Episode 3504

- [Narrator] Cacti and succulents have surged in popularity, driven by their striking forms and durability. Phillipe Chadwick profiles some highly sought-after varieties and shares tips on keeping them looking great. Jeff Poppen has been farming for almost five decades. Over that time, he has learned ways to buffer the changing climate conditions and weather extremes. He explains how building soil health and structural resilience are integral to sustainable farm production. And Troy Marden has recommendations for trees that boast outstanding fall color. Join us. Ranging in size from tiny tabletop specimens to massive tree-like varieties, succulents and cacti can tolerate some neglect and still dazzle.

- There's many different types of cactuses and succulents from all over the world that come in really unique colors and shapes and sizes. I'm here today at Hewitt's Garden Design Center with Andrew, and this is a really specifically cool one. Tell me a little bit about this.

- Yeah, so it's pretty rare. It's come into cultivation more recently, so you can start to see them now, whereas 15 years ago this would have been unbelievably rare. People have kind of caught onto it a little bit, but it is very rare to see them this big. It's commonly called a ghost cactus, but it's just a white form of the Euphorbia trigona, which is pretty common. There's a rubra variety that's red, but this white one is special just because of how striking it is, and it'll stay white all throughout its lifespan.

- [Phillipe] Wow.

- It's definitely going to be here in Tennessee, something you want to keep inside during the winter months. Which is going to be true of, I would say, like, almost all the plants we have in here. Would love being outside during the growing season, but then can't withstand the cold. So anything under like 45 degrees, something like that. You wanna bring it in. But yeah, if you put it out on a patio or something in the growing months, it'll love that. It loves the heat and humidity.

- And full sun or afternoon shade?

- It can definitely, this in particular and a lot of the cacti can certainly withstand full sun if you kind of slowly introduce it. So it's like if I went out just out and didn't put any sun protection on, I would totally burn. But eventually I would get a tan and it'd be out in the sun more. A lot of these are the same way. So if you are introducing it, it's helpful to put it out usually in like April where it gets some afternoon shade. Maybe starting with that. And then after a couple weeks you can warm it up to that full sun just so it doesn't burn. Definitely wouldn't kill it, but it might give it a little sunburn, make it not so pretty. Just kind of the whole point of this one.

- And I know one of the biggest things with cactuses, any cactus and succulents is the soil. That's probably the quickest way people kill them.

- Yes.

- Is drowning them and their roots. Tell me a little bit about the soil and what they like.

- Yeah. So I tell customers all the time in here, the most important thing is light, but the next most important thing, which is almost equally important is the soil, and put simply, you want it to be really nice and well draining. So we sell here a product called Black Gold Cactus Mix, and it's a great product, but I always recommend people to make it even more well aerated with like perlite or charcoal or just rocks. But yeah, anything you can do to make the soil more aerated, that's so important. And it's also critical that they have drainage. So do not put your cacti in pots that don't have drainage holes at the bottom, because that will kill them really quickly. Yeah, just super well draining soil. I use a cactus mix, like the Black Gold Cactus Mix. I use that for all my aroids. So, and then I actually make it more well draining for the cacti.

- Yeah. I know a common misconception with potting soil and cactus too is sand, because you think desert sand. But sand will actually hold water and make them rot. So don't put sand with your cactuses. It'll actually hurt them and kill them.

- You can do a little bit, maybe. But you don't wanna do too much.

- But perlite, that white stuff that you see in soil, you can buy bags of just perlite to really up the percentage in the soil, and that's gonna help them tremendously.

- Yeah, perlite's great. Love perlite and it's cheap too. It's a good way to do it.

- So there's some flowers I saw around. I really wanna go take a look at some of those.

- Let's do it.

- So one of the most kind of spectacular displays that cactuses do are their flowers. I know they're a lot of times short lived, which is why I'm excited to see this Echinopsis flower, because I think it's like a day.

- [Andrew] Usually in here, yeah, usually just a day.

- But it has this big white, huge, spectacular flower that opens in like the morning and then closes in the evening and it's done. It has this really cool fuzzy stem also, but you can see little small flowers forming there. But this is a relatively common cactus house plant that people have that has these really fun flowers. This one's really fun with these little orange bell flowers on it.

- [Andrew] In general, the smaller the flowers, the longer that they last. So the really spectacular ones, like you said, usually only last a day. Sometimes in the wild, it's like a night. Like one night they'll open. But the smaller ones can stay and bloom for much longer times, and they bloom more frequently as well.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. These big spikes are really fun and dramatic too. Of these aloes?

- [Andrew] Yes, that one's a Gasteria. But very similar family to the aloe. Haworthias, aloes, Gasterias, they're all relatively similar. They're gonna look different than some of the more cactus appearing ones, but they're still succulents.

- [Phillipe] And they're all directly related to what everybody knows aloe vera.

- [Andrew] Yeah. I would say that they're like cousins at least. Everyone knows the aloe vera, but there are so many different types of aloes. That's just one specific species. Lots and lots of aloes.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. So this big kind of leafy one over here with the trunk and these crazy red flowers, tell me about this.

- [Andrew] Yeah, I would say a little bit rare. Common name is a Buddha belly, Jatropha is the Latin term, but it flowers almost constantly. So you'll see those going all the time. Also very common for it to go into dormancy. So there are a lot of succulents that are leafy, and I have a lot of customers get scared or freaked out when they lose their leaves, and a lot of times I say, "It's totally fine." They're just going dormant. Just give it time. They don't always need to go dormant, but it's completely natural for lots of them to stay dormant in the winter and then they'll just come back out and pop off when it gets nice and warm and sunny again.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. I can even see it pushing a new flower bud like deep down in there while it's got this one already blooming.

- [Andrew] And those can get huge.

- [Phillipe] Oh, really, like big big.

- [Andrew] Yeah, a lot of these can get huge, huge.

- [Phillipe] Cool.

- [Andrew] They're slow growing, especially, and most, that's gonna be true for almost all these. Inside of a house, they're going to be very, very slow growing. But like theoretically in the wild, a lot of these cacti want to turn into trees essentially, right? That are like tens of feet tall, but in the house, realistically it's not gonna get that big.

- Yeah. So I don't think we could be complete talking about cactuses and succulents without talking about crown of thorns, Euphorbias, which is a massive family, but these are probably one of the more common Euphorbias I would say. That is grown as a houseplant with these little flowers that come in a wide range of color. Tell me a little bit about these.

- [Andrew] Yeah. So the thing that is true for all Euphorbias is that they have this characteristic like white sap on the inside of them. Which you can see if you ever, for example, have a pencil cactus, which is another type of Euphorbia, you see how different these look, both Euphorbias, but if you broke a little arm off of that, you would see this milky white sap on the inside that is very, you can break one. Yeah, for sure. But it's pretty irritating and toxic to the skin. So it's not dangerous necessarily, but when I'm working in here, I get Euphorbia sap on me all the time and I immediately go and wash off. Because it can really irritate your skin. You definitely don't wanna get that in your eyes. Or if you have kids, you just don't want them to be getting it in their body. Something like a Euphorbia is really just gonna be toxic. You know, if your dog or cat eats that, it's definitely not good and you don't want that, but most likely they're just going to like vomit it up and get a little sick. It's not going to usually be life-threatening unless they eat like the entire thing. It would be pretty difficult to cause lasting damage in that way, but it's definitely not good. It is still toxic.

- [Phillipe] So these are super cool. Tell me about this cactus.

- [Andrew] Yeah, so a lot of people look over these, but these are saguaro cactuses, which are the kind of famous native cacti of Arizona, specifically like the Tucson region. And they really only grow there and they're protected there as well. So they care a lot about those, their saguaros. You can't just cut them down there. And you're starting to see them more in cultivation now. If you're lucky and you go to a good plant store, they might have a very tiny variety of them, maybe like an inch or two tall, really small. But I've never seen one outside of Arizona that are this big. And we brought these by hand from Arizona, so that's how I know they're hard to come by. 'Cause you pretty much just have to like take them yourself. And they're shockingly heavy. Like if you try to pick this up, I'm pretty strong and that is like probably 50 to 100 pounds.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- And that's because the trunk is storing water for the few weeks that Arizona gets rain, it holds that water for the rest of the year, right?

- That's right. These are like perfectly built for those specific drought conditions. So this is all just complete water. They dense water in there. And the thing to know about them too is that they're really slow growing. So these are really old. I mean, I think when they're small, they grow about an inch a year when they are those small small, you know, you see them in like four inch pots. So it takes a long time, especially in a home. If you get a saguaro cactus and you put it in your house, even if it's in a south facing window, I mean, I would treat it more like a little statue-esque thing that's gonna basically stay the same size.

- A conversation piece.

- There you go. Tell people about what they are. 'Cause if you go to Arizona, they'll talk to you about them. They're really important and special to them there. They're a really cool plant.

- 'Cause they support a lot of wildlife out there too is a big part of that. So of course I was drawn to this in this greenhouse. I mean, this is the king right now. Tell me a bit about this plant.

- Yeah. People always come in here and ask about this one wondering if it's for sale. And it's not at this point just because we can't really move it. It's so heavy and difficult to maneuver. But a lot of people think it's an agave. It's actually not. It's a Furcraea or a false agave is the common name for it. Very similar though, same care, but yeah, you can see it grows absolutely huge. You get these sharp as it matures, you get these really sharp kind of razor edges like a lot of succulents that can very much hurt if you run into them, I know from experience.

- [Phillipe] The indentations on the back of the leaf from the previous leaves are so interesting and kind of architectural. I just love that detail of it is just such an interesting minute thing.

- And they're slow growing too. I mean, relatively it takes them a while for those to open up. So they've been imprinted on there for a while. But this one's gonna be a lot faster growing than most agaves, which is what allows it to get to this massive size. If I had to guess, this one's probably like 20 years old, something like that, if I had to guess.

- [Phillipe] Yeah. And it's still not shot up a bloom stalk, kinda like some of these over here that we've seen.

- Yeah, and I'm really hoping it doesn't.

- Because it puts a hole in the roof.

- They are monocarpic in that if you see that one over there, a lot of plants succulents and otherwise, when they bloom, produce huge flowers that in the wild can almost become their own like trees, which are beautiful to look at, and they last several months, or they can last a long time. But it kills the plant that it actually comes out of. So the parent plant that produces that bloom ends up dying, but eventually you can see the flowers on the actual, or I don't know what the term for the florets on the big flower, become their own pups. And so when that falls to the ground, the hope is that those pups that either form up there or down underneath the plant in some other species form their own new plants.

- Yeah, I mean, and just for scale, like this plant's like three or four feet by three or four feet, and its stalk is 12 feet tall. So like this big one's gonna send up what, like a 30 or 40 foot tall stalk?

- I've never seen it in person, but I know yeah, in the wild they can truly, the blooms look like trees. They almost have like woody stalks. It's amazing to see and they can last longer than people think.

- Right, cool. Well, whether something this giant or the little specialized succulents and cactuses, there's a huge world of them that is very interesting and worthwhile growing and just with a little specific care and the right conditions you can grow cactuses at home in your window sill, on the south or west face window, right? Like the most sun.

- I tell people for a lot of plants, but this is especially true for cactuses that if you have a plant, let's say a small one, put yourself in the eyes of that plant. So if the plant had eyes from its perspective, can it see the blue of the sky through a window? And if the answer's yes to that, then it's probably gonna do well. It's probably enough light. And you get bonus points if they can see the yellow ball of the sun through a window, like in a south-facing window or a west facing window in the afternoon bonus points, but as long as you have that really clear sight line and good well draining soil, they're probably gonna do well.

- Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for your time. I appreciate all the information you've given us and go grow some cactuses.

- Weather is a hot topic these days and whether our gardens thrive or not largely depends on the humus content of the soil. It acts as a buffer so that it keeps the soil moist when the weather turns dry. It helps the soil to drain away excess moisture when it rains too much and it keeps the plants healthy during high temperatures. With the increased occurrences of droughts and floods and such over the last 50 years it would cause us some consternation, but gardeners aren't gonna sit around and talk about the weather; we'll take positive steps to do something about it. One of the best things we can do for gardening in hotter weather is mulching. So we make a lot of hay on our farm because we have cattle and we usually have some extra hay that we can spread out to mulch the ground. The light color reflects sunlight so the soil stays cooler and water doesn't evaporate into the air. Mulch smothers moisture stealing weeds and adds valuable organic matter, which eventually forms humus. Tomatoes in particular appreciate a hay mulch because they need a lot of moisture to make their tomatoes. Besides mulching them, another thing that we do with our tomatoes now is keep them far apart. We don't put them real close together that being four foot apart both ways allows for lots of airflow around them and this helps to prevent diseases. Leaf mulch is traditionally used in gardens for many reasons. One is the wonderful mycelium that forms after rotting for a few months and years. See the white stuff in there? That's the fungal roots and fungal activity is very beneficial in the garden, helps to keep the soil resilient. Wood chips from roadside clearing that have set for 10 years form a wonderful mulch. Again, the wood products promote fungal activity, and trees, you know, they have these deep roots that mine calcium, potassium, and minerals that have leached to lower soil levels that our annual vegetables can't access. They bring these up into their bodies of the trees and then of course the minerals are left over in the leaves and the wood chips. But whenever we use forest products, they're acidic so we have to balance by using a little more lime. Another traditional method of keeping the ground a little cooler and moister that I've learned from southern growers is hilling and we love to throw the dirt up against our plants. An old timer told me once that they hill their beans to pull the moisture to the plant. So when we hill, we have the... the ground is another six inches deeper so it holds in the moisture down there a lot better and even during a drought the plants will thrive. Besides hilling corn, which besides the moisture thing actually helps to sturdy them stalks so they don't blow over in a windstorm. We hill the beans, watermelons, and we hoe after hoeing, then we hill up the squash and potatoes and many of the crops that we grow are hilled. As the climate zones move south, we can start growing crops and taking tips from southern growers. Sweet potatoes, for example, are a crop that loves hot, dry weather and if you've had trouble growing them in the past, you may be able to grow them now. The sweet potatoes are planted on a hill. So the hill is made this time before we put the plants in and so we've got a mound and then as we cultivate because it's at a slope, the soil moves like this and it helps with the weeding process. Cowpeas are another plant traditionally grown in the south. They're in the bean family, but they have, they're their own genus and you'll notice that the leaves on these are much darker green and thicker and a little shinier or a little waxier. This allows them to not desiccate in the summer heat. The varieties of cowpeas are numerous: Black-Eyed Peas, Mississippi Crowders, and Pinkeye Purple Hulls are all pretty common. This one here is called Red River and we've had real good luck with it. Batavian lettuce is a heat tolerant lettuce. It's also known as Summer Crisp. This variety is Nevada and to have a nice crisp head of lettuce in July just as the tomatoes are coming on is really nice because the lettuce soon fades out and we won't have it again until fall. Isn't that a beauty? Other southern advice we take is to not grow kale and cabbages and broccoli in the spring when the temperatures are getting warmer and as the climate gets warmer or it seems to anyway, we've taken to planting all that stuff in the fall so that the days get cooler as the plants mature. So we grow our kale and collards and all that kind of stuff in the fall rather than in the spring. So, you know, the weather is just one of those things that we can talk about. Farmers love to talk about it and complain about it, but really it's just gonna be whatever it is and we can just make the most of it. I address many garden questions with two answers: either add more compost or I don't know, although an oversimplification. Compost really is the key to a climate resilient garden. Continually covering the garden with compost mulches and rotting vegetation feeds the soil microorganisms that protect the soil from weather extremes.

- You know, when the summer heat finally breaks and we start to get cooler fall weather, I always start thinking about fall color in the garden and in the bigger landscape. Here in middle Tennessee where I live, of course, we have lots of hills, lots of trees, and most of our state really is pretty heavily forested and we get great fall color in a lot of locations. So I was thinking about as I was walking through Bates Nursery this morning, trees for fall color and good varieties to plant in your home landscapes. One of my favorites is this October Glory maple that's right here behind me. These are just beginning to color up, but within the next two to three weeks, they will turn beautiful, brilliant, crimson red, and they will hold this color for at least six weeks and sometimes almost two months. Usually by the middle to end of October, they're in full color; sometimes they'll still be in full leaf and full color Thanksgiving and even on into the first week of December. One of our native trees that is really great for fall color and spring blooms is the dogwood. Right here we have several nice specimens again beginning to come into some fall color. You can see that they've already set their flower buds for next spring over the course again of the next two to three weeks here in mid-October these will turn just deep ruby red and hang onto that color for maybe as long as a month before they drop their leaves. Autumn Blaze maple is actually a hybrid maple between red maple and silver maple and you can see here that it is starting to get its red fall color, but if I turn this leaf over, you'll see the silver backside of the silver maple influence on this. The nice thing about this tree is it has the strength of a red maple. It doesn't break up as easily in the wind as the silver maples do, but it has the growth rate more of a silver maple. So in a good year, you'll get sometimes three or four feet of growth out of this and again, really nice fall color. Same goes for sweetgum and this particular variety you can see is very tall and skinny and this is a cultivar called Slender Silhouette. Now a regular sweetgum is going to become a large shade tree. It's also going to get gorgeous red, orange, and yellow combination fall color. Slender Silhouette will get the same fall color, but if you have a place that's a little bit tighter in the yard next to a driveway or something, this is a really nice option for a smaller space because it will grow 20 or 30 feet tall and only about six to eight feet wide. It will just be a column of green during the summer and a column of red, orange, and yellow in the fall. Another favorite native of mine is the black gum and this Wildfire black gum was chosen particularly for its fall color. Black gum is one of our toughest native trees. It will grow in almost any conditions where you find it in the wild. A lot of times it's in very dry locations. It will also take a little bit more moisture, a nice fast growing tree once it's established, but again, good and sturdy and on some of these newer selections like Wildfire and some of the others, really spectacular fall color, brilliant, brilliant red and again, chosen for the length of time that it holds onto those red leaves. So if you're looking for fall color in your landscape, in your garden, if you need some good shade trees that will give you some color in the fall, these are all great choices. The dogwood a little smaller, more ornamental choice, Japanese maples would be the same way. So there are a lot of options out there and I'm sure you'll be able to find something that brings beauty to your yard.