Episode 3418

- [Narrator] Choosing plants that support wildlife, reducing storm water runoff and repurposing yard waste are principles of the Tennessee Smart Yard program led by the UT Extension Service with the support of county water agencies. Julie Berbiglia visits with two neighbors who have made key changes in their yards to create a sustainable environment. Did you know there's more than one way to propagate begonias? April Moore and Annette Shrader share their expertise in gaining more plants in a very cost-effective way. Join us. In these yards, the right plant in the right place has made a huge difference.

- We have a real treat for you today. We are visiting smart yards, two of them, in fact, in Nashville, Tennessee. So what's a smart yard? Well, Tennessee Smart Yards is a free, online certification program, sponsored by the UT Extension Service and in partnership with county stormwater agencies. Well, let's take a look at some of the features that make these yards really smart. Well, smart yards has nine different principles, and one of the principles is gardening for wildlife. Maria, your yard is such a wildlife haven here. My eye, of course, first went to the obvious thing, the bird feeder, but what are you doing with the flowers for wildlife?

- Oh, well, as you can see, we have the cone flowers here, and they are good for the nectaring insects, but also, they feed the goldfinches all winter long. So I can sit in my office and watch the goldfinches flitter around. There's a lot of life that happens right in this part of the garden. There's chipmunks and skinks and birds of all types and squirrels. It's just really fun to have them here.

- Well, this is one of the fun things about smart yards is welcoming in the wildlife. Now we have some other things a lot of people probably already have. I see you've got your black-eyed Susans that are going to start blooming soon. You have, of course, really nice sunflowers. I understand that one of the things, of course, with smart yards is that we want to deal gently with our environment, and we want to consider the whole food web of everything. And I noticed you've got milkweed for butterflies later.

- Yeah.

- Tell me, you know, I sort of almost want to rush over and brush off the aphids.

- [Maria] Yeah, you could brush 'em off, or you could just say, that's part of what's going on here. And the aphids are feeding other insects, and the insects are feeding the birds, and that the milkweed is here partly for that purpose on Earth. So, just let it be.

- [Julie] Well, this also sounds like, sort of, no fuss, no muss gardening.

- It's a lot of reward for doing less.

- I like that a lot.

- [Maria] Julie, one of the plants that I like best in the garden is this anise hyssop. It is a bee magnet in the summertime, and sometimes I can just stand very still close to it for a little while and count up to five or six different kinds of bees, just enjoying the nectar from this plant.

- [Julie] Oh, this is such an important part of smart yards, is welcoming in and appreciating all of our little insects. A lot of people don't know this, Maria, but I know you do. Our number one pollutant in our creeks and streams and rivers is sediment, because it clogs up all those fish and animal gills. So what are you doing to stop erosion in your yard?

- Okay, well, I'm glad you asked, because it is an issue. We have a creek right back, it's a dry creek, it's a wet weather conveyance, they call it, running right back behind our house. And so, everything that falls here, falls on our roof, will run into that creek, which runs into another creek, runs into the Cumberland. I try to catch the water here. I use this water every day for watering plants. Just use a bucket. And then we have a garden here that sucks up rain, another garden, and then it's coming down here. Right here, there was a whole bunch of those Otto Luyken laurels, and they got frozen in that frost a couple years ago. So what I did was, one survived, but I cut them, let the roots stay so the soil would stay and then set up with rebar. You can see a piece here. I set up cross branches with the wood from the shrubs.

- [Julie] And I see that you've got a lot of plants in here covering all the ground, which we really like, and all their roots are going to hold.

- We're expecting a lot of bloom out of this. It's xenias and cosmos and celosia, all kinds of good flowering plants. We get the use of this sun on this hillside. It's just perfect for them.

- [Julie] Well, this is a wonderful way to deal with what could otherwise be a disaster, not only for your yard, but also, of course, for your creek. So this looks great. An important principle in smart yards is to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and you are seriously reusing your landscape waste here. I love the way you've bordered your beds.

- [Maria] Thank you, yeah. These are just pieces of logs from various tree trimmings we've had over the years, and if a tree comes down, then I know I've got a new bed, because I've got the logs.

- That's a great way to look at that, as a resource, not a problem. It's helping with your erosion. And then also, I saw in the back where you have a nice leaf pile.

- Yes, I will blow the leaves off in the front and put them back here in a leaf pile, but in the backyard, I don't do anything with any of these leaves. I just use them. It's the landscape waste. They are making the soil for next year. So, I love this new concept of leaving the leaves.

- Oh, well, once again, it's easy.

- It's a resource. Yeah, easy, right, no work.

- Also, I love the way that you're incorporating what some people might cut down, a snag tree, into your yard as garden art.

- Yeah, exactly. Well, I like to plant in those old whiskey barrels, and then you never know what... They disintegrate and you don't know what to do with the hoops, so I made a pretty orb and put it up in my snag, a snag being a word for a broken down tree that birds might be able to use in some way or another.

- [Julie] Now this beautiful continuation of the smart yards is actually smart yard part two that Fran is working on. So it's so nice to have neighbors doing this together. Hi Fran.

- Hi. How are you today?

- I am great. Now, what I love about your yard, I mean so many things, but one thing is the way you are really living out the principle of water conservation, and you've got these great rain barrels.

- Yes, Julie, I have a rain barrel like this on every corner of my house. It has a screen on the top so the mosquitoes can't get in. If we have a big rain, and the barrel fills, and there's water in the top, I have a mosquito dunk to be sure that I don't breed any mosquitoes.

- [Julie] Well, that is a great tip, because I've also seen those little sticks and bags in all of your mini bird baths that you have around here.

- [Fran] Yes, anywhere I have water on a regular basis, I keep a dunk stick, and I try to keep anything that would catch water turned upside down.

- So a really neat thing about smart yards, it's really all about keeping water in your land to prevent runoff, because runoff can move all kinds of pollutants to our creeks and streams. Now, you, Fran, are doing a great job with this principle.

- Thank you.

- Well, and it's so wonderful, because I see you're doing a lot of mulching with natural materials.

- Yes.

- [Julie] And then you have left my favorite ground cover.

- [Fran] They're wild violets, native of course. And they help hold the soil together, keep the water in.

- [Julie] You know, it's one of those things that's so easy to miss and dig out, and now you're using it to such great effect.

- [Fran] And they have the sweetest little violet blooms in the spring.

- [Julie] Well, speaking of native plants, I understand you're a bit of a cautionary tale. So, let's go look at what's happened and what you've done about it.

- Okay.

- Fran, this area is gorgeous. It's so nice and cool. It's relaxing. It's got just a really nice feel to it.

- Thank you. I planted this bamboo about 35 or 40 years ago against the advice of Maria. I said, "Oh, I'll take care of it." And then I worked out of the country for five years, and it took over the yard. All of the beds that you see here used to be bamboo. It was so difficult to get rid of. I finally had to spend untold amounts of money having another company come in, cut it down. Then somebody else came in with a stump grinder, ground up my whole yard, it was a horrible ordeal.

- [Julie] This is one of those other important smart yard principles is to plant natives and then, 'cause they are better behaved for the most part, and then to avoid and get rid of all of these awful invasives.

- [Fran] Right.

- [Julie] Now, you have a plant here. I know you're eradicating. I've eradicated before. I planted it because I loved it, and it was before I knew it was so invasive. Let's go look at our money plants.

- Oh goodness, okay. Julie, I did the same thing you did. I love this money plant, and I planted it several years ago, not realizing how invasive it is. Look at this area, completely taken over by the money plant. I'm working to eradicate it, which means I have to pull it by hand, but it's the only way to get rid of it.

- Well, and I'm so glad that you are doing that, and this is just such a message to all of us to make sure and check on plants before we go adding them to our yard. There are some things that are on invasive lists that are even available in the stores.

- I know. It's appalling.

- I know. We have to be so careful with all of this. This is a success story here, what you've done with this bed.

- Well, thank you. I'm very happy with it. This bed I completely cleared out, and my goal is to have this bed be fully native. Everything from the front corner of the house over to the sidewalk is native. And I'm gradually working across the bed, replacing the invasives with natives.

- [Julie] Well, and I know the animals and the people are really appreciating the fact that it's not just boxwoods anymore.

- [Fran] That's right. That's right. And this is so much better for the environment.

- Don't you want a smart yard? Don't you want to be like Maria and Fran? Well, of course you do. All of our yards are works in progress. And Maria and Fran, you've done such a great job, and I know you have more to do.

- Yes.

- And you can learn more at tnyards.utk.edu.

- And it's easier than you think. You don't have to do everything that's on the checklist, that's just a guideline.

- Just try.

- Thank you all so much for showing us your smart yards today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- We enjoyed it.

- What a treat.

- Every year, when I'm getting my begonias ready to put in the greenhouse for the winter months, I end up with lots of little broken branches that I turn into cuttings by just sticking them into water, and you can do that with almost all begonias. But there are other ways to propagate 'em, and since I don't know anything about those, I've asked my friend Annette here to tell us about them because she does.

- Well, you know, one of the best things about knowing how to propagate is it cuts the expense of whatever it is that we want to make more of. So let's start out first with a rhizome. This plant right here, you can see-

- Look at that, nice.

- is growing on rhizomes.

- Wow.

- And so see how it's circled around and it's circled down. And so one of the things I don't wanna do that I look for that's encouraging when at the base, see, this was the original where that rhizome was put in there. Here comes a new leaf. So, but I see over here on this side that perhaps this little one right here, I'm going to slice.

- Oh, I see.

- [Annette] See how this has got one little piece that's growing over there, and it's got a sort of a bedraggled leaf over here.

- [April] So you think you could cut that one there?

- [Annette] Yes, this is what I'm going to do. I'm gonna take this off.

- [April] Oh wow, you just break it off?

- No.

- Oh, you're gonna cut it.

- [Annette] I'm gonna take this box cutter or a nice sharp knife, but I want to cut it right here at the base.

- Okay.

- [Annette] Let's see what I can do here. I'm gonna lift it and give it a little heave hoe right here. And we want it to be sound and clean. Let me show you when we get it out of there, how the end of it's gonna be nice and green. See here?

- Oh look.

- [Annette] Okay, now, just like this, we're gonna produce probably four plants.

- Oh, look at the end of that. That looks good.

- See, it's very sound.

- Yeah, it's solid. There's no rot or anything.

- And this is actually a root. That's okay. But I am going to remove these leaves from this, so that would take away from the growing of the rhizome. One of the things I'm not real sure about in growing these is I wanted a potting mix, other than making it myself, that does not have fertilizers and moisture retain.

- Yeah, that's really hard to find actually.

- It is very difficult to find. So, I found a specialty in the Miracle-Gro. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna slice this little rhizome, and we're gonna get probably...

- [April] So you just slice it right at those little lines?

- No, it doesn't matter.

- Really? Okay, cool.

- [Annette] We're just gonna see how many pieces, see there's one.

- Okay.

- [Annette] I think I can get four. Two, and then I'll just leave this root.

- [April] Yeah, that's quite a lot, right?

- [Annette] Yeah, I think I'll cut it right here.

- [April] It was looking for a home, wasn't it, with those roots.

- [Annette] Yes. So we wanna make sure that our rootings medium is nice and packed, compact. And then we're gonna just take this little root, and actually, because we know that there's a root there, I'm gonna put this one in here just like this. And my soil may not be quite deep enough, but we're gonna cover this, like this. We're not gonna cover it all the way. And then, I'm gonna put another one. So I can tell that this is the upside. See how this is smooth?

- Oh yeah, I get it.

- [Annette] See, this is where the leaves have grown out. So let's insert another one.

- [April] Would you bury that little root that was on it already too?

- [Annette] Yeah, I guess. This one had one, didn't it?

- Yeah.

- There we go. See now this one, we can tell there's that root. So we have one here, one here. We're gonna put one here.

- So they don't need that much space really.

- [Annette] No, mm-mm, and it doesn't take, probably in a month, there should be some evidence of growth from these.

- Do you keep spraying, spritzing the potting medium?

- Mm-mm, we're gonna make its own little greenhouse.

- Oh, okay.

- [Annette] Now this is all you'd have to do to this one, but right now, we're gonna spritz it. I'm not worried about drain holes, because we're not adding water-

- [April] Gotcha.

- [Annette] once we put it in its little greenhouse. Okay, now-

- Is that gonna be one of these?

- Yes.

- Okay, cool.

- [Annette] Okay now, let's try doing what's called a vein cutting.

- Oh!

- [Annette] Yeah, that's quite different. Okay, you see, this is from my beefsteak begonia.

- [April] Wow, it's pretty. It almost looks like a lily pad.

- It's one of the older used of the begonias, goes further back. But you see it has a core. If I turn this leaf over, do you see this deep veining?

- Yeah, on the underside.

- That's right. And so really, I could tear this off here.

- All the edges.

- Yes. I think I will, because this is a little bit bigger than my little potting. You know, I'm very good about saving all of our fast food containers. Because, you know, you bring a lot of plants inside, gotta have plant water protection.

- [April] I do the same. I do the same.

- [Annette] You know, they come in handy.

- [April] And if you get one that has the little lid that's kind of tall, it's kind of perfect for this.

- [Annette] Now see how that's gonna fit in there?

- Oh, okay.

- Okay. But first, we're gonna snip off this little stem right here. Okay, now-

- [April] Wow, this is cool.

- [Annette] Now the next thing we're gonna do is we're going to slit these little veins right here. So everywhere you cut, see how that does that?

- Yeah.

- And cut right here.

- [April] Oh wow.

- [Annette] Cut right here. And it doesn't mean that all of these are gonna produce. You know, you can do an African violet this way.

- [April] I'd heard that, but I've never tried it, so it's good to see this demonstration here, Annette.

- And you know, I have a strepto carpus, if you've never grown them.

- Oh, I love those. Yeah, I've grown once.

- They have such big ribs.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- [Annette] When I get into my winter mode of not knowing what I really want to do. Now, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna tamp this down. And there's two really cool ways to make this, we're sure that this is gonna be in good contact where we cut those veins, because the little plantlets are gonna grow right up out of-

- From the cuts?

- From those cuts.

- Wow! That's cool, man.

- [Annette] Now here's a cool little trick. I'm a rock collector.

- [April] And just weigh it down a little bit, so it's in good contact?

- Exactly. See, that's very firm in there. I have florist wire, and you just take this, snip it and make a little hook. And you take this, yes, and you just put it down like this, and you push it to hold it down. And in fact, I just had to share my little rocks with you.

- No, but that's awesome though.

- [Annette] But anyway.

- And so now it's gonna be in great contact with the soil.

- Exactly.

- Okay, cool.

- And see, whatever's in the soil will give it maybe some food, but you don't have to worry about that.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So just a little moisture. Do you put it in a Ziploc bag too?

- It's gonna go... This is one of those big gallon or two gallon ones. And no matter who makes them, they zip lock.

- That's true. I always save a bunch of plastic bags and stuff for this sort of thing too, because...

- Yeah, now then, here is a neat little thing. If these are viable. Oh wait, that's the wrong one.

- Yeah, it's this one.

- It's this one right here.

- There we go.

- Okay. Believe it or not, in this little piece of paper towel, I have seeds.

- Oh!

- They're actually seeds.

- I've never even seen the seeds of a begonia.

- Well, I hope I have seeds. I saved these on purpose. Okay, inside here is the magic package, April. I saved these, put 'em in a good place. And just like I showed you on the perennial begonias at a recent time, there's a little triangular-shaped portion of a bloom. And here's one right here. Do you see this?

- Yeah.

- Okay. Inside this, I'm gonna open it. And I think right there, see that little black thing?

- Yeah.

- Those are seeds. See that?

- Oh!

- Right there.

- [April] I've never even thought to look at, and you'd think I would.

- [Annette] See, that's one. Here's some more that I had gotten out. See right here? Look, you see there's some in there.

- Yeah. Okay.

- See that? Those are seeds.

- They're not teeny teeny.

- No, they're not powder fine. What I am gonna do, because whether or not this has to be stratified, I don't know. But you know, if I don't try I won't gain a thing, will I?

- Yeah, and you know, I mean, since they're native to like the subtropical, tropical zones, you'd think they wouldn't really need stratification.

- Right, that's true. Okay, so there's that little round one, see it?

- Yeah.

- [Annette] Looks like a little frog egg. So what I'm going to do, and hopefully...

- [April] Just sprinkle those around.

- I am, and I don't know-

- And let 'em fall out.

- [Annette] I don't know what's good and what's not good.

- [April] Well, we'll just see what happens.

- [Annette] I'm gonna give them contact.

- [April] Do you ever just really press 'em down, or do you just lightly?

- [Annette] I'm just sort of knuckling them.

- Okay. Yeah.

- Now I am-

- [April] I have like a little wooden block I do, and so just lightly cover.

- This is what I'm gonna do. And even though I won't have enough room in the little baggie that I brought for all of these, they will all go into that, so.

- Cool.

- Now I didn't have a tuberous one, but under some of these, I know we have some tuberous varieties here, but I think just knowing how to begin. But I know that if I get, I put four in there. If I get two, you know-

- Then that's good. And you didn't have to pay for those.

- [Annette] No, so it's also important, April, that we put these in a a warm environment. And you know-

- Not just a semi shady spot, but an actual warm place.

- No, no, in the house. Well, you have a greenhouse, but for someone that doesn't, an excellent place, if you don't have a built-in refrigerator, is on top of the roof of the refrigerator.

- On top of the fridge, yep.

- Or anywhere that, now that we have our heat on, up on a shelf, higher up, the heat rises. And another important thing to remember, we can put anything in a jar of water, but there's one thing to remember. When these start to grow roots, the first ones are white and bright, and but then they start to turn... Once they start to turn in, like I say, a brown mess, like a little piece of organic something, then that root is not nearly as viable. So, you've got-

- I've got one that's already started doing it.

- [Annette] Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So you don't want to leave them.

- [April] And it doesn't take long. I didn't do this, but like in the last week or 10 days.

- [Annette] Seven to 10 days is what it takes for them to produce a root. But now, you actually can grow 'em in water, but don't take 'em from the water and plant them in soil.

- Yeah, they won't adapt.

- No. You have to catch them when the roots are fresh and young and white.

- Perfect.

- And the scope of how costly grow growing begonias are, it's not very, because anywhere from $5.99 to, if you were to search through online, you might find some that are $20. But when they come, they're not going to be this, so it's-

- They're gonna be little tinies probably.

- I think a good eye, when you're going through the aisles of any store that has live plants, you're suspect to find one where you don't expect it. And that's kind of how I built my collection.

- [April] Awesome. Thank you so much.

- I just love being out here on this beautiful morning with you.

- It's beautiful.

- I remember my first trip here.

- It's been a couple years.

- It has. It's very special, and thank you for having me with you.

- Well, I think I'm the one that got all the value, but thank you so much, Annette.

- Well we are a mutual admiration society.

- Agreed.

- Okay.

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