, that doesn't hurt anything, but you wouldn't want to drink that, would you?

- [Tammy] No, not really.

- [Josh] So we need to clean that up and make a nice clean, clear champagne, so the bottles that are laying down, that is actually starting to work the sediment down to where we can get it out of the bottle by leaving the wine in the bottle. What you're seeing here has been in the bottle for about two years already, because the process of that bottle fermentation is so long.

- [Tammy] Then the next step is for it to be placed into these quite interesting-looking racks.

- Well, these are called riddling racks, and what you see here, and this is a bottle, that, as you can see, the sediment down towards what would be the top of the bottle if it was upright, the sediment that is coming all the way down from the bottle and settling in that neck around that crown cap. So, in the riddling racks, these bottles are hand-turned two to three times a day to start working that sediment down into the neck of the bottle.

- Got it. So how long do they stay in this rack?

- About three weeks.

- [Tammy] Okay, so basically, what's happening in the bottle is, the yeast is eating the sugar, and it is causing this sediment that you've got to get out before it's ready for it to be consumed.

- [Josh] Correct.

- All of this long process is necessary for it to be nice, and clear, and bubbly at the end of the day.

- [Josh] Yes.

- [Tammy] Then, obviously, you gotta somehow get all of that off while the bottle is upside down. How does that happen?

- [Josh] Cold. So, these are the bottles that have come out of the riddling rack, and this is a freezer that we've got a bronze solution in to freeze that sediment plug to be able to get it out, and have clean, clear sparkling wine.

- Okay, so again, it stays upside down through this whole process, and when you pull this out, then you should have the frozen plug, correct?

- Correct, yes. So, we've got that frozen plug. You can see that ice right in here.

- [Tammy] Yeah.

- So now, we gotta get that out. Again, these bottles are under about 90 pounds of pressure from that fermentation in that bottle, so, to get that out, all we do is come over here. We'll rinse a little bit of that off the neck, and then we just pop this cap off. Let's make sure we get all that sediment out of it. We'll put a little temporary plug on this bottle. So, from here, this is basically a dry sparkling wine, so we do sweeten this up a little bit to about the sweetness of what the berries come in from the farm.

- Got it.

- So I have to add a little bit of a simple sugar solution to that, but first, before I add my sugar, I have to take a little bit out of each bottle to make sure it doesn't overflow.

- [Tammy] Got it.

- To add our simple sugar solution, we have our high-tech farmer's pipette, is what my dad used to call it. Just a little syringe that we inject this simple sugar solution into, and you want to do it nice and slow so it doesn't really interrupt the champagne, or the sparkling wine, I keep calling it champagne. So we let it sit there for just a minute. Now, I do want to add a little bit more back to that to make sure that the bottle is full.

- Will that come from this?

- Yeah, this bottle, I use for overfill, and then, if I have poured more out of a bottle than I put sugar in, I'll just add some back to it.

- Got it.

- [Josh] So we just want to get that. Everything is kinda slow with the champagne process 'cause you can see, it kinda agitates it there if you want to do it.

- Yes, it does.

- So, what we've gotta do now is, we have to put the actual plug, or champagne cork, in it, and then we put a wire hood over it.

- [Tammy] Okay, show me how you do that.

- All right, so, again, it's more hands-on. We do use just a synthetic cork, champagne cork. It's brute strength going in with it. So, we take that temporary cap off. Then we have to give it a little love tap to make sure that that is seated in there well so it doesn't come out, and again, it's under pressure. I don't ever take my thumb off of this because the pressure could blow that cap back out.

- Got it.

- It has happened. So the wire goes on, and then, to seat it, we get five turns, which gives it about five and a half rotations. Five won't hold it, six will break that wire, so now, we have a finished bottle of sparkling strawberry wine.

- And it's all been done by hand.

- All been done by hand.

- That's the best part.

- [Josh] Yes.

- [Tammy] Josh, here's our 100% ready-to-consume bottle. Tell us about the uniqueness of this product.

- [Josh] Well, as far as I know, we're the only one in the state of Tennessee that are doing a sparkling strawberry wine.

- That's great. I think we need to taste it.

- Well, let's go with it.

- Is there a trick to opening?

- Well, there is a little bit because, as you saw when I did the bottle, I give it a little love tap, to that cork, to make sure it's seated in there, so sometimes, it takes a little bit of effort to get it out. But undo the foil, you gotta take the wire hood off, and again, I'm gonna keep my thumb on it just because I don't want it blowing. Again, with safety, any time you're doing a champagne or sparkling wine, you never want to point the cork at anyone, so it's either up, or away.

- And twist. Oh, sweet.

- You got that pop.

- [Tammy] Beautiful.

- [Josh] So, as you see, in the glass there, those bubbles, they're very small, tiny bubbles, and they're going, and they're going, and they're going. That is a tell-tale sign that that sparkling wine is done. This true bottle-fermented, and that's what the secondary fermentation in that bottle.

- So, if you see larger bubbles that are kind of exploding like a carbonated beverage?

- That's a sign of a artificially carbonated sparkling wine that basically, they add CO2 as it's being bottled.

- Got it, so we want these tiny bubbles in there.

- Yes.

- Absolutely. Well, Josh, thank you for this wonderful tour, and showing us how this is done, and then I just have to say, let's just toast to local.

- [Lauren] 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.