Episode 3422

- [Lauren] These beautiful raised beds are constructed of wood that was charred using an ancient Japanese method of preservation called Shou Sugi Ban. Sheri Gramer walks us through this labor-intensive process with a gardener who has honed the technique. She now has garden beds that will last for decades. Then Jeff Poppen shares advice on how to reap a delicious and plentiful raspberry harvest with the ever-bearing variety, Heritage. Join us. Not only do these garden beds have a striking, textured appearance, the vegetables that are being grown are interesting too.

- These raised beds behind me look different, and that's because they are different. They've used the traditional method of charring wood to preserve the wood, make it last hundreds of years, chemical-free, and it's actually very pretty to look at too. We're with Jana Gaston today in College Grove, Tennessee, and she's gonna show us a traditional Japanese method of charring wood. Okay.

- Okay.

- Tell me why a gardener would wanna do this.

- Yeah so, well, this all started with us wanting to make a sustainable garden, right?

- Okay.

- Raise the beds, make it sustainable for longer. And it's kinda like the give a mouse a cookie, then that led to, we don't wanna redo this in five years, so we wanted to protect the wood, but I didn't wanna do it in a toxic way.

- Right, so you didn't wanna use treated lumber.

- Right. So I started looking, and found Shou Sugi Ban, which is a ancient Japanese technique that's been used for centuries where you char the wood, and you go through a process, there's several steps: charring, scraping, cleaning, oiling. But what it does is it actually changes the chemical makeup of the wood, it modifies the cell structure, right? And makes it more resistant to moisture.

- So approximately how long will this wood last after you did this?

- There are buildings in Japan that had this process done 500 years ago that are still standing.

- Oh, my goodness. Oh, goodness. Okay.

- So, 500 years. We're going for that.

- Okay. So show me me what we would need to get this started.

- Yeah, okay. So what I would recommend, you need to have steel-toed boots.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- Something, because you're gonna be using a torch. I use a weeding torch.

- Okay.

- Okay. Propane tank. And of course, all the equipment to get this safely attached, like tape and stuff. A lighter, I used a lighter, but there's also these lighters.

- Right. Okay.

- Respirator mask, because sometimes it can get real smoky. And then leather gloves.

- Okay.

- Several times I've had to run over and stomp out a little fire on the wood, or pat it down with my hands. So there's a protective step that you wanna take, you wanna probably have a fire extinguisher or a hose.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- Okay. As I've done the grass fire stomp dance a few times.

- Okay.

- Until I learned to pull it further away from -

- The grass.

- Grass. Yeah.

- [Sheri] All right, well, let's show.

- Okay, the kind of wood is important, you wanna use a soft wood. So teak wood I think is probably what they use in Japan, but here in middle Tennessee, eastern cedar is very available. I got mine at Grant Cedar Mill, which is out by Lebanon. We used mostly Grade B wood, which worked fine. We did have to, you know, put some through a table saw to make sure everything was even, consistent. Yeah, because we needed all sides to be level, because we put a topper. So, yeah. So, eastern cedar's great, soft wood. So you wanna burn it until you've got a good burn, about an eighth of an inch deep. The surface, you want to look like alligator skin, slightly crackly, okay?

- [Sheri] All right, and so we've finished burning it, and now there's another step we do, right?

- [Jana] There is.

- [Sheri] Or two steps?

- [Jana] Two steps.

- [Sheri] Two steps.

- Two more steps. So, equipment is really important for this second step as well. So, number one, you need a respirator mask, something to cover your hands, you need either a wire brush or a real stiff brush. And I would recommend a Tyvek suit.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- We found that out later. I started using scrub pants, and after scraping wood, when they came off, my legs were covered in that ash. It just goes everywhere. Oh, and you would need goggles.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- Okay, something to protect your eyes.

- So what exactly, what is the purpose of scraping the wood and putting this?

- Good question. So, the scraping of the wood really just makes it so that you can go by it and not be covered black.

- Okay.

- And it helps to kind of seal that. The burning is really what, it changes the pH, which protects it from termites and makes it more moisture resistant. But so, you scrape it, and then after that, you clean it.

- Okay.

- You clean off all that, dust that ash.

- Okay. Last step, step three.

- Last step, yes.

- [Sheri] What are we gonna do on this step?

- Okay, for this step we need, what I used, you could brush it, I used a roller, but I use both sizes of the roller rags, or heavy paper towels. I just got those at a big box store in bulk. I chose a garden food-safe, non-toxic.

- [Sheri] So you're sealing the wood with that?

- We are sealing the wood with a food-safe, non-toxic oil. Okay? It just adds extra protection. Okay, and I found it also helps keep that nice dark color, which I think looks classy. I also used a leaf blower before I would wipe off the ash.

- Kind of like dusting it?

- I would dust it with a leaf blower so there wouldn't be so much wiping.

- Okay, okay. Oh, gosh. I guess it is dusty. All right so, we've seen how you prepare the wood.

- [Jana] Yeah.

- [Sheri] I can't wait to see how you incorporated it into your raised beds.

- [Jana] Yeah, okay.

- Let's talk a little bit about constructing these, how you went about it. I see there's some cinder blocks, or cement blocks, underneath.

- [Jana] Yes. Yeah.

- [Sheri] And then walk me through your process.

- Okay, this was more involved probably than most people, because we have such a sloped land here. We had existing cinder block beds that were, you know, raised about that much, that were semi-level, but not completely. So, we started at the highest point, okay? And that was the first four by four.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Jana] That we would plumb.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Jana] We would secure it to the first level of two by six. That went all the way around, we had already made it into a box, put it down, we plumbed the first one, secured it to the board, and then proceeded to plumb the others, okay?

- [Sheri] And these are very sturdy. I noticed that.

- [Jana] They're very sturdy.

- [Sheri] So they will be here a long time.

- They should be here for a very long time. My husband, Matt, is the designer, and he can design and build almost anything. So he came up with this design, thinking that we could cover it and have a greenhouse, or we can secure a cattle panel for climbing vegetables and fruits.

- [Sheri] Well, great. I want to talk a little bit about your vegetables next.

- [Jana] Okay.

- [Sheri] I love this growth. And what kind of melon is this?

- So this one is, I believe it's called a kajari melon. You can see it through here, it's a cute little guy. It will turn orange, and it's a musk melon. And then on the other side, I have a Siamese bitter melon, which is more of a super food, 'cause it is a bitter melon, but it's a super food.

- And you do companion planting here?

- I do companion planting. So, my marigolds, well, anyway, this is a marigold, it's not blooming right now. This is alyssum, which attracts beneficials. I just put my cilantro here, I'm letting it go to seeds so I can gather the seeds. You'll see I have some green onions in there. And, oh, here's something called purslane, which is a weed, and I have more of this in my lettuce green bed. This purslane is the only plant that is super high in Omega-3 fatty acids.

- [Sheri] Wow.

- So we pull off the leaves. We let it grow. It's a weed. I actually plant it, I get heirloom seeds from Baker Creek, and I actually plant it, and we use it in our salads, or I cook it.

- How's it taste? Is it bitter or no?

- No, no. It's a succulent, so it has a different texture, but it still has a little bit of a crunch.

- [Sheri] Okay, so what do we have growing here?

- [Jana] Yeah, we have purple whole peas. Love these. And since this is my first season with these raised beds, I should have used taller posts for them.

- [Sheri] Okay. Yes.

- [Jana] So they're a little, you know, I stuck a couple extra in there. But yeah, so I'll do that differently next year.

- [Sheri] And in front here?

- [Jana] Yeah, I've got beets, beets down here. And this is Bibbles the cat. We'll take her off. So I've got beets. These are the golden beets there.

- [Sheri] And some zinnias.

- [Jana] Zinnias for good pollinators.

- [Sheri] This is so cool. Tell me about this vegetable.

- [Sheri] Okay. This is a squash. This is one of my favorite vegetables, it's zucchini rampicante, is how I pronounce it. I hope that's right. But we do a lot of zoodles, and I'm a nutritionist, so my husband has to eat all this stuff.

- And before you go any farther, you have the hog fencing on top of this one.

- [Jana] Yes. Yes.

- [Sheri] So they can grow hanging down. Support. Great support.

- [Jana] Because it's heavy. They're heavy. So, what's great about this, especially if you zoodle, there's no seeds until you get to the bottom in this bulb, and so all this is great for zoodling. You can also slice it, and while it's young and tender like this, and green, it's just like a zucchini, it is a zucchini squash. But interesting about it, if I let it hang, the skin will become harder like a butternut squash, and the meat turns orange like a butternut squash. So then I can actually save some of this into the Fall.

- [Sheri] All right, I've seen lots of basils. This little gal is actually very pretty, she's so ruffly.

- Yes, yes. I love it. This is called lettuce leaf basil. And so, I grow a lot of this. I've got several rows, especially around my tomatoes, and my peppers, and the eggplant that I have. So yeah, I've made over 25 batches of pesto this year.

- Yum.

- Yes.

- [Sheri] This is kind of pretty. But you said you didn't plant it for pretty, what did you plant it for?

- I didn't. It's an extra benefit that it's so pretty. This is dreadlock amaranth, and I learned from a wise gardener that to cut down my cucumber beetle population, like at the beginning of the year.

- [Sheri] Because on the backside here on the hog fencing is all cucumbers.

- Cucumbers, and then I have some lemon squash here.

- Okay.

- So, at the beginning of the year, I plant amaranth. And you can see there's only two leaves left, I left this to show you this. I pull the stem outside of the garden bed, and I'll dust just a little bit of sevin on the leaves, and then leave it for anywhere from a day to two days. And then I cut off the leaves, that's why there's no leaves on this, this is the only two left. But cucumber beetles love this, and they will start munching on this actually before my squash is blooming, and before they go there.

- [Sheri] Well, that's a great thing to know about.

- Yeah, so I can cut down the population.

- [Sheri] And where did you say you got the seeds?

- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. And that's where I talked to that wise gardener.

- [Sheri] Is that where most of your seeds come from, it's Baker Creek?

- [Jana] Yes. Yeah, I get almost all my seeds, I try to save them and replant them.

- [Sheri] Curious, what is your growing season? What time does it start fruiting? Well, you said you plant your plants, because you grow, you start 'em inside, a lot of them.

- [Jana] I do, I do.

- [Sheri] And then so like, mid-May, in May?

- [Jana] Some. Well, my cool season vegetables, my lettuces and things like that, I have a little bit of lettuce over there that's ready to be pulled. And my carrots, which also need to be pulled now.

- [Sheri] So really, it's producing by the end of May, the cool crops.

- It's producing by the end of May. And then I'll plant my garlic, I always plant around 100 cloves of garlic in the Fall, around November, 1st of November. And so we have that.

- So you're harvesting pretty much all but maybe two months of the year?

- Maybe so, yeah. Keep it busy.

- Yes. I wanna tell you, thank you very much, you and Matt have done a wonderful job here. And this technique of charring the wood, I think people will find interesting, 'cause it's something new to try.

- Yeah.

- And it's gonna work, and it's gonna work for a long time.

- And it's non-toxic.

- Right. And your vegetables are just breathtakingly gorgeous. So, thank you for sharing with us today.

- Thank you. I appreciate it.

- Welcome back to the farm. Today, we're gonna talk about the raspberry patch. They've been known and grown since Grecian times, and these pretty perennials are very easy to grow. The variety in my childhood was called Latham, and it was a old-fashioned variety that took two years. You grew a cane one year, and then bore the fruit the second year. We liked them real well until the mid-80s, and then those Japanese beetles came, and they hatched out at exactly the same time the raspberries did and covered 'em and devoured 'em. So we started growing a variety called Heritage, which we can prune back a little more, and consequently, it'll bear later, after the beetles have come and gone. All fruits require well-drained soil. Before we plant our patch, we run a subsoiler, which is a shank about two-feet deep with a shoe on it that breaks up the ground that deep. You can also do this by double-digging, where you take some of the soil, move it to the side, and then dig that deeper layer, loosen it up. This allows a free flow of air and moisture from the subsoil, up to the surface, and back down. And this is how we keep the plants moist, watered during the hot, dry summers. We dig in the ground like this around the plants and create this loose soil. Then it's got a lot of air in it that allows for the microbial interactions between the minerals, and the soil, and the atmosphere that makes the nutrients available to the plants. We fertilize the patch with compost, we use lime, rock phosphate, wood ashes, things of this nature, and keep the ground real loose and aerated. And that's the secret to growing high-quality fruit. Red raspberries are susceptible to a virus that's carried by the wild black caps that grow in our forest in Tennessee. I found out the hard way by letting some black ones grow up near my red patch, and the red patch went into immediate decline. So we try to keep at least 300 feet between black ones and red ones. But still, every 8 or 10 years, the plants start weakening, and we dig up the cleanest-looking plants, look at the roots real good, and we take them to a new place to have the next raspberry patch. Let's dig some up and plant one for you. Raspberries are easy to propagate for your new patch, you just go into the old patch and dig out some of the suckers. We just get a plant. Oh, about like this. Let's see what this looks like when we dig it up here. I can tell it's still connected to the mother plant by an underground root. Yeah, actually we got two plants it looks like, huh? Yeah so, we get this plant, it's got plenty of good root hairs, that's a good thing. And we'll just take this. If we were gonna go for long, I would wanna put this into water, but we're just gonna go right over here. I usually plant them in a fairly large hole that the roots have plenty of room to spread out. And I kind of move the roots around a little bit so they're not bent. And then I just cover back up. This soil is about half compost here. And so when I get it about half full like that, I firm it in, I'll even use my feet to do this, you don't want any air pockets around a transplant. So, we firm it in really good. While I still have a depression, I water it. So we just take some of the dry soil and fill the hole all the way up. And this dry soil then will keep that moisture underneath there, and the plant will grow real well. We do all of our transplanting, of course, while the plants are dormant. This would be between November and March, I was just doing this as a demonstration here. The weight of the ripening fruit of these raspberries will bend these plants, you know, they'll get on down to the ground. That's no good, they'll rot, so raspberries need to be staked. The way we do it is we trellis them with T-posts, they're about 80 inches apart, and then we wrap string, or twine, or whatever I can find around, and we tie them tight as we can get 'em. Sometimes we'll take a piece of bamboo and lean up against them. You can't put the trellis up real early because the plants just grow out from it, so we sort of wait till as they're growing, we'll put a line on it, about two foot, and then we'll come up about four, or four and a half foot or something, and put another line. And this keeps the berries from falling over. As with all crops, we must be vigilant about vegetable evil. Keeping the weeds down is one of the gardener's favorite chores, I'm sure. So we use a hoe and go around the plants routinely, and try to get them weeds while they're young, if we can. The worst problem we have in raspberries, besides these grasses, are the perennial vining things, like bindweed. These, you have to get out by the root. All of these things you have to pull up by the root, you can't leave any of those roots in there, it'll just resprout. But the bindweed is particularly frustrating because it's a perennial, and it has rhizomes. So in the first year, you can pull it up and get the whole root, but once they form those rhizomes under a berry patch, we've lost the patch, and we've lost several patches to bindweed. So we're pretty much in here during the first year particularly to keep anything perennial out. We don't want to dig around the plants during a drought, because we'll be exasperating the heat and dryness by opening up the ground real deep. We just wanna do something on the surface. So if it's a dry time of year, we might just take some old leaf mold, or some hay, something like this, and just tuck it around the plants. And again, that'll help conserve moisture, which is real important on a farm that doesn't use irrigation. The canes die back after they've bore their fruit. And we like to summer prune, it's highly recommended, though seldom practiced, we had a chance to get in here this year and get out a lot of the dead canes. So we might as well just get rid of these old dead canes, they're not doing any good in there. And that way, the plant's free to use its energy to make new growth. And all of this will, you know, flower and make fruit, you know, several weeks from now. 100 years ago, steamers floated daily down the Hudson River to New York City, carrying thousands of bushels of fresh, ripe, red raspberries, wafting their delicious aroma to the homes on the banks along the river there. Red raspberries have a very unique flavor, there's really nothing else like it in the world. They're one of my favorite things that we grow. They're just absolutely heavenly tasting, and there's really no limit to how you can enjoy them. Fresh in pies, with cream and sugar, really, the only limit is your imagination.

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