Episode 3407

- [Narrator] A kitchen garden that's just steps from the house allows for frequent use and informed meal planning. Jeremy Tolley shows us around this well-designed garden space, featuring L-shaped raised beds that make planting and harvesting an activity that can engage the whole family. Phillipe Chadwick gains insight into edible landscaping on a tour of a residential garden that incorporates a tidy vegetable garden as well as fruit-producing trees and vines, along with ornamental plantings. It makes for a delightful blend. And Marty DeHart shares tips for growing blueberries. Join us! Better soil quality, good drainage, and ease of maintenance are among the benefits of raised garden beds.

- I'm in Nashville today in this beautiful backyard garden with Sarah Ruzic. Sarah is the founder and the creative genius behind Tennessee Kitchen Gardens. So Sarah, what exactly is a kitchen garden, and who should have one?

- Yeah, so a kitchen garden is actually a really old term, like potager in French means kitchen garden. And so just like the kitchen is a really important part of the house, the kitchen garden is a really important part of the backyard. It basically informs your cooking, and it's an important part of coming out to the backyard and enjoying your space.

- Well, I love this garden, obviously it's beautiful and it looks very intentional. Can you tell us about the design of this particular garden?

- Yeah, we think about this one as an outdoor room. So the raised beds are creating our walls. The arches are drawing the eye up and creating a ceiling. And then we have a centerpiece, the fountain in the middle. And then we have this base, we have our floor created with both gravel and with this stone edging.

- It's beautiful, great work on this. Let's take a look at some of the things you have growing here. This looks like a sugar snap pea, am I right? Tell me about it.

- Yeah, yeah. Well, so it's important to acknowledge that these arches are not only gorgeous, but they're also functional. And so this is our cool season climber. Later on, we'll replace these with tomatoes, but for now we have these beautiful sugar snap peas, which are gonna produce a nice crispy crop, which probably won't ever make it into the kitchen.

- [Jeremy Tolley] And any kind of pea or bean also contributes to the health of the soil, right?

- Of course, yep. So we're fixing nitrogen in the soil so that when the tomatoes come later, they're gonna have a little bit extra energy to go off of.

- So you design gardens for a living, and I know you do a lot of raised beds. That's the thing that you do. Why raised beds?

- They're just so much easier. We can control the soil in the raised beds in a way that we can't in just the clay soil of middle Tennessee. So our raised beds are two feet high and they're filled completely with a mixture of screen top soil and worm castings and mushroom compost. And we're constantly adding a little bit more. Even when we plant, we might add a little bit of fertilizer to the planting hole just to make sure that plants are getting their very best start.

- [Jeremy Tolley] That's great. If I were a home gardener, I would look at this and it feels easy to do. It's the right height, I can get to it without having to bend down, it looks like it's easy to control the weeds. What are some of the other benefits of, for, you know, a typical family? They're busy, they have kids in school, or they have jobs, they vacation. It seems like it's easy to take care of, am I right?

- Yeah, I think that whereas every single year, if you had a tilled garden, you have to go out and you have to re-till and you have to re-weed and then you're pretty much weeding every week. But with a raised bed garden, you have the structure and so you can just go out and plant. Even if you don't have a chance to add more soil, you can do that later. And so the raised beds and the verticals, the arches and the obelisks, they create the structure so that you can get out and get your crops in each and every season.

- [Jeremy Tolley] Yeah, so looking around this garden, it is way smaller than my grandparents' garden.

- Right.

- It was, like you said, rototill, huge roads, weeds everywhere. But they grew a lot of food in that. How much food can you grow in a space that's as small as this is?

- You'd be shocked how much food we could get in here. Because the soil is so well taken care of, we can intensively plant this. Some of the patterns that we have, we have herbs on the edges, we have flowers on the edges. On the inside, we have intensively planted all of our lettuces, our kales, our broccoli, our cabbages. And so we're able to pack in lots of plants.

- [Jeremy Tolley] And I see you've intentionally included some pollinator crops as well, right?

- [Sarah] Mhm, yeah. Trying to bring in the good bugs.

- Yeah, for sure. So Sarah, when we think about raised beds, often we think about really small crops like lettuce or we think about ornamentals or herbs. In this particular garden, I see that you have some aliens and some pretty large kale. Talk to us about those particular crops in a raised bed situation, and maybe some other crops that would be unusual to see in a raised bed.

- Well, generally we're trying to create kind of a forest within the raised bed. We're trying to diversify so that, for instance, if we have a cabbage moth come and take out this Russian red kale, we've got plenty of other plants that that cabbage moth is not going to get into.

- Smart.

- [Sarah] Sometimes I think about like, that old "Southern Living" technique of the spiller, the thriller and the filler. And so right here we have leeks to create our thriller to get some height, but also they smell, so they're gonna repel some of the pests. And then we have our filler of our lettuce. And of course that's just a loved crop and it's not gonna be that small for long. And then we have our spillers, our herbs. We have chamomile here, Alyssum, we have these pansies. That sage over there is gonna start to tumble over the edge 'cause it's a beer garden variety. Yeah, we're trying to create beautiful stuff and also fill in the beds as tightly as we can.

- And how do you manage transitions? So when this lettuce is harvested and it starts to get warmer than it is now, this is gonna bolt. How does the gardener know when and how to switch out those plantings?

- Well, that's the great thing about raised beds. When you're out here, you're not necessarily getting distracted with weeds, you're just out here to harvest. And so if you see the perfect size lettuce and you need it in your dinner that night, come out and get it. And so we know that lettuce is gonna start to bolt as it heats up, and so we're gonna be transitioning this garden out pretty quickly for peppers and tomatoes and our eggplants and all of our warm season crops. So the kitchen is right there and it's time to eat this stuff.

- Yeah. So it sounds like there's a continual rotation of plantings that are getting harvested into the kitchen, and then new things that are coming in depending on the season and the frost dates and those kind of things, right?

- Right, right.

- Great. Sarah, this garden is very intentional, very beautiful. And it looks like you put a lot of thought into it. If I'm a home gardener and I want to design something like this, what are some of the basics that I could take from this garden and apply in my own backyard?

- Yeah, well, start with what you want. So first of all, think about if you're gonna be out in your garden, what kind of activities might you be doing? This particular garden has a table to have dinner. We have a fire pit in the back. But we've also built gardens with swing sets and sandboxes 'cause we need to get the kids busy while you're out here, you know, plundering around your garden and playing around.

- I love that.

- Yeah, so that's probably the most important part is to think about what do you wanna be doing? And then from there, consider what kind of structure do you want? This garden is very formal, so we have the repeated geometric pattern of the L's, but you could also just have rectangles or squares and keep it simple. This is beautiful Tennessee lumber. It comes from Gordonsville. It's our eastern redwood that we see all over the sides of the road. And so this is two inches thick, and so I would recommend not going any less than that. You want a beefy piece of wood to keep your garden long-lasting and easy to take care of for a long time.

- Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I love that idea about having sandbox in the garden and having toys and making this garden, if you are a family and you want your children to participate. This seems like a really great format for, kids can't run through this easily. Certainly they could climb on it and interact with it. But have you seen any of your gardens where children are helping to take care of them?

- Oh yeah, we have a bunch of gardens that have tiny shovels and tiny rakes.

- I love it.

- We have a lot of gardens that have miniature excavators and dump truck, little cars. And we have a lot of gardens with like, decorative rocks. It's just really fun to see how kids can make a garden their own. And then there's a lot of plants that are very kid-friendly. You probably know that, you know, sugar snap peas are very easy for little fingers to put in the ground and then of course to come out and eat. Radishes can be planted, and they come up so fast. And beans, squash, squash and the whole pumpkin family can be easily planted and you'll see a seedling pop up within four days in the heat, yeah.

- You're making the case for not using pesticides in the garden so that kids can pick and eat as they will, right?

- For sure, yeah.

- Yeah, that's great. Sarah, I see that you have an irrigation system in this garden. Tell us a little bit more about what's the best way to irrigate a raised bed?

- Yeah, so we irrigate with drip line because we wanna water the soil and the roots and not the leaves. Of course, the rain is gonna water the leaves, but that's also when we get more bacteria, more viruses, more fungus. And so we wanna use drip line tube water. And then we do have it set up on a timer so that in our busy lives we don't forget to water and we can leave town for several days and the garden's gonna be just fine.

- [Jeremy Tolley] Yeah, that's really smart. And for a garden that sometimes, they can tend to dry out a little bit more in the summer. What happens over time as these gardens mature? Do you find that that happens less? And do you find that weed control happens less as the garden matures?

- Well, not really. That's a good question, though. So when we first put the soil in, it is really loose. And so you'll notice that the water can just go straight down to the bottom and you'll be standing in your irrigation. And so that is true, in the first six months or so of your garden, you might have to water a little bit more because that soil has not compacted yet, but it doesn't take long. And once that soil starts to compact and the roots start to create some, you know, ecosystem down below, then we know that the water's gonna be catching and the soil is gonna become better and better over time, really kinda takes care of itself.

- Yeah, that's great to know. Love the design, I love the aesthetic behind it, but I also love all the practical tips you've given us today. Thanks for spending the day with me.

- Yeah, absolutely. Glad you were here.

- When you think of a typical home landscape, you think of mostly ornamentals, but there's no reason why edible plants can't be thrown in there in the mix. We're gonna go take a look at a home landscape that's both pretty and productive. I'm standing here in the most beautiful vegetable garden surrounded by tomatoes and eggplants, and I see basil, some grapes, all kinds of peppers. Really prolific and spectacular vegetable garden right here. I'm with Jeremy Lekich of Nashville Foodscapes. So you've helped start this garden and get this going.

- Correct, this is one of my many offices. This is an example of a more, you could say formal garden, you know, contained in a space with a fence around it, which is really a great way to get high production in a garden. Especially when you have critters that also want to enjoy in the abundance that you are growing. The raised beds help with that a bit. They also really help with just kind of organizing the garden, and to be able to kind of think about rotation and delineation of pathway and beds. It's a nice way to really keep it clean. For a vegetable garden when you're trying to get high production, this is a really convenient way to make that happen.

- And with plant rotation, you're talking about planting the different families in each area so you don't kind of leach the soil of those certain nutrients.

- [Jeremy Lekich] When you plant certain plants in the same spot year after year, it can actually breed diseases.

- [Phillipe] As far as the history of this site, was this just yard, you know, a few years back?

- At one point it was yard, and then when I arrived it was a big garden, but there was no raised beds. There was, you know, some minor pathways that went through. But what was happening was it was always getting compacted because there wasn't clear pathways. And so when we put the raised beds in, it really helped so that at this point, the only place that gets compaction are the pathways and the beds stay loose. And what's been really nice about these raised beds also is that we put really good soil in to the point where this garden is not being irrigated. There's no irrigation system in place here. Now, it gets a watering once in a while, especially now because we're in a drought. But the nutrients that we brought in were such that it allowed for these plants to really set deep roots. We also did not put any landscape fabric underneath, because if you do that, then you prevent the roots from going down. And the roots of most plants will go down further than six, eight, 10 inches of your raised bed. And you really do want that, because then they build this resilience into the deeper soils, and it helps them to tap into the water that will be in the ground even during a drought.

- [Phillipe] Well, I do have to comment too how tidy it is. And it's actually pleasing to look at from the house. You know, a lot of people think of a vegetable garden as this kind of messy place, but this is a nice-looking formal vegetable garden. I think it adds visually to the yard.

- [Jeremy Lekich] A lot of the work we're doing is trying to say, "Hey, growing food can be beautiful. It doesn't have to be an eyesore."

- [Phillipe] I'm sure when people come visit they say, "Oh, that's neat. Let's go take a look around there." No one says, "Hey, go tour me around your grass."

- Right. Another benefit of having a garden, edible plants, even just a diverse landscape, is that you get to meet your neighbors, right? And I mean that on multiple levels. Like, when you have fresh produce, it's really easy to go to a neighbor's house and say, "Hey, it's nice to meet you. Here's some fresh tomatoes from my garden." But you also get to meet your non-human neighbors, right, which are plants, which are lots of insects which are really beneficial for our life. They pollinate the things we like to eat. They kill the pests that like to eat the plants that we want to grow. So you get to meet all these incredible neighbors that are all around us, human and non-human.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, I mean, more than beneficial, necessary.

- Necessary, essential.

- Essential, yeah. So here's a tree that's an ornamental and an edible, so it's kind of a best of both worlds, which I know you try to accomplish a lot.

- Yep, absolutely.

- It's a crabapple tree, right?

- [Jeremy Lekich] Yep. All crabapples are per se edible, but they range in being bleh to like, really good. And when I showed up, these were loaded. This was years ago. And they were about the size of a quarter, and they were absolutely delicious! They were so, so, so good! And it really opened my eyes how not to discriminate against a crabapple. So, but what we did with these is we actually grafted on big, delicious, tasty eating apples. This is a great technique, because these were already established trees and then we just converted some of the branches so that this tree will produce the crabapples, which are good, as well as two or three other varieties of larger eating apples like you're used to in the store.

- [Phillipe] So to graft these on this tree, what's the needs for that?

- Specifically with apples and pears, they have to be the same genus. The genus of apple is Malus. And so as long as it falls under Malus, it should take. Now, you know, it is kind of plant surgery. So I mean, I think the success rating on our grafts here was about 50%. And that can shift depending on the weather that happens over the next couple weeks and different things. Especially if you're only gonna have one apple tree, for instance, you wanna make sure you do graft on another variety or two because that will increase your pollination and will actually make your tree more fruitful. And crabapples are really good pollinators, so it's a really good foundation to have as an apple tree to graft onto because it ensures good pollination.

- So we've got another garden back here that looks really cool. And it's got a very ornamental fence that we're working on here that looks like it's covered in blackberries?

- [Jeremy Tolley] Yeah, every fence we build has to grow something, because why not? This garden was already established, but the chickens were getting in and eating everything. And so we built this fence around it just high enough to keep the chickens out and then figured, "Well hey, it's a perfect trellis. Let's grow blackberries on it." And the thornless blackberries are delicious.

- They are.

- And they're a lot easier to deal with.

- [Phillipe] I also see, is that an espaliered fruit tree back there?

- Yep, they're two pear trees. We started when they were just young whips and we've been training them over the years. Those need a good pruning here once the weather cools down this winter, but they're really starting to fill out. And they make a nice screen for the back there. And doing fruit trees like that, shaping them really is good for small spaces, you know? Especially if you have just a small bed along the house, you can do an espaliered tree no problem.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, and fruit trees in particular react well to heavy pruning, right?

- Absolutely.

- It's good for them and it's good for the small space. So this is a really cool alternative to trying to grow grapes here, which can be difficult. These muscadines look really happy here, and they're just kind of nestled on this fence row right here.

- [Jeremy Lekich] They love growing here. This is a great example because if you already have a fence, you can grow them on there pretty easily. You have to prune and train a bit, but they really will grow without too much attention. And the fruit are really good. Are you gonna make like, some nice wines out of it? You can. It's not gonna be like the wines that you're used to. But you know, in terms of just fresh eating, they're awesome. Making jams or jellies and even making the wine is really nice.

- Yeah. So this is definitely one of my favorite ornamental and edible trees in the landscape, a fig tree. And it's completely loaded with figs right now too, and it's really happy here.

- Yeah, so this is about 10 years old, this tree here, and it's on a southern-facing brick wall. Which is a really good spot for a fig. As much sun as possible and thermal mass, right? So that's a brick wall, that's a stone wall. I mean, really just any wall is enough thermal mass to really keep it going.

- [Phillipe] I've had some die back on mine a few years back when it got below zero, but other than that it's been really tough, which is fun. One of the best trees as far as ornamental and edible that I think we can grow in this area.

- [Jeremy Lekich] Absolutely. My favorite variety, I've tested a lot of different varieties. The one that seems to be the best is Chicago Hardy because it fruits on first year growth.

- Wow, yeah.

- Which makes a big difference because as many people have figs know, they will die back, especially in a hard winter. And so if we have Chicago Hardy, the first year growth starts producing figs right away, which makes it so that even in a hard year where the fig dies back, you still get good fruit set.

- [Phillipe] So we've got a little rain garden over here that looks like it's got a couple different things in it.

- Yeah, yeah. So it's beautiful, edible, and functional.

- Wonderful.

- And we've got the back end over here, which is a lot of perennial wildflowers that are supporting the pollinators that are essential for our gardens and our fruit trees and a lot of the foods we love. We also have blueberries around the edge here, which obviously are delicious and do well in this type of situation because they don't like wet feet and rain gardens drain that water quickly. So blueberries are a good option for the edges of the rain garden. Codes has recently established some rules that are really beneficial for the ecological landscape. It's now required to have rain gardens on sites, on new sites, new development. And the tree ordinance is being enforced, so people have to build plant trees when they build a new home.

- Yeah, so with all those things, there's no reason why people shouldn't plant things that are ornamental and edible.

- [Jeremy Lekich] Correct, there's no good reason not to try it because it's fun, it's beautiful and it's delicious.

- [Phillipe] It's getting people out there and getting your friends and family and your neighbors involved in the landscape.

- [Jeremy Lekich] Absolutely. It's facilitating our relationship with the outdoors, and in a way that's super fun and inspiring.

- Used to be if you wanted to grow blueberries, you had to order 'em online or go to some specialty fruit nursery or whatever. These days, they're everywhere. I mean, you go into any big box store or garden center and they got blueberries for sale. As a consequence, people are planting a lot of blueberries and running into a lot of problems with growing blueberries because there's a special, blueberries have certain requirements that people don't know about. I'm gonna tell you what they are so you can have lots of success with blueberries. First, a little bit of information about blueberries. There are three major categories of blueberries. There's one called Northern Highbush, and those are the ones that you typically see. And they have names like, there are lots of varieties. Bluecrop, Blueray, Bluejay, Rubel, I mean, Herbert. These are all Northern Highbush types that are common and been in the trade for a long time. Then there is a kind called Rabbiteye. This is the classic southern blueberry that grows in warmer climates, zone seven and below. And then there's a cross, they crossed southern blueberries with northern blueberries and created what they called the Southern Highbush. This was started at the University of Arkansas. Obviously it's great for our Tennessee climate. And Southern Highbush kind of combine the best characteristics of both types and a few unique ones that came with hybridization. So about blueberries. They need an acid soil. They need more acid soil than azaleas or rhododendrons do. The reason most people have a failure with blueberries is they don't give it enough acidity in the soil. The other reason is they need a lot of sun. It's not a plant you can plant in the shade, even half shade and expect to do well. It wants a very sunny aspect. And it will both bloom and grow vigorously in the right setting, in the right soil. The other problem is that even if people plant it in the full sun and give it lots of acid, if they don't plant the right combination of varieties, they can get no berries. This is where it gets a little complicated. Rabbiteye blueberries, if you're gonna grow the big southern ones, you gotta have more than one variety. They are not self-fertile. You can't just plant one and expect it to bear any fruit. It will not. Northern Highbush are in a limited way self fertile, but you get the berries you want when, once again, you plant more than one variety. Two or three are much better. The exception, interestingly enough, are the Southern Highbush, that new cross I talked about. And this is an example of one called Sunshine Blue. Sunshine Blue is self-fertile. You can plant one bush and get blueberries off of it. And most of the Southern Highbush are self-fertile, although, once again, planting multiple varieties will increase your yield. But you will get berries off of these even if you just plant one variety. And I'd like to talk a little bit about this particular one, which is called Sunshine Blue. This is a great landscape plant. Even if it didn't have delicious fruit, it is a really terrific plant. It doesn't get big and rangey like, say, Rabbiteye blueberries, they tend to be a really big bush. These are compact, you can see it's got tight foliage. It's kind of a nice powdery blue-green. And the fall color is incredible. It's purple and maroon and red, just gorgeous. It has red stems in the winter. It has pretty flowers in the spring. This is a good landscape shrub. Doesn't get that big, maybe four feet by four feet. Really nice habit on it. And it's just a wonderful subject. But the berries are delicious. And I gotta say one thing, blueberries are worth trying in the home garden simply because a fresh blueberry you pick yourself is not like the ones you buy in the carton at the store. There's no comparison. Give yourself a treat and grow some fresh blueberries for yourself. They're wonderful. I've got here the products you need to give you the soil that you really want to have successful blueberries. The first is soil acidifier. This has elemental sulfur in it, which is a natural chemical, mineral actually, that will acidify the soil gently. This will, don't put aluminum sulfate on 'em. That's something that you can buy in garden centers. They'll say it'll turn your hydrangeas blue because it acidifies the soil. That stuff's really toxic, so it's not a good idea actually on anything. I don't like it, but a lot of people use it. Don't use it on your blueberries, though. This is the way to go. Dig this into the soil. Also dig into the soil this stuff. This is a packaged soil mix called Woodland Soil Mix. But don't worry about the woodland part, it's for acid-loving plants. And it's got little bits of expanded shale in it so that it increases the drainage, which is really good. Blueberries like good drainage around their roots. Dig this into the native soil, really helps. If you've got really tight clay, do half and half and give it a big hole. You'll have great results. Then as the plant grows, you fertilize with Holly-tone. Holly-tone is an organic fertilizer that has, once again, sulfur in it so it'll help keep that soil acid and keep that pH down so the blueberries will remain happy. How do you tell if the soil isn't acid enough? Well, the plant will start getting yellow, chlorotic. It'll get sparse, it'll drop leaves. You'll know, it'll look lousy. But reducing the pH, you actually can bring these plants back. I've done it and I've seen it done. So blueberries really aren't that hard to grow if you meet the requirements. And mostly it's the kind of soil you plant 'em in. So go out and buy yourself one of these. I recommend Sunshine Blue in particular. It's a terrific plant no matter what size yard you have. And enjoy yourself some fresh blueberries. Nothing better.