Episode 3204

- [Narrator] A backyard can come to life just like you've always envisioned. Sheri Gramer visits with homeowners who always wanted a pond. So they rolled up their sleeves and did it themselves. Plus they've got attractive garden beds and a supportive place for the birds and butterflies. Annette Shrader demonstrates how to freshen up garden containers when summer is at its peak. These small fixes should take them through 'til frost. And Jeff Poppen explains how a short-term monoculture farm plot can be beneficial. Join us. What a nice spot to enjoy the birds, the fish, and the pretty landscape that completes the backyard setting.

- A beautiful day in Franklin, Tennessee. We have some lovely homeowners that have opened up their beautiful backyard and their pond area for us to visit. We're here today with Charlie Hart. Hey Charlie.

- Good morning. Good morning.

- I wanna know about this pond. Tell me how it evolved.

- This pond was a labor of love and craziness at the same time. When we moved into the the yard, I always wanted a pond. And when I said "I'm gonna make a pond", my wife said, "By the way, our daughter's getting married in about two months. What are you thinking?" And I said, well, "I can get it done in a month's time." Well, it took a month. We started in October 4th and ended on October 28th. But it was all done by hand. We dug it out. We had to lay all the rocks. I will say there were some sore shoulders after that, a little rotator cuff injuries, but we got it all done. And it's so nice to be able to come out here every morning and see the fish and enjoy it.

- [Sheri] Had you had a pond before?

- [Charlie] We had never had a pond before. It'd always been a goal.

- [Sheri] So for those that have never had a pond, what was your biggest challenge?

- [Charlie] The biggest challenge was probably digging through three feet of clay. And you can't bring in a bulldozer or backhoe. It all had to be done by hand to be able to do it right.

- [Sheri] I noticed some netting. What's that all about?

- Yeah, so when we first put the pond in, we didn't have the netting. And as you know, there's a nice lake at the front of our development and there's a lot of blue herons down there. And so we see a lot of blue herons flying over all the time. And I came out one day and there was a blue heron standing in the middle of the pond with a lot of fish scales all around it and a number of fish missing. So it -

- It was eating a little sushi, huh?

- [Charlie] He was eating a little fresh sushi. So we've had blue herons in here. We've had green herons in here. So that led to the need for the net if we want to keep the fish.

- So I noticed you have a beautiful red Japanese maple. I love the contrast between the chartreuse of the hostas back there. I see in that same color tone you have a heuchera there also in that beautiful red tone.

- [Charlie] Well, again, the maple was a tree that we really liked maples and we wanted something that was gonna be small enough to not block our view from the kitchen looking out into the pond. And then the hostage and the heuchera that we had, we just weren't probably thinking all the colors at the time. We just maybe got lucky. And actually it all worked out really nice with the light greens and the red of the heuchera as well.

- So tell us a little bit more about the other plant material. I see you've got some, obviously some water lilies and you have umbrella.

- [Charlie] We have the umbrella pond. When I bought those, we were told that they probably wouldn't over winter. And these are now going on their fifth year and they just keep spreading and spreading and spreading.

- They look pretty happy.

- [Charlie] And so, you know, we've done, we started off with a couple of small plants and now we're where we are. I actually have to cut 'em back 'cause they take up too much space. And the lilies again, they're in there every year and we get beautiful flowers coming out of that.

- [Sheri] You have some Siberian iris.

- We have some Siberian iris that are there. We had some in the lake in the pond as well.

- [Sheri] Some Walker's Low, catmint

- [Charlie] We do. That and then we've also got sunpatiens that are going in there.

- [Sheri] And like how you've incorporated some driftwood. Where did that come from?

- [Charlie] We had a house on Tims Ford Reservoir near here and we saw those up on the property coming up from the lake and thought those would make it look more natural. So that's what we were trying to get is that natural feel.

- [Sheri] And you were telling me, and it's obvious that you love turtles. Tell me about the turtle.

- Well we have a lot of artificial turtles here. But this last winter, we were traveling and we had the young man taking care of our pond said, "There's a turtle about this big in your pond. It just showed up today, what should I do?" And I went, "Well it's natural, leave it." And we weren't sure if it was gonna eat the fish or not, but as it turned out it over wintered and it just laid down in the algae and the moss there. And about March it just disappeared one day. So he had a nice safe overwintering and where he went, I have no idea.

- [Sheri] Wonderful, wonderful. I love the combination you have here. You have some herbs, you have some flowers. Tell me about this plot here.

- This was initially designed to be sort of our hummingbird, butterfly, bird sanctuary, so to speak. And you know, it's been a bit of over the last five years, trial and error to get certain things to come up. You can see on the front, we've got some dill here. This is actually a volunteer dill from last year,

- It's very happy.

- It just recedes itself. We put in some new basil, some rosemary. We had a big rosemary plant last year that unfortunately didn't make it over the winter with the freeze, so-

- You and everybody else unfortunately.

- We're starting again. I love the zinnias 'cause you just plant a few seeds and they pop up and they grow fast and they give you beautiful flowers. The biggest hassle is making sure you keep cutting 'em back down or else they get as tall as you and me. I'm a lover of dahlias. We put in dahlias last year for the first time and they didn't do so much, but they've come up really well. And again, we just left 'em in the ground over the winter. Some of the other bulbs we've got, were a shot in the dark from my perspective, but they're doing really, really well.

- The red hat pokers.

- Yes.

- [Sheri] Showing us how pretty they can be right now.

- [Charlie] And we have a bunch more of those coming up, so that's nice. And then these hyssops, these are really good for the bees and also we get a lot of the hummingbirds, will feed off of those. And we get a lot of goldfinches on these as well.

- [Sheri] Oh yeah.

- [Charlie] Which is really nice.

- [Sheri] Then there's Lucifer, the devil itself because it's very invasive.

- Well I'm gonna find out, I guess. We have two plots of 'em, so we'll find out how that goes.

- And your vine.

- [Charlie] The clematis. those have been in now for probably four or five years.

- Again, I think it might be really happy there 'cause it gets a little bit of shade in the morning.

- [Charlie] And they just keep coming back every year. I cut 'em way back down to nothing. And in the spring off they go.

- We're visiting your little vegetable patch. Lunch is served?

- Lunch is served. We've had this every year now, since we moved in. I mean we've got some jalapenos up front, some arugula, which obviously is going to seed. So that's pretty much end. A couple of different kinds of lettuce, some spinach. We've got three different tomatoes that I planted this year. Plus a whole series of volunteers that are coming up. There must be 500 tomato plants that come up every year and I'm just plucking 'em out. But we love it 'cause I mean, for lunch we come out, we pick fresh lettuce, fresh spinach, get some tomatoes off the vine. We have some Oregon pea pods back there and all that goes into lunch every day or salads for dinner. So I really love being able to come out here and get that fresh food all the time.

- It's definitely an advantage. Well I don't know if the viewers can hear it, but there certainly is a lovely sound in the background. Tell me about what you have going on here. Well I'm a big fan of the birds that come into the yard and with the trees behind us, obviously it's a good home for them. But we've got three different bird feeders right now. You can see we've got some cowbirds on there. Here comes a dove flying in. We've got a hummingbird feeder, which we'll feed there as well as all the flowers. I think this morning alone I've seen like 12 or 13 different species of birds come into the feeders. I love the goldfinches, the male goldfinches. We see those a couple times a year we saw-

- [Sheri] And what about bluebirds?

- [Charlie] We see some eastern bluebirds fairly often and we saw the red breasted grosbeaks this year. We had a couple of pairs hanging around for about two weeks and they are just gorgeous birds as well.

- [Sheri] And you were telling me about you had baby bluebirds?

- We had baby wrens this year.

- Oh, wrens. Okay.

- So we have a birdhouse back in the corner there, our bluebird house. And we had a wren family set up there.

- [Sheri] Those little stinkers.

- [Charlie] And it's funny 'cause we have a wren that will nest in our wreath in our front door.

- [Sheri] Yeah.

- And so after that it kind of leaves and then we saw it nesting back there and we were fortunate to come out one day just as the birds were fledging. So we saw mom and dad standing right in front on the bird house and all of a sudden a baby bird flops out and then it flies away and then we saw four more come out. So we have pictures of all five of the babies kinda hopping around on the ground. It was a wonderful morning.

- [Sheri] Do you continue feeding your birds summer, winter, fall, all the time?

- [Charlie] We put feed out all year long.

- [Sheri] Any particular kind you'd like to share?

- Costco's best.

- There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that.

- Costco's best, yeah.

- So you don't worry about specific seed for specific birds?

- We don't, we don't. That's a mixture of seed. So I mean every, we get all kinds of birds and then what the birds knock on the ground, the squirrels and chipmunks come in and take care of.

- [Sheri] Right, right. So we've got a fenced in yard.

- We do.

- What's behind this back fence?

- [Charlie] Behind the back fence is a green belt, actually. So we've got another house that's probably about 40 yards over, but, so this is gonna stay a green belt. We have deer running back and forth in there. We have rabbits, we have armadillos coming out. What I like about this though is because it's a great place for all the birds to have nests and stuff. So I mean that's probably why we get so many birds at our feeders. One thing we do have on occasion is we see hawks coming through here. There's a hawk nest up here. This last summer, at one point we had three hawks sitting on the fence back here.

- [Sheri] Oh wow.

- [Charlie] No birds around during that time period.

- [Sheri] I wonder why.

- [Charlie] But it's pretty impressive to see three hawks like that all standing there together.

- So I bet these knockout roses were beautiful about three days ago before we got that hard rain.

- Yeah, the thing that I like about these is that, you know, you cut 'em back when they die and they just bloom again. So we get blooming all summer long on those.

- [Sheri] And you have one of my favorite old fashioned shrubs: spiraea.

- Yes they, again, you can cut 'em back really hard and you think they're not gonna grow and then boom, there they are and flowers come in.

- I always think of my grandma or my great-aunt when I think of spiraea. I don't know why. It's a mental thing I guess. And then your hydrangeas are doing awesome back here.

- [Charlie] Yeah, they're doing wonderful job.

- [Sheri] re you watering them every day back here?

- [Charlie] They get watered probably about every three or four days, but we've had a lot of rain, so I haven't had water as much because of that.

- Great. This bed or this flower bed seems wide, but it seems small because of how you've planted it. It's great. You've got some crepe myrtles and some shrubs going on to make it nice and full. Doesn't look bare.

- [Charlie] Well, when we started at the backyard, I mean it was literally a blank canvas for us. It was just grass with nothing else. And so I designed kind of how we wanted some curvature to it. I wanted a gate to be able to get out back, but I also wanted to make sure we kept enough grass for the kids to put a volleyball nets and badminton nets and play baseball and football out here. So I think, it's worked out nice to give us a nice backdrop. We're pleased how it's turned out.

- Well Charlie, I wanna tell you thank you very much for sharing your beautiful lawn, your beautiful yard, your beautiful flower beds, your pond and all your fun stories. Thank you for sharing with our viewers and with me.

- Thank you for coming in and letting me share it with you. I appreciate it.

- We have entered into the dog days of summer, August. But you know what, the growing season is not over. We have container plants that are getting a little bit tired and weary looking, as you can see. Let's just show you the backside of this. At one time, this was lovely. I had some plants in here. I have a lemon licorice plant and I knew, because I don't even think there's anything living on this plant left in here, but I knew because it is one of those fuzzy leafed plants that hot weather or even too much moisture, they will melt in really, really hot weather. And I think you've seen that on lambs ear for instance. It's something about the humidity and we've had enormous humidity, right? So what I've got here, this plant has completely died out. Then there is still some coleus left, maybe. And you can see right here, this was a lovely little coleus. It was called Great Falls. And that meant it was a trailing coleus. This geranium has actually, because we have cooled down a little at night, but anything over 72 degrees at night, they will stop producing these buds. Another thing that we want to do with our geraniums also is keep them disbudded. And you know, if you look right down in here, you know they will go to seed. Don't just snap this off. If you follow this down closely, you'll see a little node right here and very carefully it will pop off. See that? See that little thing on there? So when you disbud your geraniums don't just go around and pluck the tops, you need to get the entire stem. So what I want to do with this one, I'm going to remove these. I think these will just pull up and I'll show you something else in a geranium. Let me just turn this around this way. You see these dying leaves right here. This is a good sign that I allowed this to get dried out. That's what happens with our geraniums if we don't keep them watered. To be honest. Even though this plant was right where I entered into my back porch sometimes it just was outta sight and outta mind. And another thing, when we talk about I'm gonna fertilize this plant once I have cleaned it up and decided if I can insert a new plant. Don't ever fertilize unless your soil is wet, unless the roots are wet. Because fertilizing on a dry plant means that you could burn the roots. So when I'm finished with this pot of white geraniums and decide if I can insert some more plants with it, give it a good dose of fertilizer, then I know it's gonna smile at me all the time. So let me just start to work on this. No, I'm going to pull them out because you can see there's the roots that are on that licorice and it was so beautiful. It was chartreuse colored. So look what's gonna happen, even just removing the dead. I'm gonna even take out this piece of coleus. Well, I've made my decisions. I've removed the old and I'm gonna ask Sheree to come in here and help me if you'll hold this so it won't fall forward for me. I'm going to, I have cut apart this vinca that's a trailing vinca, which I do love those. And I knew that it was a hanging basket, but I also know that a hanging basket is put together with separate plants. So with that in mind, I'm going to insert these white trailing vincas into here and it's gonna fill this void that I've created. But I am going to finish this plant out later on. And I think I'll be able to insert four plants into this and then I'll give it its fertilizer. And the process of fertilizer for this plant can be several different analysis. This is what I like to use, that one right there. And then you can use these. But again, the coated granular type, they do flush out over certain temperatures. But these are my favorites for the geraniums. Sherri, I know you have a lot of container plants. What do you like to do to say, fertilizer plants?

- Well, I like to take my coffee grounds and I put them and scatter 'em in different plants each morning. And my eggshells, I like to crumble them up in there as well.

- Yeah, that adds a lotta good calcium. Sheree, what can we do to this planter? Spruce it up for the summer.

- We're gonna trim it back some, we're gonna trim it back behind the leaf so you won't see that we've trimmed it back and just cut off some of the things that have gotten too long or dead looking.

- [Annette] And so what are the plants that are actually in this container?

- Well, we have coleus and we have a vinca, a Sprengeri fern. We have another coleus here. Now this is a torenia, a spike plant. So here we have a trailing coleus, a variegated vinca, and we have a verbena.

- Okay, now see that looks better already. And you know, just a quick tip. I know that bees like the bloom on your coleus here, but also that sets seeds and we have to be careful because once a plant starts to decide it's gonna set seeds, then it also inhibits any more growth. So let's just keep that in mind too. And then, you've just taken off some cuttings that could be rooted. So while you're working, I'm gonna just show something that's common with coleus. A coleus is a host plant for a mealy bug. Do you see these little white fuzzy things on this plant right here? That is a mealy bug. When you smash a mealy bug, it has a little red insect inside it. So when you do decide that you wanna take those coleus cuttings and take 'em in the house, then you better be sure that you take something that's probably organic. I like to use insecticidal soap and any coleus that I'm gonna bring in for the winter, I'm gonna treat it with that. Now, okay, let's see what else. You've still, now that coleus, this looks really good. I know where you trimmed but if you walked upon this plant, I dare say that you would know it. Now come around over here on this side. What do you think about what needs to happen to the verbenas?

- [Sheree] Yes, we could cut them back some too. So that will encourage them to bloom again. And that little haircut helps so much. It looks so much better.

- It does look better. And I'm very sure that once you've added some more fertilization and I do have some things that are water soluble that I will use on this. But it will green up and for sure it's going to flourish for at least three more months if we've been given that much more warm growing season. I'm gonna move over here with you, Sheree, because I know this rubrum penstemon right here is one of your favorite plants. But you know, when I buy this in the spring, I'm actually envisioning what it's gonna do in the fall for me. As you can see, it's grown tall. We had a very refreshing rain yesterday and it did fall over some. And what I want to do when the time comes for the chrysanthemums, all of these dead stems and you can see that this penstemon is starting to grow again. But I envision putting raffia, you see this little plant stand right here, it can go down even further and I'm gonna tie raffia, which is suitable for fall. We use it on our front door wreaths and everything else. But I'm gonna trim off. Once I add something else to the bottom, and I'm really like celosias. They are feathery and they're a fall color. But earlier in the season I had under this that beautiful pink vinca that was not a trailing one. And they just do so well in the sun without even any water. And so anyway, what I'm gonna do with this, if you wanna help me hold this over here, Sheree, if you'll hold that right there. I'm gonna go around to the front and I'm not gonna plant this. I'm actually gonna just insert this now because I'll assure you when I get through here what I'll do, you don't have to worry about. This is a large root ball. First of all, you can see it's not that much rooted in yet. This is a new plant. So I will reduce the size of this root ball and then I'm gonna use three in here. I'm gonna put one right here and then I will come over here. Well, Sheree, what do you think about this?

- [Sheree] I think it's beautiful. I love the colors. It's bringing out all the colors in the fountain grass.

- Yeah, and you know, just as soon as the chrysanthemums hit the market, I will find those and I may even have a place to put a pansy. But can you, what else would you add to it?

- I can see adding some pumpkins.

- Oh, true. Pumpkin could even go where I might have to remove a celosia, right?

- Or around on the ground.

- Well Sheree, I wanna thank you for helping me. And just for being such a good assistant, I'm gonna gift you with a new Corona pair of clippers.

- Thank you.

- So as you can see, it may be the dog days of summer, but there are many good ways where you could enliven your plants that you already have. You can go to the garden centers, they still have annuals for summer and not just fall. So add to what you have. If you think you've lost something, make it better and enjoy the dog days of summer.

- Diversity in an ecosystem such as a farm is a sign of health. Fields of just one crop often create many problems, but there are positive and negative aspects to everything, especially in farming. We grow a wide variety of crops and find good reason to fill a field with just one. Let's explore the benefits and detriments of monoculture. When fields are in just one crop, like corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see, there can be many detrimental effects to a monoculture. The chemicals used negatively affect the land and water and the grain oftentimes ends up in what's called a confined animal feeding operation. On the other hand, plants like to grow next to their own kind. A microbial intelligence awakens underground that helps the plants to grow. The lettuce here has microbes living in the ground that are having the time of their life. We are relying on a live soil humus, not chemicals to grow this crop. As the lettuce grows, stuff sloughs off of the root. These are root exudates that are specific to the lettuce plant. The plant root becomes colonized with bacteria and fungi that live off of these root exudates. Then in return for their food, these microbes can grow through the soil and gather the nutrients that the lettuce needs to grow. In other words, the microbes in this field are all lettuce loving microbes, helping the lettuce crop to do the best it possibly can. The beets use microbes too, but they're a different set of microbes. It's up to me as a farmer to create soils that have a wide variety of microbes in it. And we do this through compost. So these beets get exactly what they need. An acre of just potatoes is a beautiful site. The specific potato loving microbes here are not only helping the potatoes grow, but they suppress other weeds from sprouting. If I let one pigweed grow and starts being healthy, it sends a signal through all the microbes so that other pigweed seeds sprout. That's why gardeners like to keep every single weed outta their garden. Once the crop is finished growing, like this garlic, the microbes that are helping there give up the ghost and weeds start sprouting. But that's okay. We'll soon harvest the garlic and plant something new here. The monoculture that we do on our farm only lasts for one season. Monocultures are okay as long as they're followed by crop rotations, cover cropping and plenty of good compost. In a way, farming is unnatural and unhealthy. Many of the things we do on our farm are not the way nature does. She doesn't grow just one crop. Instead, she always grows a wide variety of plants and they grow together symbiotically. Legumes are like the lungs of the earth and the legume plants breathe in atmospheric nitrogen, which helps the grasses that are growing nearby. We can mimic nature's secrets as long as we keep our focus on always having a lot of biological activity in our soils. Temporarily having a monoculture is not a bad thing.