Episode 3315

- [Announcer] Orchids are the most popular flowering potted plant in the world. Admired for their beauty, they can stay in bloom for several months and live many years. Tammy Algood is at Stones River Orchids to showcase their selection and get care tips. Troy Marden is awed by the plant selection at Garden Treasures, a retail and mail order nursery that specializes in rare and obscure plants. We go behind the scenes to learn about their propagation work and see new varieties of Japanese maples, Aucuba and camellias. Come along. Learning the do's and don'ts of orchid care from a passionate grower.

- You've been gifted with a beautiful orchid. Now what? Today we have an expert who's going to take you from bud to bloom and beyond. So never fear. Orchid help is here. We have the expert in orchids, Tom Harper, who is the owner of Stones River Orchids in Franklin. And not only that, a decades long friend of mine.

- Absolutely right. I love that.

- Thank you for having us to your greenhouse and for educating us on orchids 101.

- Good old 101. Yes.

- Yeah, let's start with somebody that's just been given this beautiful orchid. Okay? So it can be a little intimidating, you know, Tom?

- Well, I think that's no question about that. I mean, they're truly spectacular and people absolutely love orchids. And being the recipient is even more exciting. But the question remains, what do you do with it now that you have it? Well, thankfully, this is one of the easiest orchids to care for. This is a Phalaenopsis orchid, and the white Phalaenopsis, the one you see here is number one when it comes to popularity.

- So what do you do with it?

- Well, it's really important first of all, when you receive the orchid to check it out, make sure it's okay. In other words, that it's got some nice buds forming. It's got the flowers in good condition. It's the overall health that you want to examine. So that's the first thing. So beyond that, then you look at the plant. When you look at a plant like this, you really wanna see those leaves nice and strong. They're firm, they're, they have a slope to them. There's a nice V shape here. And that V shape tells you that it's healthy and it's strong and it's doing well. And then looking down into the pot, and you'll notice this is a clear pot,

- Right.

- This is the grower pot.

- Right.

- This has not been transplanted. So they're grown out and then ultimately bloomed out, and then they're given as gifts.

- So you see all these roots and stuff here.

- Yes.

- And you kind of think, you know, if I see this with an other plant, I think, well, this has got a problem. It needs a bigger pot. But it's fine.

- [Tom] It's absolutely fine. It's interesting to me to see the size of the plant, the natural spread of those leaves is significant compared to the smallness of the pot.

- Right.

- And automatically, like you said, you think that needs to be repotted. But we don't do that.

- Okay.

- Because we don't want to disturb the plant as it exists when it's in flower. The worst move a recipient could make is to repot it at this stage.

- Got it.

- In other words, enjoy the flowers as they are. Allow those buds to open.

- Right.

- And enjoy it. Now, when it starts to grow from the middle, it will produce new roots. And that would be the repot time.

- Does it need anything in particular?

- My best suggestion there, and I've had some personal experience too in our home, in handling these, some natural light would be good. And an east facing window is the ideal number one spot. That could mean direct sunlight early in the morning.

- Right.

- And that will be fine as long as those leaves don't get too warm to the touch. But I mean, up to 10 o'clock or so with direct sun, not a problem. Now what that does, it produces the food and the leaves, and that supports these flowers.

- Gotcha.

- So that's very helpful. Now, what can happen, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Those buds are most sensitive at the tip. And those buds can dry up and fall off over time. That's due to two primary conditions. Number one is the light, but some natural humidity is helpful as well. But I have a good friend and she grows and she puts them not in the window sill, but under a direct spotlight. And it's only a few feet away from the plant. And by golly, those buds do open. Now she's in the kitchen. There's some natural humidity in that kitchen.

- Right.

- But no natural light whatsoever, and that spotlight can make a big difference. So grow lights or spotlights can be beneficial if you don't have that east facing window. The trickiest part is all about the water. This material that it's in is known as Sphagnum moss. The entire pot is full of Sphagnum moss. Sphagnum moss is used because it grows orchids fast and it stays moist for a long time. But that works against you. 'Cause if you water this too often, it's going to mean that those roots, those nice healthy roots that we see, they could easily be too wet and suffocate and die. Uh-oh, now you're in trouble.

- Right.

- So always err on the conservative side of watering. On this particular plant and this particular pot size, now this is roughly a four inch pot. It's gonna retain moisture for a very long time, even inside the house. So I'm thinking two weeks, 10 days for watering. I think there are more often killed by too much water than not enough. So even it's amazing that I've had plants go two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, because I missed watering them in the greenhouse. And they're fine. To add to that, fertilizing is not a big deal. In other words-

- Leave it alone.

- Don't be enamored with having to fertilize this orchid. There is a lot of nutrients in that moss. It not only holds the water, it holds the nutrients as well. Now, when you water with plain water, you're gonna flush some of that out. But the plant at this stage with this many leaves, can support this many flowers over a long period of time without any fertilizer at all.

- Perfect to know. Okay, so let's take it to the point where it's not blooming.

- Oh yeah.

- Because you're gonna eventually get it to that stage, right?

- Yep.

- And so then what do you do with it?

- Well, when the plant's finished, and this plant has bloomed before, if you look very carefully, there's a little cut stem right there.

- Right there. Yeah.

- So the flowers have run its cycle. Now, the cycle inside it will last you up to three months. I mean, with very little care.

- Unbelievable.

- It's just, it's one of the best purchases you could make for a blooming plant and enjoy it for such a long period. I don't know of a better one. They just, they're so showy and so beautiful that they make such a beautiful statement that way. Orchids typically are annuals, so they bloom once a year. So after that bloom period, it's a grow period. And as you can see here, this is a brand new leaf right here. And that's a good sign.

- Absolutely.

- So the leaf is good color. It's nice and shiny. It's really happy. Now, as it produces new leaves, it also produces new roots. And if you look real carefully into the pot, you'll see those beautiful reddish roots that are showing in there.

- Yes.

- And that means it's really happy and doing what it's supposed to do. So what it's preparing for is adding new leaves and ultimately through that rebloom cycle, which is something it will do ultimately. But again, there's a very special technique that you have to perform to make it rebloom.

- And so do you just kind of leave it to do its own thing now?

- I mean, yes.

- It's not blooming. But it's still beautiful.

- Yeah, it's a beautiful green plant. But the key here, then even more important, is the light that it receives because it needs to bulk itself up from growing to rebloom in the next cycle. So it's needs not only good light, now's the time they add the fertilizer.

- Gotcha.

- So certainly want to go light on the fertilizer, maybe half strength is recommended. You know, every product's gonna encourage you to use a certain level of fertilizer, but they're in the market of selling fertilizer. So you have to understand that less is better. So if you'll halve that amount, for instance, that's like perfect.

- Gotcha.

- For this. And it's important to understand that most orchids, because they are annual, they tend to bloom that once a year cycle. But the Phalaenopsis orchid, in particular, its bloom cycle can be manipulated by the wholesale nurseries who grow these in great quantity.

- Right.

- And they are absolutely able to manipulate when this blooms. So here we are in the fall, and the timing is such that, you know, here we have a plant that now has not one but two brand new inflorescences. Frequently they're called spikes, flower spikes, but technically they're inflorescences. And these in turn will grow and ultimately produce buds and flowers. So that's how the cycle is. But, they're manipulated to produce not one, but sometimes two spikes. And those in turn will grow and bloom. It'll take three months from its first initiation to flowers. Three long months. So the cycle naturally in nature is that most of the time when they finish growing in the summer, it cools down in the fall. And that's when they initiate the flower spikes to bloom in the spring.

- [Tammy] And do you have these roots come out?

- Well, yeah. They-

- This, I mean, do you have 'em?

- And it's perfectly natural.

- Yeah.

- Don't be-

- It looks weird though.

- Don't be alarmed. These are natural growth of the roots, and they come out of the pot. So initially they were all in the pot, but over time, as the plant grows, it will send out roots over the pot. Because orchids technically are epithetic, meaning they're epiphytes and they grow on something.

- Right.

- They don't necessarily grow in something. And because of that, those roots will search out new environments and head out where they want to go, wherever they want to go.

- And they're kind of wild childs.

- Yeah, they're kind of wild childs and it looks kind of cool.

- Yeah.

- After a while. So this is a little two and a half inch pot. And these are just cute as they can be because they can produce a fabulous show. Like you see right here. This one is a, again, a two and a half. And the plant is fully grown in there. And it's no different treatment than the big one.

- Right.

- No different.

- [Tammy] So just because it's a small pot doesn't mean it's gonna have small flowers.

- [Tom] Correct. Yeah. They'll have nice size flower, maybe not quite as big. Sometimes they're-

- But numerous.

- But numerous. And they're bred for that. This is what the intent is to have smaller flowers, but lots of them. So you have them, in this case, in this beautiful pinkish color. Then you have this beautiful white one in here. You know, there's a lot of information on the internet out there. Some of it's pretty good, some of it's not so good. And I don't know what to tell folks other than to try to filter through as much as possible. Now many areas have local orchid clubs and they can be very beneficial in helping people if they really have that interest and wanna take a step further.

- Absolutely.

- And take care of orchids. I know we have one in middle Tennessee. There's one in Knoxville and there's one in Memphis throughout Tennessee and all the neighboring states as well. So yeah, those are for real dyed in the wool orchid people. But everyone in that club is willing to help anyone grow better orchids and have success with them.

- [Tammy] It has been a pleasure, and an educational one, to be with you today. And we love the information that you've given our viewers. Thank you so much.

- [Tom] Well, you're certainly welcome.

- [Tammy] For allowing us to come to your greenhouse.

- [Tom] So glad for you to be here. Thank you, Tammy.

- I have often been heard saying I need a few treasures for my garden. And I have found just the place, Garden Treasures Nursery about 30 minutes east of Raleigh, North Carolina. And we are going to be joined by Pat McCracken, the owner. We're gonna look at the nursery and at some fascinating plants. So Pat, tell me how Garden Treasures came to be.

- Okay, well originally, I started this facility here about 10 years ago. I designed it and built it as a wholesale nursery for camellias for someone else. It, the camellia market just wasn't there, so we kind of fizzled there for a little bit. I bought the nursery out five years ago this September. And we've transitioned it now from a wholesale nursery to a completely retail nursery with a specialty in really rare and obscure, a lot of irrigate, but all kinds of woody plants, tropicals, subtropicals, kind of, you name it.

- [Troy] Right. So you have a broad interest in plants. Not just one sort of focus.

- Too broad is probably the best word.

- Right.

- Just on the nursery alone here, we probably have close to 5,000 types of plants in our collections.

- Wow.

- And certainly have a lot more available that we can get our hands on.

- Sure. And speaking of being inside the greenhouse, it is full of all kinds of garden treasures. And we're standing in front of some, these beautiful Japanese maples. That one in front of you is really pretty.

- Yeah, this is Abigail Rose. It's a, which is broomed off of Higasayama, gets maybe five to eight feet tall.

- Okay.

- Really pretty in the spring. And it holds some variegation through the summer.

- Okay. And then you've got some really compact ones down here in front of us. Are those dwarf or are they just small plants?

- They're dwarf.

- Okay.

- [Pat] This one, I don't know if you can see it. This is Yuri Hime.

- Uh-huh.

- [Pat] I've got a 20-year-old one at home that's maybe 18 inches tall by four feet across-

- Wow.

- So it's really, really slow. Very low grower. Very low.

- [Troy] Yeah, and then the one over with the very narrow, almost linear leaf.

- Yep, that's Koto-no-ito.

- Mm-hm.

- You said you had a 12 foot in your garden. That's probably pushing its pretty much its upper limit.

- Yeah.

- I don't think I've seen one any bigger than that.

- Yeah.

- But beautiful, almost like string leaves.

- Yes.

- Great fall color and usually yellows, oranges, sometimes a little bit of red in it. It's a stunning small growing maple, but still maybe 12 feet or so.

- Yeah. And Koto-no-ito has done very well for me. It's been in the ground about 15 years. And even during the polar vortex a couple of years ago when we lost so many evergreens and even some Japanese maples and things because of bark split, it sailed through with no problem at all.

- Awesome. It's a great one, yep.

- So you also have quite a collection of camellias here. And for a lot of Tennessee, I would consider us a, you know, for the past 20 years, 30 years, anyway, a little bit borderline for camellias. But as we get into, you know, this inevitable warming, regardless of how you feel about it otherwise, it is happening.

- It is happening.

- And you know, we're going to need to start looking at other plants that will thrive in different climates than we're, than we've been accustomed to for the last three decades.

- That's absolutely true. For sure on that. I think we all need to be looking at least a zone warmer than what we've typically, historically gardened.

- Right. So you've got some beautiful camellias here and we like to think that in a protected place around, at least around the Nashville area where I am, but certainly around Memphis, Chattanooga, and some other places in Tennessee, they do a little better with camellias than we do a little further north. But there's some beautiful varieties here. So maybe point out a few for us and tell us a little bit about 'em.

- Well, most of the ones up here are not terribly, terribly rare.

- Yeah.

- This one is fairly unusual.

- Yeah.

- The Mikado.

- Right.

- [Pat] It's about finished blooming, unfortunately.

- [Troy] Look, but that's a pattern on that flower.

- [Pat] That's a really crazy pattern on that. Yeah.

- This one down here, the red with the variegated leaves-

- Yeah.

- [Pat] Is a new release we just released last fall for a grower down in Alabama. We're actually getting a patent on it for him.

- Oh wow.

- So, it's called Gordon's Flash-

- Uh-huh. But it's one of the best camellias, personally I've ever seen. It-

- Right.

- [Pat] Blooms like crazy. Great growth habit. It grows fast.

- [Troy] And it's got that beautiful variegated foliage.

- And so great-

- So you've got green and gold leaves and red flowers with big gold stamens on them. It's really showy. And then also-

- And the number of buds, I mean, there must be-

- Hundreds on the plant.

- You know.

- Yeah. I mean 10 buds in a cluster in some of those places.

- It's really-

- And it's been blooming now for about six weeks.

- Okay. And it's just getting started. It'll go for another-

- So very long bloom season compared to the-

- Yeah, it'll go four months maybe.

- Yeah. Compared to a lot of camellias who, yeah, have sort of a short timeframe and then they're just green shrubs for the rest of the year. So that's great.

- [Troy] Alright. One of my personal favorites that you have quite a collection of are Aucuba. And a lot of people say, "Oh, I don't like the yellow speckles," or "I don't like this," or "I don't like that." But I think for a tough plant that grows in the deep shade, that's evergreen and that provides year-round color because of those variegated leaves you all, you just can't beat it.

- Absolutely.

- And I know in my own garden it's growing in the dry shade of two great big oaks that take every ounce of water outta the ground and it never skips a beat.

- Mm-hm.

- So you have a real collection here.

- Yep. We do. Unfortunately, maybe, we're out of control and post everything outta nursery is outta control. We all have a very small number here, currently available in our sales area.

- Right.

- But we have about a hundred, 120 different varieties.

- Wow.

- In either evaluation or stock buildup now. So eventually we'll have at least a hundred on our website.

- [Troy] I'm gonna have to really start collecting then.

- [Pat] And save your money both.

- Right. So tell me just a little bit about some of the reasons you're looking at Aucuba and some of the things you're looking for.

- Okay. Well, obviously color-

- Right.

- Is important.

- Sure.

- I think growth habit is important. You know, there are Aucubas that stay under two feet.

- Right.

- There's some that get 10 feet maybe.

- Right.

- They're big ones.

- Yeah. We asked you to grow Aucuba omeiensis, which is a tree. It'll get 20 to 30 feet tall.

- Wow.

- Probably not gonna be okay in Tennessee yet.

- Yet.

- Give it a few more years.

- Yeah. Yeah.

- It's a true zone eight, probably eight, nine, that has really big leaves. Maybe 12, 15 inches long.

- Wow.

- And becomes a single stem, 20 foot tree, maybe 30 feet occasionally.

- That's pretty amazing.

- So we have a whole range of little dwarfs to trees.

- Right.

- But also, the full color palette of solid greens to almost pure golds.

- Right.

- But one question we've had a lot did here at the nursery is why are my Aucubas not fruiting?

- Yeah.

- Well-

- And I think a lot of people don't even know that they will fruit, but they will.

- That's true. They will. They make a little berry about the size of your little finger maybe.

- Yeah.

- And they can be anywhere from reds to kind of oranges. There's some that are called white, but they're more cream colored, yellowy-ish maybe.

- Cream, yeah.

- But Aucubas are, they are male plants and female plants. So any specific variety like this particular one here that Daisuke's Tiger is a female, always will be.

- Right.

- So this one, in theory will set fruit, but you have to have a pollinator for it. So you need a male. So one thing we're trying to do with our collection now, and this is just some examples here.

- Right.

- Is at this size when they're starting to bloom, I'm going through and doing picture documentation of close ups of all the flowers. So eventually I'll have all hundred and something varieties documented.

- Documented with flowers. So we know, is it a boy or a girl?

- Right.

- So if you have a boy in your garden, it's not gonna make fruit ever.

- Right.

- But you need a boy and a girl in your garden to make sure you do get fruit.

- Right.

- So we're using it kind of as a reference collection. But I think something no one's ever looked at really is-

- Yeah.

- Is the characteristics of the flowers.

- Yeah. So it's the same theory as, you know, to use an example of a plant that people might be a little more familiar with, your winterberry hollies.

- Mm-hm.

- Those or those that we call the winter berries.

- Right.

- You know, you have to have a male pollinator to go with the female plants, and quite many hollies are that way.

- Exactly. Yep.

- So it's the same sort of theory and yeah, you get these nice little clusters of, like you said, red to orange berries. And you mentioned that the flower color, actually, they have different flower colors and different flower types, male and female.

- Correct. Most people don't even pay attention to their flower. And these are-

- Right.

- In bloom right now.

- They're small.

- Those are fully open flowers. It's not something you're gonna see from across the yard.

- No.

- But they do come in from a bright yellow to kinda these light greens to a kind of a soft, kind of a tannish brown-

- Mm-hm.

- To all the way up to a dark burgundy. And then you have male and females within those color ranges. So you can really separate Aucubas into five flower color and then male and female. So technically 10 different selections you could make just on flower form-

- Just on flower form alone.

- Yep.

- I wanna take a look at one more really unusual plant. And this is a banana relative. It's not a true banana, but it's a very closely related plant. And we have had it perennialize a little bit in Tennessee, but we rarely see the flowers. So to see these sort of alien-looking blooms is really unique. Tell me about this.

- This is Musella lasiocarpa, it's a flowering banana.

- Uh-huh.

- So again, very close relative to bananas.

- Right.

- The cannas, they're all in that same close relative group to bananas. It does actually make a fruit, as you can see.

- Yeah.

- The fruit that, so that Troy has there. It's technically edible but not very palatable. It's mostly just like starch and lots of big seeds.

- [Troy] Yeah. Full of seeds.

- [Pat] The plant in the ground will make really large, almost a big canna looking leaf. Under really good conditions, we can get 'em maybe 8 to 10 feet tall on the ground. Doesn't make much of a trunk. It's a very short trunked banana relative.

- Right.

- Versus the big tree type bananas. We don't flower them here often because the bloom spike needs to be frost free.

- Right.

- And we're usually not frost free.

- Yeah.

- So these started blooming last summer and they'll keep going all the way through this summer. So in the greenhouse we bloom them. No problem.

- Sure.

- But they're great as just a really large focal, if you want bold tropical foliage, that's cold hardy-

- Right.

- It's, we've had 'em below zero with no damage.

- Right. And unlike some of the musas, the actual bananas, and a lot of people I think are familiar with the Japanese fiber banana Musa basjoo, which is totally hardy for us.

- Right.

- But it's a monster.

- It's a monster.

- And you know, after 15 years or so, the base of the clump can be 15 feet across and you know, it's very overwhelming for an average size garden. So these smaller growing varieties, are much more garden friendly for most people.

- Absolutely. Yep.

- So, yeah. But this is really cool. Because this big artichoke kind of looking what you, what looks like the flower actually isn't. The flowers are down here inside of these bracts, and after they're pollinated, then they turn into these little banana like fruits that are underneath here. And you can see that they're, like Pat said, they're just kind of fleshy and full of big, black seeds. But it's a really fascinating plant. And like I said, I know of some places in Tennessee where the plant itself has been hardy and perennialized and in a protected space, will come back. So you get this fabulous foliage during the summer. We just aren't quite warm enough yet-

- Yet.

- To bloom it. But I think we're probably headed in that direction.

- I would say so too. I think we can probably bloom 'em here in a couple more years at the rate we're going.

- Yeah.

- And you mentioned you designed and built this facility. Tell me a little bit about the design of it and specifically how you worked to lessen its kind of environmental impact.

- [Pat] Okay. Yeah. This greenhouse structure was in my head back in the eighties when I was an undergraduate at UT Knoxville. And I was trying to design a greenhouse that had very minimal impact to the environment around it. And it unfortunately took 30 years before I could actually make that vision in my head a reality.

- Right.

- So what you can't see is the, under the floors here, there's five between four and five feet of gravel and french drains. This greenhouse has almost two miles of underground drain lines in it. So all the water that falls in here from irrigation, we catch 100% of it. It's sent down to a tank down below, behind me. We pump it up a hill through a ditch with a bunch of Japanese irises to help filter out any contaminants outta the water. Goes into a built wetland area we designed that filters more of the nutrients and sediment out of it.

- Mm-hm.

- Through three settling ponds back to the original pond. So we've been pumping now for about eight years and our water quality gets better every single year.

- [Troy] Wow. So you're actually improving the quality of the water.

- Absolutely.

- You know, based on just all of that natural filtration.

- Correct. Yeah.

- Well, Pat, I wanna thank you for taking the time out of your day to share your Garden Treasures with us. And we really appreciate you having us out.

- [Pat] Thanks for coming over. Appreciate it. And hope you guys have a great gardening season.

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