Episode 3419

- [Narrator] The inter planting of vegetables can maximize yield and the use of resources. Jeremy Tolley, finds that as a key to success at Young Harvest Farm in Arrington, Tennessee. There are thoughtful crop combinations in every planting spot, to ensure the right amount of sunlight is provided, pests are deterred and roots can grow to their potential. The variety of fresh produce at any given time is exceptional. Then Troy Marden talks about the optimum time of year to prune those spring and summer flowering shrubs. He shares tips that will encourage healthy growth while also preserving next year's blooms. Join us. At Young Harvest Farm, the soil is never bare. As one crop gets harvested, another is planted.

- Okay, it's midsummer and this is some of the most beautiful kale that I've seen that's made it through a heat wave. It's not bolted, it's succulent. It's really gorgeous. Today I'm in Arrington with Chelsea Young of Young Harvest Farm, and Chelsea, along with her beautiful family, has a homestead here and some beautiful gardens that we're gonna tour today. Chelsea, welcome to the show. Tell us.

- Thank you.

- How do you get your kale to look so beautiful in this heatwave?

- Well, I will say there's always a little bit of luck in anything that is gardening, mother nature for sure. But we've been able to plant throughout the spring, different crops alongside the kale and harvest it quite a bit. So you can see it's pretty far off the ground. So away from pests, away from water, getting splashed up on it, I think that's been helpful as well. And then we've got all of these nice summer crops that are kind of entangling themselves around it. Another kind of shade for that kale, if you will.

- Yeah, I love this inner planting technique that I see throughout your garden. Let's go take a look at some more examples.

- Alright, let's go

- Chelsea, I passed by a lot of gardens on my way, my drive through the country today, and I saw a lot of gardens that were traditionally organized and neat rows and everything in its place. Now in your garden, I'm looking at just in a few square feet, I see lemon balm, there's some shishito, I see some basil, something coming up really small over there, some sort of brassica-

- Yeah.

- And tomatoes in the background. Tell us more about the technique you're employing here.

- Oh, yeah. I'm a messy gardener, but there is some rhyme to the reason, there's always like this perennial here. It's nice and smelly and fragrant along with the basil. So that's always to help some type of pest, be deterred from my tomatoes, my biggest crop this year, and then whenever I see anything. So we just pulled some things over in the corner there. Whenever I see bare soil, I love to cover it with micros of some sort. I've got buckwheat even I think popping up somewhere, giving back to the soil and keeping the soil moist, especially in this high heat, is really important. Not only for the tomatoes, but for then again when Nebraska's come in this fall.

- Yeah, so when you talk about micros, you're referring to micro greens?

- Micro greens, yes.

- Are you actually, so these are gonna be the, you're seeding heavily over the soil to keep the soil covered.

- Yep.

- And then you're growing these, I assume they're cabbages and broccolis and other sorts of brassicas.

- Yeah, things that we can take in and eat as well. And I love arugula for that purpose.

- Good, good. So you are harvesting the micrograms?

- Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

- Yeah. And then are you leaving those roots in the soil?

- Yes, we let them all, we never pull from the soil. We always just cut at the soil level and then we let those roots give back to the soil.

- Yeah.

- Never disrupting.

- I love this mix of plants that you have here. So like you said, so you've got the perennials, you've got the vining crops. I see some other spots over in your garden where it looks like you've done some recent plantings. Let's take a look at that.

- Okay, yeah.

- So here's another great example where I see pollinators and you know, peppers and I see some lettuce. Tell us more about what the design is here.

- Yeah, it's, well, the heat is not so great for the lettuce, but I still love lettuce in the summer, so I try to put them almost as a ground cover.

- Yeah.

- And then build it up with lots of pretty flowers. You can see the peppers in here, even some bushy zucchini down here. And this is a parsley that's going to seed as well, so that I can enjoy lettuce. But then we let it bolt in some instances and then we're able to just shake those seeds and then the lettuce will replant itself. So always having the ground covered as much as we can with a lot of different other plant partners. You can even see it's tricky down here, but we've got some carrots. Carrots don't love the heat as well.

- Oh yeah.

- So this helps them prevent from bolting. And I actually get some really nice long carrots that way if this soil stays moist and it's underneath a lot of, you know, different friends, like lettuce or we've got some peppers back here, some really hot peppers back there I see. That are just about to get ready to get picked. So yeah, so we just, this is parsley, so I would simply grab the seed heads once they get all dried up, sprinkle them in, ruffle them in, and a couple months we'll have fresh parley, so.

- So earlier you referred to your garden as a bit of a mess. I think it's the exact opposite of that. I think there's a lot of techniques that you're employing here that are pretty advanced and are not just intuitive things that you've learned. I assume you've learned that over the course of many years of gardening, right?

- Not really. We just started kind of a pandemic garden in 2020 and I jumped in wanting to grow food with my family and it was something that we just enjoyed so much. And yeah, I just, I made a lot of mistakes and I think that's, as gardeners, that's what we do, right? That's how we learn.

- Absolutely.

- And there's great books out there and the internet is out there as well.

- It is.

- Which is helpful to identify things and also to give different ideas on how do you grow peppers and tomatoes and how do you, us different ways. But you will know your soil best and you will know your environment best. So I think just experimenting a lot of the things that I do is an experiment.

- Mm-hmm.

- But keeping the ground covered, having lots of variety and that has helped a lot in deterring pests and keeping our garden growing throughout even the hottest months in July and August.

- Yeah. Well it's very impressive and I love the fact that you're actually experimenting and you're not afraid to fail.

- Yeah.

- I think sometimes when I do see those nice, neat organized gardens, I wish people would try some other things and let it be okay to fail and not give up and not be frustrated.

- Yeah, I love that.

- And have some happy accidents that you learn from.

- Yeah, lots of accidents. But it turns out that the more you try different things, the better you get and the more varieties that you enjoy. And sometimes you can, you know, the biggest mistakes are your biggest rewards.

- Yeah, for sure.

- So, yeah.

- I see some beautiful trellising you've done over here. Let's take a look at that.

- Okay.

- So you've taken interplay to the next level, even with your trellis. So we're looking at some squash or some cucurbit here.

- Yeah, pumpkin.

- Pumpkin, okay.

- Yeah.

- And we've got tomatoes and other vining crops. Tell us more about this.

- Yeah, so this is a easy and very affordable actually cattle panel from any supply store, and then just some T posts that we bent up and it allows us to grow up and then also keep the soil moist underneath with a lot of more squash varieties depending on what does well that comes up and what does well on the ground. So this sand Marzano, I thought was dead, but once we've gotten a little bit of shade from the pumpkin and the loofah, which is my first time to plant the loofah, she has come back alive. So I will bob and weave her and we'll probably get a second or third round of San Marzanos.

- Oh, that's great.

- Yeah, so sometimes, yeah, works out where they just needed a little bit more shade or the soil just needed a little bit of help and then plants can get revived pretty quick.

- Well that's part of that experimenting until you find what works and having some happy accidents that happen like that, right.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So we're in midsummer now. By the time we get to the end of summer and early fall, we're gonna see it a full cattle panel here, trellis.

- Yeah.

- Full of loofah and tomato. And you're gonna pick these?

- [Chelsea] Yes.

- Yeah, that's great.

- Yeah, I can't wait. We got our first little guy right up here.

- I see it. I love these cattle panels. I use these on my farm a lot. They're really inexpensive. They're fairly easy to shape, it's a two minute job.

- Yeah, it's a two minute job for sure.

- If you can get them shaped using some T posts. And this is something that anyone can pick up at their farm supply store.

- Yeah.

- And put it in a home garden in the ground, in a raised bed.

- Yeah, we use them for multiple things you could saw in the hoop house. We use them to tres cucumbers as well. Something that doesn't need to go as high, but it's a great way to get things off the ground and grow vertical.

- [Jeremy] Looks great.

- [Chelsea] Thanks

- Chelsea, we've seen your inner planning technique in a high tunnel. We've also seen it growing in the ground outdoors.

- Yep.

- I see you've done something similar in your raised, tell us about it.

- Yes, this is kind of a new, we just put these raised beds in this year, but I love the idea that you can kind of plant them sequentially all the way up to a trellis that I've got in the middle. I do quick roots like a radish and then carrots, which will actually benefit from some of the shades from the climbers. And then I even put some of the nitrogen givers, like beans, pole beans would work here great too.

- Mm-hmm.

- They would climb, and then I do all my cucumbers. I've got baby butternuts down here and they will climb. And so it's kind of nice you have succession planting where you'll be able to grab radishes, then replant, and then grab your beans and then your carrots. And so you have this wide variety that you can grab from for a couple months.

- Yeah.

- In one bed.

- This must be like a treasure box for your kids when they come outside, right?

- [Chelsea] Yeah, yeah, it is. It's who can come down and grab the beans and the cucumbers first.

- Yeah, it's great.

- So-

- Your high tunnel is a little bit of magic in the middle of summer. All of this growing around us is so beautiful. Chelsea, you have shown us a lot of techniques today with inter planning and with crop rotation and just other things that I think any home gardener will find that they can employ, whether they have a really small raised bed garden or a big garden.

- Mm.

- So thank you for sharing.

- Oh, thank you.

- Sharing this with us today.

- So honored to be a part of this, I love this.

- Now I know gardening is not the only thing that you're doing here. Can you tell us a little bit more about Young Harvest Farm?

- Yeah, so we have opened our doors to the community so that others can learn with us. So we started this garden and I thought, gosh, everybody should learn and if they can't learn 'cause they can't do it in their own space, come out to the farm and join us. So we have so many different family events. We started growing flowers two years ago and we just love that the community can come out and do a, you pick on the weekends, so we've got you pick flowers and using all of these amazing vegetables and seasonal recipes. So we have cooking classes sourdough, and I even get to teach yoga in the barn loft. So we welcome everybody. And then we do two big farm to table dinners, both in the spring and the summer or in the fall, not in the summer, good Lord.

- Thank you.

- That would be too much. But yeah, we welcome everybody on farm so that they can learn with us. It's a community-based farm, so we want everybody to come and learn with us as much as they can.

- It's beautiful, it's inspiring and it-

- Thank you.

- It's just been a pleasure visiting you today. Thank you Chelsea.

- Oh, we're so thankful to have you out. Thank you so much.

- Thanks.

- I get a lot of questions about how and when to prune. So I thought we would take a moment to walk through a good friend of mine's garden who has invited us here to use this as a backdrop and to teach everybody how to prune, how to prune properly and at what time of year. When you're doing a pruning job, you need good pruning tools, that includes hand pruners. I prefer the scissor type pruners with the blades that bypass one another like a pair of scissors that gives you a cleaner cut and you also have better precision with this blade tip. There also are anvil type pruners where the blade actually comes down and meets a flat surface like this. But a lot of times with that action because you've got a flat surface down here and a cutting surface here that will crush the stem and that is not nearly as good. You also need a really good pruning saw and you can tell that my tools are well loved and well used, but this is one of my go-to pruning saws because the blade folds in, it is compact again, it just clips like that folds right back up. That way you can stick it in your pocket. You don't have to worry about running your hand down the blade and cutting yourself. And these are really good and sharp. This also happens to have a blade that can be changed so you don't have to buy a new saw. You can buy a new blade, put a new blade on it when this one is no longer good. You also need a really good pair of long handled loppers. These are good for branches that are maybe half an inch and larger in diameter. They also have that scissor type action. And the long handles give you more leverage, instead of just squeezing with your hand like a pair of hand pruners, you are squeezing with both arms, you've got more muscle behind it, you can cut larger branches and that really works well. And then the other thing you need just for home pruning, I don't do a lot of shearing, but once in a while we want to just shape something. And the most important tool I have for that is not electric or gas powered head shears, but good old fashioned scissor type hedge pruners or hedge shears, just like these, good stainless steel ones, sharp blades. And one thing that I really like are these blades that are just slightly scalloped on the edge because that helps to grab the branches, whatever you are shearing, if it's boxwoods or use or it will grab that new growth and keep it inside of the blade as you cut so that you're cutting cleanly and evenly. With spring and early summer flowering shrubs, you do have a window of opportunity to prune. And this example of an abelia here to my left is one of those. Now it is just getting ready to come into flower a little bit, but abelia grows so quickly that you can really prune it almost anytime during the growing season it will put out new growth and it will still flower. So what I wanna do here is just get this one a little bit out of the way of the path. I'm just gonna go back to a growth point here where it's got new growth coming out, clip it off. And you can see when I did that, just taking this weight off of that stem, allowed it to pop back. And if I do this one right here, you'll see the same thing. We're just gonna go back here to where we have some new growth, clip that and it will take that weight and just pop that limb right up out of the way of the path. And we don't have to completely clear the path, but it's nice to be able to walk through without being able, without having to duck in order to do that. Hydrangeas are always a big topic of discussion when it comes to pruning because number one, there are a lot of different kinds of hydrangeas and those different kinds of hydrangeas require different types of pruning at different times of the year. On oak leaf hydrangeas, there are a couple of different things to consider. One is just deadheading of old blooms from last year. Like these. They do not have to be deadheaded, but you can if you want to. And that just simply means coming in here and clipping these old flowers that are completely brown and finished. And this can be done anytime that they've turned brown and are finished blooming. The bigger question sometimes is when you need to control the size of a plant, especially on an oak leaf hydrangea, when do you do it? Because they flower in June. So if you cut them in March, then you're cutting off this year's flower buds that have already formed and you won't get any blooms or you'll get fewer blooms. So really the time to prune an oak leaf hydrangea is just after this year's flowers begin to go from white back to green or brown. And these are just beginning to get to that stage. It's about the second week of June right now. These have another good week or two weeks in them maybe of being showy, but then they'll begin to fade. And once that happens, if you need to control the size of the plant, you can actually come in here and cut back beyond the flowers. You can even get back into bare stems like back into here. And anywhere that you cut there are latent dormant buds along the stem and it will eventually leaf back out over the course of this summer. And by pruning, just as the flowers begin to go over, just as they begin to fade, that leaves you the rest of the summer, July, August, September, and even into October for the plant to recover and set new flower buds for next year. I think almost everyone is familiar with Annabelle hydrangeas or maybe this day and age we say Annabelle type hydrangeas because it's something everybody is familiar with. But there are so many different varieties these days. This is a hydrangea that flowers on its new growth. So any pruning that happens on these should happen in the early spring before new growth begins. And then you'll get these beautiful flowers in June. For other hydrangeas, the macrophylla types, the big French hydrangeas, pink and blue, they flower on last year's growth. So you want to wait until they're finished blooming and then you prune. You let them grow out after their pruning mid-summer, maybe July, and then they'll set buds in August and September and October for next year's flowering. So with your Annabelle type hydrangeas, again flowering on new growth, the smooth hydrangeas, these are some of our natives, the macrophylla hydrangeas, the French hydrangeas that come in pink and blue and other colors as well. Those flower on their old growth. So you really need to wait until after they're finished flowering and then do your pruning. So for early spring bloomers like forsythia, many of your spirea, azaleas, abelias, camellias, you have until about the 15th of June. That's sort of your window of opportunity from the time they finish flowering in March or April, whenever that is, until about the 15th of June to do your pruning on your early spring flowering trees and shrubs. For evergreen foundation plants or plants that are used as, let's call them punctuation marks in the garden, plants like Boxwoods, hollies, yews, there's a great opportunity in late spring or early summer to do some shaping. If you need to do hard pruning, you need to do that in late winter or very early spring. But after the new growth has come out late May, early June and begun to harden off, this is pretty firm growth now. You can come in here with your head shears and just do some very light shaping of your boxwoods. This will keep them neat and tidy for the rest of the summer. You may get a little bit of extra growth and have to come out clip a stem or two here and there. And you can see that I'm just barely taking anything off here. I'm not trying to reduce the size of the shrub, I'm just trying to neaten and tidy up, where there's two or three inches of new growth in different places. As I work my way down the side of the shrub, one thing I do want to mention is this is a shadier garden. So you've got some areas down here toward the bottom where the boxwood has actually just lifted itself up off the ground. It's kind of shaded out down there. But what you don't wanna do is trim back into the shade. You wanna leave your box wood, let it come down almost straight to the ground so that sun is hitting that foliage. Otherwise the top will get wider, the bottom will stay shadier and you'll continue to lose growth on the bottom of your shrubs. I love these boxwoods that grow straight up, just as an exclamation point, a vertical exclamation point in the garden. But a lot of times with vertical plants, they have multiple stems and sometimes just the weight of the new growth will pull branches like this out. You can simply, anytime of the year that you have something like that happen, just go in and clip these out. Doesn't hurt the plant at all. There's another one behind me here and we'll take that out right down to where there's new growth here and that will help keep your form of this plant and it makes it a whole lot more effective from a design perspective when they stay really nice and tight and neat. In this garden, there are a couple of examples of really beautiful rhododendrons. A lot of us struggle with rhododendrons and rhododendrons are something we wouldn't do a lot of pruning on, but azaleas, their first cousins, are shrubs that we would prune. And I wanna just show you this example because we never wanna go past mid-June on pruning azaleas or if you need to rhododendrons because this is actually next year's flower bud already setting in the second week of June. So our window of opportunity for pruning on this rhododendron has passed. We should have done it immediately when it was finished flowering. And that's also the best time of year to prune your azaleas late march to early April, to early May, as soon as they finished flowering. Sometimes we also need to do a little tree maintenance. And for smaller ornamental trees we can often do that here at home, just ourselves. One of the things you need to watch for is, especially on trees like red buds, dogwoods that have a naturally spreading habit anyway, just the weight of new growth on thin branches will begin to weigh the canopy down. And sometimes we need to just lift it up a little bit, keep it from obstructing pathways and that kind of thing. So what I often do is just go back part way on a branch clip at a joint. And you can see that when I lifted that off, when I clipped that off, this branch just lifted up naturally. When you do make a cut, you want to find a branch that is growing out in the direction that you might want this to fill in later on, and you're going to cut flush with the end of the, where that new branch is coming out right there. And that way this will heal over nicely and cleanly and this new branch will work its way upward. I know pruning is often kind of a scary thing, but it's not anything to be afraid of. Plants are resilient and I hope this has given you a little bit of information about pruning, how to do it, and at what time of year

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