Episode 3217

- [Lauren] This home garden is a thoughtfully-planned space where the hardscape, lighting, irrigation, and drainage infrastructure was installed well before the first plant went in the ground. Treasured trees, reliable perennials, colorful annuals, and favorite flowering plants make this a delightful garden to stroll. April Moore visits the greenhouse at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage to learn which landscape plants they propagate from cuttings. We'll see the process. And Jeff Poppen shares his growing tips for eggplant and peppers. Join us. This garden is so colorful and pretty during the day, and simply enchanting after dark.

- I am so happy to visit in a garden this morning that has started from the ground up. And what I mean is they started with the very basics of electricity, water, and hardscape. The hardscape has created a wonderful platform for which the gardener can plant in. Mark Krueger, I want to commend you for being a technician. And you began a beautiful garden, I want you to tell us what you thought about and what you installed in this wonderful garden to make it easy to garden.

- Well, I always say I handle the things that aren't living, and Vicki handles the things that are living. So, well, as we started, we wanted to get a lot of things in place before Vicki planted. So I wanted to get drainage buried, we wanted some landscape lighting and irrigation. So we spent a fair amount of time, or I did, probably a year or two, just getting everything planned out before we started. And then, after that, we had an idea of what we wanted a garden to be. We wanted to be able to garden when we're old and perhaps we're in a walker or wheelchair, so we wanted some pathways that would take us meandering in a garden that we could still do that. We have about 130 landscape lights throughout the entire property. Some of it is moonlighting, down-lighting from trees, up-lighting on the crape myrtles. And I put as much in conduit 'cause I knew we would be planting, and transplanting, and moving like gardeners do.

- [Annette] And be safe.

- And be safe.

- [Annette] Well, I say you make a great gardening partner.

- Well, thank you, my dad was a builder. And it's something that, as an adult, even I have an interest in designing and just thinking through how things will look no matter what, you know, the project is.

- Now, this is the gardener, Vicki Krueger. But I wanna tell you, Vicki, that as I stand here with you, there's an aroma in the air that's unmistakable. It's Cleome and I love it.

- [Vicki] Cleome is one of my favorite flowers. My mom always had these when I was a kid, and I would be fascinated at how the seed pods would pop open. But I love them because they reseed themselves and they'll come up like weeds in the springtime.

- Good weeds.

- And you could have as many of them as you want or as few of them as you want. So you can just kind of pull out what you don't want and plant other things with them. But I just love them, because they look so well with some of the other spring-type plants, like my petunias are getting leggy. But these look great in July and August.

- [Annette] Do the deer eat them?

- The deer leave these alone. The deer don't like the way they smell. And another way you can get around having some of the things you like is to protect what you have with these. If you'll notice, I've got an impatien over there. I put a pot inside because the deer ate my impatiens.

- [Annette] Oh, but so you are surrounding the plant's exterior and putting the ones they love in the middle, and this acts as a barrier. The Cleome will act as a barrier then for the deer.

- [Vicki] Another thing that you can do for deer repellent is take peppermint essential oil, just a few drops, in a spray bottle with water and spray the leaves. They don't like peppermint.

- [Annette] Yeah, that's right, they don't. You know, Vicki, we have a perfect example of a southern tree behind us. You have the white crape myrtle. And that tree is rather old, isn't it?

- [Vicki] Yes, it was here when we moved here. So I think that's probably about 30 years old.

- I believe that variety is probably Natchez. And I turn around, and over your head, you have some wonderful Altheas. Do you think you know the name of this one?

- [Vicki] I've been told it's the Diana. It's the Rose of Sharon.

- Yes!

- That's what I know. White Rose of Sharon.

- [Annette] Yes, there was an introduction for this shrub dedicated to Diana. All right, well, now I want you to take me to some of your favorite plants in this garden. Well, Vicki, tell me why you like this coleus.

- This coleus, it's pretty, it's colorful, it does well with the heat, it doesn't require a lot of water, and you can make more plants with it. It's very economical to buy. And then, you can break off a piece, strip off the lower leaves, put it in water, it will root, and you have another plant.

- [Annette] That's true. It'll root almost instantly, I think. Well, and I do love the one that has the chartreuse color in it. And just look how the colors, you don't have to have a flower is what you're saying.

- Yes.

- You've got color and leaves that bounce off of all of the colors that are surrounded in your needled evergreen there, and just other plants throughout the garden. It's a wonderful annual accent, isn't it? This is a perfect example of foliage with no flower. Now this is a Loropetalum?

- Yes, it's a burgundy Loropetalum.

- Now, is that evergreen?

- Yes, it is.

- Oh. Well, it just really is beautiful with your bird bath, and, again, the old friend Cleome. But this is a very healthy-looking plant and it does well to showcase other things off of it. Doesn't it?

- Yes. And, may I say, this is a dwarf.

- [Annette] Oh.

- Because you can get this in a variety that grows into a huge bush. So you want to choose the size when you buy the plant.

- [Annette] Now tell me how you decided you were gonna garden the soil.

- Well, it had to be amended. And many places, the soil is so hard, it's rock and clay, and you have to dig out a big hole with a pickax where you're gonna plant. So we compost, we use yard clippings, whatever green we can chop up, add, too, our kitchen waste, and turn it over and over. And, after a while, you get some really good dirt.

- Well, Vicki, I'm ready to hear about your favorite plant here. What is this?

- This is a Coral Drift Rose. It requires not much care at all. It's very hardy. This one I bought on a discount rack, and that's how I like to buy a lot of my plants.

- Well, me too.

- Yeah, and so nurse it back to health. The other one was given to me by a master gardener that was getting rid of all his plants.

- Oh, it was a gift?

- [Vicki] Yes.

- [Annette] Right, and, you know, I believe this variety of rose, you don't have much issue with disease. Do you?

- No.

- So it doesn't have black spot. I only see one leaf that I would say is bad on that entire plant. That's beautiful. Now tell me about this. This looks like a very good ground cover. What is this?

- [Vicki] Okay. The person that gave this to me called it Angelica. But you've told me it's a native, and it grows, I only started with a handful.

- [Annette] Right, see, I could just reach right down there, and pull that up and it's like a little ball, isn't it? Of living stuff.

- Yes.

- And just drop it somewhere. But, you know, this is a native, and I've seen this on the creek sides, and even down by your river bank you may even have it down there. But I love it in the spring because it's beautiful yellow when it blooms. But it is rampant with where it goes.

- It is. You have to control it, and I regularly give it away to people. Even the day we had our garden tour, I had people just, "Hey, you want some? Grab a handful and go."

- And it's a fine gift. All right, now then, take me to another lovely spot. I like your foundation plantings here. Vicki, tell me about what you have in here.

- [Vicki] We have a Mahonia, and it is the first thing to bloom, and it feeds the bees first.

- Yes, they love those blooms, those yellow blooms that hang in clusters. Okay, and then I'm interested in the chartreuse.

- [Vicki] That's a Fire Chief Arborvitae. And if you notice it has red-tipped foliage. I like a lot of contrast with the foliage in my garden. 'Cause you got the deep green, you've got red and kind of lime green there.

- [Annette] Now these are beautiful.

- [Vicki] Yes, these are Golden Thread Cyprus.

- Yes.

- And they're very hardy.

- Do you have to clip these or they just stay pyramidal?

- They stay pyramidal. You can clip them if they get out of control.

- But you can just intermittently go in, can't you?

- Yes.

- Beautiful. These are beautiful, Vicki. Now this lantana.

- [Vicki] Yes, I love lantana, because in July, August, and on to the fall kills it. It attracts butterflies. It's a good source for their food, and also it attracts hummingbirds.

- [Annette] Yes, it does. And they need to be fed right on up till October, I think, in our gardens.

- Yes.

- Those are beautiful. Vicki, I have to say, that's a very beautiful lady garden over this garden. Tell me about her.

- She's one of the four seasons. And Mark did the base of the statue, so she is level, and there are two up-lights so we can see her at night.

- [Annette] Oh, of course, he's got lighting on her.

- [Vicki] Yes, and some of the plants in here were going to be destroyed from an Adopt-a-Plot, so I got yucca, canna, Rudbeckia. So all we had to do was go dig them up and replant them.

- [Annette] Take the time and the effort to give them a new place to live and be happy.

- [Vicki] Yes, and so we got a lot of plants that we would've had to pay for.

- [Annette] So this yucca right here, you say that blooms?

- [Vicki] Yes, it does. It comes up on a huge stalk and it has beautiful white blooms. It bloomed in June.

- Naturally. But look how beautiful her foliage is. And I'd say the deer don't munch on that either.

- [Vicki] Oh no, the deer will leave this alone.

- All right, and I see, as I stand here with you, knowing the gardener that has her hands in the soil 12 months out of the year, I would venture to say that in this garden, and all these gardens, you have daffodils, tulips, spring-blooming things. And you have just taken the time to be economical with your garden, but yet it's beautiful and vast. And you just put a lot of time, and thought, and effort into it. And you have shared it, and we thank you so much. And you can thank Mark also, because he had a hand in this. You're a great team, and thank you for allowing us to come.

- You're welcome.

- We're here at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage visiting the propagation greenhouse in the fall. And here with us is Kimberly Cooper, their historic gardens manager. Can you tell us, you know, are all these things here that you plant in the ground? Or tell us a little bit about these.

- So a lot of the plants that we'll produce in here are either from seed or they're from cuttings. This time of year we have a lot more cutting production going on. This one is blue porterweed, and it's actually a Florida native, but its flowers are actually really good for pollinators. Our bees and butterflies have been going crazy for it.

- [April] Okay, so you're propagating these by cuttings, and then they'll go out in the spring, I guess?

- Yes, they'll be planted about in May. We'll make sure we're clear of frost, 'cause they will die from frost.

- Yeah, and I'll say many of the things in here are frost tender at this time of year.

- [Kimberly] Yeah, at this time of year, a lot of them are frost tender. But our cooler temperatures are the perfect time to collect the cuttings from them.

- [April] Okay, and so when you propagate these by cuttings, how do you do that?

- [Kimberly] Well, I use my trusty pruners.

- Nice.

- So I actually have some, these are cuttings of pineapple sage that we took because it is a winter-tender plant.

- Yeah.

- And they have gotten to the point that they are well rooted and they actually need to get trimmed.

- Oh, okay.

- But the fun part is, is this will actually be your cutting.

- Uh-huh, okay.

- So I can actually show you how they all start in these pots is I start trimming it. You gotta take off some of its leaves, and you only really wanna leave this top part. And you want to get where I just cut those leaves, you wanna get those underneath soil if you can, or you need to at least get one set under the soil if you can, because that's going to be where your roots are gonna come from.

- So are these difficult, are these particular plants, are these difficult to do with cuttings? I mean, are they hard or they go pretty easily?

- These are very easy, and I believe with these I got 100% rooting.

- Wow!

- Which is great.

- No, that's fantastic.

- I, of course, do have other things, like roses, they are a lot harder to root.

- [April] Tell me a little bit about some of these other things that you're starting from cuttings this time of year.

- Okay, well, we have these musk roses from our garden, and these are a little bit harder to root than some. So I actually use rooting hormone for these to help kind of give them a boost and a better chance to root.

- Yeah.

- We also here have scented geraniums that come from pots that we keep in front of the mansion.

- Mm.

- So that we have citronella scented and rose scented.

- Yeah, where's the rose scented?

- [Kimberly] Let's see, this is actually, this should be the rose scented.

- [April] Oh.

- Or, yeah. This is the rose scented.

- Mm.

- [Kimberly] This is the citronella scented here.

- Oh, lovely.

- The leaf's kind of softer and a little bit bigger on the citronella.

- [April] And I see these, I love these.

- Yeah, so we have our red salvia, or Texas sage, here. It can be found throughout the garden. Sometimes it comes back from seed. But to be a little bit more predictable, we take cuttings in the fall.

- [April] And do you need rooting hormone for these? The sages? These sages?

- [Kimberly] These actually root so easily that I don't bother with rooting hormone.

- That's awesome, well, they're beautiful flowers. You can still see those pretty red blooms. Love it. I see some things here that probably were started by seed. Can you tell us when you started these from seed and what they are exactly?

- All right, well these are violas. They're actually King Henry variety violas. Old enough to have in our garden.

- Oh, that's lovely.

- And so this is just a couple of the ones that are going to be ending up out in the garden. A lot of them are already planted, but these are just holding for now because we gotta replant them later. But we started these from seed in August, about the beginning of August, we had to put 'em in the refrigerator to chill.

- [April] Oh, see now I did not know that about these. They're violas?

- Yeah.

- [April] King Henry, right?

- Yeah, King Henry violas. Any viola, you have to chill it in order for it to sprout. And then, you have to keep it in darkness. Usually maybe cover it with like a newspaper or so, just so sunlight's not hitting it. But check it every now and then. In about a week, they'll sprout, and then you can let them see sunlight.

- Okay, so you take 'em out of the freezer at that point once they've sprouted? Or do you keep 'em chilled a little?

- So you have to chill them for about one to two weeks.

- Okay.

- And then, you can take 'em out and keep 'em in darkness. They can start getting a little bit of warmth, and then once they sprout, you can start introducing them to sunlight, but not too harsh, because our summer, sunlight in August is a little too harsh for them. But our greenhouse is a shade fabric, and that knocks off just enough sunlight that they can flourish in here.

- That's far more complicated than I imagined it was to produce violas and pansies for the fall, so thank you for sharing that. Now I know you guys grow a whole lot of plants from seed, and there's just a few in the greenhouse right now. So when will you start growing out things that, for example, have to go out into the garden in the warm weather months? When will you do that? And what all sort of things are you guys planning to grow this year?

- So a lot of our plants, usually we have to start them from seed in the greenhouse about end of January into February, just depending on how long they need to actually get to size that we can actually put 'em in the garden.

- Okay.

- So we'll be starting things like dianthus.

- Oh, nice.

- Cosmos, sometimes foxgloves, just so we can get them in there to replenish for the next year.

- So I know, at the Hermitage, that you guys have plant sales here, and I think they're a couple of times a year. Can you tell us when those are? And I'm assuming the greenhouse plays a big role in that.

- Yeah, so everything that goes into our plant sales comes to our greenhouse at some point, whether it's been dug from the garden or cuttings, or if we're just starting it from seed. And we will have them in spring for about about April into May. And then, also, the month of October is when our fall sale takes place.

- [April] Okay, awesome. Thank you.

- Mhmm.

- [April] I definitely will be buying some things.

- Oh, please do.

- Oh, I definitely will be. Thank you so much.

- Today, we're gonna talk about peppers and eggplants, two members of the nightshade family, which also includes potatoes and tomatoes. I've never had much luck with eggplants. But gardening continually offers surprises, and this crop of eggplants is one of them. Around the 1st of April, we prepare our cold frames. We mix equal parts of sand, soil, and compost, and add a sprinkling of lime. Here I'm making the furrows about three inches apart. And then, I carefully drop the seeds about an inch apart, one at a time, because this is where these plants will stay until I'm ready to transplant 'em. I do this instead of replanting them into little pots. After I get the bed seeded down, I cover them up and press firmly. Now we keep them well watered and well weeded. And the plants will grow up, and they'll get pretty good size, before we transplant them out into the garden. In this cold frame, we put window sashes on to keep them warm at night, but then we remove them during the day to let the rain fall in and to provide good air circulation. We planted about 600 pepper plants this year in rows 3 1/2 feet apart, with a spacing of about two-feet apart between the plants. We hoe them, keep them cultivated. And then, in the middle of July, we spread a thick mulch down to keep the weeds down and keep the soil good and moist. Peppers tend to break off branches and can be staked, much like you would a tomato. But when we have this many of 'em, we just find it simpler to grow extra pepper plants rather than to try to stake 'em all. The varieties we grow are bell peppers. This is King Arthur and these are a beautiful bell pepper. And then, we grow another bell pepper called Gypsy, which is yellow, some of them turn red too. They're a little smaller, but very productive. Our specialty is Italian peppers, Corno di Toros, which means horn of the bull. We like the Bull Horn peppers because they're not hot, but they do have a zing. They're tastier than a regular sweet bell pepper. This variety is called Carmen, and it turns to a beautiful red color after being green. The first Bull Horn type pepper I grew is called Italia. Here's a basket of them. But they don't seem to produce quite as well as the Carmen. Poppen's pickled pepper pickers have picked peck after peck of prolific peppers here. These are pizza peppers, a small jalapeno type that has a real thick wall. Very flavorful. And although a little bit smaller, each plant really puts out a lot of them. Banana peppers come in two varieties, a hot one and a sweet one. They're real popular and are often pickled. Peppers love to grow up on a hill where there's full sun from morning till evening, and they also love the heat, but not as much as their tropical cousins, the eggplants, who really thrive in hot weather. I filled up my rows with peppers and discovered later that I had forgotten about the eggplant. One day in late June, I dug them up and put 'em in a basket as I was heading up the hill. I found a spot for them next to the watermelon patch, set them out, and forgot about 'em again. Eggplants often get eaten by the flea beetles, and I wasn't too hopeful. But something worked. Intuition plays a large part in gardening. You can read about what the experts say, but I say trust your intuition. I don't know how, but somehow I found a great spot for the eggplant patch. Planting late, even though accidental, apparently helped this year, as the flea beetles weren't so bad and the crop thrived. Gardening intuition can be developed many different ways. We put up a lot of hay, feed it to our cows during the winter, and make great biodynamic compost where they've eaten at. This not only helps our soils, I guess it helps me too. Being in the garden and eating out of it keeps attention focused and intentions clear. This variety is called Orient Express. I ordered it from the catalog because it said it was early, easy to grow, and tender and flavorful. It's a skinnier variety than the common Black Beauty, which is actually a wider eggplant. Look at these passionate, purple fruits. I really don't know what to do with them, but good ideas come to mind. Last night, I sauteed up with tomatoes, onions, and garlic, and stuffed peppers with them. Boy, it was good. There's many Mideastern dishes that use eggplants. And, of course, there's Eggplant Parmesan. When you're gardening, don't be afraid to try something new or old, as I've tried growing eggplants rather unsuccessfully for over 30 years. Build your soil up with organic matter, and surprises will happen.

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