Episode 3201

- [Narrator] No doubt that the summer harvest in Tennessee is plentiful. There's so many vegetables that grow well here, but a fall garden can produce a big bounty too. Tammy Algood is at Red Thread Farm in Franklin to learn what varieties of carrot, radish, and kale they grow in this high-yielding fall garden. And Sheri Gramer visits a pretty courtyard garden that's just the right size to accommodate all the ornamentals and veggies this homeowner loves. Come along.

- [Narrator] Shorter days and cooler temps make for an even tastier harvest.

- How wonderful to enjoy cooler temperatures and slightly shorter days, but sometimes we don't think about that in terms of a garden. Today, we're here in Franklin at Red Thread Farm, and it is a plethora of wonderful fall and winter produce that's available here, but also available for you to grow at your own garden. My new best friend, Jeremy Tolley, is going to tell us about carrots because, Jeremy, I've tried and failed miserably at growing carrots. Help!

- I hear that often. The trick for growing carrots is to get them to germinate.

- Yeah. I had the worst problem.

- Yeah. They're not picky about what temperature they germinate in. They can germinate in warm weather, which you need to do in order to get them to grow like this in the fall, to get the size, but you have to keep them moist. Were you growing in a raised bed?

- Yes. = Yes. Raised beds tend to dry out much faster, so the trick is to keep them wet, much wetter than you normally would, until you get those little seeds to come out of the ground. My recommendation for you, cover it with a sheet, weight the sheet down, and keep the sheet wet. That would keep the soil moist underneath it. As soon as they start to germinate, take the sheet off, and you'll have a perfect bed of carrots.

- 'Cause they're such tiny, tiny seeds.

- They are. They are.

- And I just broadcast them and lightly covered them, but I didn't give them enough cover is what you're saying.

- Right, exactly.

- Okay. All right. So you obviously have perfected this. Tell us what kinds of carrots you've got here that are growing that I'm dying to see.

- Sure. Yeah. Let me show you a couple of different kinds. So when we think about carrots from the grocery store, obviously everybody immediately thinks about orange.

- Correct.

- So here we're gonna have some oranges mixed in. This is an orange carrot. This is a mix called rainbow. So here's one that's yellow, right?

- Yes.

- And then we have them in here that are white. See, this is more of a white color carrot. If we wash this, these will be brilliant colors, right?

- Yes. Yes.

- Okay. So that's not too far off from orange. They're delightful. They're great. You get some color with those, but this is the carrot I really wanna show you. This is a variety called Dragon.

- Dragon?

- And dragon is aptly named for this beautiful orange color, I mean-

- Purple.

- purple. It's almost red. It's almost the color of my shirt, you see that? And on the inside-

- Oh that's beautiful.

- Isn't that brilliant? Yeah. It doesn't match. I keep thinking the inside will be like the outside.

- Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

- This is a really fun carrot to grow. It's no more difficult than any other carrot than an orange carrot. You just have to make sure you find a quality place for the seeds, and I highly recommend Dragon.

- Okay. And then I'm gonna say when you get these, because you got the tops obviously with them, when you get them home or after you've harvested them from your successful planting, what do you do with these tops, because they pull moisture from the root, don't they?

- They do. They do. So the vast majority of people, we cut them off when we give them to our customers. Most people don't want the tops, but carrot tops make a wonderful pesto. Did you know that?

- No.

- Yes. Try carrot top pesto. But, like you said, if you're not gonna make a pesto with them or eat the the greens, then cut them off. You can even break them off here, it's probably the best way to do that, and then store this carrot in your refrigerator.

- 'Cause it, again, is pulling moisture from the root. All it knows is to keep itself alive.

- It does. It does. The plant continues to live, continues to feed those leaves from the energy that's stored in the root, so you do wanna take them off.

- Perfect. For carrot success, do you need a particular kind of soil for these varieties?

- You don't want compacted soil. You do want a soil that is nice and loose that you can stick your hand in or you can put a fork in and it goes down in there, that's not overly rocky. So you do wanna make sure you have a well-prepared bed for that. Raised beds are excellent in that regard.

- Well, I noticed when you dug them that they almost pull out immediately.

- Yeah.

- So that's because of the nice loose soil?

- That's right. And you'll find if you have soil that's compacted below that top layer, you'll end up with carrots that are crooked or broken or stunted because they can't go down into the soil.

- Got it. Carrots aren't the only roots you grow.

- Correct.

- What else have you got here?

- So radishes, I think, are maybe one of the most undervalued fall crops that there are, winter radishes in particular. They are frost-hearty, they do great in the cold weather, and they're really versatile. So when we think about radishes, we think about radishes that you cook or that you eat raw in salads, but not ones that you cook. So this is a Daikon. Look at that.

- Oh my.

- Much different than the little round red ones, right?

- That's very different. Yes.

- So Daikons are an Asian variety of radish, and you certainly can eat them raw, they have a nice spice to them, but they're also great prepared and cooked. I've even seen recipes for Daikon french fries. They can be used as a coal salt substitute grated over a salad. So this is a really nice, very versatile radish to have.

- So do you grow these just the way you would grow what we would call an ordinary radish? What's the difference?

- Sure. They take much longer. They take about twice the amount of growing time. So you wanna plant these in August, about mid-August in our area here in middle Tennessee. They take about 50 to 60 days to mature. These have been here about 75 days. Another great thing about these radishes is that they hold well in the garden, and they store well in the soil, but you can also then store them in your refrigerator, if you have a root cellar, and can keep these throughout the winter.

- So if you get busy with other things and don't have time to completely harvest all of these, they'll be just fine. Mother Nature will take care of them in the ground.

- Right. They will be okay in the ground until it gets really cold and the ground starts to freeze and the soil starts to heave. You wanna get 'em out of the ground before then, and then just take them into a root cellar. You can take these tops off, and these will store for weeks, if not months, in your refrigerator.

- Okay. And I'm assuming that just like other root vegetables, you don't wash that before you store it. You just wipe it off.

- I do.

- You wash it off?

- I do. Yeah. Just because we have a lot of soil on here, and I want to get that off. I think you could do it either way. We have success in washing them and storing them clean.

- Got it. And so what's the variety of this one called?

- It's called Miyashige.

- Miyashige. And does it have the same peppery taste?

- It does, yeah. It has a really nice peppery taste. Although the top is a little bit green, you'll find that this root is white through and through.

- Got it. So that's a big radish.

- It's a very large radish.

- But it's also fun to use.

- It is fun and tasty.

- I love it. Jeremy, this seems like a much smaller variety than the Daikon that we just saw. What have we got here?

- It is. This is a pleasant surprise. These are called watermelon radishes. So watermelon radishes are also winter radish. They take about the same length of maturity as the Daikons do. And they look pretty ordinary, right?

- Yeah.

- So you wouldn't think much about that, but then look what's inside.

- Oh, that's beautiful.

- You see why they're called watermelon radishes.

- Yes.

- So these have a very similar spiciness, have kind of a kick to it, but they're beautiful. If you use a mandoline and slice them on deviled eggs, put them in your salad, any of these winter radishes can be pickled. You can make Kimchi with them. And this certainly is probably one of the prettiest things that we grow.

- That's gorgeous. And, again, this is as easy for a home gardener to grow as it is for you to grow?

- Very easy. You wanna make sure you get your spacing correct, about six inches in spacing with these, whereas smaller radishes you plant 'em really close together. Because they have such large tops, you wanna make sure you give them plenty of space to grow in the garden, and they also, like the Daikons, these are going to store very well if you take the tops off and keep them in your refrigerator or put them in your root cellar.

- Perfect. I'm sold. Gardening can be a lot of trouble, you know, Jeremy.

- Mm-hmm.

- So let's talk about things that are a little more maintenance free. What do you have in mind?

- I think one of the most rewarding crops to grow in the fall is lettuce.

- Lettuce.

- We often think about lettuce in the spring and the summertime, but not so much in the fall, but that's when it's at its peak, that's when it is the most vibrant, that's when it tastes the best. It's sweeter when the temperatures start to drop and the temperatures are cooler, and I think it lasts longer too in the garden.

- So as far as a home gardener goes, lettuce. Is that worth their effort and their time? Because how much trouble is it for them to grow lettuce?

- It absolutely is. I think sometimes people get started with their gardens in late spring. They plant lettuce. They become disappointed because lettuce doesn't perform well when the temperatures get hot and those day lengths start to get longer, but it does wonderfully well in the fall, and I think people would be much happier with it in the fall. We just don't think about that.

- No, we don't.

- And it does well in a pot, it does well in a container, as well as it does in the soil or a raised bed, particularly as it starts to get colder. If you cover it and protect it, even just on those coldest nights, lettuce is remarkably cold-tolerant as well.

- We don't think about that. We think about it as really tender.

- That's right. We think about it as a summer crop because that's when we like to eat it.

- Yeah. Kale used to be the must-have on your table. Now, not so much. Why?

- It was the "It" vegetable for a while. Well, kale was really popular because of its nutrition, its nutrient value, and we would get this kale in the grocery store, and we would take it home, and we knew that it was really good for us, but it didn't taste good, right?

- No, it didn't.

- It was bitter. It was often wilted by the time you got it home. Kale that you grow in the fall in your own garden or getting it from a local farmer is gonna taste nothing like what you get at the grocery store.

- And I even see a difference, even though this is familiar-looking kale, I even see a difference between this kale and what you would find at the grocery store. This looks fresher and greener-

- Yes, and it's soft.

- and healthier. Yes. It's very soft. It's almost like silk.

- Right. This particular variety is called Dwarf Scotch kale. So this is the classic one that we would typically see in a garden store. You don't wanna over-fertilize your soil. It does like some nutrients, but you just wanna have a nice lonely soil to grow in. Whether that's a regular garden or a raised bed or even a pot, you can grow really nice kale. Get proper spacing on it, six to 10 inches of spacing between plants, and the key is to pinch these leaves off regularly. So you'll see here we've continued to break these leaves off. At the end of the winter season, this will be a very tall stand like a palm tree almost with the leaves at the top. So this will continue to produce all throughout the fall season. Varieties that are cold-hearty, like this Scotch kale, will grow even in the winter. You might get some frost damage, and if you do, just pull those leaves off and tender growth will start from the top.

- So Jeremy, you're pulling the leaves off that you want to use from the bottom.

- Correct.

- Okay, got it. So these are ready to harvest, these larger leaves here.

- I see, I see. And then obviously this is fun to do lots of stuff with, but next door you've got something that's also kale, but it looks so different than this.

- Yeah.

- What have we got?

- There are a lot of beautiful varieties of kale. We grow about five here. This particular one is a Russian kale, so this is a Red Russian kale, this is a White Russian kale based on the stem that's here. It's not quite as cold-hearty as the Scotch kale we were looking at, but if I showed you this as a cook, what would you think about this?

- I would think that that's gonna be tough and hard and woody and stemmy.

- Yeah, you would think so. This is super tender. So when you go to the grocery store and you buy baby kale, we're often doing that because we want that softness in a salad, but it doesn't have much flavor, right?

- Right.

- This has all the flavor and all the tenderness. You just have to cut it. So a quick way to do that is to roll these leaves up-

- Like you would basil.

- Like you would basil or something, and then julienne these and then it makes a really nice soft tender salad.

- And do you grow this similar to how you grow this spacing and-

- Exactly the same growth habit. Exactly the same harvest habit. You can see how we've been taking the leaves off the bottom. As the plant continues to grow, we'll continue to harvest those leaves.

- Got it. So you're making me fall in love with kale again, Jeremy.

- I would love for you to take some of this home with you and put some feta or some goat cheese with it, some pine nuts, and a little bit of balsamic vinegar, and you'll love it.

- I'm headed home. What would a garden be without herbs?

- Lonely.

- And I can see that you've made sure that this parsley has plenty of company.

- It does, yes. So we have collard greens growing here. Herbs are a great thing to sneak in your fall garden. Again, like many vegetables, we think about herbs as being a summer crop, and certainly you can grow these in the spring and the summer, but herbs like parsley, dill, cilantro and chives, they're really at their peak in the cooler seasons, particularly in fall. So here we've just interplanted some parsley with these collard greens. So as we pick the leaves of the collard greens, it gives plenty of space for the parsley to grow, and they're great companion plants.

- And mine always bolts and I lose it early, so this is a much safer environment and it looks deliciously healthy, and I need it more in the winter than I do in the summer because I need to add some green to my menus.

- Right. It's bolting because it's responding to the heat and the increasing day length, so it'll be very slow to bolt in the fall.

- Perfect. I love interspacing. That's beautiful. And I love herbs in any time of year.

- We do too.

- So Jeremy, thank you so much for letting us come-

- Thank you for coming out.

- and visiting with you at this beautiful farm. It has been a pleasure, and I feel privileged to be here.

- You're welcome back anytime.

- Thank you.

- [Sheri] We're in Franklin, Tennessee, and we're gonna show you how satisfying courtyard gardening can be. We're in a beautiful-bordered backyard, a courtyard garden, and we're here today with Susan DeGarmo. Hey Susan.

- Hey.

- I want you to explain and share with us some of your beautiful plants and flowers here.

- Well, I just get what I love, and my husband gifted me this Espalier pear tree about five years ago.

- [Sheri] People are afraid of these, don't you think?

- [Susan] Well, I think they are. I'm not afraid of it. We fertilize it in the spring, I keep it pruned, and I just love the shapes of 'em. You can get 'em in all different kinds of shapes.

- [Sheri] And this is pear?

- [Susan] This is pear.

- [Sheri] And It fruits for you? It bears fruit?

- [Susan] It fruits. It bears fruit. They're not exactly the prettiest pears, but they're good to eat. They're really good to eat.

- [Sheri] And you've got some little roses going on.

- [Susan] Yeah. The Drift roses. This is like a lot of black-eyed Susans, because my eyes are really dark and I'm a Susan, so I have to have those.

- [Sheri] Some Phlox there.

- [Susan] Phlox. Yeah. I always like my annuals because they're always blooming.

- [Sheri] For color.

- [Susan] For color.

- [Sheri] Yep, yep.

- And then what's over here on the fence?

- This is a Clematis.

- [Sheri] She's pretty. She's showing us how pretty she can be today.

- [Susan] Yeah. She's like incredibly full of blooms this year, and I'm thinking it's because of this experiment I'm doing.

- [Sheri] How big is your backyard here?

- [Susan] 750 square feet.

- [Sheri] And so when you moved here, you were downsizing-

- [Susan] From eight acres.

- [Sheri] Okay. And so has this been perfect size for you?

- [Susan] This has been perfect. We just love it. It's just enough for us to put all the things that we really love in it, enough grass for our dog. We have that beautiful Tulip Poplar that gives us wonderful shade. We've got our little dogwoods, they bloom pink. This is a Japanese dogwood. It's white. And I just have a lot of my favorite things over here 'cause I moved from Memphis to here in 1992, and I brought a lot of the plants that people had gifted me.

- [Sheri] Susan, I love the crazy pots and containers, all the galvanized. What do you have growing in there?

- [Susan] That's an old horse trough, and that's garlic, and I planted that in the fall, and I've never planted it before, so it'll be ready to harvest when about four dead leaves are down at the bottom of the stem.

- [Sheri] I see it's starting to curl in some spots.

- [Susan] Yeah. You can cut those off and use 'em for pesto.

- [Sheri] Yum. Okay, okay.

- [Susan] Yeah. They're in the refrigerator right now.

- [Sheri] And this is a beautiful rose that we have in front of us here.

- [Susan] Yeah. I love the colors. I love that some of them come out yellow, some come out orange.

- [Sheri] The aroma's intoxicating. What's over my head?

- Well this is a Peggy Martin, and she's a rose that I read about in Southern Living Magazine, and she survived Katrina. She was under saltwater for three weeks. And I thought if that rose can survive that, it can survive me. So I ordered her from a place online and got two of the bushes. Well, they're really climbing. It's really a cascading rose. It's not really an-

- [Sheri] Does it bloom all summer or just one big flush?

- [Susan] They say it can bloom all summer if you fertilize it. I've only fertilized it in the early spring, and it does this and it's just gorgeous. The neighbors love it. They love walking by and seeing it. And she's very easy to take care of. Like this year, she got blown off her trellis twice because of storms that we had, and there was a lot of dead in her because of the freezing temperatures we had. But you just cut it out, and she's just as happy as can be.

- [Sheri] Well, she's beautiful.

- [Susan] I just love her.

- [Sheri] We have another trough going on here, don't we?

- [Susan] Yeah.

- [Sheri] And what do you have planted in this one?

- [Susan] Well, I love strawberries, but I think the birds like 'em more than me 'cause they get to 'em before I can get to 'em.

- [Sheri] You have asparagus in there as well?

- [Susan] I have asparagus in there too. I read somewhere they're good companion crops, and so I love asparagus so I planted that this year, so I'll just let it go for a couple of years until it gets going pretty good.

- [Sheri] I have to say that I love your border, your edging.

- [Susan] Oh, thank you.

- [Sheri] A lot of bricks.

- [Susan] A lot of bricks. We did hire a company, I drew the plan for the garden, and they came in and did the edging, dug out the beds and everything for me. But the strawberries are great. I use 'em for a ground cover too.

- I saw that. Yeah. You have it planted within the roses, and it actually is a great weed deterrent. So, yeah. And so you have some Hostas behind us.

- [Susan] Yes. I have a Hosta in a pot right behind the spiderwort. It's a real pretty chartreuse color, and I like it on top.

- [Sheri] Chartreuse is one of my favorite colors.

- [Susan] I love chartreuse and it really pops in a garden, especially in the shade, and then this little ground cover, I'm not sure what the name of it is.

- [Sheri] I think that's Snow on the Mountain.

- [Susan] But I just love it.

- [Sheri] It's called different things in different areas.

- I have my Lenten roses. I have some hydrangeas back there. Those are giant Hostas, I think.

- [Sheri] Those are beautiful.

- [Susan] I think it's called giant.

- And these two azaleas are still working.

- Struggling, huh?

- They're struggling. I'm not sure if they're gonna survive. And then there's a rhododendron in the corner, and I love my little angel statue. I think little statues and-

- [Sheri] Your folk art's wonderful.

- [Susan] Well, folk art and stuff is fun to have in a garden.

- [Sheri] I love perennial geraniums.

- [Susan] I do too. I love their color. I just love how they spread. They spread all over and it's just so beautiful.

- [Sheri] Pinks, reds, purples, They come in all colors and they're wonderful.

- [Susan] All colors, yeah. They're great.

- [Sheri] And I see you tucked a tomato plant in here as well.

- Yeah, I do. I love having vegetables around my flowers. There's no rule to gardening. You just do what you love.

- [Sheri] Right, right.

- [Susan] And that's what I like doing. It's putting my little vegetables in with my flowers. They seem to be happy cousins.

- [Sheri] Your garden isn't confined just to down on the grassy area, is it?

- [Susan] No.

- [Sheri] Tell me what's going on here. This is awesome.

- [Susan] Well, this is upstairs off of my office area, and it's such a great area that gets sun pretty much all day, and when we built the house, we made sure we put a faucet out here 'cause I knew I wanted to do some vegetable gardening, and this is where I do all my vegetable gardening. It's all in pots.

- [Sheri] And you have drip irrigation.

- [Susan] I have drip irrigation and these crazy things that I'm experimenting with this year.

- [Sheri] What are those called?

- [Susan] They're called electoral culture antennas. Supposedly, here I'll pull it out. Supposedly, in the 1700s they used this technique to multiply the yield of their food, their vegetables and their fruit and stuff, and it uses the, what would you say, the energy that the earth gives-

- [Sheri] Out of the air.

- [Susan] That's all around us.

- [Sheri] So is this your first year with it?

- [Susan] This is my first year y'all, so I got grandkids and stuff, think I've lost my mind, but all I know is that I've already got heads on this broccoli. And my carrots, I've never seen 'em grow so fast.

- [Sheri] And this is the end of May.

- [Susan] Yeah. It's the end of May.

- [Sheri] Yeah, yeah.

- [Susan] Zucchini and everything. It's just insane.

- [Sheri] Well, you have one good thing going up here with your vegetables up here.

- [Susan] What?

- [Sheri] No critters can eat them up here.

- [Susan] No critters. Yeah.

- [Sheri] That's great.

- [Susan] It's really good.

- [Sheri] Yeah. And your unique pots and galvanized is continued on up here.

- [Susan] I love my galvanized. Of course, I got plastic ones too. They're always good when you have hard freezes like we had. And I love my flowers. I have to have the flowers, too, around us. So, we'll see. We'll see if this little experiment works and how good the yield is this year.

- I gotta ask. Do you like to garden inside? I mean, you have magnificent gardens and courtyard areas here and upstairs.

- Yes. I love houseplants. They're my favorite. I have so many different kinds, but they have to like the shade. There's not a lot of sun inside the house, so ferns, mother-in-law tongue, just the normal easy ones that I know will survive and look good. I think every house needs a houseplant.

- That's true. That's true. Well, I wanna tell you, thank you very much for sharing your wonderful gardens, your flowers-

- Sure. My pleasure.

- your vegetables, your roses.

- Thank you.

- It's been wonderful. Thank you.

- Well, thank you for coming. I appreciate it.

- [Joanna] Mosquitoes beware. We have the easiest tip here to make the mosquito bucket of doom.

- Joanna, I have a bucket. What fancy stuff do I need next?

- All you need is a handful of weeds.

- Ugh, I hate that stuff in my yard. Perfect.

- Some water, like maybe half full, and here's the secret weapon. A MosquitoDunk, which is BTI. It's a bacteria that only harms mosquitoes in the larval stage. Won't hurt birds, bees, butterflies, the dog, us, only mosquitoes. So you put a quarter of a dunk in the bucket with the water, the imaginary water, and then you add a stick as an escape ramp in case anybody else falls in. They can climb out.

- Ah, okay. Like little lizards or chipmunks or something.

- Anybody? Yeah.

- Okay. And then I just leave it?

- You just leave it. You leave it all summer. I leave mine until December, quite frankly. And all summer, fall, it's killing mosquitoes. So the mosquito smells that stagnant water, which we can't smell, she smells the CO2, lays her eggs in the water, the eggs hatch, they become larvae, they wiggle around, they die, and that's it. They never progress to the next stages of the development. So no mosquito comes out even though all the eggs go in.

- I love it, and I am going to go home and make a doom bucket myself.

- [Announcer] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org and find us on these platforms.