- Howdy.

I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on Central Texas Gardener, let's embrace and respect winter's gifts.

On tour, Kristin and Ryan Harvey restored lifeless soil through permaculture.

Shaman Jesus Garcia of the Herbal Action Project cultivates joyful nature connections in every season.

Daphne answers your questions, and Melissa Hagen-Wilson goes for bold, beautiful foliage indoors.

So let's get growing right here, right now.

- [Announcer] Central Texas Gardener is made possible by the generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

Thank you.

(bright uplifting music) (birds chirping) - Rampaging bamboo, and lifeless soil.

That's what faced Kristin and Ryan Harvey when they asked what do we want in our dream garden?

- We started kind of dreaming about well, what is possible?

Like, what do we want back here?

We kind of became students of the yard, and the garden.

We have over 100 trees in the ground and in pots.

Over 70 of those are edible.

They make fruit, or leaves, or tea of some kind.

- Hi, I am Kristin Harvey, and this is our garden.

- Yeah, and I'm Ryan Harvey.

And we bought this house in 2014, and when we first moved in, there was a lot of bamboo.

- [Kristin] Uh-huh.

- [Ryan] And some trash trees.

- We just spent years slowly taking out dead trees, dead plants, dead everything, and enriching the soil, and planting things in the ground just to see what happen.

(laughing) - Yeah, we both cook a lot, and so I think that was probably one of the first kind of impetuses for us, was just well, we wanna grow our own herbs, maybe some of our own food, and so a friend of ours, as a housewarming gift, gave us a book about permaculture.

Instead of sending leaves off to the city, we started mulching them, and building soil, doing lasagna gardening in beds, and learning more about cover cropping, so we would cover crop areas after we pulled out the vegetation.

And just kind of started seeing the transformation of the soil, mulching like crazy.

So they just kind of started spiraling after that into all these fun different projects.

- We actually got Patricia Michael to come out, and just kind of walk through with us to help us, like, what could we do?

- We just hadn't really thought about all of our needs, or that we could get them, so things like a screen from the road, place to cook and eat, shade, edibles, a lot of plants in one space, all these sorts of things, and then she helped us chunk up the work, and that's where we had a lot of family members and friends come and help us.

I don't know how many hours my brother was out here moving bamboo, and just helping us move along that path to get to our goals of having different rooms out here for different purposes.

We like being out here, we like having coffee, we like relaxing, we like animals, and so over time, the vision's became, let's see how many edible things we can fit out here.

(upbeat music) And then also, how can we make this beautiful, how can we make this relaxing, a place that we can share with the people we love, and enjoy with our dog.

- We relied a lot on discount plants, and buying things in stages.

Seeds have been huge.

- [Ryan] Yes, seed saving, and starting things from seed.

- One of the wonderful things about having plants that make seeds is that you then have free plants the next year.

We had zinnias that we grew from seed one year, and then at the end of the season, chopped them off, and I thought oh, I'll just throw them back in the bed.

And then the next year, we had more zinnias.

We have wild rocket arugula that has just re-seeded itself, and just spread throughout one entire bed from one little plant.

We have a fennel that's on its third year that just spreads everywhere throughout the garden, and it's delicious.

We eat the seeds, we eat the bulbs.

- [Ryan] Yeah.

Perennials are a great money saver.

- We also buy a lot of small plants, like most everything came in a four inch pot.

It's going to get huge pretty quickly.

We have a Monterrey oak on the side that we planted that, I mean, it was small enough to fit in my SUV when we bought it, and now we can see it from our second story window.

- We probably have 15 plus moringa trees on the property, which are an excellent super food.

I highly recommend everyone researches moringa.

And that, I just bought a $20 package of organic seeds, sprouted them myself, and we just started planting them around everywhere.

We've gone through a couple of stretches where we didn't have to buy vegetables from the store, but our big goal is just growing our own greens and herbs, and so we'd like to be able to have salad year-round.

- We knew we wanted to sit on the porch and just enjoy it, and so we thought what can we do to make it even more enjoyable?

Big parts of that were screening.

We have a busy road not too far off over that way, so we wanted screening, but we also wanted fragrance, so we put almond verbena, and mountain laurel right off the porch, and we have a sweet olive over there, and have planted another one here so that when the flowers are blooming, we get the fragrance, and we can just sit here and see the butterflies.

During the pandemic, we met one of our neighbors, because he would walk everyday, and he said he would walk past our almond verbena just to enjoy the smell, and that was like his reward for going on a walk, was getting to smell our tree.

- Your mom gave us that one passion vine cutting.

- [Kristin] It started way over by the shed.

- [Ryan] Maybe about 30 feet away.

- [Kristin] There are blooms under here, and you can just, the whole porch is filled with the fragrance.

- [Ryan] With the fragrance and things, we started seeing more pollinators.

We wanted to have year-round flowers.

That was kind of one thing we did, was sort of sketch out, okay, when do things bloom?

I would start with more than one plant.

I would start in one tiny area.

Plants like to be together.

It's all part of one system that goes into the soil.

- [Kristin] When everything dies back in the winter, we just try and leave it all until spring, because it makes so much habitat.

Part of that is just thinking about all of the di things that live here, and what they need to survive the winter, which is just let dead stuff be.

It's fine.

- [Ryan] You just chop and drop.

The vegetation that you drop becomes mulch.

The insects, they like to hide in there.

- And we have hundreds of lizards.

(both laughing) We have anoles and spiny lizards.

We have a family of toads that lives over here under the corner of the porch.

We have skinks, and we have snakes that will occasionally move in if we have a rodent problem.

We have a four-foot long rat snake that'll make an appearance.

- Cover cropping has been a big part of helping us build soil health, and it's also can be very beautiful.

We've done buckwheat, we've done clover, but I think one of our best tricks lately, we buy grain from Barton Springs Mill, and so we'll get these whole wheat berries.

They're all organically grown, so they'll sprout.

So we plant the wheat from the fall through the winter.

Kind of the new rhythm is when the first frost comes through and kills the remainder of the peppers, and the eggplants, and the basil, then normally that bed gets the wheat.

That and black eyed peas, too, are great, for cover cropping.

- I would say I think the garden has become our happy place.

It not only just connects you to this place, but it also kind of connects us to, I think, our family histories, as well.

My aunt is actually a professional horticulturalist, and she loves to tell stories about how growing up they would drag me to these gardens, and I would be like, oh my god, not another plant.

And I was so annoyed (both laughing) growing up, having to just go to Longwood Gardens, and Hershey Gardens all the time, and now I'm like, oh can we go to Longwood every time we go visit.

(Ryan laughing) Both of my grandmas grew things.

My great-grandparents on one side were farmers, and on the other side, my great-grandmother was basically a poor Italian immigrant who grew food just to survive in their yard when they moved here.

Even our plants, like that fig tree is cutting from my dad's fig tree that we gave him for his 50th birthday.

I have a pomegranate tree that my friends bought me after my grandmother passed away, because they know I don't like flowers that die.

(Ryan laughing) I like things that live, and so they gave me a pomegranate tree.

- We changed a lot the more we got into gardening, just seeing how resilient nature and life can be.

The other day, we were out with friends just talking about all the birds we'd seen lately, and I will tell you what, like after a conversation like that, we're all so relaxed, and so happy, and so connected.

So much more so than if we were talking about the stock market, or all these other things.

This is real, and these are things I wanna talk about.

I wanna share food with people.

We wanna share our garden with people.

It's a connection, like it just kind of always draws us back.

Draws us back to the earth, just those patterns, everyday.

- Well, winter's on the way, and for lots of gardeners, that means chopping everything back the minute plants turn brown.

Well today, let's put a spin on that idea.

Instead, let's cultivate winter joy with Shaman Jesus Garcia of the Herbal Action Project.

Great to see you, Jesus.

- Thank you for having me here today.

- [John] I wanna first discuss about the Herbal Action Project, the purpose and renewal.

What's this about?

- Herbal Action Project started with considering how we utilize different things in our garden that are going away in the season, and bring them back into life.

For this season, what we're connecting with is our tree branches.

We had a lot of different branches that fell down from many different ecosystem connections and storms, and we're turning them into little small teepees that grow all the beautiful climbing vines for our children's gardens.

- I love that, because I know we work on nature play elements for kids, and I know that loose parts play, that's always such a big need when you ask schools about, we're gonna get tree cookies, or boulders, or things like that.

So that's a wonderful spin to utilize that material that otherwise would be seen as waste.

- That's correct.

We get to really play with how our ecosystem is delivering these gifts from the garden, and what we can do to open up that connection of texture play, and also learn different styles of gardening within our own childhood connections.

- [John] Why should we consider or appreciate the winter garden?

- The winter garden brings us a sense of community, and wonderment on how to really expand ourselves in the knowledge of what winter can bring us in the garden, for example, connecting a little bit more into the spirit of what a tree once was, and how it's going to bloom in the spring.

So it gives us an enjoyment on how to picture and design new gardens, but also a perspective on spiritual love and connection within the communities that the garden really brings us before they come back into life in spring.

- In science, it's a lot about recycling of nutrients and all that, but really you're talking about this more of a healing or spiritual approach that acknowledges that tree, or that other plant's existence, and that circle of life coming back.

That's wonderful.

I know gardens tend to be for people a lot, but we really want wildlife to celebrate, but also to really reside within our gardens as well.

- The style of gardening that we do around winter, mostly, is in our mushroom beds, to really cultivate a great mycelium network and bring in those nutrients, and the animals that love these mushrooms into a position of safety, as well of different styles of agricultural therapies that might support our children and anyone that's growing a home garden.

- When you were talking about mushrooms that some of the wildlife might use, can you go into that a little bit more?

I mean, how did y'all get excited about, or into using, or focusing on mushrooms?

- Mushrooms have always been in our lineage, ever since I was a young child growing up with my grandmother and her gardening.

And we got to see a lot of that as medicine, and really healing ourselves, our bodies, and our emotional and spiritual form.

And we got to really play with that regenerative agriculture and how we wanted to see these gardens bring new life into not only the soil, but keeping the gardens healthy throughout this winter period.

- I think that people tend to think of soil as dirt when soil is actually a vibrant living community.

There can be, I think, over billions of microbes within just one tablespoon of soil.

And I know we work on a lot of restoration projects and for the native grasses, that's a really big thing, because the big four of the prairie are obligatorily mycorrhizal, meaning they can't grow and thrive without that symbiotic connection with mycorrhiza, so you're really acknowledging that for people and the greater environment as well.

- That's correct.

I think the worms need love, too.

(John laughing) So we need to support them.

- [John] But what about utilizing or leaving dormant or dead material throughout the winter?

Why is that so important?

- It's important because it really supports the life that spring is gonna give us.

This is, of course, connecting to the insect life, and how we want to support their young, and their eggs, and their particular kinship to the garden itself, and how we get to see that from a different perspective as a human, how life wants to thrive, and be cultured, and to be connected in a safe space.

The way that children also wanna be connected in safe spaces as well.

- Sure.

So this material, and I'm really interested in this, I mean, what we view as a waste when we tend to compartmentalize a garden as merely as an aesthetic thing, nature's been using this material for eons, right?

And the stems can be used by insects to over winter, it's nesting material, I mean, it's a wonderful resource that can be utilized by not just gardeners, but really, the whole ecosystem.

- [Jesus] That's correct.

- Why do y'all also look at leaving leaves on the ground?

I mean, shouldn't those just be swept up and pushed away, and thrown away in a landfill?

- Well, some people do have that idea.

We really consider on certain animals that we can't see, like for example, fireflies and butterflies, and we wanna make sure that they have a home, too, whenever it gets cold.

We're not the only ones that gets pretty cold around wintertime.

- Right.

- We also want to see what develops after that, after a few months of noticing, well, we'll leave this here, and what new plants are gonna grow here?

Or what plants that used to grow here are now popping up and saying hello to us?

- So do y'all look at just leaving in seed too, or on the ground, or are you also maybe doing stacks of logs, or I'm just curious, like, how do you approach, you know, setting up certain situations to support specific species?

- Yes, we have different cycles, and we try to implement almost all variety of knowledge within that as well with the education that we try to teach with our children, and most of it is trial and error, kind of seeing a few things that our ancestors have done in the past with traditional gardening, but also the new evolution of gardening, as well, how we wanna create bug hotels, and little small houses for critters that need some safety and care.

So we try to have a variant connection of how we want to really support life within our own connection of understanding ecology.

- Right, and then even besides just the larger portions of limbs, or trunks, or even leaves, there's just seed heads, right?

I mean, leaving those up, to me, there's nothing more beautiful than some of those seed heads in the winter.

It still gives you that texture, but you know, a lot of plants are still using that as seed dispersal, and one of my favorite things in the world is seeing a lesser gold finch on some sunflower heads, still going for seeds.

So how do y'all incorporate that as well with the kids?

- With the kids it's really great, because we do embody a breakthrough style and loose parts connections, so we'll take some of those as projects, so we teach the teachers how to get those seed heads, and really decorate them into floral bouquets that we can then hang outside as a gift for the elements, and as a gift for the animals.

And the children get to see that, as we walk through our trails, and see if those seed heads have been eaten, and what ate it, and what can we tell is going around that one bouquet that isn't in another bouquet of dried seed heads.

- So this really looks towards the lessons of the cycle of life with kids, and you know, it sounds like it's just really hard to get kids interested in nature.

I'm joking.

(Jesus laughing) But I think that's a really pivotal point, that they're able to get in there and look, and see that other species are utilizing this space.

This isn't a garden for us, it's really a garden for yes.

- That's correct.

And we get to really experiment that, not only within our own child self as an adult, but also see the wonderment of the child as they teach us new lessons as well.

- Joni Mitchell has a wonderful quote in one of her songs that I think is really relevant to this, and "We are billion year old carbon, "and we've gotta get back to the garden".

So I think looking at this aspect that y'all really promote is really wonderful, and helps teach future generations, but even ourselves, a bit more of that connectivity to the earth.

- Yes, and it really is a fun connection to it, as well.

- Well Jesus, how can we follow you and learn some more about the wonderful work you're doing?

- Yes, you can follow us online at herbalactionproject.com.

- Well Jesus, thank you so much for coming today.

This has been a wonderful discussion.

I love getting down with dormancy.

I like to say we gotta get down with brown, because it's really something that should be celebrated.

Now, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

(cheerful uplifting music) - Hi there.

I'm Daphne Richards.

Our question this week is do ice and snow insulate our plants?

And the answer is yes.

They really do.

Snow and ice on top of the soil and water in the soil help to insulate the root zone.

You'll also commonly hear the advice to water your plants ahead of a freeze, and that's actually a good idea, too, because of water's ability to moderate temperatures.

Well-watered soil will stay warmer than dry soil in winter, providing a cozy environment for roots to stay protected when the air above is frosty.

Mulch also really helps with soil temperature moderation, so irrigating beds, then mulching, is a great way to protect plants from winter cold.

You may have heard the term root hardy, which refers to a plant's ability to survive freezing temperatures by dying back to the ground in winter and emerging with new growths from the roots once spring and warmer weather arrives.

Now who could forget the big freeze of February 2023 when ice felled so many trees?

But Hannah Thomas grabbed a very heartwarming shot of a spotted towhee in her Fredericksburg garden near Enchanted Rock.

She wrote, "From my understanding, spotted towhees "are somewhat rare here in the Hill Country, "which is why I was so excited "to see this little guy stop by."

And we'd love to hear from you.

Click on centraltexasgardener.org to send us your stories, pictures, and videos.

- Next, let's go for bold and beautiful houseplants with Melissa Hagen-Wilson.

(upbeat music) - So this Hoya macrophylla is starting to bloom.

He's got a peduncle here that is working on his little flowers, and he looks kind of red in the leaves.

This is actually sun stress, so when you have Hoyas in really bright light, it's common for them to turn red, or brighter orange colors, and it goes away when the bright light goes away.

My name is Melissa Hagen-Wilson, and today we're gonna talk about companion plants for orchids.

Some of the plants that I have chosen to talk about today are all epiphytic and native to tropical places in the world, so not cold hardy.

We're gonna start with anthuriums.

Probably you recognize the dutch anthurium.

They're pretty common.

They come in a lot of really nice colors.

Since the pandemic, we have had a lot of really awesome hybrids that have become available, and while they are collectors items, they have collectors prices, they are really stunning.

A lot of anthuriums can start out pretty small, but over time, some varieties do get quite large.

To care for anthuriums, you're going to want to have a very airy barky mix.

These plants, as they do grow in trees similar to orchids, they really like that airy, well-draining soil.

When it comes time to replanting your anthurium, they are very similar to orchids as they wanna be kind of tight in their pots.

Anthuriums are definitely going to need the most water.

They come from rainforests, and the humidity there tends to be a little bit higher, so make sure you check what variety you're getting, and what humidity they like to be at.

Hoyas are not going to need that same humidity, nor will bromeliads.

Most of the time, they're not gonna complain in the household setting.

You do, however, wanna keep your plants in good, bright light.

Light is like carbohydrates for plants, so if you're keeping them in low light, they might survive, but they may not thrive.

Fertilizing your anthuriums, I like to use any balanced fertilizer.

I use one that is seven, seven, seven.

With staghorn ferns, you can do the same thing, just watering them with a balanced fertilizer, and all of these plants are really going to love liquid seaweed.

Next, I'm gonna talk about staghorn ferns.

These guys do really well in more humid environments.

So if you're going to keep one in your house, I do recommend a bathroom, or maybe a kitchen.

These guys do tend to get a little dehydrated if they're not getting quite enough humidity and moisture in your house.

I would say you could mist these daily, and wet the moss at least once a week.

So it's really common to get fungal issues if you're misting normal house plants indoors.

We just don't have as good of air flow inside of our houses most of the time.

As they get larger, a little more cold hardy, but still only down to about 30.

We keep ours in the bathroom all year round.

To mount these on wood, you just take them out of their pot, place them on wood, or I've seen people put them on pieces of metal grating.

Anything that's really going to support the plant as it grows, and we just cover the roots in sphagnum moss, drill screws in around the moss, and use fishing line and tie the whole thing down.

The next plant that we're gonna talk about today is Hoyas.

Hoyas have really blossomed in popularity the last couple years.

There's a ton of different varieties, and they make amazing flowers.

A lot of the Hoyas are really easy to care for.

You can really treat them like a succulent, letting them dry out between waterings, making sure they're in a really good well-draining soil.

That means in a small pot, your watering may be every seven to 10 days.

If it's a larger pot, eight to 10 inches, may go a little bit longer, up to two weeks.

Even more in the wintertime.

They need bright light, and especially if you want to get those beautiful flowers, keep them in a good south-facing or west-facing window.

And a lot of them will hang and trail, so sometimes you can give them a trellis, you can let them hang, and the flowers just drape really lovely.

Hoyas are one plant that can really benefit from bat guano and worm castings.

Not only the nutrients in these fertilizers will help to keep those blooms coming, but also the hormones.

The finlaysonii has these dark veins.

Also makes a really nice flower.

Some have more dainty foliage, more interesting textures that you can introduce if you're looking for an interesting hanging basket for a bright window.

One of the most common varieties is the Krimson Queen that has variegation in the leaves, some pink and white.

This one has been very popular the last couple years.

The Hoya compacta.

This one is a Hoya curtisii, another great option for a bright windowsill.

Next we're gonna talk about bromeliads.

So bromeliads come in amazing colors.

Some of them also have really bright flowers, so you can get foliage interest, you can get amazing blooms.

And these are considered tank bromeliads.

You actually want to water in the cup of the bromeliad in addition to watering the soils.

This is gonna help your flowers to last longer.

Watering in the sides of the bromeliad is kind of how it happens in nature.

It collects water in the cups as it's in the trees.

If the water gets stagnant and old, which can happen, you can just dump it out, and refill it every week or two.

For Backyard Basics, I'm Melissa.

- Find out more and watch online at centraltexasgardener.org.

Until next time, remember, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(bright upbeat music) (birds chirping) (bright upbeat music continues) (dog barks) - [Announcer] Central Texas Gardener is made possible by the generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

Thank you.

(bright music)