Episode 3117

- [Lauren Berst] Marty DeHart tours a jewel of a garden, that is designed to showcase the many and varied specimens of a true plant collector. The colorful blooms, pollinator plants, succulent desert bed, and an indoor moss garden will surely inspire. Then, Jeff Poppen underscores the importance of planning, when it comes to a late summer garden. We'll find out what vegetable crops are suitable for a fall harvest. Join us. First, a collector's garden, where each plant can be seen and admired.

- If you're a plant nerd like me, you typically feel like you don't have enough space, to get everything that you lust after as a plant. But today, I'm here in this jewel of a little garden, on a small lot in the middle of Nashville, and I'm gonna show you how you can have just about everything you might possibly be interested in, in a relatively small space, when it's designed smart. We're in the garden of Bill Baucom, who lives in Nashville, and he is a major plant collector. I wanna thank you for inviting us here today.

- You're so welcome.

- And let's talk about some of the things you have. I'm interested in this circular, lovely sort of raised backyard that you have here, and the way that these beds are arranged, so you can really admire everything that you've got.

- Well thank you. There's structure with the architecture of the garden, and then I like to collect plants, so there's a lot of variation within the structure of the garden.

- Right. Well, you know, people always say you have to plant in big swathes, but when you have a small bed, you don't have to. One plant is enough. You know? I mean, if you're thoughtful about placement, and you have. I love the way everything is very distinct. Let's talk about some of the stuff you have, like this hydrangea here.

- [Bill] That's a Haas Halo. It's a Annabelle hydrangea relative, but instead of the globe-

- The dome, yeah.

- [Bill] It's more of a flat plate, or..

- [Marty] What they call a lace cap, yeah.

- [Bill] That's right, yeah.

- [Marty] Yeah, that's a beautiful plant, and it looks like it's doing well. And I'm amazed at this agastache. That is just, talk about a bee magnet.

- And butterflies.

- Yes, I noticed a ton of butterflies flying around here. I have, in my yard that is the most popular pollination plant of all of the things that I grow. It's a wonderful plant. And I see the little yellow..

- [Bill] Melampodium.

- [Marty] Mhm, Blackfoot daisy. Melampodium means Blackfoot.

- [Bill] It seeds every year.

- [Marty] Yes, I've had it kinda get out of control. But it's easy to control, just pulling it up. I'm loving this euphorbia stuff you've got.

- [Bill] It's Mediterranean. Grows wonderfully in Nashville. In the spring it'll have a three foot tall large.. chartreuse blooms that-

- Like euphorbias do, yeah.

- [Bill] They look like eyes that are looking at you. And it seeds, it'll live three years, and then-

- It's a short-lived perennial.

- Right, right.

- [Marty] Now all of this stuff likes good drainage, that I'm seeing, that you're growing, and we don't have, Nashville is famous for not having terrific soil in lots of places, clay mostly. So how do you deal with that?

- [Bill] Lots and lots of pine fines, so.

- Okay, so you put down this.. Which is, sometimes you can buy it in bags called soil conditioner.

- [Bill] That's right, yeah.

- [Marty] And you just mulch with that.

- [Bill] 'Bout an inch to inch and a half every year.

- Okay, and then you, it just rots into the soil.

- Yeah, right.

- And so doing improves it?

- Yes.

- Okay, and is that a fairly rapid improvement do you think? Or is it sort of-

- This has been here three years, and things are growing.

- Okay, yeah, I'm seein' stuff that looks pretty happy. For sure. Herbs and all kinds of, the butterflies in here are amazing. Is that ginger?

- [Bill] It is. It did not bloom this year, but it's its first year, so I'm hoping that next year it'll have the white blooms, and the fragrance of that is extraordinary.

- [Marty] And that's hedychium coronarium. The white ginger?

- Right, yeah.

- [Marty] Yeah, yes. And basil, oh my goodness.

- Thai basil.

- Thai basil. That is just lovely, look at that. You've got..

- The verbena from..

- [Marty] The verbena, the see-through bonariensis, yeah.

- [Bill] From Argentina.

- [Marty] Yeah, and does this self-sow for you?

- Oh yes.

- Yeah, it just comes off. Butterflies love that too.

- And so does the Thai basil.

- Really?

- That self-seeds, mhm.

- [Marty] You know, they always tell you to cut the flowers off, but I don't, because look at how the bees love them.

- [Bill] Yeah, I think we should share.

- [Marty] Yeah, I do too. I see you are an aster lover.

- [Bill] This one's Raydon's Favorite.

- [Marty] Ah yes, the Aromatic Aster they call it. This is native to middle-Tennessee.

- [Bill] This bloomed for nearly six weeks last year.

- Ah man. My experience is it just covers itself in flowers in October, so much so that you cannot see the foliage.

- Beautiful blue.

- Beautiful kind of a periwinkle blue. Ugh, I can't. That's gonna be just so gorgeous. But before this comes into bloom, this is in its glory. This blue lobelia.

- [Bill] Lobelia siphilitica.

- [Marty] Right. Do you know why they call it that?

- [Bill] It's probably a cure.

- [Marty] Plant, yeah well, they thought it was. It's not. But the original, the Indians used it as, Native Americans used it as medicine, and white folks thought it was for syphilis. They were all, at that time they were crazy lookin' for cures for syphilis.

- [Bill] And this is, this seeds wonderfully. It's not a pest, but it'll seed quite a bit.

- [Marty] The color is just gorgeous. And this time of year, we're filming this in very early September, and this is just such a delight to see this time of year.

- [Bill] And Marty, I'll, about oh, June or so, I'll cut this in half.

- [Marty] Yeah, I call that kneecapping stuff.

- Kneecapping?

- So it doesn't, yeah, it's kind of a Mafia term for cuttin' back perennials. So they don't get too high and flop over. It delays the blooming maybe a little bit, but not badly. And, I wanna go from that to this glorious thing.

- [Bill] This was a gift from a friend, Steven Felds and Susan Felds, and it's a yucca,

- I noticed that, yeah.

- [Bill] That's sort of a tree-form, and it's beautiful in the afternoon, watching the sun come through the bloom is just marvelous.

- [Marty] Ah, I just love it. And moths love those at night, yeah. That beautiful, and it's just gorgeous. How tall? Do you know what variety this is, or?

- [Bill] I do not, I do not know.

- It's pretty spectacular. Well I know this is just the intro to a bunch of cool succulents. Let's go look at 'em. Bill, tell me about this wonderful, basically succulent desert garden you've built here in Nashville. First off, I see it's a raised berm. And what kind of soil did you use?

- This is basically just fill dirt.

- Nashville dirt?

- Uh huh. And then incorporated into it is up, not quite all of it, but some of it is up to six inches of limestone, just like driveway gravel. That's just incorporated in.

- That makes sense because a lot of desert plants like that higher PH that the limestone would help. And drainage.

- Yeah, mhm.

- I would think that growing these things that I'm seeing, in general, the challenge is drainage in winter. Right?

- It is. In Nashville these plants don't freeze as much as they drown from clay soil.

- [Marty] They rot out in the winter.

- [Bill] They do.

- [Marty] Yeah, that's a big problem in Nashville. I mean, I tell people, they say my echinacea didn't come back, and I'm like, I can tell you why.

- Right.

- It's not that you did anything wrong, it's that it was a cold, wet winter, and it didn't have enough drainage around the roots. Happens to a lot of plants. But this is just spectacular, and I'm seeing so many great, great plants, let's talk about some of 'em, like is that a Sapphire Skies, or is that a-

- Yucca rostrate, Sapphire Skies.

- [Marty] Ah, that is so beautiful. This beautiful column, and then it's almost like a starburst or something. And that gorgeous sort of steely blue-green color.

- Oh I love it, yeah.

- Yeah. And needless to say, all of these things are evergreen.

- [Bill] It is, yeah.

- [Marty] Yeah, so you get, and if we do get snow, these are all hearty obviously.

- Right, right.

- If we get snow it looks so great on those.

- It does, uh huh.

- [Marty] So, and let's talk about some of these smaller things. Like I see you've got, is this hesperaloe?

- [Bill] It is, uh huh. That's a Mangave Mammoth.

- [Marty] Now Mangave is a cross between..

- Manfreda and agave.

- And agave, okay.

- [Bill] Most are not hearty, but that one is.

- [Marty] Okay, cool. Let's.. Just for educational purposes, what is the difference between a yucca, and an agave, and I see you've got a sotol dasylirion over here, which is the other big spiny thing. So how would you describe the difference?

- Three different genus. Yuccas are usually more spiny and more upright, so the agave has a flatter leaf, more rigid, and then there's a large peña, a large amount of plant underneath the ground. That's what they make tequila and mezcal from.

- [Marty] A huge rootstock under there.

- [Bill] Huge, huge, yeah.

- [Marty] Yeah, water storage.

- [Bill] Bigger than a basketball.

- [Marty] Wow!

- Right.

- Wow, that's pretty amazing. And agaves have these ferocious spines.

- [Bill] Right, right.

- [Marty] I mean, they're all spiny, but agave I think-

- Particular so.

- [Marty] Take the cake with spines. And they also have these big, broad, flat, fleshy leaves, whereas seems like yuccas can have big leaves, but they're not as, you know.

- More flexible.

- They're more flexible. And then we've got the dasylirion over here. Which is another grassy-leaved.. Right there. That's beautiful with the saw-toothed edging.

- And that also has a large bulb. It bloomed this year. The bloom earlier in the year was beautiful; if you, color of corn, a bright yellow.

- [Marty] God, that must've been beautiful against that wall.

- [Bill] Yeah, right, yeah yeah.

- [Marty] That is, and you can see that has no spines on the tips to speak of, but these really fine saw-tooth edges on the grassy foliage.

- [Bill] That one you wanna be careful with weeding around.

- [Marty] I would say most of these things.

- [Bill] Yeah, right.

- [Marty] And you've got obviously a prickly pear.

- [Bill] Uh huh, another Mangave.

- [Marty] And I love these spotty ones, with the delightful..

- [Bill] And that came through the winter just fine.

- [Marty] Oh that's great. And California poppies coming in. I know they definitely want great drainage, so you've got it here.

- [Bill] And these agaves, these big ones, the variety to get for our area is the agave ovatifolia.

- [Marty] Which means?

- [Bill] O-v-a-t, ovatifolia.

- [Marty] Which means oval-foliaged.

- [Bill] Also known as the Whale Tongue agave.

- [Marty] I was gonna come and say that, yeah.

- [Bill] But they grow, that's the best one.

- [Marty] And look at that gorgeous color, it's almost powder blue. It's just lovely. And obviously they're happy as anything here. And tell me about the Snap Dragon.

- [Bill] It's a Spanish variety.

- Look at that.

- And it likes desert climate. Another euphorbia, a myrsinites.

- [Marty] That Snap Dragon is amazing, does it bloom all summer?

- [Bill] All summer long. And this, I don't water this. This all just takes care of itself.

- [Marty] Whatever nature sends, yeah.

- This plant right here-

- This little guy.

- [Bill] Is digitalis, that's a Foxglove. Also Spanish, that likes drought, heat, full sun, baking.

- Wow. Excellent. It's just fascinating to me how you've done this. This is just a really wonderful way to deal with, and it's so great against the very architectural graphic almost design of your house.

- We have lighting at night, so this all kind of glows at night. So that's great.

- Yeah, that's lovely. I'm lookin' at what you tell me is a hearty fuchsia. Tell me how you keep this going.

- [Bill] This is apparently a hearty variety, I believe it's Japanese. It's called sanihanf. Which is German.

- That trips off the tongue.

- German-sounding name for a Japanese plant. But it's bloomed all summer long.

- Wow.

- No maintenance.

- How big does it get?

- I'm guessing that it gets about two feet tall, but that's a guess.

- [Marty] Is this one, how long have you had it?

- [Bill] One year, less than one year. Planted it about three to four months ago.

- [Marty] Okay, so it hasn't been through a winter. So we're gonna, it's in a very sheltered spot though.

- [Bill] The other amazing thing about this, is that I've always thought of fuchsias as being not tolerant of heat, and this one has not batted an eye in this really awful summer.

- That is amazing, and we have had a blast furnace of a summer. That is truly amazing because fuchsias, you know, they're from Chile, and often altitudinal Chile, so they like cool, foggy, moist. That looks great for early September. I'm interested to know how it gets through the winter. But, that's a beautiful thing. I bet the hummingbirds love it. I love this atrium, it's like this focal point of your whole house. And it sits smack in the middle, very Roman. You must enjoy this year round.

- Very much. It snowed here in the winter, so we had snow inside the house.

- [Marty] Fantastic, what a treat. So everything in here's hearty obviously.

- [Bill] Inside the house, that's right.

- [Marty] Right. And you've got some native wildlings; I see asplenium, the little Ebony Spleenwort there. That's just beautiful. Hollyfern.

- [Bill] Gingers.

- Mhm, I see gingers. Lovely. And this is just such a incredibly calming space to organize your house around. It's really beautiful.

- This species here is very lush, I mean it'll get up to six inches deep.

- [Marty] Oh that's nice. And as it spreads and fills it's just gonna get greener and greener and greener. How many kinds of moss have you got in here?

- [Bill] Four or five.

- [Marty] Okay, where did you get 'em? Did you collect 'em, or..

- From Mountain Moss.

- [Marty] Okay, you can buy 'em.

- [Bill] In North Carolina. In Brevard, North Carolina.

- [Marty] Yeah, yeah, Annie Martin, yeah. That's great, and it's obviously taken off really well for you.

- [Bill] Literally, well not quite literally, almost no maintenance. I'll weed twice a year, and then sometimes maple seeds will fly in here. And I'll pick them up.

- [Marty] Mostly what I'm seeing are baby ferns.

- [Bill] Right, right.

- That are, they're sporing and spreading, which isn't a bad thing at all. How lovely. So, obviously you're gonna selectively weed or place those as you want to. This is just charming. I just wanna thank you so much for sharing all this with us.

- Well thank you.

- It's just been wonderful to see your lovely place.

- Oh, my pleasure.

- The late summer garden in Tennessee is bound to have lots of tomatoes. These were planted early though. I'd like to talk about the late summer garden that's planted at the end of June, all the way up to the end of July, ensuring that we have fresh vegetables through September and October. The late summer garden begins when the spring garden ends. This is a field of peppers here, and they're just beginning to color up at the end of August, beginning of September. We put the peppers out from our cold frames sort of mid to late June; we don't plant them very early because they love hot weather. We do put a mulch down, but only after the ground is thoroughly warm, will we put a mulch of hay down. So, our farm grows lots of rolls of hay, so any ones that leftover from last year's feeding of the cattle, get used as mulches in the garden the next year. Peppers are a bit disease-prone in the late Tennessee garden, and so I monitor for these kinds of problems. And when I see a pepper plant like this, I know from experience that it's not gonna recover. So, I like to get these peppers out of the field, because I don't want this plant spreading disease. This field had onions in it, and we had a great crop of 'em. We harvest them towards the end of June, and because we keep onions pretty weed-free, I had a clean field that was ready to plant. So, I planted it. We put a row of string beans down at the beginning, with three rows of late sweet corn. This row right here is Red Rippers. And can you see how healthy these things are, compared to the regular beans? That's because these are a cowpea. And these were a really important part of Tennessee agriculture before deer became a problem. So the marauding deers that are bothering everybody's gardens weren't here 100 years ago. The farmers had gotten rid of all the deers so that they could grow crops, particularly cowpeas. And they would have big fields of these cowpeas, just as a cover crop, because they're so valuable in the amount of organic matter they bring in, and the nitrogen that comes from them being a legume. But look at how leathery the leaves are. Yeah, so these are called Red Rippers, but they're just relatives of black-eyed peas, and Whippoorwill peas. Might've heard of pink-eyed purple hulls, or Mississippi Crowders. There's all these kinds of cowpeas. But I tell ya right now, deer love 'em. So you have to have them inside of a deer fence, or some sort of protection. Black beans grow great when they're planted late. We like to get our protein from the farm, so the nitrogen from the air becomes part of our bodies, by going into the soil through the legume plants, and then being eaten by us as beans. These are the black bean that can be eaten in the fresh stage. They cook up pretty quickly, and boy they're mighty fine. We'll let these dry though, the majority of these will dry on the plant. And we'll harvest them, and just put 'em in baskets up in the barn to further dry out, and where we can shell them at our leisure, with our friends, probably in rocking chairs. Green beans are a must in a Tennessee late garden. And so, we planted these at the end of June, right after I realized our spring beans weren't gonna do anything because of that drought. But we'd gotten the onions out of the field, I had some space, so we just put a row of Blue Lake green beans in here. And they're just beginning to flower, so we should have some green beans before too long. The July 27th planting of yellow squash is in its prime now. We're just beginning to harvest it, and look how healthy the plants are, compared to some of those older plants. Those third planting is perfect for September harvests. The summer squash variety we grow is Yellow Prolific Straightneck. That's a mouthful, but they're a mighty fine mouthful when ya eat 'em too. This is our third planting of cucumbers. They're not bearing yet, but they're beginning to flower, so means that we will have some late cucumbers towards the end of September. We grow two varieties of cucumbers here: the Marketmore make the dark green slicers, but we also grow National Pickling cucumber, to make those crisp, crunchy pickles that everybody loves. We love our Shelly beans, and our favorite would have to be the famous October bean. It also has a mouthful, the official name is Taylor's Dwarf Horticulture bean. But we call 'em October beans because when you plant them in late July, you harvest them, guess what, in October. So these are ones that we can eat in the fresh Shelly stage, or let dry on the plant, and shell out for dry beans. Gardeners love to experiment. This year we're experimenting with late planting of pinto beans. So I don't know if there's gonna be enough time for these to make, they take a few weeks longer than the October beans that we grow every year, but they're look like healthy plants. And they have quite a bit of vining tendency, so I don't know if they should've been staked maybe, but we have these big long rows, I'm not gonna stake 'em, so we'll just see how they do. And I'll have to let ya know later if a July 27th planting of pinto beans will make in middle-Tennessee or not. The rest of the late summer garden field is planted in Daikon radish. That's what this plant is right here, and it's the one that makes a big, long white root. We also grow the watermelon radish, which makes a really kind of ugly little green thing, that you cut it open, and it's this gorgeous tie dye red lookin' thing on the inside. Yeah, watermelon radish, really really tasty. Good plant. But we wanted a nourish crop to put in here, so we use buckwheat, which is that plant that's so handy about improving soils by making calcium more available, and loosening the soil with its nice root system. Love buckwheat. And we're also been experimenting with Sunn Hemp, or crotalaria. It's another legume, doesn't look like one, but it's more like in a vetch family I think. And it's a great plant for adding the nitrogen and carbon and oxygen from the air into the soil. And so we love to have legumes in our mixes. So, this field then, will, the buckwheat is becoming a weed itself, but the radishes don't mind it too much, and Jack Frost is gonna come here in a little while, and lay all of this stuff down, and this will then be a big field of the Daikon radishes. If Jack Frost comes a bit late, the radishes will suffer, but the pinto beans over there will do better. If Jack Frost comes early, we might not get pinto beans, but the radishes will be better. In gardening, always keep planting, and you will always have some successes.

- The Hicoria family, I love these plants. I've never had success planting them in the ground. I've suddenly discovered by putting them in containers, I'm growin' them all winter long, I'm putting other plants with them that are perennial, and I just find that that's the way that I'm gonna grow them from now on. I put some, this is the sage right here, Ogon sage, and this is very winter-hearty, and this will be evergreen all winter. Some of the Hicoria will die back, and you'll still see leaves, but they won't be flourishing and lustrous like they are now. And then occasionally somethin' happens, and one doesn't come back as well as the other ones did, and so that's what's goin' on in this pot right here. Those were all three in there all winter, but for some reason, this one in the front. But I find that they get a leggy net to them, and so I bring new soil up around that, so, and I have seen them actually sucker out new plants from that. And then the one next to it, that has come back so beautiful this spring. That's been in that pot for two years. And all of that, the grass, everything in there is perennial, and I have not fed them, they just thrive on their own. And then last year, over in the back over there, there's one that's called Eclipse. I got that when they had the eclipse, and so it's easy for me to remember the name on that one. And the one in front of it is that way too. And then I'm gonna try a companion plant with some. I have a bleeding heart, and I love the chartreuse colors, so I have put the bleeding heart with the chartreuse colors with the wineberries that I have in another container, and I'm anxious to see how that bleeding heart does in a container. Then I have one that I have had for fifteen years, and I call it the crème de la crème. I've never fertilized it, I never water it, it's blooming now, and it's definitely an accent for me in my gardens. I find that actually these Hicorias will take some sun and the shade. They will get sun right here probably until 1 o'clock, 12 o'clock, because this is facing the east. But I have seen them actually growing in full sun. But I suggest you get a container, pick out you some of these wonderful colors. This is just a small portion of the colors they're out there in now, and enjoy growin' yours in a container.

- [Lauren Berst] 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.