Episode 3221

- [Narrator] Begonias are the fifth largest genus of flowering plants, with more than 2,000 species and hybrids. Hosts April Moore and Annette Shrader share their collections and discuss growing tips. Jeff Poppen profiles five varieties of creeping weeds that have integrated into food production areas on his farm. He shares his approach to keep them at bay. Julie Berbiglia tours the landscape along a city street that filters and absorbs storm water, and looks great too. Stay tuned. With colorful and interesting foliage plus bloomscapes from small to tall, begonias have a lot to love.

- With winter around the corner, cooler weather coming, I've been preparing my plants, my tender plants, to be wintered indoors, and among those are my begonias, and I have several begonias that people have given me. I don't know how to take care of them, so I've invited my friend Annette here to come and give me some tips and advice on how I can get 'em to thrive indoors and outdoors.

- I call this the hurry scurry time of year, because we want these plants to be healthy outside and happy, and most of mine, I do take indoors, a plant, the whole plant. I don't take parts of them, I take them all in, and there is a world of like 2,000.

- [April] Wow.

- [Annette] A variety, zinnias, all this that goes on with the begonias.

- I didn't even know there were different real types. I knew there were multiple species. I didn't know there were different types. I just have some wax begonias.

- Yes.

- And I have some angel wings, but you've got a whole array on this table.

- Yes, and you know, some of these I might not have exactly right what their type is. You can identify them by name sometimes. But what I have here are examples, here's one for instance. This is a rhizome.

- Oh.

- [Annette] See this, how it comes up?

- [April] It's fuzzy.

- Yes, but that's a different leaf. This plant right here, this plant right here, I purchased in a garden center that was a little bit warmer area, and she told me that they had not found out what these two were.

- They don't even know what type they are.

- Well, and actually what I really wanted to see if maybe by chance they were perennial, and I have looked, and there are numerous books that will just, you can flip them pages and pages and pages, but I never have found that these could actually be.

- [April] Yeah.

- And then there's the rex begonias.

- Those are gorgeous. I love this one.

- And you know, the way they grow from the bottom of the base of the plant, see?

- Uh-huh.

- And their leaves are lots of different colors, but one of the things that I like about these, they do bloom.

- [April] Oh, do they?

- [Annette] They actually do, and when I-

- [April] I would just grow them for this. This is gorgeous.

- Yes, and you know, and there's lots of different ways that you can extend how many you have, just by propagating 'em in yourself. Actually this plant right here, this is a, I think it was called a green dragon.

- Oh.

- [Annette] I have seeds for this one.

- [April] Look at stem on that, that's wild.

- [Annette] This is the rhizome.

- [April] Wow.

- [Annette] And I do have a picture of this one. It was in its heyday, shall I say.

- [April] Yeah.

- [Annette] And starting in January, this had a bloomscape that came up at least this high.

- [April] Wow.

- [Annette] It had a very sturdy stem on it, and so it bloomed almost for two months. Now, this is yours right here.

- Yes, and this one's happy. I took 'em from cuttings last year, but I have others that aren't so happy, and one question I had was, since I'm about to clean these up and put 'em in the greenhouse, I usually will trim 'em off and keep some for cuttings, but should I pot them on now? These are pretty root bound. Maybe they're okay, but I know they suffer, 'cause in the winter when I take 'em out, they just look sad.

- Yeah. So do you actually want it to grow some, or do you want it to sort of remain a little bit dormant when you take it in?

- Slightly dormant.

- Well, I think my personal opinion is if you were to divide this and repot it, it might encourage it to regrow.

- To grow too much?

- So I think I might wait till the later months, like February.

- And then repot.

- Because you can tell when spring is coming, our plants are gonna tell us. I don't care where they are.

- That's true.

- They'll start that new growth.

- [April] Everything in the greenhouse starts blooming.

- [Annette] You can time it, you know when it's coming. Well now for instance, this begonia right here's called Marmaduke, and you see how it's growing.

- [April] Oh, that's nice.

- [Annette] On a rhizome.

- [April] It's another with fuzzy stems.

- [Annette] Yes, I actually got that from a friend down in Jackson, Tennessee.

- [April] Oh, and look at the light shining through that leaf, that's gorgeous.

- [Annette] See, now I am fortunate enough to have, what you need to have is an eastern window in the wintertime. Of course, we know the sun is gonna rotate and it's gonna go to the south, so all of these in my home will get southern exposure and eastern exposure.

- [April] Okay.

- [Annette] Until about 2:00 in the afternoon.

- Okay, and that's adequate light for them in the winter?

- [Annette] Yes.

- [April] Indoors, so these keep their red color?

- [Annette] Oh yes they do.

- [April] Awesome.

- [Annette] And this particular one, I was at a certain big box store in like May a couple of years ago, and they had one of these, and it was blooming and it was pink, and it's almost like a falling star. The petals open and point out downward.

- [April] Wow, pretty.

- And took it home and set it beside my little chair out on my little porch, and it bloomed nonstop all summer. I took it inside, I put it back behind the plant. I forgot about it, and I looked at it one day in the dead of winter, and all of the greens were just flopped over. Well, I took 'em off and forgot about it. Well, wasn't long when spring started to come. Out of the base of that plant came the new plants.

- Oh.

- And I kept it for like two years.

- So do you use any sort of special soil mix or watering routine with these indoors in the winter or in the summer months? I mean, I know they need quite a bit of moisture generally, but.

- [Annette] Well, I actually find that I might let them dry out.

- [April] Okay.

- [Annette] And I try not to leave them sitting in a coaster that has standing water.

- [April] Mm-hmm.

- [Annette] And I might add like a fourth a cup to a half a cup of water. But your plants, even though they're inside, they're gonna tell you when they start to just wilt down a little, and you're gonna know.

- And most plants when you do overwinter 'em, do need less water, and I know that begonia can get root rot. I don't have that problem 'cause I very seldom water them, which is why they sulk in the summer.

- Yes.

- But what you're telling me is what I've been doing isn't that wrong.

- No, it's not, it is not, and what I think that I'm wanting to say that to encourage someone to grow begonias like this is I can't count the ways of why I love them.

- [April] And they're so easy, I mean, they are so easy. I'm a very neglectful begonia owner.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [April] I don't even fertilize 'em, and I know that's something good for you to do periodically, a slow release wax.

- Yeah, here's a little tip. If they do get leggy, now this is a branch off of my Harry Lauder walking stick.

- [April] Yeah, yeah, it's pretty.

- [Annette] And I had to cut it off.

- [April] As a support, that's a pretty support.

- [Annette] Yeah, so I do that with lots of things. I might use dogwood branches.

- [April] Yeah, 'cause some of the cane begonias will get really tall and skinny too.

- [Annette] Yes. I have some of those

- [April] And those are good to prop up with something like that.

- [Annette] April, I brought you a present.

- [April] Oh.

- [Annette] This is a perennial begonia.

- [April] Oh, yours is a lot prettier than mine, Annette.

- [Annette] Well, lemme tell you about it if you'd hold this box.

- [April] Yeah.

- [Annette] Let me just stand it up for you and show you. This is a special begonia from a special friend that passed away.

- [April] Oh, look at that.

- And I want you to look right down here at the base.

- Uh-huh. Wow.

- You see these little nods?

- Yeah.

- Nodes, whatever, nodules right in here.

- [April] Yeah.

- [Annette] This is how it propagates itself.

- [April] Okay, it grows from those?

- [Annette] Yes, and see how that has a, look at that. That looks like somebody has a wallet in there.

- [April] Yeah, it looks like a wallet.

- [Annette] Okay, that's part of last year's.

- [April] Uh-huh.

- [Annette] And so they come up from that, but I have a sneaky suspicion that on these, in these flowers, let's turn it.

- [April] 'Cause these are rhizomes, right?

- [Annette] Yes.

- So it's a little bit the way that irises do, actually.

- I have a feeling that inside this bloom, this one right here, it's about to go by. You see how it's winged and it's like a little triangle there?

- [April] Oh, that's pretty.

- [Annette] Inside there, there are seeds.

- [April] Oh.

- So I think it's traveling both by the stolen seeds that come off of here.

- See, I didn't know they'd do that.

- Well, this has spread about eight feet from its original.

- Wow.

- Planting place.

- Well, it sure is pretty. So one thing I had a question about, I haven't really studied them 'cause I've grown them and they just grow, is, you know, what part of, I think these are from tropical areas.

- They are.

- Not zone 9A or 10B, so most of these we wouldn't be able to grow outside, just the one species, I think.

- The example I showed you of the pink.

- Yeah.

- And you can find a white one.

- Yeah.

- And then you-

- And those can grow in the ground year round here.

- Yes.

- But none of these?

- Right, and you know, actually, your strawberry begonia can be grown as a hanging basket.

- Yeah, that's exactly the way my mom grew hers, so.

- Yeah, I think I have a dream that I would like to go where these are growing on their own without us.

- [April] That would be amazing.

- [Annette] Without the touch of man, and to see them in their natural habitat. I can only imagine.

- I think one of my begonia goals is to actually break down and grow the tuberous ones that my mother grew, because I didn't want to grow them for the years because I thought it was pretty fiddly. She had to take those little tubers out, and she had cut 'em apart and clean 'em and store 'em for the winter, like you could do with dahlias sometimes, and it just seemed like a lot of work. But they are really pretty, so maybe that's one I should add to mine.

- Yeah, and I think that under this one, this one is a tuberous.

- Yeah, well, it has the leaf shape, yeah.

- That's right.

- Awesome.

- So anyway, they're a wonderful plant.

- Absolutely.

- Actually, whether we think they are or not.

- Oh, over 2,000 or almost 2,000 species.

- Let's don't go there.

- I don't think so.

- There's something creepy going on around Long Hungry Creek Farm these days, and it's creeping out my perennial beds. It's the creeping weeds. So when we're doing the garden and digging the weeds, we have got to get every last root of the creeping weeds out, because they sprout and come back if you don't. We'll start with Johnson grass since it's the biggest, and it's one of my biggest problems here. So this is an old blueberry patch that I just couldn't keep the Johnson grass out of, and you'll see why I'm having such trouble with it when you see the size of these roots, they're amazing. I mean, it is a amazing plant here. Look at these roots here. So when we dig out Johnson grass roots, we have to get them all out, and it is a chore because they go in pretty deep, so we just have to keep digging until we get all of those roots out, and they're very prolific. Just a small little piece of a Johnson grass root, you know, if I break this off and it stays in the ground, that's a new plant. So you can see with these roots like this, how once they get into a perennial patch, they're really hard to get out, so we've got to keep them out from the get go. That's why we like to plant perennials in land that has been worked up for a few years and cultivated so we've gotten all of these pernicious, perennial creeping grasses out. It comes outta the ground this time of year, oftentimes at an angle, and it looks a whole lot like corn. It's in the same family. Yeah, you can see where these grassroots get right in here with the blueberry roots and makes it hard to grow the blueberries, 'cause you got all these other grasses competing with them for moisture and nutrients and such. When I first moved to Tennessee, the old timers warned me of something they called moody grass, and after a little while, it didn't take long. I realized they were talking about Bermuda grass, and Bermuda grass is an enemy of all of our perennial plants because of these little wiry roots. You see those things? And they will take over a perennial bed of berries or something like that, so we have to get in there and clean these things out. Now, this one here, you can pretty much, if you just get 'em out on the surface, they'll dry out and die, but you just have to do it, you have to keep on. As soon as you turn your back, they're back in there again. So we just flip 'em over, and mainly we're working on these little wiry roots. You can see 'em right there, yep, and again, just a small little thing like that will make another Bermuda grass plant, so we want to keep these out to start with. Once they get in our plants' roots, they're really hard to remove, and then gradually, they'll be the ones that are getting your compost and nutrients from your mulches and stuff, and your berries and other perennials will suffer. Bermuda grass and Johnson grass are actually wonderful cattle feed, so I encourage them in our pastures. So as a farmer, I love Bermuda grass and Johnson grass, but as a gardener, I really don't like them. Nutgrass is actually a pretty plant. It sends a stalk up that has a nice little flowering thing, looks sort of umbrella-like, but it's another one of these creeping weeds we have got to keep out of our perennial patches. Now, the real reason that there's nutgrass somewhere is because the subsoil is holding too much moisture. They like wet spots, so we've been out some of the clay here on the lower side, hoping to get better drainage in here because we have a little bit of a nutgrass problem. So this time of year is a good time to look for these little things right here, and this is the nutgrass wanting to sprout up out of the ground, and it's got a little rhizome right there, and you see this wiry little root thing? Well, that's connected to the next one, so we have to go in there and loosen the soil and see where it's connected at, and follow those little threads, and look there, we keep finding more of these little things with their nodes on 'em wanting to make new plants, so we want to get all of these outta here. We loosen the ground up. We try not to break 'em because we're trying to actually follow them. There we go, I can tell I got to the end of that one, yeah. So no amount of pulling the tops off when they come up is gonna help you. You have to get down there and get in there and dig out these little things. This all reminds me of the story of an old farmer on his deathbed. He told his three sort of lazy sons that there was a treasure buried in the orchard. Well, he died, and those three sons rushed up to that orchard and dug all through the orchard trying to find this treasure. Well, they didn't find anything, but the next year, they had a treasure of apples. Whenever we see these kinds of creeping grasses and weeds, we know the ground is compacted and damp and needs to be dug. So it's the digging, besides just digging these out, the digging, we're adding air, we're aerating the soil, we're loosening up the subsoil, getting better drainage, and that's in the long run, what will help keep these grasses out. Ground ivy looks innocent enough with its pretty little blue purple flowers here. It's a really kind of a pretty little plant, but again, it's a low growing creeper that will love to get in and invade your perennial beds, so we're gonna have to dig 'em out, and you can see, once I pull up a chunk of it, all of these roots there have to come out of the ground. This is another one we can just dig up, and the sun will dry it out and kill 'em off pretty good, but it just sends out these little runners, and I mean, it just creeps, and in a matter of weeks, can travel several feet in from your grass and your lawn into your perennial beds. So anytime we see roots like this that develop with these little nodes on 'em, each one of those nodes has the ability to make more roots, so even if we take, just leave that much, there's a whole new plant right there. We oftentimes smother these out by growing a quick growing black-eyed peas or Sudan grass, or just something that's gonna grow tall, lush, and quickly during the summer months. These are all summer growing plants. Bindweed is a pretty, white flowered morning glory, but it's also pretty darn invasive. Usually I show you the pretty gardens on our farm. Now I'm gonna show you a pretty bad one where we could not keep the bindweed out of this raspberry patch. And so we do have some raspberries in here, but I'm gonna dig just a little bit, and you'll see what I'm talking about. All of these roots, like this right here, are this perennial bind weed, and once it gets in there, it takes over. So this is where the leaves look like, that familiar heart-shaped morning glory leaf, and it's a vine, climbs up. But these roots last year after year and grow and just they filled this bed up. This was a, I mean, you can tell it's good soil and everything, but I can't grow raspberries here anymore because of the bindweed. I'll probably have to somehow get all this cleaned out and grow annuals where I can just keep cultivating, or I may just turn my chickens loose in here and let them have it for a few years. And again, each one of these nodes has the capability of making a whole new plant. Look at the roots shooting out each one of those. So these creep laterally and then they send up these chutes. No amount of pulling these is gonna get rid of your problem. You have to dig. I've heard that burning the rhizomes or seeds of weeds and then sprinkling the ash back on the ground and repeating this for several years will make the ground not want to grow those weeds. Fire has a detrimental effect on plant growth, sort of the opposite of water, which is of course really good for growing plants. That might be worth a try. Although I like the idea of the fruit plantation being in a lawn, it hadn't worked out that good for me because of these creeping wiry grasses that I feel like I have to keep out of the perennial beds. So I keep digging, and if you dig gardening, you'll be digging in your garden.

- Well gardeners, you never know where you're going to find inspirations for your own gardens, and today I'm finding inspiration out here on the 28th 31st Avenue connector in Nashville. Now believe it or not, this bridge is like a giant rain garden, and we're gonna find out about some of the plants that you can grow at home, and some of the ways that you can take care of your own rain garden. McKayle Houghton is with the Cumberland River Compact, and I know that these kind of projects are near and dear to your heart because when they put in this bridge to connect two sides of town, they really thought about rainwater and all the runoff.

- They did, they did, and this is such a wonderful example of how we can build our city so that we have a great, booming city and a healthy environment too. What would happen on a normal street is the water would rush into that storm drain and then drain to the nearest stream unfiltered, and the way that this street has been designed is the water hits this curb cut, flows through the rocks, and then into the garden bed. So these are bioswales, they're long rain gardens, and they divert rain water from the storm drain, so some of the advantages are that this trash is what we find in streams all the time when we do stream cleanups with volunteers. So the first thing is all the solids, trash, and some sediment here, this is all, this is not bad, but all this sediment washes into the streams and pollutes the streams, so this is kind of a filter of the first flush of storm water, and then that after the solids are filtered out, the rain goes into these garden beds, and you can see how moist these garden beds are.

- [Julie] So McKayle, what I really like that they've done here is these mass plantings of really attractive plants that really have a lot of seasonal interest. So what is it that we're looking at right here?

- [McKayle] Siberian iris, and the density helps minimize the weeds, and so weeding is always a problem in any garden, and these proliferate, they come back thicker and better, and that's one of the characteristics of rain gardens and bioswales is that over time as they fill in, they percolate the water more quickly.

- Yeah, it's really nice because we had the beautiful flowers this summer I remember seeing. Now we have these great seed heads, as you drive by, you see them, and then that flows right into these wonderful grasses.

- Shenandoah switchgrass, and switchgrass is always a great addition to any rain garden, any perennial garden. In a home setting, you don't really need to irrigate a garden with switchgrass. They usually do really well, and they keep this upright character through the winter. The seeds hang on through the winter, and they provide a lot of nice structure to a garden.

- [Julie] A garden wouldn't be a garden, I think, without trees.

- [McKayle] Yeah.

- [Julie] Trees are so great for soaking up water, aren't they?

- [McKayle] They are, they're incredible for soaking up water, and these are disease-resistant elm trees. You know, after the elm blight went through, people worked hard to find a disease-resistant elm. They're really beautiful street trees with their upright habit. Yeah, then these have grown so quickly over the years since this was planted.

- [Julie] So another good choice for rain gardens is native shrubbery.

- Yes, the shrubbery is great because it gives structure to the garden. And this is one of my favorite, this is inkberry, and it's got these beautiful leaves that I just love, and it's drought tolerant. It produces beautiful purple berries for wildlife to eat, so this is a great and very popular choice for rain gardens and bioswales. You'll see this in a lot of commercial rain gardens around town.

- Now, what are some of the other bushes that they've used here?

- Virginia sweetspire is this shrub right back there, and that's another one that's great. It spreads it, it creates a really dense look, beautiful fall colors, and then the ground cover that they're using is St. John's wort, and that stays low, covers the ground. With pretty much any garden, the first two years, you'll wanna water your rain garden. But the rain patterns in Tennessee are changing, and there're more intense periods of rain and more intense periods of dryness, so when we're building a rain garden and as a watershed organization, we're very sensitive to water usage, so we're trying to plant super hardy plants that can take the rain periods and the dry periods, and so even in a rain garden, you want drought tolerant plants, so. Those are always the plants that we're recommending, and they're always native perennials.

- [Julie] Well, these are really great examples for all of us to look at it, and I really appreciate your time here today looking at the way that the city is certainly investing in our streams in a way that we may not even notice.

- [McKayle] Yep.

- [Julie] And they're really all great ideas for us to take a look at. So during the various different seasons, keep in mind that the landscape along your roadside and certainly along this beautiful bridge are great places to come out and get some inspiration for your yards.