Episode 3415

- [Presenter] Annuals can add vibrant color with continuous blooms from spring until first frost. Phillipe Chadwick has a wide array of forms, heights, and habits that are ideal for visual interest and impact. Arbors and Obelisks have a dual purpose in the vegetable garden. Optimizing plant performance while adding structure. Jeremy Tolley explores the possibilities for plants that wanna grow up. Join us. Annuals are an excellent choice for season long color, in containers and gardens.

- So there's a great, wonderful big world of annuals. I mean, look at all this color we're getting here. So I'm at Hewitt Garden Design Center with Athena, who's one of the managers here. She's gonna tell us all about annuals, and what to do, what not to do, where to plant things, where to even get started? Which is kind of the fun part of, I guess, annuals. Where would you tell people to start with that?

- Well, when people come in and ask for help, the first thing we always ask is, "Are you planting in sun or shade?" And then we like to kind of know if they're planting in the ground or in pots. Not that annuals really are that particular, but sometimes it helps us to know if they want a mass of color or if they want lots of color to go in their pots, all one color, what their favorite colors are, start with those kind of things.

- Yeah. And water needs, I guess, too, is a big thing.

- Water needs is a big deal. 'cause you don't wanna put plants that like to be dry in with plants that like to be wet if you're going in a pot. So that makes a difference too. Or if they don't have access to water, you might wanna plant one that takes the heat a little better than if it needs lots of water.

- And I know also with annuals, height, and expected growth size is a big thing. 'cause you put this little thing in the ground and then it gets six feet tall.

- Right. They do. They grow. When we have little pots of plants, people don't realize how big they can get. So sometimes it's easy to over plant your space or your pot. And we help with the growth size on that. And how many you might need in a space.

- Well, let's dive into some of these specific plants. I guess we could start over here. So, impatiens, of course, you know, everybody pretty much knows impatiens. I feel like if you're not growing 'em, your grandma and your mom and your neighbor is.

- Absolutely, they're beautiful. This is a mixed tray of an of impatiens. They will do well in the shade. They love the shade. They need water when it gets hot in July and August, you really need to water 'em. But they're great in the shade and they do great in pots. They do great as a mass border, if you've got a space for shade border. They're very easy to do and they'll get surprisingly taller as soon as you take 'em outta these little four packs, they'll get surprisingly taller. So they make a nice statement.

- Yeah, and so I would say morning sun up until about noon?

- They will take morning sun. They might get a little droopy if they're dry.

- Okay.

- In the morning sun. But they will take morning sun if, if they need to.

- Yeah, and of course we couldn't do annuals without begonias. Who's this one right here?

- [Athena] He's a Greenleaf bedding Begonia, is what we call 'em.

- Okay.

- And he loves the shade. Wonderful bedding plants, you'll drive around town, see 'em out in front of neighborhoods or shopping centers that they're used a lot. The green leaf you wanna plant in the shade, the bronze leaf one you can plant in the sun.

- Okay.

- So you always wanna keep that in mind. And they do mound and they get really, really pretty and probably considerably bigger than that.

- [Phillipe] I've also heard them called Whiskey and Vodka begonias.

- Right.

- [Phillipe] With the dark ones being whiskey and the green ones being vodka, which is a fun terminology.

- [Athena] That is fun.

- [Phillipe] And again, another, you know, tried and true one, the lantanas, which there's tons and tons of colors.

- There's tall ones, there's short ones. There's all, like you said, colors. There's ones that drape, ones that mound. So they're a great annual summer for Tennessee because they love our heat. Our deer don't eat 'em. You don't have to water 'em near as much as you would some of the others. And they deadhead themselves. And they bloom in pretty much till frost.

- Yeah. Speaking of deer, which pretty much all of us have. Marigolds are considered a deer deterrent, right?

- [Athena] They are. They're deer resistant. And deer deterrents, and rabbits. Rabbits don't like them either.

- [Phillipe] Okay. Yeah. And so these are fun. These will get... Are these the tall ones? Will they get big?

- [Athena] These are not the tall ones. They're gonna... If you were to plant these in the ground or a bigger pot, they're gonna mound a little more. But we do have ones that get tall. They're great to plant alongside your garden to keep the deer and rabbits outta your cabbage, or lettuce, or whatever. And they add color and they bring the pollinators to help your garden. So they have a lot of uses in the garden.

- And if yellow and orange is too strong, I know there's white varieties also that are a little softer on the eye.

- There's white varieties. There's even some red, and then there's mixed colors. These are solid, but there's some that are mixed.

- And there's this one I don't know a ton about. These are really cool. Tell me about these two.

- [Athena] That is a gazania.

- Gazania.

- Gazania, it loves the sun. It's a workhorse in the sun.

- Okay.

- [Athena] Kind of like lantana is, deer don't seem to enjoy it at all. It blooms all summer long, nonstop. Once it gets established, it's a beautiful plant. Kind of resembles a sunflower. Doesn't exactly look like gazania, but a lot of the same growth habits as gazania.

- [Phillipe] And these come in some wild colors, right?

- [Athena] Yeah, we've got it in orange and yellow.

- Yeah.

- And I think there's a red and kind of a brownish red back there.

- That's fun. Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And for kind of more of architectural size to, like, go with your mounding, or trailing plants, some of these like gomphrenas or...

- They add a pop of fun for sure.

- Yeah, let me try to get this guy out. So tell me about this little guy.

- They get about 15 inches tall. Send off these pretty little blooms all summer long. The deer have not eaten mine.

- [Phillipe] Okay.

- [Athena] We have them in this color, a soft pink, a white. They work great in arrangements. A lot of people grow like a mass of them to cut for arrangements. 'cause they're good into the fall, until frost.

- [Phillipe] And they'll hold that little kind of... They'll hold that shape when they dry.

- [Athena] They'll hold that shape and you can dry them. A lot of people dry 'em in the summer for fall arrangements with the dried flowers.

- Okay.

- You can dry 'em and make tea out of 'em.

- Oh, really?

- Mm-hm.

- Like a herbal tea?

- Like an herbal tea.

- [Phillipe] Does it stay in the water that color too?

- [Athena] Not a whole lot because when it dries they kind of lose their color.

- Okay.

- And so when you make tea, it's not particularly purple.

- What kind of flavor does that add?

- Kind of an earthy.

- Okay. That's fun.

- Just an earthy... Yeah. It is fun.

- Yeah. So one of my all time favorites that I've been, you know, using for years is this little euphorbia that's a small kind of mounder.

- Right. This is a popular one called flurry euphorbia. And it lasts all summer, does well in the shade or the sun. It'll just kind of fill in when you put it in an arrangement, it'll just kind of fill in wherever it needs to and just make everything have that little pop of white that makes the other colors more vibrant.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, so it's like a good mingler.

- It's very good.

- It makes friends with everybody in the garden.

- It does! It does.

- [Phillipe] So in Tennessee, I feel like if we're gonna talk about annuals, we gotta talk about zinnias. You know, everybody's grandma has zinnias, again. What does zinnias like?

- [Athena] They like sun, and they can take a little extra water now and then if we're going to experience some dry times. But they're pretty easy to grow. They can recede themselves sometimes. We love these little pink ones here. Pink is always a popular color and once you plant that in a bigger pot or in the ground, it just really takes off and will provide color all summer long.

- Yeah. Really nice. And, is this petunias? This purple.

- Right.

- Is one of many colors. But this deep, deep rich purple petunia is nice.

- It's very nice. It's a great spiller in your pot if you wants something to drape down, it'll also spread on the ground if you would rather go that route. But you know, they're time and tested. Good plant.

- Yeah. Coleus. The big world of coleus. This one's really beautiful. This green, and some of the newer varieties of coleus can be grown in more sun. Is that correct?

- Sure, sure, yeah. Coleus, a lot of the coleus will take sun or shade. And if it gets too big for your space, you just clip it back a little bit and it'll grow some more. It's a super easy plant, adds a lot of color and a lot of people like it because it doesn't add a lot of bloom, but a lot of color. So if you're not wanting to add a lot of bees to your... Like, maybe the play space of the kids or something, they're afraid of bees, coleus is a good thing to add for that color. It's not particular about sun, or shade as much as some other things. And it doesn't attract the bees as much.

- That's a good tip, yeah.

- I mean, you can let it flower and it will attract bees, but you can also just pinch the flowers back and get that color without...

- Yeah, without flowers.

- Without, yeah. 'cause nobody wants to scare the kids.

- Right, right. So these angelonias, which are a really cool plant. And I see two different sizes here. Two, which shows you difference in cultivar. This little guy versus this big tall guy.

- Angelonia is a great plant to add to your pot for height or if you want to add it in mass, there are varieties that have upright habits, or a spreading habit. But like if you wanted a color in a more formal setting, it's a great way to get the upright, and add the color. And you could just do a mass of one color or they're real pretty to mix. You know, like, 'cause it's softer. The raspberries, and the pinks, and the purples.

- Yeah.

- And the white. We can add in the white one.

- Oh, right, yeah.

- Just to add a little color.

- Yeah! So with annuals, you know, you're gonna get that all summer bloom, whether you have pots or a big garden that you want to add to. Adding annuals here and there can really be a big jolt of color in your garden. Definitely worth a few here and there, every garden is not complete without 'em.

- Sun gold tomatoes are one of my favorite varieties to grow in this area. They're so sweet. They're prolific. They continue to produce, and I really love the fact that these have been incorporated with some red ones as well. They look great in a salad bowl. I'm with Abi Tapia today of Tennessee Kitchen Gardens and Abi has designed this beautiful garden that we're at today. And Abi, I've noticed that you've chosen to incorporate a lot of vertical elements in the growing here. So can you tell us a little bit more about why you chose to do so much vertical and what some of the benefits are of that growing method?

- Yeah, we love to incorporate vertical elements into all our garden designs. And it's one of the things when folks ask us to come and do a consultation on their garden, usually they don't have enough vertical. So that's gonna be something we recommend. So, first, they're just beautiful. They give a a really cool structure and dynamism to the garden throughout the year. They help create that garden room indicating a ceiling and some walls. Second, they give you so much more space. Like with this trellis, we're actually growing over the pathway. So if you've got a small garden, getting up and using that vertical space is gonna allow so much more production. And third, they're just healthier for a lot of plants. You get airflow around them, it's easier to tend them, you know, clip off damaged leaves, you can see pests and harvest kind of right at your eye level.

- [Jeremy] Let's take a look at some of the examples that you have of all those different benefits, okay?

- Yeah! Great.

- All right. Abi, you talked about the aesthetics of vertical growing and I think this is a great example of that, of where you've taken something like a cucumber and put that on this beautiful metal piece. Tell us more about why you chose to do that.

- Yeah, these obelisks, I think are what a tomato cage wishes it was.

- Yes.

- They're, you know, really nice, sturdy, black. They've got a really cool design to them and they're great because you can move them around. So you know, if you want cucumbers here, you know, this year, and next year you want a determinate tomato in a different bed, these are easy to pop out and move around to a different spot. But we love these for small spaces. You can put 'em in the ground, you can put 'em in raised beds, you can get something like this even up to eight feet tall.

- Yeah, that's great. And so this is something that just came from a hardware store or a garden center, am I right about that?

- Yeah, so we do buy these wholesale.

- Okay.

- But something similar you can find, you know, online somewhere, yeah.

- Okay, and how do you ensure that this stays anchored in the ground? So if this gets full of fruit and you know it's at the end of the season, it's really kind of top heavy, how do you make sure that it doesn't blow over?

- [Abi] Yeah, so this is actually in the ground, probably be about a foot.

- Okay.

- Sunk down in there. And one thing that you really wanna do is have it in place when you plant. So either put your seedling in and put this right over it or plant your seeds around it so that they can, you know, have the structure as they're growing and you can really train it to be kind of centered on this structure.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- All right, so we've looked at temporary structures that you can easily move around and interchange throughout the season. This doesn't look temporary to me, this looks very intentional and permanent. Tell us more about what you're growing here and how to incorporate something like this in a garden.

- Yeah, so these are blackberries and they're, you know, gonna be here for a decade at least, probably. And they get really big. So we wanna support them. And we've just got some simple cedar posts with wires running horizontally between them. And then when we can weave the canes through or tie them up if we need to. So these are really great for plants that you wanna stay somewhere for a really long time. You could do raspberries, blackberries, grapes, hardy kiwi, anything kind of vining and big that is gonna be in its permanent location.

- So, this is beautiful, and by the way, I love the way you've got sweet potatoes growing on it. This is beautiful. But I've gotta spend some money. This is just not, you know, in my shed in the backyard. However, this is in my shed. I have plenty of bamboo poles lying around, and T posts and other things like that. So talk to us about maybe the difference between, you know, going out and purchasing something and using things you have around the house.

- Yeah, if you get creative you can build a vertical structure out of anything. And bamboo is very versatile. Now these are small steaks and we would just use them for a pepper or something like an eggplant that's not gonna get too big, but just needs a little bit of support. But you can get some really big bamboo from your neighbor who probably wants to get rid of it.

- Yes.

- And build a big tent or you know, something four, or five feet tall like this by just tying together at the top and you know, securing them into the ground. So a lot of options. A ladder, you know, something free that people are giving away. A lot of people give up gardening and wanna recycle theirs.

- They do.

- Yeah.

- I love going to flea markets and looking through all the junk of, you know, just old industrial stuff that's left over and you can find some really cool things like ladders. I've used that. I've used like metal frames and domes to grow things in that once they're covered are really beautiful.

- Yeah, cattle panels are great too.

- Yeah, cattle panels are great. And those are the... It's sold at to typically at farm supply stores.

- Yeah.

- That are intended to be fences.

- Exactly! So you can use it like a fence, and grow things up like that, or you can create an arch out of it.

- Yeah.

- And have your tomatoes or melons growing over a little tunnel.

- Yeah, I agree. So not everything is gonna cling to these like the sweet potato vine is, and not everything has tendrils it's gonna necessarily hold onto the vertical structure that you're trying to get it to hang onto. Peppers is a great example. So talk to us about some of your favorite ways to attach plants.

- Yeah! Yeah. So there are a lot of different ways, and one that we really love is just some garden twine, you know, hemp or whatever it's made out of. And you can cut it to size and tie it as you go. You know, as the plants grow, continue to support them. Especially things like tomatoes. They're gonna want to flop on the ground.

- Yes.

- But we wanna help keep them upright. You've also got some things here.

- Yeah!

- A good old-

- See this bread twist, looks like?

- Twist tie you could reuse. And then these are Velcro ties, which you know, can last a couple years.

- Yeah.

- So those are options too. Old t-shirt, you know, any kind of rags or fabric you've got.

- Yeah, I love that idea. And for my garden, I find that is the least amount of plastic I can use the better. So I love the idea of taking an old t-shirt and just ripping it and making, you know, just little strips out of it and using that to tie.

- Yeah.

- So if it ends up in the soil, you know it's gonna decompose if it's cotton.

- Yeah, yeah, cool.

- Great. When I was growing up in my family's garden, we would grow melons, watermelons, cantaloupe, those kind of things. They would get lost inevitably and we wouldn't find them. There's no way you would lose this melon in this garden. Tell us more about the benefits of being able to access the stuff.

- Yeah, it's great to get your melons up for that very reason. It's so easy to see when you've got something ready to harvest. I can tell there's a little one right here I'm gonna keep my eye on. Now you do probably wanna have a smaller variety because the weight can get really big or heavy on a vertical trellis, but you can support those with a little net. It's also just so much easier to see "Oh, I've got a few leaves that need to be trimmed here." And I'm not bending over, you know? Like, hurting my back, trying to, you know, navigate a big field of melons on the ground. I'm just, you know, comfortably standing here working on it.

- Yeah, so, and if you get disease or you get pest, it's so easy to identify those there.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I really like that. Another option I guess would be to, even if you have a traditional vining variety, if it's not a compact, you could just trim the fruits, trim the vines and just try to keep it to the form that you want it to grow on.

- [Abi] Yeah. Yeah. A lot of options.

- [Jeremy] Yeah, let's take a look at some other things.

- [Abi] Cool.

- So this particular arbor, you have tomatoes growing on it and tomatoes would do great on this for a good portion of the growing season, right? But there's that period before in the spring and that period, you know, after that. Do you just not have anything growing on this? Or are you using this all season long?

- Well, this particular trellis we do use for three seasons. Now, it looks great even with nothing on it. But here we're gonna start out in spring with our sugar snap peas and those will be planted in March and grow for a couple months. They'll be up to here, and right when they're hitting their prime, it is time to plant the tomatoes. No problem. We just nestle them right in next to the roots of the sugar snap peas by the end of May, the peas are done and the tomatoes are rooted in and ready to take over the trellis. Now, here at the end of summer, we've got our tomatoes pruned up, you know, removing all these lower leaves. So there's plenty of space for us to plant peas down here at the base again for fall.

- Yeah, and I think that's a great point that you have properly trimmed all of that foliage up as the fruit has grown up the vine and those pea can just grow right on top of this. You can have... I guess theoretically you could have fruits from both on this at the exact same time.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it might happen.

- Yeah. I love that. So I assume there's a little bit of benefit from the shade that this produces as well. So it's late summer and it's starting to get a little cooler right now, but it's still gonna... We've got some hot days ahead of us. Sugar snap peas do not like heat.

- Yeah.

- So is this casting enough shade to help those continue to grow even in the summer?

- It definitely does help, yeah. We've got the canopy of leaves above, so you know, at least the morning sun, it's not really getting full sun until half the day's over. So on this side, you know, we're getting the benefit of the shade for those peas.

- Yeah. I think those are some really great techniques and tips that we can all take back. No matter what type of garden that we're growing in, right? So this is applicable... These are beautiful raised beds by the way. But this is applicable not only to high raised beds, low raised beds, but any of this would work in any type of garden. Right?

- Yeah, absolutely. You can put this exact structure in the ground and have a lot of success. And it's just gonna, you know, feel good. You're gonna, again, create that sense of height, which if you're growing right into the ground, it can be kind of like, you know, heavy.

- Yeah.

- To feel like you're being pulled down to work. When you've got things growing up it just kind of, you know, helps you kind of walk in upright and feel like, "Oh, yeah, I'm in a room. I've got work to do above and below me."

- [Jeremy] Yeah, it does feel like that we're in some type of room, like we're in a structure. It feels good, just like you said.

- [Abi] Yeah.

- Now this is definitely an example of a permanent structure, isn't it?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Beautiful pergola for dining and lounging in the garden.

- Yeah, it absolutely is. And I see that instead of planning with stereo or some type of vinyl, I think about you're using it for food production. Tell us what you've got growing here.

- Yeah, so this is a hardy kiwi. It's gonna be a vining plant and produce really yummy fruit. But again, yeah, we just use the pergola that's here, that's part of the lounge, dining area of the garden, and we will be training it, you know, with some string till it gets, you know, fully incorporated. But ultimately this will reach the top and provide a bit of shade for this area too.

- Yeah. I think a lot of times when we think about putting something on a structure like this, we are looking at something that's just flowering and ornamental, and that's great. But if your goal is really food production and addition to kiwi, can you think of some other types of fruits or plants, vegetable plants that we might grow on a structure like this?

- Yeah, maybe passion flower vine.

- Yeah.

- If you're brave enough, it does spread pretty easily. I haven't done grapes, but that might be an option. Be really fun to come harvest them from underneath.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Specifically I've done muscadines.

- Oh, cool.

- Yeah. Which it's really cool because muscadines, because they grow individually, they're kind of hard to pick, but you can just reach up and pull them off.

- Perfect!

- And eat them, yeah.

- Yeah!

- Yeah, that's great. Would you growing tomatoes, or melons on a structure like this?

- Yeah, I would. Why not?

- I would too, yeah.

- Try it.

- I would too.

- You might wanna, you know, have some guide wires. Again, you're gonna be really... There's no way they're gonna reach around a big post like this, so you're gonna have to be training them, tying them up, but yeah.

- Yeah.

- Why not?

- So if I don't have a per line in my backyard, what are some of the other structures that you can think? 'Cause I know you're creative.

- Well, I grow loofah on my chain link fence.

- There you go.

- It works really well. But yeah, you do wanna be careful around buildings because, you know, if it is a climber that can like get into your paint, or your mortar and your brick, that could be tricky. But, you know, anything that's, like, really strong and sturdy, you know, try it out for this season, with something like a melon that's not gonna tear it down, it's not gonna be so heavy.

- Sure.

- That, you know, you're gonna damage the structure. But yeah, I think go for it. Give it a try.

- Yeah, I think it's great. You've showed us a lot of examples today of how we can just using, you know, things that we have in our backyard, to going and intentionally purchasing something that we can get our gardens off the ground and growing tall. There's a tremendous amount of benefit from doing that and I'm looking forward to going back and trying some of these in my garden. Abi, it's been a delight. Thank you for showing us around today. I really appreciate it.

- Yeah! This has been awesome. I really hope we inspired people to grow up today.

- I know you did.

- Yeah.

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