Episode 2902

- [Narrator] A lot of gardeners enjoy hybridizing daylilies. On this episode, Phillipe Chadwick introduces us to a hybridizer of these cool carnivorous plants. Sheri Gramer strolls through a child-pleasing woodland bunny trail, fashioned by a Springfield gardener, and Jeff Poppen explains how organic backyard farmers are good for the environment. Join us. This plant in the wild is said to regularly eat small vertebrate. Lizards and mice have been found digesting in their orchid-like traps.

- [Phillipe] So these pitcher plants are so fun and interesting. I bet kids just go wild over them.

- [Domonick] They love them. That's when I got into them.

- [Phillipe] Yeah?

- When I was like, 13.

- Very cool, very cool. So, we've got a really old-looking plant right here, I assume, because of its height.

- Yep.

- And when they get kind of taller, you can take cuttings of them, is that correct?

- Yes.

- And that's probably, is that the best way to propagate them if you're gonna do that?

- Yeah, it really is. You could see how viny this one is. And normally, when I do cuttings, I won't cut the vine until there's a base growth coming out of the bottom.

- Okay.

- And a lot of them will produce a base growth, so once they do get one, and it's tall like this, you can do cuttings, and when you do, you want to cut, start from the top, make sure you get the tip, and you probably wanna go down two nodes where the leaves touch. Clip, one, two, clip. And you'll end up with something like this. You wanna cut the leaves off about a third to reduce the water loss. You wanna dip it in some of this rooting powder, and then with your finger or a pencil, you just wanna put it down, press, and then once you got that going, you wanna slam some water on it. Make sure it's nice and moist, let it run through the bottom of the pot. And I would keep these super humid, probably cover them if you're inside, and in a few months, you should have roots and a growing plant from that.

- Yeah, wow. So, they are really slow to root, so don't pull it out and look at it.

- Just leave them, yep. The biggest thing now, once you do the cutting, is that you really wanna make sure the plant's holding all the moisture because it doesn't have roots to suck it up, so you really wanna keep it humid, and in a couple of months, you'll see it'll start to get a growth from the side, and start a whole new plant.

- [Phillipe] These pitchers, these are not the actual flowers, correct?

- They're not, nope. They're actually a modified leaf. The flowers are a little more basic looking, a lot more basic looking compared to the pitcher. We just started hybridizing, making a lot of our own stuff here, and really excited to see what we create. This is a male flower, and Nepenthes have either male or female flowers, so to pollinate them, you gon' have to make sure you have both in flower at the same time, which sometimes can be a little tricky.

- Wow, so this plant is always a male plant.

- It will always be a male plant, yes.

- Wow.

- There are rare cases where they can produce both, but I've never had that happen. It's super rare.

- Uh-huh, very cool. So, it looks like we've got some spent flowers, and then I guess the active pollen, this bright yellow?

- [Domonick] That's correct, yep. It'll almost look fuzzy on the end. Powdery, when it's ready.

- [Phillipe] So it's not always necessarily the brighter color?

- [Domonick] No.

- [Phillipe] Okay. I mean, do you have any to pollinate?

- [Domonick] Yeah, I'll show you guys.

- [Phillipe] So, female to pollinate?

- Everyone has their process. I honestly, I'm a little more easy-going about it. I just kind of pluck the flower off, and you'll see you've got the pollen there. And then, I am gonna come your way. This is a female that I'm pollinating, you could see they don't have any pollen on the end. And I cut my crosses off here with the little ties, and this plant I'm doing right here, so I just get the pollen, and I go from flower to flower, and I just dab the pollen on the ends.

- [Phillipe] Playing pollinator.

- Yes. Some people use a paintbrush, Q-tip. It's kinda whatever works. I like to just do it this way. There's a lot of pollen on the end of here. And yeah, I'll just go around. I'll do this actually, for a couple of days in a row to make sure it's super pollinated. And then, in a few months, these will swell up and I'll have some seeds.

- Very cool. So, on a mature plant, how often do they flower?

- [Domonick] Here, in the States, where we have those daylight changes, I notice a lot of the plants will bloom in the spring and fall, but they can bloom anytime.

- [Phillipe] I guess since they're tropical, they're not on a time clock, like our seasons are. They kind of bloom when they're ready to.

- [Domonick] Yep. Usually in the wild, they'll grow toward the canopy, and once they reached where it's brighter, that's when they'll send their flowers out.

- [Phillipe] So, we've got some, I guess fertilized flowers here?

- [Domonick] Yep. I fertilized these a few months ago. Takes about six months for them to fully mature and ripen.

- [Phillipe] Wow.

- So, I pollinated this with a really cool hybrid, and I'm just waiting for them to start to dry and crack open so I could collect the seed.

- And are they like a dust, is it like a really small seed?

- They look like little hairs with a dot in the middle. Very small, definitely you could just blow them in the air. Very small, yeah.

- I guess that's the concept in nature so they can, once they pop open, they can kind of-

- Blow in the wind.

- Move to a new location.

- As soon as they burst, I plant them immediately. The longer you have them sitting around, the weaker they get. So, I'll just get them and you could see here, the sphagnum, I'll just sprinkle them on top, moisten them in, and in anywhere from two to six months, you'll get germination, sometimes over a year, so they're definitely plants that require patience.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. Is this one of the seed heads that's kind of cracked open right here?

- Yeah, you can see the seed head there.

- A little brown-

- [Domonick] I'm not sure if you could see the seeds themselves. They're little slivers.

- [Phillipe] Right, right. But the little, this little guy, is a little cracked open flower.

- Yep.

- Or seed pod. Extremely small.

- If you can see all the little green dots in here. These were planted in March, so they're super little. They just look like little green dots.

- [Phillipe] Wow.

- [Domonick] But yeah, it takes a while compared to most plants from seed. After maybe a year and a half to two years, you'll get something that looks like what you're holding in your hand.

- [Phillipe] So, that's still only about an inch across, but it's already making pitchers, which is kinda fun.

- [Domonick] Yep. And after the two year mark, they really start to grow a lot faster. But just getting them from the initial seed stage, just takes a minute.

- Well, you've definitely got some of the most amazing plants that I've ever seen. You take really great care of them.

- Thank you.

- And that shows by how beautiful they are and prolific they are.

- Lots of love.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're really great. And if you're interested in Redleaf Exotics and growing some of these, you can check them out online or on Instagram or Facebook. Thanks.

- [Sheri] We are in for a treat, Charlotte. I am so happy to be able to visit the bunny trail and where nature and gardening meet your fantasy world and your love of Beatrix Potter and the books. Tell us a little bit of how this came to be.

- Well, I have two grandchildren, two granddaughters, and their names are Sadie and Salem, they're six and 12, and they live a couple of streets over. When the oldest one was about four, I just sort of decided utilize this little trail through the woods and I called it my bunny trail. This was full of nature back in here, you know the children, the neighborhood children, my children from my Sunday school classes are always welcome to come down the bunny trail, and I'll tell them some of the tales of Beatrix Potter, the most common one being Peter Rabbit, the Flopsy Bunnies, and Squirrel Nutkin, that naughty little squirrel-

- [Sheri] So, I noticed when we get in there, that the beds are really wide, and how you said you don't fight nature.

- [Charlotte] Right, I said in the wide areas, you have room for your shrubs and things to grow. There's so many Lenten roses back there that just love to reproduce, and in the spring, they're just full of flowers.

- [Sheri] There's some other wildflowers that are back there as well, right?

- [Charlotte] Right. There's probably a good hundred varieties of wildflowers in my backyard. That's always been a favorite hobby of mine, ever since I was a child, and I was a science teacher at one time, and I'm sorry we missed most of those, but the last blooming one is just started opening, which is an Indian paintbrush. There is a huge stand of giant Solomon's seal, that just planted itself, 'course it's been blooming for a long time, but it lasts for a long time. We have a woodland backyard, the woods just wants to creep into your yard, and the wall provides a barrier from all just the woodland things that grow and spread. It's one of my favorite things. It's just a backdrop to the woodland garden and it serves a purpose too.

- [Sheri] Charlotte, I noticed you had some azaleas in the deep garden in there.

- [Charlotte] I do. In fact, there's several kinds. Most of them are just the standard azaleas, and they've been planted for 30 years also. And I did try an Encore azalea but I did discover they do not like the same conditions as a regular one. Too much sun, I can't grow them. But what I've been enjoying lately, are the native azaleas that we were able to transplant from quite a bit of acreage that my sister-in-law has in Camden, Tennessee. And I've got them placed, I think, in just the right light, 'cause they were beautiful this year. There's probably three or four of those back there too, along with the rhododendrons.

- [Sheri] And what about that beautiful moss walkway, and there was a special kind of stone, hard to see now with all the moss-

- [Charlotte] That's sort of how I discovered the Jones Stone anyway, is I was looking for flat stones to make the walkway. They're Kokanee, those stones, and they're real flat and they're pink-

- [Sheri] Are they native to Tennessee?

- [Charlotte] They are not native to Tennessee.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Charlotte] There's some other stones around the water feature that's more limestone, which is native, but that was put in later. It was like the stone path evolved because I just believe in not fighting mother nature.

- [Sheri] Yes.

- And where the-

- It's easier on you that way, isn't it?

- That's right. So when it became evident where we were walking and it was too shady for grass, so we laid the stone walks and the moss just sort of came because the growing condition was perfect for it.

- [Sheri] Well, I think it's wonderful.

- I mean, it's just soft, you can sit down on it. It's very pretty, and sometimes you can take a piece off and mash it somewhere else if you wanted.

- So the bunny trail, the story is which story from Beatrix Potter?

- [Charlotte] Well, it's not-

- [Sheri] Is it a blend of all of them?

- [Charlotte] It's a blend of all the stories.

- [Sheri] Okay, okay.

- [Charlotte] It's the more common stories that, especially the ones that occur in the woodland settings. You know, she was quite the conservationist in her time. Not only was she an artist.

- [Sheri] You were mentioning the year she was born, or was that the year that she passed away?

- [Charlotte] I believe she was born in 1902, and we recognized her most-famous tale of Peter Rabbit, still the second biggest seller in children's books, with the biggest sales, but there's lot of the other stories that are really cute, and so I have a big book of the Tale of Beatrix Potter, and when children come to visit, they'll sit down and I'll tell 'em about Squirrel Nutkin, or the Flopsy Bunnies, and Peter Rabbit, and then we talk about the creatures in my backyard which are a whole lot. We've had a family of raccoon and five babies she raised in a hole under the playhouse up there.

- Oh wonderful, huh?

- They were quite humorous to watch. You know, her teaching 'em to climb in the trees.

- Well, Charlotte, I think my granddaughters would love to walk through this bunny trail, and I wanna thank you for sharing it with our viewers today.

- Well, I am so glad to do it. It just makes me happy, and so.

- And before we cut away, I want to show Spot, what's in your hand.

- [Charlotte] Well, this is Dot.

- [Sheri] Oh, Dot! Not Spot.

- [Charlotte] Dot. Dot, no. Probably 10 or 12 years ago, a big turtle meandered down and I put a four on his back. Few years later, I found two more, and I put two and three on their back. We call them Twosie and Threesie. And then, a year so after that, here come another one, so that became Fivesy. Last year, my husband found one playing in the flocks, that was quite a bit smaller, and we put a one on his back. Well, 'bout a month ago, this little bitty one was crawling across the bunny trail right here in the beginning, and I put a dot on his back, and my 6-year-old granddaughter insisted he needed a number, so we call him Halfsie. So I hadn't seen Halfsie until we picked him up just now at the entrance to the bunny trail. So I guess Halfsie wanted to be on the Volunteer Gardener with us.

- [Sheri] Well, it's a perfect blend with nature and your foliage and your wonderful storytelling. Thank you, Charlotte.

- [Charlotte] Oh, I'm so glad you're here to share with me today.

- Carbon, the seventh element on the periodic table, is a wonderful element. It's in anything that is alive or was alive. Carbon is in coal and slate rocks and even a shiny diamond. Carbon has a bad name these days because there's 50% more of it up in the atmosphere than there was 200 years ago, and it's causing climate problems. Don't forget, we are a carbon-based planet. The forest is full of carbon, in the trees, in the wildflowers, and all the plants, and in this beautiful leaf mold that's on the forest floor. So years of leaves dropping have left this pleasantly earthy-smelling leaf mold that gardeners have long relished to put into their compost piles and on their beds. Nature's beauty has great intelligence in it. The organic in organic gardening refers to carbon. We copy nature when we make humus in our compost piles. Any rotting plant life or anything that was alive can be put into the compost pile. We use garden refuse and old hay, and things like that nature, with soils and things from the kitchen, garden scraps, and all that stuff we mix it up and we make compost which then has lots of carbon in it that we put back onto our soils. We also like to add wood chips, but only if they're rotten. Otherwise, it takes too long for them to break down. These wood chips are seven or eight years old, and they don't look like wood chips anymore. They have totally rotted down and are ready to put into the compost pile. Wow, look at all that fungal activity! You can't tell that these were wood chips. All this white stuff is the fungal activity that's breaking down the wood chips, and creating microbes that will make our soils so much healthier. The final compost is a rich, black dirt that smells earthy like the forest floor. Another way to get carbon in your garden is to just grow it right there. This field of crimson clover will add lots of organic matter to this soil here. The Great Plains soils were made great by bison alternatively grazing it and leaving their wastes, and then moving on, and letting that field grow back up. All that growth then is sequestering carbon, which then gets put into the soil when the animals tromped it back in. We mimic this by growing the cover crops, and mowing them and putting 'em back into the soil. These soils of the Great Plains had 10% or 12% organic matter, and that's a lot of carbon, and a lot of carbon-ingesting microorganisms. In these situations, the carbon is coming from the air, and going into the soil, which is really what we want to happen. When a soil has less than two percent organic matter, which is quite common today, in many of the world's soils that had been artificially fertilized, we've killed the soil microbes, and consequently, there's nothing in the soil to ingest the carbon and bring it back in from the atmosphere into the soil. Although, humans have put carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, scientists now know that humans can take carbon back out of the atmosphere and put it into the soil. We do this with regenerative farming, which follows nature's way by letting the grass grow, intensively grazing it with ruminants, like these cows, and then letting it grow up again with no animals on it. The advantage to lots of carbon and a high organic matter in your soil are many. The soil's so much easier to work, and it holds much more moisture, but then it'll dry out quicker in the spring. The soil is teeming with life-giving microbes that plants need to grow healthily. Another advantage to having carbon in your soil is that it forms carbonic acid with the rain water, and this carbonic acid then is capable of dissolving the minerals that are locked up in rocks. Mulching, instead of tilling, also conserves carbon. This field of garlic is mulched with hay, which then adds the valuable organic matter to the soil, and besides keeping the soil moist, also protects it from the sun and that helps to protect the carbon in the soil. Your small organic garden is actually helping to reverse climate change. Grow cover crops. Make compost. Till less, and mulch more. And you are building up the organic matter in your soil, and sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You're growing microbes in your garden that eat carbon constantly. And another advantage to having lots of carbon in your garden is that you and your plants will be healthier.

- We are about to stroll the paths in a beautiful shade garden in Coopertown, Tennessee. Don and Anne, thank you. Tell me about the beginnings of starting to garden here.

- Ah, well, we started here about seven years ago with building a pond first. We got married seven and a half years ago, and then we had the house built and moved here, so it's just kind of started and basically joining a hosta society, I guess, is what got started on hostas because of the abundant shade I had.

- Uh-huh, right. And Anne, you gardened along with him, right?

- Yes, I enjoy it as much as he does.

- Well, I can see many different varieties of hosta here. Pick me out a specimen that you're particularly fond of.

- [Don] Well, the larger one over there is T-Rex.

- [Annette] Oh, yes.

- [Don] That, I like. And then I also like Whirlwind because it changes as the summer goes on, it'll darken up, the leaves.

- [Annette] Yours puts mine to shame. And as I look in this area, I see great companions like the hellebores and the Solomon's seal.

- [Don] And also, I have a lot of lady ferns.

- Now, I also see that you have rock on each side here. Where in the world did you get all of these rocks?

- [Don] Well, all of these rock, basically were collected off of the property, off of this lot and in adjacent areas of this area here, they were thrown back out of the field into the edge of the woods, and I reclaimed them so to speak, and so that's taken a while in collecting and positioning and...

- Well, they blend in well. I like the color. They're not a stark limestone, they have that redness to 'em.

- One of the biggest problems we had when we first started with the hostas was the moles working up the ground and then the voles following behind and eating all the roots of the hostas. So, now I've started to put 'em into pots and then put sharp gravel on top and bury the nursery containers in the ground, and that seems to have solved the problem so far. I haven't really discovered any of them where the voles have gotten to.

- Well, that's wonderful. I think we can see the sun sort of shining in on this. Is this a Paul's Glory?

- [Don] Yes.

- [Annette] And I see the edge of that pot right there. So, do you do that above it so that they might run against it, or is there-

- Correct, yeah. Some of them I've actually gotten too low, but I still haven't had a problem, but generally, what you wanna do, is leave it about a couple of inches out of the ground, and supposedly the vole, which is blind, and they'll run into it and continue on, 'cause they travel at night.

- [Annette] Let's look at this bouquet of live hostas. I know you have a favorite hosta today, which is it?

- [Don] Well, the one that I like the most is Atlantis, because of the shape of the leaves and also the shape of the clump, and it's growing real well at this point, and 'Night before Christmas is also a very showy hosta.

- [Annette] And you know, I love on that Atlantis that chartreuse edge, and just look how it goes with that clematis shining behind it. I'm always partial to the blues. What is this one?

- [Don] That's Regal Splendor.

- [Annette] Wow, and it's also accented with that chartreuse color. The blues to me are just some of my favorites, so. This is Abby?

- [Don] Correct.

- [Annette] And it has that chartreuse on the outside and the green in the center, then right next door?

- [Don] Is Stained Glass, which is a reverse.

- [Annette] It surely is. I've just purchased that Stained Glass, I'm gonna expect big things out of it.

- [Don] Well, so far it's done real well for me.

- Don, as I walk through the path with you, I see that you have different shape beds, you have a semi-circle, you have longer ones, and then you even have a rectangular-shaped bed. How did you come up with what you were gonna do?

- Well, I just look at the space, and try to determine what would look good in that area and what would kind of fill in an area and yet leave me with a walkway. So, it's basically one bed was planned at a time. It wasn't a large scheme, as I just work down the hill, doing one bed at a time, and that's pretty much how it's developed.

- I find many gardens developed that way. People start just a little border around the outside of the yard, and then they get into that garden and it just progresses. Native azalea, tell me about where you found that.

- [Don] Well, I found that on the back of my property, and I transplanted it about two years ago, and so far it's done well.

- [Annette] And I know that has to give you joy.

- Absolutely. Anything that I can find and I don't have to pay for it.

- [Annette] Standing under this tree canopy that gives you all this wonderful dappled shade, I know that there has to be a lot of maintenance.

- Yes, especially in the fall, when the leaves start to fall, and I kind of try to stay on top of it, but not always, and I try to take all my leaves down below our fence and then mulch 'em later on. So that's kind of an ongoing project on up until January.

- [Annette] What do you do to fertilize or put growth into your hosta? What do you do?

- [Don] Well, early in the spring, as they start to emerge, I put triple 10 on all my beds, sprinkle it around, and then later on, I put Osmocote in all of my pots with the hostas, and that seems to work well.

- Well, I hear the sound of water in the background. So, I want to go see a wonderful pond that you have.

- Well, that was my first project here.

- Okay, well, show it to me!

- [Don] Okay.

- [Annette] Don, I understand you're a society man. You not only belong to the Middle Tennessee Hosta Society, you belong to the Davidson County-

- [Don] No, the National Pond Club.

- [Annette] Okay.

- [Don] And I also belong to the Middle Tennessee Koi Club.

- [Annette] All right, well just, this is a beautiful setting. There's such a flow of the plant material and the choices in your-

- [Don] This was really the only spot that we could use, and because of the slope, we were able to get the waterfall in, with the stream.

- [Annette] It's a garden of Eden, no doubt.

- [Don] Well, it's certainly been our privilege for you to come and film it, and it's something that we're proud of. It might not be the best, but it's ours.

- [Annette] Absolutely.

- [Annette] And we thank you.

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