Episode 2822

- Hi, I'm Tammy Algood. There's no question there's been a huge surge in people gardening of late, both as a hobby and as a way to be a little more self-sustaining by growing food. But you don't have to have a big outdoor space in order to garden. You can grow things indoors or in containers on your balcony or patio.

- That's right, Tammy. Hi, I'm Troy Martin. In this very special episode of Volunteer Gardener, we're going to help you no matter your gardening capacity, maximize your investment in time and money. We'll discuss the fundamentals of successful gardening, new and improved plant varieties and will help you maximize everything that you get out of your garden, join us.

- I've got a recipe for plant success, it's the soil mix. A good soil recipe is really not expensive. When you buy prepackaged potting soil, it can be really pricey, especially if you've got a lot of pots, containers or beds. So we're gonna make our own. So what we're gonna start with is topsoil. So this is one five gallon bucket of topsoil. Topsoil is great to use because one, it's cheap and two, it's already been sterilized to kill all the weeds, seeds and diseases in it. So we've got a bucket of top soil. We're going to add a half a bucket of peat moss to this. So what is peat moss? Peat moss is basically decaying moss. So, it's wonderful for holding in moisture, you can see how moist it is. So we're gonna mix that in. That's half a bucket to the bucket of topsoil. So peat moss is great for retaining moisture and keeping your flower pots from not drying out. To that, we're gonna add some food. So we've got half a bucket or half a part of composted cow manure, so make sure it's composted cow manure. So it's already been through a heat cycle. And obviously what this is going to do is feed your potting mix. So this is the feeding of it. Notice I'm wearing gloves and long sleeves because your hands are the best shovels that you've got. And our last ingredient is a fourth of a part of sand. Now, what's the purpose of sand? The good thing about it is that it keeps the soil loose and so you're not gonna have compaction in your soil or in your pot or your bed. So, all we're gonna do is just keep mixing this up until it's nice and mixed and then we're gonna transfer this to a bed or pot. The good thing about this is it's got a long shelf life so you can mix a whole bunch of it up and keep it through the whole season. And also it's really inexpensive. So I've taken that soil recipe that I just mixed up and I've incorporated it into this bed. Now one of the things you might wanna think about is double digging. So what that means is, dig into the soil that's already there, mix that soil, mix into it and then what that does is, it makes sure that your plants stay good and hydrated. It pulls the moisture that's already in the soil into the mix. That's especially important if you're not using irrigation like I've got. One of the things you wanna make sure and do is orient your bed appropriately. This runs North and South, that's very important because you can get maximum sun exposure that way. The other thing you want to consider is how wide your bed is. This is three feet by 25 feet, the length isn't so much as important as the width. So three feet is perfect, this way you don't have to step into the bed and compact that soil in order to work it. You can stay on the perimeter of it and work both sides of it perfectly. Now, the good thing about this is that, this is long lasting, so one of the things that you can do is you garden year round. Once spring, summer vegetables are finished, you just till up the soil, put new plants in there and go again with some fall cold crops. It's easy to rotate things out and you especially need to rotate things out when you're in a raised bed like this. So I'm not gonna plant the same things in this bed this year that I planted last year. Rotating those out eliminates disease pressure that might be already in the soil. So by taking these steps, what you're doing is, you're ensuring that your garden is set up for success.

- Thanks Tammy. You know one group of plants that is particularly well suited to raised bed gardening are herbs. Tammy and I both love to cook and you can have fresh herbs year round in these raised beds, their drought tolerance, they're accustomed to growing in shallow soil and you just have bundles of fresh herbs all summer long to cook with. Now Sheri Gramer is gonna tell us all about drying and preserving herbs to use them year round.

- We're an Ashland city today at No.9 Farms where we're gonna learn about preserving and drying herbs. We're here today with Stephanie Oaks, and she's got a beautiful herb garden and tell us what we're gonna do here. We're in front of the lemon balm patch.

- Yes we are. Right now it's July and at this time of year, perennial herbs are wanting to flower and they're also sending up new growth from the ground, and so we want to go ahead and harvest all of this top growth so that we can have another full few months of lemon balm again.

- So show me how you go about trimming this for preserving and drying.

- Okay, so if I was just coming along to cut some of this lemon balm, let's say I wanted to make a tea or I wanted to cook with this, I would just cut here by where there's some new growth coming back up. But since this is July and I'm wanting our new growth to come up from the ground for this perennial herbs, I'm going to actually cut it all the way back.

- So you're gonna give it a good haircut.

- We are gonna give it a good haircut

- Going almost to the ground I see.

- This is gonna be true on your thyme, your oregano, your sage. You're going to see that there's little babies coming up from the ground already.

- Stephanie, now let's go clip some basil. This has all been picked clean, the front half here of flowers.

- So we want this plant to, want to create leaves. That is the part of the basil that we want to eat. We do have restaurants that we grow for that want the blossoms and we'll pick certain plants to allow those blossoms to form. But we want the plant to not go into seed mode. So here you can see this plant right here is wanting to form seeds and live on for future generations. But we have many months of basil production to go. So if we look here at this plant here, and I was going to be cutting this back. I would pinch it off right here where we have two new heads forming.

- So you'd, right at the branch?

- Mmhh. And we don't wanna leave a lot of stem because that just is an opportunity for disease or something like that to form. So as close down as we can and then now these two are gonna fill out.

- Great, you said you wanted to snip the dill and if we didn't snip it now and let it go to seed, you could use that as well, correct?

- Yes, so the dill seed we do leave some. So we have a row of dill in the main garden that we are allowing to go to seed and we will use that both as culinary herbs. And then we'll also be using that to seed our dill for the next season. We are going to use this for pickles, so I don't want to be done with dill flowers yet. I want them to still keep going for as long as we can. So I'm gonna cut above where this new one is wanting to start, so I'm gonna cut this right here.

- Kind of like roses.

- Yeah, mmhh. So if I'm doing a coat of pickles, this is probably a good amount.

- All right, great. Well let's go head over to the table and you can share your preserving techniques.

- Okay.

- Tell us the about drying and preserving, what are the do's and the don'ts?

- So when we're harvesting herbs, we want to do it first of all in the morning and in the morning is when the plants are full, their oils are full and you're going to get the most nutrients in them. So in the morning before the heat of the day has happened. The other thing you want to do is get them drying in their spot as soon as possible. And for different herbs, that's gonna be a different method. So typically for a lot of herbs you can just tie them up and hang them upside down in a room where there's not direct sunlight and some good air circulation. We dry mostly in our dehydrator because we're selling a lot of our dried herbs. We want them to be pretty in vibrant in color. And so a lot of our herbs and we ended up drying into hydrator. And then too, there are some herbs on the floor in our house that are on some different grades and they're all over the place. So I try not to take over the whole house with herbs this time of year, which is very impossible.

- All right, let's start here.

- Okay, so these dill flowers and also these grape leaves I'm actually gonna use to preserve my cucumbers and make pickles with. So this is just gonna be used in a vinegar based, like refrigerator pickle. You can also do it in canning and the grape leaves will actually help the cucumbers not get so soft. So that is how I'm gonna use these. If I was going to dry dill, I'd probably do it a different stage than the flower heads where it's just that nice fronds. So we typically, leave them on the stem. So this is tulsi basil, which is a culinary and medicinal herbs The thing we use these for the most is drying for tea. Tulsi is an herb that you can just tie up, the drying racks that you use in the laundry room, you can use that. And this will actually dry really beautifully. Now that is not true of all basils, so our sweet basil that we just picked, this here, this is gonna turn black.

- I was gonna say black.

- So we leave this out. So there's two ways to dry this. One is in the hydrator, another thing you can do that some people do is put it in ice cube tray with some water and then they are taking that out into frosting it or adding it to their soup or whatever. And one of the ways that we preserve it, is making a pesto and that pesto can again be frozen in ice cube tray or something like that and it's a perfect amount to add to things. If I wanted to try this though, I would either do it in the dehydrator, and it will keep its color. It won't be this bright green but it will not be black. The other thing you can do is take tool, the fabric like that you use for a veil and wrap the basil leaves in that. If you're going to do it that way, you want to actually remove the leaves from the stem and wrap that in there and put it in the refrigerator and it's so drying in there and it's a cool enough temperature that it kind of mimics what the dehydrator is doing but at a cold temperature instead of a hot temperature.

- So I see to your right there, you've got a jar of sage?

- Yes.

- Tell us the ins and outs of preserving after you've dried something then put it in the jar, what do they have to watch out for?

- So this does not go in the jar for a while. So this is an airtight environment and if there's any moisture in here you're just gonna have a jar full of molds. Which would be,

- Sad.

- Really sad because you've worked so hard to get to this stage. So once you have dried your herbs, we typically will put them in like a paper bag so that, it's protected from the air but still has a chance for that last bit of moisture to dry out. So it is breathing, but not losing really, it's oils, it's not exposed to sunlight anymore. So this is a clear glass. If I was storing it in a place where, there was sunlight coming in, it would either need to be in a closed cabinet or in darker glass.

- And it's just because the sun will create condensation in the jar and it'll be back to square one with moisture?

- And the other thing is, it degrades the herbs that sunlight integrates the herbs.

- Well, thank you Stephanie. We've learned a lot and I think all of our viewers can go pick some herbs and try some of these drying techniques and preserving techniques. Thank you very much for sharing No. 9 herb farms with us.

- Thank you, thanks for having me.

- One of the things I always like to deadhead, chops and by deadheading it's just cutting off the bloom of the plant. You don't want the bloom to stay on there. The reason for that is because I really don't want to have little baby charts coming up all over the place. So this is what happens when you leave the seed pod. You'll get little babies coming up in places that you don't want them to be. Now let's think about fruit production. We're lucky to have so many options of fruit trees and shrubs that do well in our Tennessee climate. Here's Julie Berbiglia and Matt kerske with some specific varieties that are proven performers.

- Well, a lot of us urban farmers would like to have some fruit to go with everything else and also to fit into our landscaping. And Matt kerske of gardens of Babylon has some great suggestions for us.

- Absolutely, starting with some of the easier Berry plants to keep in mind. Two of my favorite, as far as easy berries, blackberries and raspberries, you got a Blackberry here and a raspberry right here. Blackberries are just great, have at least six to eight hours worth of sun in your yard, full sun is great too. Leave some space for them, these guys can up easily to the six to seven foot range. With blackberries and raspberries, biggest things to consider. it's just working good organic matter into the soil, leaf mulch, compost manure, that kind of thing. They're not so picky in the world of pH. You don't have to worry about raising and lowering your pH with blackberries and raspberries. But just a good old organic matter, last little note on blackberries, there's a lot of, everybody's so used to big thorny Blackberry brambles where they're making a lot of blackberries nowadays that are all thornless, like this guy here, triple crown, apache, chester. These are all thornless varieties of blackberries, much easier on the hands when you're picking them. Going on over to the world of blueberries, kind of the same thing. You want to stick with, varieties that are in the rabbit eye. Southern rabbit eye great for the Southeast heat and humidity. They do really well. Get up four, six feet, no problem. Good organic matter, just like the blackberries and raspberries. But you do want to be lowering your pH, when you do blueberries either with things like, using straight peat moss, using a lot of coffee grounds. A lot of farmers I talked to in the area are just big proponents of just using sulfur, pelletized sulfur per directions cause you can overdo it with this stuff around your blueberry plants. Blueberries, just like a good pH between 4.5 and 5.5 in the soil and then they're off to a great start.

- All right, well so we've got some great plants with some pretty flowers on them at different times of the year especially in the spring. We've got some nice privacy fence possibilities, some bushes. And then one of my favorite bushes.

- The old fig tree or fig bush, I guess, either way. You can grow figs in Nashville, Tennessee. The three varieties that I try to suggest to customers like this one, this is a Chicago Hardy, There's also a Brown Turkey and there's also a Celeste fig. Those are all rated to about, zone seven, and best time to get figs in the ground, early springtime, early summer. You want these things to grow really hard, very fast growers throughout the summertime and get their roots really well established for the coming winter, figs are great to be planted up along South wall, Southeast, Southwest facing walls. They like little bit of protection in the heat radiating off of them in the wintertime or if you've got, if you just have to do a fig out in the middle of the open area, just take some livestock fencing or some chicken fencing, make a big cage around it. prune them back about 30 to 40%. They love to be pruned and then just dump all your leaf grass clippings, wheat, straw, whatever you got to keep those stems warm. You don't have to do that for the first couple of years until they build up a good tolerance to the cold winter.

- Fantastic, and now for that trellis that we really wanna put up in the middle of the yard.

- That's right, that's right.

- We have grapes, you have an easy one? I have a couple varieties that I really like to stick with 'cause again we're in the Southeast. we're not in the Northeast, we're not in Maine or New Hampshire for a lot of the Concord growers. We've got the Champanel grape, we got black Spanish grapes, and we also have muscadine. This right here is a champanel grape the heat and humidity does not both it whatsoever. You can already see we already got grapes forming on this particular one and again, like you said, with trellis is four to six feet tall or you can run them sideways, horizontal lines, for the grapes to grow on. Kind of like you've seen a lot of vineyard styles, but great for offenses and trellises they'll just take over. Raspberries I'd say in the only other group you might wanna consider doing some posts with some, two types of horizontal, going across, just to kind of help it growing up, that it has something to attach to. And then as far as pruning on both of these guys, keeping it real easy with blueberries and blackberries prune these down to around 10 to 12 inches every winter time. All these nice berries that are producing, those are all getting produced off of new wood. So don't worry about, there's not really too selective with blackberries and raspberries. Just kind of cut them back. Some raspberries like heritage, you can cut back even more in later summer and get a second crop off of them. They're known as an Everbearing Raspberry plant. Blueberries, for as pruning these guys, you don't wanna cut these back every winter time. You just wanna do more selective pruning of big long canes. Blueberries will fruit off of second and third year wood. So whatever you trim off the side shoots, next year we'll have the berries on them.

- All right, well this year, why don't you consider landscaping with fruits? You'll enjoy the fruits of your labor for many years to come.

- Albert Einstein once said, the only source of knowledge is experience, to that end some of my volunteer gardener co-hosts are going to share some of their golden rules of garden

- I think you can tell that all of us have learned gardening lessons from garden failures. My golden rule, take care of those pesky weeds that rob your intended plants of valuable water and nutrients. And I like to do it first thing in the morning when the weeds seem a little bit easier to pull up. Now when it comes to being happy with the plant that you select, my co-host Troy Martin literally wrote the book on the subject. Here's Troy with "Plant this instead."

- A few years ago, I did write a book called "Plant this instead." Some of you may have that in your gardening library and if you do, I really appreciate that. The thing about "Plant this instead " though is that gardening is always changing and that includes the varieties of plants that are available on the market every. Year the breeders come out with new, better improved varieties of things, more unusual plants for those of you who are collectors. So I thought we'd take a quick look at a few things that have come on the market since the book was written. And we'll start back here with some shade garden plants. This is a beautiful new Solomon seal. This particular variety is called Ruby slippers, these gorgeous red stems. A lot of you may be familiar with the variegated Solomon seal with the green and white leaves. This one obviously is solid green, but those beautiful red stems that stay that way throughout the season. There are some other forms of this red stemmed also on the market. So if you can't find Ruby slippers, you will find some other ones available. In the world of heuchera or coral bells, always improvements coming out in these, especially for Southern gardens. When you're looking at coral bells, if you'll find the ones that have the fuzzy leaves, Fuzzy on the back, fuzzy on the stems, those have the genetics of some of our native eucharis in them and are much longer lasting in our heat and humidity. This one is called fire alarm. Look at that gorgeous color as it leaks out in the spring. And a lot of these are semi evergreen also, so they'll give you some winter color. This one is not as new, but it is a tried and true performer. This one is called Lime Rickey and has proven itself over the past decade or so here for our Southern gardens. Again, heat and humidity tolerant, this beautiful lime green color throughout the season, it doesn't green up in the summertime. It holds that nice chartreuse color really well. In the world of hostas, always new hostas coming on the market. And about four or five years ago, one of the newest introductions was one called Empress Wu. And Empress Wu grows four feet tall and seven feet across. Even here in the South, it will form a sizeable clump. This is a new one called wu-la-la with a gold variegated edge around that green leaf, same size. So if you have a large shade garden and need to fill a big spot with a very impactful plant, that would be a great one. Reach in here and find this epimedium. Epmediums came to the forefront about 15 years ago in perennial gardening, especially for shade. There were very few on the market at that time and they have just exploded. This one has just finished flowering. It had little spires of pale yellow flowers, but look at this foliage, almost spiny, terrific texture in the garden and this gorgeous coppery bronze, new growth. Again, semi-evergreen in our climate, and in a mild winter like this past one, completely evergreen. Now we're going to jump to some sun plants here and there have been great improvements in salvias. Many of you have probably grown black and blue for many many years. It's been on the market for a long time. This is a newer one called black and bloom. This one flowers from the time you buy it in the garden center until a hard freeze late in the fall. It doesn't stop all summer long. The spires are a little more compact, the flowers are closer together. It gives you a bigger show in the garden, also a favorite favorite hummingbird plant. A lot of us think that red is what attracts hummingbirds, but it actually is the flower shape. Anything with a tubular flower will attract a hummingbird. Also in salvia is a true perennial salvia. This is the latest improvement on the old fashioned may night. This one is called blue marvel, flowers are about twice the size, a little bit more of a cobalt blue rather than that deep indigo blue of may night, but a terrific perennial. You will have to deadhead this through the summer, but as long as you keep it dead headed, it will flower for you all summer long. And one more salvia back here in the back, this one called radio red. This is a hybrid between some of our sages that are native to the Southwestern United States. It used to be that these only flowered in the fall. They would grow and grow and grow through the long days of summer and as the day shortened they would begin to bloom. Now we have varieties like radio red that will flower right through the season. A quick mention about impatiens. we've had some disease problems in impatiens the last few years. These new SunPatiens are disease resistant, they will grow in a half day to a full day of sun. And there are both compact and tall varieties. Really fun new annual, this is a low growing annual sunflower that will grow about three feet across 12 inches tall and flower from the time you plant it until fall. Quick mention about something in the world of plant breeding. If we look at these two plants very quickly, a million bells and the old fashioned petunia, the hybrid between these two plants are these new ones called Petchoas. And you can see that the flowers are more the size of a petunia but in the number of the million bells. And these are one of the greatest innovations in plant breeding in the last few years. Coleus are always old fashioned favorites, new and improved varieties with gorgeous leaf colors and forms and less flowers, so less pinching. And finally, as we wrap up this segment on new and improved plants, I can't think of anything that is more new and improved. Certainly not new, but more improved than the Begonia world. And 10 years ago probably we came out with dragon wing begonia, which changed the way we can use begonias in the landscape. And in the last couple of years, this new one called Canary wings has come out with bright golden yellow foliage and these beautiful red blossoms. This plant needs morning sun and a little bit of shade in the afternoon in our hot climate. But if you're an avid gardener, like all of us on Volunteer Gardener are there is always something new, beautiful and improved for your garden.

- Oh Troy, I have to have some of those new salvias and new and improved black and blue, can't imagine that. It just goes to show that the right plant in the right place equals the right look and the right performance in your garden. And another important element for that plant to reach its potential is the soil. We know in Tennessee that most of us have to amend our soil in order to achieve some sort of gardening success here to help us along is Annette Shrader and another gardening expert who's going to show a simple methods for building rich soil.

- Let's meet a gardener who utilizes several methods to build soil. All pretty simple and all using natural resources that most overlook. This is just not ordinary logs, is it?

- Well yes it's just a Cedar logs and things I've got to enframe this, it's called a Hügelkultur bed and I built this about close to five years ago. So this bed is about a little better than three foot deep. Everything even though the logs looked like 18 or 20 inches deep, the ground gonna--

- It goes down--

- Yeah, 'cause when you do lasagna garden or Hügelkultur garden after a couple of years to the ground--

- Settles.

- The ground loosens you go on down where it was hard ground and it just keeps getting better and better. And this soil here, is just like that.

- Am envious.

- I put aged logs in here and then cover it with soil and compost and those logs holds moisture. So these bed never gets watered except when you're at logs waters it.

- That's exactly right. It's just a replica of our trees in our forest, how they fall on the ground and--

- Exactly the garden try to grow things just like nature provide it. I grow as organic as I can. I don't use any commercial fertilizers, no chemicals.

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

- I've got a lab--

- That's exactly right. And we talk about lasagna, we think that's food, but it is, this lasagna is food for plants.

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

- Okay, now you've got all this richness going in here, how are you feeding the soil?

- I don't use any chemicals, I use no commercial fertilize. I do use blood meal, I use bone meal and cotton seed meal.

- I know all about it.

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

- And then you do some trenching?

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

- And nothing like that type the worm castings for fertilizer.

- I'll show you that, in a little bit.

- Okay.

- I will be worm farming too.

- Okay, and I know why you're going to have successful carrots and potatoes because you've got nice loose soil. And this right here, it looks to me like sweet potatoes,

- They are just sweet potatoes and they seem to be ready to dig here pretty soon. The wood chips I get from the power companies when they trim the trees and everything and I use a lot of them. That's what I put in, in the pathways. I don't want to use it on the beds because they're still green and they'll pull nitrogen out. So I use it all on my pathways all here and all in back of my permaculture garden back here. And then, in a year's time I can take this and put it up on the beds because there'll be--

- And you've got an advantage here. A lot of people when it rains, they can't get in their garden. So you are a very frugal gardener.

- I try to be.

- You're taking everything from nature, putting it back into your garden and it's feeding it.

- I've got two kinds of kale, got a spinach right here coming up, mustard greens. And mustard greens, I grow, we like mustard greens, we mix them in with a term grain and we cook them a lot of times. And but mustard greens is a real good green crop. All this, I grow so many greens and beans. 'cause it's good for your soil, it feeds the soil and cause it draws nitrogen out. And this here's a green crop. Your beans will have nitrogen, puts in the salt.

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

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

- Is this lasagna or do you have--

- It's all lasagna bed with logs underneath it and this bay, it'll probably be about 30 inches deep going down.

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

- You go right ahead.

- I just don't want to see, cause they say--

- It's like chocolate cake.

- That's exactly right. When you've got your soil right. All you gotta do is just take your hand and dig a hole. That's just black dirt, black , that is just beautiful. Tom before me, what is this?

- This is my worm farming.

- How many worms could you get this far?

- Oh, you can get probably a thousand or more. And it's probably that many in there. This they make warm poop.

- Yeah, I know worm castings.

- Worm casting and it's just full of young worms and hard kids, sometimes they'll go all the way to the bottom and you see them right in here.

- So let me ask you this, after you can see them, do you take them and put them in your garden or do you leave them in here to make the castings?

- No, I just leave them in here to make casting this just how you use, of course, I've got a lot of worms in the garden that's making her own caster. But I just liked doing this. I'll use this when I plant my tomatoes, I'll take a handful put them in the tomato holes.

- And so this just kind of decompose doesn't it?

- Yeah, they live there, they load old newspapers and stuff like that. So well now I use coffee grounds in it and and when I do my juicing and in the mornings or my vegetables, I'll take the remains from that and it goes right in that.

- Well, let me ask you this, is this something that you made up because it's riddled with holes and it's just a container for storage.

- I bought that at Walmart.

- And you just put all those holes in there.

- Yes, little holes in there, one eighth inch.

- So you put those same holes around the edge.

- I out holes on the edge, about an inch or so below lid. These aren't anything, I put quarter inch holes in the bottom.

- And then like today it's raining.

- I put this over, but they can breathe in this, the worms got to breathe so they can breathe in that. And they like dark. So, you wanna get a dark--

- Do you just move it out here all the time or did you just move it out?

- Well, a lot of time I'll move it in when it gets a little warmer, like a 65 60 to 70 degree weather, they told me that.

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

- Thank you.

- And thank you for your knowledge.

- Thank you.

- And many times when we purchase plants at the nursery, they have been growing in containers for quite some time. so a lot of times you'll find that they're fairly route bound when you take them out of their pots. You can see that the roots have grown all over the bottom of this. We do have nice healthy roots coming down the sides of the root ball. But before we stick it in the ground, I always want to break this up just a little bit. This one's breaking up pretty nicely. Sometimes they don't do that. You get a little more, you have to get a little more aggressive with them. Sometimes even use a tool, and cut through some of those roots. You don't wanna break a lot of them, but if you have to cut through a few, it's not going to hurt anything, they'll regrow. But what we're looking to do here is just tease those roots out so that when we fill in around the plant, they're more inclined to go right directly into the soil rather than just continuing growing around and around around the root ball. We'll just fill right in behind my soil. I use soil conditioner as mulch, it's clay based, but over many years of amending I've been able to make the texture pretty good. So some parts of the garden, I still use amendments in the hole when I dig and other parts, I don't have to use as much anymore and but anyway, that's all you're looking to do. But just tease those roots out good and loosen them up in the root ball so that again, they'll go right out into the soil rather than growing around and around that root ball and potentially strangling themselves. It's relatively easy for a home gardener to grow many fruit crops in their own yard, apples, plums, pears, blueberries, many kinds of things. Tammy Algood is with an expert who can tell you just how to do it successfully.

- For bigger, better fruit. Sometimes you've got to plant a companion. Dave, talk to me about that. This is Dave Lockwood with UT extension. He's a fruit specialist. And Dave, I know that the companion planting is very popular, but I don't know what needs a companion and what doesn't. So talk to us about that.

- Yeah, for the most part, you should consider that all Apple trees, all pear trees, some sweet cherries, some plums, Muscadine grapes, rabbiteye blueberries need to have two or more varieties so that you get cross-pollination. If you have just one variety, the crop is going to be a lot smaller and much less, size and poor quality. So cross-pollination ensures that we're gonna have bigger fruit and more fruit. I need to--

- So instead of having one Apple tree, but it's better to have two different varieties of apples?.

- Yeah, a minimum of two. The more you have, the more variety you have, the more assured you are that you're gonna have pollination at the right time, so yes.

- Okay, Dave but what if you have one pear tree, one Apple tree one? It does that serve the same purpose?

- No, it doesn't. So it has to be similar types of fruits. So Apple and Apple, pear and pear, a sweet cherry and sweet cherry. We don't see any crossing, no.

- Okay, and then, so when you've got this a landscape plan, how close do those plantings need to be to each other for it to be even beneficial?

- The closer, the better. Normally I say within 50 feet, but like the closer they are, the more they are to get insects, to visit both of those and more different types of plants you have that may be in bloom at the same time. The more competition you have for the insects that do the pollination.

- And we're talking about, bees for pollination and wind you said affects that?

- Right, in most of our fruits, those were the showy blooms are insect pollinated and honeybees are by far the biggest one that we have. Bumblebees will work other types of bees, some flies will work, but honeybees are the primary, insect that transmits pollen or transfers pollens among different fruit crops.

- So, Dave in fruit crops, when you're looking at different varieties, what do you need to look for in selecting that? Because some grow better in different areas than other, I know about the zone, but really what do you need to look for Tennessee?

- If you, are looking for the best fruits for your area, first contact the extension office, they're going to have, they see a lot of different people in that area and they may have encountered the same issues. And of course they have access to the information that we generate as well as other universities. A reputable nursery will have that information in their catalogs. So that if you're growing a certain type of apple, it's important that you have an apple tree that they will bloom at the same time, not all of them do. And then also that apple tree has to have viable pollen. There are a few sterile pollen varieties out there that won't work. So the catalogs, the extension service, and of course people, your neighbors. If they're successfully growing fruit, then we know that what they're doing is going to be successful and we can copy their practices. Generally if the plant grows, if it blooms and there's no fruit or not much food, I look at it and say pollination problem and you need to have another variety or two in the vicinity.

- Great, thank you, Dave Lockwood. I appreciate that and so do our homeowners who are maybe yearning for fruit and maybe haven't been successful in that area, thanks so much.

- You very welcome.

- Another fruit that is best with a companion are blueberries. Blueberries come in two forms, low Bush and high Bush. Literally meaning shorter plants and taller plants depending on the species and are wide variety forms on the market for early fruit set, late fruit set, you can have blueberries all summer long. We've enjoyed bringing Volunteer Gardener to you for nearly 30 years. So much in gardening has changed in that time and the changes are one of the things that I love the most. Tammy, it's been a pleasure co-hosting with you.

- Oh, Troy, it's always a pleasure. And from all of us here at Volunteer Gardener, we wish you much success with your gardening efforts. Gardening gets you out in the sunshine, gets you moving around, and studies show that it even enhances your mood. So from all of us, happy gardening, For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects. Visit our website@volunteergardner.org or on YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener channel and like us on Facebook.