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Coming up on tonight's episode will travel to a private landscape and North garden to learn about heirloom plants and a plant share program.

And in the second half of our show will be in eastern Henrico County at Fairfield Middle School for a community garden and a wonderful community outreach.

As always, we welcome your questions via phone call or email.

Stay tuned for Virginia Homegrown.

Is your garden taking off with all this warm weather we've been having?

Mine is.

I'm Amy Williams.

And I'm Peggy Singlemann.

And welcome to Virginia Home Grown.

You know, tonight, Amy, we're going to a student run community garden market that's got a wonderful little secret trick of worm composting, which you're going to be learning about.

And as always, we welcome your questions via phone call or email.

Amy?

Well, Peggy, a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go down to North Garden and meet with Teresa Vada of Native Earth Landscaping and tour a beautiful little garden, she maintains.

Take a look.

We are in beautiful North Garden with Teresa Vada of Native Earth.

Sheree, you've invited us on a gorgeous day.

And I want to know more about your business.

Tell me about Native Earth.

Well, I started Native Earth in 1999.

I was a single mother, and I wanted to have my own schedule and on top of it, I wanted to integrate into my son's exposure of how plants work, how important they are to the wildlife of the pollinators, and just how that whole ecology works.

And I love that.

And I was saying to you, you know, I have two boys, and teaching them that connection to land is really important.

And it's something that kids don't get very often.

And I think it's interesting that that is your focus with your business, because then you came to this property and that was the family's focus from the 1940s.

So tell me about this property.

Well, when I was first asked to do the restoration work on this property, I really it really became close to my heart because I really understood I could really see her vision of Constance Anderson as this magnificent magnolia behind us.

She knew and had the foresight that this was going to need a lot of space.

And it's an heirloom tree by tradition.

It's one of the oldest trees in history, and they live for centuries.

And so obviously it's had the space to grow.

And she were telling me that she planned for the future.

She knew that she wanted to pass the property to her family.

As you look around, there is something that you don't see in urban development now, and that's choices of plant material that take a long time to grow, to be fabulous.

But she counted, accounted for that and she knew it was something that she wanted to share with her family.

And you pointed out the magnolia where amongst gorgeous American boxwood, beautiful varieties, you were telling me about these peonies dating back to the 1800s, dating back to 1824.

They are the the Romans used to call them the oldest, the oldest plant.

And this is the Romans in 1824.

So they are ancient.

They are the oldest of the peonies.

So you could tell that she really put the forethought into how long they would last.

And so you came to the property about three years ago, and it was a massive restoration.

It was covered with whiskey area all through the boxwood, covered with poison ivy.

And it's a it's a nice evolution over the past three years.

And it's really become its original of what Constance saw.

Well, it speaks very highly to your work in returning her garden to a beautiful Southern charm garden.

And it speaks a lot of the client because this takes patience.

It's not a hire a guy who comes in for a week and knows everything about gratification.

You've done a beautiful job.

I love part of your business.

That ties really to your vision of starting it and this property, and that's your plant share.

And there's another part of this garden and I want to learn more about it and talk about Plant Tree over there.

I'd love to.

So, Cherie, we're in another part of the garden, and this is where you have used materials from your plant chair.

Before you get into it.

Talk to me about what plant share is, because I love this concept.

Plant share is pretty much the heart and soul of Native Earth because of the fact that as it was becoming and the longer I was doing it, I noticed that a certain jobs were asking me to just throw stuff out in the woods or throw it in dumpsters.

And I explained to the clients that this would benefit our environment, you know, and as well benefit senior citizens that are on fixed incomes or children in urban areas that we could use this in gardens that could be created there.

And it really makes sense.

And I think all of us as gardeners, we eventually run out of space and we find ourselves throwing good plants on the compost pile and we can't find somebody to share it with.

And with that we lose pollinators and all sorts of things, don't we?

Now the pollinators and the wildlife suffer the most, and a fan garden like this is going to draw these pollinators, and it's very easy to do.

And this this plant share comes to me is donated to me, to Native Earth.

And as it's integrated into people's properties, it just makes sense.

You know, right here we've got shafted daisies, we've got crest irises, we have lambs here, lots of perennials.

And so when you started this garden a couple summers ago, there was nothing, nothing here.

And if you wanted something to work with and learn how to work with this herself.

And so what you did is really interesting because if a new gardener goes to a garden center and buys a newly rooted plant in a pot, they can oftentimes be very disappointed.

It can take years for it to do something to mature if it's successful at all.

You're taking mature plants from part of the plant share and creating sort of instant gratification.

And that's inspiring when you haven't gardened before.

Yes, it's something as basic as the lily turf.

If I just grab a section of a lily turf, just this small off of each clump, you know, this can create the border of a small fan bed like this.

And I know that that's an expensive plant.

If I go to the garden center, you're going to pay at least $5 for something this size.

So someone who isn't a gardener necessarily is going to be turned away by that concept where.

But this is actually a great thing.

And maybe an advanced gardener isn't a huge fan of variety, but a new gardener is because it's easy that holds the soil in place that flowers.

And there again, you're benefiting the pollinators.

And I think one of the stories that you shared with me that was so interesting was your connection with your brother, who has some Section eight housing.

You're introducing these to kids who would otherwise see none of it.

Exactly.

And that's just a real opportunity there.

So how would someone participate in plant share with you?

Well, they could just go on my Facebook page.

Native Earth landscaping.

And or they could call me and and they say, I've got plants to share.

And and you take them.

And so you sort of house them at your house and then and let them mature.

And or if they're mature, just go ahead and integrate like I've already, you know, install three of these gardens just in the past three weeks and people are thrilled about them.

Really, really great concept and so nice because this would be a really expensive bed to create.

Absolutely.

And all your time labor.

But the plants are free, the plants are donated and they're free.

And you really spreading goodwill and doing something great for the pollinators.

And it's teaching people to ten the earth and everybody needs to tend the earth that is in their yard.

I love it.

Thanks for you've shared great information with us.

Say, a beautiful garden.

And what a concept.

Well, thanks for sharing this on the communities.

Thank you.

It's good work.

Sure.

It was a beautiful day in your office, which is a gorgeous office.

And you've brought a lot to share with us.

But before we get started, I want to remind our viewers that if you send in your phone calls or emails right now, we'll answer those in just a few minutes.

So, Sheree, at your.

I'm still just in love with this idea of plant chair.

And tonight you brought with you some plants that you excuse me use in plant chair.

So just to get our viewers understanding, if you have a client who has plants they are willing to share.

You collect via division?

Yes, predominantly.

And I see you've brought these all in different pots because you load them up and take them home.

And then what?

How do you take care of them or do they go off site or.

Or what goes on?

Well, as soon as they get to the designated plant share area, which I have several around spots that I use around Albemarle County, County and Charlottesville, they go straight into the ground so they so they can stay maintained and.

Well water.

Sure.

Yeah, that's really hard to keep things in a container, especially if you have to hit all those spots, especially in hot temperatures.

And that's you smartly brought everything in containers that these happened to be staying and so that you didn't disrupt the roots.

Yeah, these were in pots anyway, because right now is starting to get to be a real tough time.

Yeah.

Okay, so you brought this beautiful guy.

Tell me whether this was a common bond and why would somebody want this?

Where is it?

Good for a Well, it is a wonderful perennial that is an early bloomer in a woodland area that it blooms early and.

And it recedes nicely, too, doesn't it?

So it's one of those ones that's fun because it sort of naturalize us, which is ideal for your plant share.

And I think it's nice as a woodland because oftentimes you don't get a lot of color in there, but these give you this and they sprinkle it another a woodland beauty Trillium, which happens to be the plant of the month.

Last month, that was what we had.

That's right And great plant in the Charlottesville area, really popular but another woodland native to use and these are a great example with your plant share because they're expensive.

If I go to the garden and I try and buy one right, they are You don't want to you don't want to transplant them around a lot.

They are a there, you know, they're more rare than your average, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you cautiously dig.

Yeah.

Very careful with them.

And so I think this is a plant that is a great example of something that a person, unlimited resources would not have much opportunity to introduce to their garden at all.

Yeah.

So really nice.

And then we talked about the lily turf.

Yeah.

And that's just a small staple that is easily accessible and it takes up fills up space.

Great for tough soils where you can't grow much of anything.

And as you said, I was in the garden center this weekend and I just happened to glance down at the price and it really is costly.

So what a great, great notion.

Here's something that I think is a great idea.

What do you have here?

This is Money Ward, also known as Creeping Jenny, which is a it thrives in shade to light sun.

And you suggest growing it in a container.

Yes, although it's wonderful in gardens, but it gets away from people quicker than they sometimes desire.

So if you're trying to have a lot of variety, it might not be the best because it's going to really.

But it's great for Borders.

And you've done an interesting thing in this box because you have a couple of annuals with the Begonias a real benefit, right?

Because if you can plant share something that's going to come back, you could just add a couple of pops of.

Exactly.

And really save that way.

Great.

But you have here, this is a lamb's ear and this is great and full sun to light shade and it's hardy and it's an early bloomer as well.

Very nice.

And then after it blooms, you've got the beautiful leaf, that wonderful texture, very soft, nice contrast, beautiful plant.

And next to it is one of my top ten favorite plants in the world.

But that hellebore, hellebore and again, another plant that they reseed prolifically.

Yes.

So you do have the opportunity to share.

But if you go to a garden center to buy a single hellebore, it's terribly expensive, you know, some people's hourly rate or more to get one, right?

Yeah.

So that, I bet is well loved in your.

Mm.

There, there are evergreens and they're also early they're, they're the earliest bloomer they bloom along the same time the crocus everywhere.

And I love that the deer don't bother them.

I you know, even most things that you see our deer resistant it's questionable but I've never seen one touch a hellebore And then down here what do you have?

I have the peppermint because that is another example of something that you want to stay content, you want to keep it contained.

But they're great to have as container plants because they are they keep their insects away.

A nice thing to have on your patio this time of year.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Using your tea, throwing drinks.

Yeah.

And and he'll help keep the mosquitoes up.

Well, I think it's a really neat program.

And if our viewers are interested, they can contact Native Earth and participate by sharing plants, because it really does go to a great cause.

And I love the idea that you're introducing children who wouldn't otherwise know about this expose to you.

And I had a conversation one time of encountering.

I encountered children at one point who told me that tomatoes came from the grocery store.

So I think this is a great lesson for them and wonderful that for elderly you're reviving their memories of.

Yeah, So thanks for sharing it.

Thank you.

Now we're going to watch this tip of the month from Peggy at Mama as we get ready to take your calls.

A few months ago, we were pruning our rose bushes in preparation for the spring growth.

And here it is, Summertime, Mama and Mama.

Italian garden.

And it's now we've got beautiful, lush growth and we also have our first flush of blossoms.

But it's time to do that second wave of pruning what I call the early summer wave of pruning.

And that is going to be to remove the center of the rosebush to allow air down there.

Our first step, of course, is to sterilize our clippers.

And we use secateurs style or cicada style scissor action clippers here at Mama to sterilize what we use is 91% rubbing alcohol and that ensures that the Clippers are not corroded, but that they're well, sterilized For us to work in our bushes.

The next step is to look at your rosebush and look to the center of the rosebush and to remove canes growing directly in the center, because as I mentioned, you want to get the air circulation to come.

Right now, I'm just going to make a blind cut in so that I can see what's in there.

And I'm taking out pieces of cane and I'm making my cuts at an angle to ensure that we have water rolling off and not sitting at the top of that rose cane.

And as you can see, I've opened up the plant significantly and I've got one more cut to be able to get air all the way down into that plant.

And next step, though, is, of course, to glue the rose canes.

We glue only roses because it's to protect against the rose cane borer and this all-purpose glue, whatever brand you like, it has to be.

All purpose dries and creates a barrier that prevents the rose cane boars larva from burrowing down into the cane.

And that's really quite simple step to do.

And how to get that air circulation down into your rose, to let that sunshine down and to get those leaves dry, to reduce those diseases, keep those plants healthy and hence free of insects.

Be a guarantee that you have beautiful roses blooming all summer long.

By taking the short and simple step this early summer.

Great tips, Peggy.

And now I feel guilty because my roses are neglected.

I have somewhere to go.

I have to hurry up and finish the show.

Wonderful information.

As always.

We appreciate it.

And I want to tell everyone before we get started with our question and answer segment, that if you follow us on Facebook, you can ask questions throughout the month and people will respond as we see them.

Peggy just answered one just the other day, I think, and I have on there sometimes and so follow along on Facebook.

And you can also go to our Web page where you can see past shows.

This one will be loaded in a couple of days.

Check out plant of the month from previous months.

And just follow along.

So, ladies, we have some questions.

Peggy, though, I will forget to ask you, there is a big important event coming up at Mama, too.

So I want to ask you before.

Yes, we have coming up on June 13th, it's a Saturday.

The Chesterfield County Master Gardeners for the past number of years have worked very hard and put together another Bumblebee jamboree.

And this is a celebration of pollinators.

It's a wonderful family, fun event, and it's for little families as well as older families who will say the big kid, as well as those cute little toddlers.

And they've got wonderful support from the community to talk to, you know, our guests and our visitors at Mama in our families and our community about the importance of pollinators and how they can bring more into their gardens.

Really fun program and really ties into what you're talking about.

Placement.

Perfect is such an important topic.

We're going to touch on it again next month here too, because we can't say enough about it.

Exactly.

It's so important.

So let's get started with some questions.

We have a question about applying antifungal.

I need to know when to apply antifungal to my lawn.

It is devastated by summer fungus like Brown's patch every year.

Last year was a bit better.

I used antifungal granules and it didn't totally succumb.

When is the best time before we see any evidence and can it be applied too early?

The best time really.

I'm not the strongest lawn person in the world is Richard.

Yes, it is.

Richard.

Hello.

But I do know antifungals are anti.

You want to start them before the problem begins.

The cows out of the barn, you know, So we need to either have the lawn be treated with a fungi and you know something, but get it down and get it down soon.

So those that haven't started can hopefully be, you know, suppressed.

Fungicides suppress, they don't eliminate.

And it's a big difference in our mindset.

So when we put down something that suppresses, that means when it stops working, the fungus starts growing.

So it's a constant suppression and we're coming up on whether that is perfect for a fungus is supposed to be near 90 and rainy.

Oh, yes, I know.

We definitely need to keep an eye.

I'm going to say one thing, though.

If you've got a lot of fungus in your lawn, you might want to consider aerating.

Let's try to do some cultural practices to eliminate that and to maybe, you know, get in there with that.

Thatch.

And I don't say remove it because we want to keep it, but there's going to be some issues there that are causing these funguses to continually reappear.

And so I'm going to ask you to call your local cooperative extension agent and find out what you can do to treat your lawn so that you won't need to put these fungicides down.

And I do see a lot of that in well-maintained gardens.

Heavily irrigated.

Yes, heavily fertilized.

So sometimes you can make it too healthy, too rich, too rich.

And you see those sorts of diseases up here, Cherie, this might be one you can handle getting rid of Wisteria Vine.

I think you are an expert at this art.

How do you get rid of it?

How do you stop it from spreading?

Well, I have I'd, I'd boiled garlic and brushed it, really pressed it on and I use vinegar.

I think one of the things that you mentioned to me that was brilliant is that you meticulously pull it out of what it's going in and hit the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just leave it.

I, I untangle it from the top down to the bottom and I leave it laying out and I'll tell my customers if you see it a line laying out, just leave it.

I know it's going to look ugly for a little bit, but spray it and just leave it.

You know, persistence is really key with Wisteria.

It is a stain on top of it.

It's because it's not going to go away.

No, we tell a joke.

My it's not really a joke, but we had a neighbor come with a backhoe and dig ours out and it still looks back.

And so it is tough.

If you want it, put it out in the middle of your yard and train it as a tree.

Don't have it, grow on it and don't grow any to begin with.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

Think twice.

There's other things you can use.

You probably fight that battle at me.

Mad scientist.

Oh, we did.

We actually took out all the wisteria on the pergola and the Italian garden and we did it by digging the beds by hand to save and removing every root.

Yeah, it's a beautiful Southern plan, but boy, it's tough to dividing peonies.

Both of you ladies have much experience doing that.

How do you do it?

What's the best time of year to do it?

Fall.

Fall.

And I. Yeah, I just divide that.

I make sure to get the whole root ball and then I divide them and they come back every single year.

If you leave the enough tuber.

Yeah, yeah.

And you plant them high when you replant them and you do it in the fall, usually a success.

And we had a guest one time years ago who raised peonies, and he suggested that on Mother's Day, you choose the panda you want to because it's blooming and then in the fall you go back and divide it or buy it and plant her rain barrels up.

I'm not very computer savvy.

Hold months, rain barrels.

Karen from the West End, does she have to have gutters to have an effective rain barrel system?

She does not have gutters.

You've got to have a way of channeling that water into the barrel.

You know, the classic you know, there's got to be a way of of collecting the water coming off of the roof so that it can then be channeled.

As I said, I hate to repeat myself, but if you can do that in another way, go for it.

But to me, gutters are the only logical solution.

Well, not last year you had a guest from the state capital who they talked about putting cisterns, cisterns underground, and so you could capture ground runoff.

Right?

Or you could maybe brick an area that the water comes off of the roof into a channel that then goes into a barrel that's in the ground.

But I think it's goldfish.

Yeah, I think a traditional rain barrel, you're really going to need a gutter to.

I guess I'm thinking of an above ground gutter.

Good point there, Amy.

So I hope you can take that suggestion and think a little more creatively with it.

I think we can.

Food for thought.

Marilyn from Charles City says Fungicides that are being recommended, are they detrimental to toads?

Oh, I don't know that.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with asthma, but other plants as well.

Do they affect anything other than you'd have to read the label?

Because it depends on each fungicide.

There's so many different products out there that I'm not confident to see across the board.

I would definitely read the label.

The label by law states everything about that product.

And so just take out your glasses or sit down and start reading.

It is tiny little Bob from Midlothian says his red, but rose bushes have blooms, but the leaves are brown.

What can he do?

Oh, my.

His rosebushes have blooms, but his leaves are brown.

I'm wondering if he recently transplanted them and that they've been scorched by the sun.

I'm wondering if they've been moved from a shady area to a sunny area.

Yeah.

Sounds a little stress.

Yes, sounds stress related.

And I'm just wondering what happened.

Is something eating the roots that's reducing them out into the.

I've got a lot of wonders here because the buds would have been perhaps pre formed before this started happening.

So they would continue to open up if they even if the plant was stressed, perhaps if but that would be a good example of something to take a significant clipping of to your extension office.

Exactly.

And see if they can find any pathogen on there or anything about exactly.

We love the extension office for all of their help.

Ulysses from Caroline says he has fireblight in his pear tree.

He got rid of it, but it spread to his apple trees.

How can he get rid of it without cutting the tree way back?

Have you dealt with familiar too much with apple, With trees, With fruit trees.

Okay.

Fireblight is a persistent disease and it loves the weather that we've had those long cool springs.

And so what you have to do is be very diligent with coming back with clean clippers, sterilizing them with 91% rubbing alcohol between cuts and you have to cut to green wood and you've got to make sure that each cut you make is into green would then spray the clippers and make your next cut.

tDCS You have to be very precise, very sanitary.

Then you have to take the affected branches and basically get rid of them immediately.

You don't want to leave them around in your garden because the spores will move.

They love the rosacea family, which are your fruit trees and etc.

and, you know, roses, obviously, but it's a matter of sanitation and being very cognizant of it.

I mean, laying a tarp down, laying them in the tarp, wrapping up that tarp and throwing the whole thing away, no compost, no composting and throwing it into the you bring it to the dump and getting rid of it would be as a great sanitary, strategic, you know, action to take.

But the most important is the Clippers would become the vectors.

You've got to clean them between each and every cut you make and it's got to be down to clean Greenwood Great information.

We have time for one more questi Contact for Native Earth.

Eddie in Richmond says he would love to make a donation to Native Earth landscapes, and he wants to know how to get in touch with you if you have a Facebook page.

I do have a Native Earth Facebook page and I also have an email address of Native Earth and Mark Malcolm.

And that's too easy, right?

But I do have a Native Earth Facebook page.

Very good.

So and that would be wonderful.

Sheriff Land Yeah, because it gets out there and it helps a lot of people.

That wonderful program.

It is wonderful.

And I hope you get a lot of nice plants from.

Yeah, thank you, ladies.

We'll be back with more questions.

But first, let's take a look at this great segment that Peggy did at a school in the west and east and I'm not sure Richmond really has a fabulous program.

Take a look.

Yep.

So if you just pull these out by the roots, shake off the soil or set them aside to compost and that will be a good job for now.

Amanda Hall I have to tell you, I came around the corner after being led in it by the main office and what a beautiful sight to behold for a horticulturalist, a wonderful stand filled with plants and vegetables, and behind it the garden it came from.

What do you have going on here in eastern Henrico?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

This is the famous community garden market.

We are a youth development urban agriculture initiative.

We focus on service learning and mentoring for our students.

Grade six through eight.

Wonderful.

And here at Fairfield Middle School, what's the program that you've got going?

So it's an internship program again for grades six three.

All students are eligible to apply once the interns are selected.

This year we have 15 students.

Yeah, they do an extensive training period for three months.

We train them on everything from how to grow the produce to how to harvest it, food security issues, social justice issues surrounding food and culture, and then as well as marketing.

Wonderful.

So you have the older students working with the younger students?

Yes, absolutely.

We have some students that came back this year and our interns again, and they're helping our sixth graders and any of our new interns kind of learn the ropes.

And so it serves as a nested mentoring.

We mentor the students and then they mentor each other.

You know, we've got gardeners growing.

Gardeners have.

Yeah, I think that's wonderful.

What are the challenges that you've faced here, Huh?

Well, you know, I will say flexibility is key.

So the students wanted a program where they could grow food and donate it to their community.

Right.

And that was our plan in the beginning, unfortunately.

You know, logistically, that doesn't always work out either.

You know, kitchens or churches don't have the capacity to store fresh produce or to prepare it when volunteers are doing the service right.

And so what we found is that we needed to adapt.

And you have.

Yeah, so a good way for us to be able to provide fresh food for our community.

You know, that was the whole underlying purpose was to have a market.

I think that's a great idea.

You turn it completely around and sit around and give it away.

Let's create a market.

Let's fill a niche in a community that needs fresh produce because it's sort of a food desert out here for fresh produce.

But what I love the most is the fact of the garden behind us.

Thank you for introducing this to me, and I'm going to go chat with Toby for a little bit.

Well, here we are in what I call the important part of this whole operation, The Garden and Toby Vernon.

You're the sort of the garden manager out here, sort of the operations person.

And tell us, how do you keep this garden green and growing?

Well, that's a good question.

Thanks for coming out.

Well, right now what we're doing is we're turning over sort of from spring season plantings into the summer plantings.

And we're preparing, as you can see behind me, to plant out nine new beds with our summer crops.

Wonderful.

And I noticed that your labor force is very energetic and they ask a lot of questions too.

It's important for them to ask questions because even though I know a lot about how to teach kids and get them excited about gardening, you know, I can't possibly tell them everything that I want them to know or that they would want to know.

So they do ask a lot of questions.

They come with great energy.

And thankfully, because on days like this, when it's 90 degrees, you need a good spirit and a strong back to stick out the days in the evenings.

I agree.

And the spirit, the exposure, they're getting all sorts of gardening techniques.

I mean, right here next to us is growing up a ladder and you've got other, I want to say, gardening methods here that the kids are exposed to.

Yeah, well, you know, that's one of our strongest one of our biggest goals is to help train a new generation of gardeners and hopefully new farmers.

You know, right now, as you probably am sure know, the average age of the American farmers, almost 60 years old.

And we love and really care and respect for those folks.

We're getting excited about training a new generation.

And so our methods here are a bio intensive, small scale market gardening style.

So we've got our peas and our crop with beets.

And behind us we'll be having basil and spinach and or a crop with tomatoes and okra.

We're really trying to extend our seasons using row cover, right?

I saw that as well.

You see the hoops over these raised beds here.

It helps us kind of get a jump start on cold weather crops in the spring and later in the fall.

But it also serves as a little bit of shade for some of those greens that need it.

And it's got a nice bit of wind that moves through here.

And I also noticed too, it's a great way to protect, to get insects, to help keep an organic flare to this garden.

It is.

And that's that's a principle that we grow on.

We're here to really reinforce skills and train kids and agricultural skills, but we're also here to provide really good biologically grown food for our community members.

So yeah, the road covered does at once act as a season extender.

But, you know, we look over here at the squash, I've got floating road cover on it because we really have a lot of pressure from Harlequin bugs and squash bugs and fleet beetles.

And so it does a lot for us.

It protects as a as a mechanical barrier between the plant and the insect.

It actually helps the soil, maintains the moisture.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And buffers that sun from burning as what does it does.

So we really like a ro cover as a season extension and or an organic intervention.

And it's something that anyone can do at home.

We're doing everything that we're doing here in this market garden.

Folks at home can do.

And that's another one of those principles that we stand on is demonstrating all the different ways that you can get the best out of whatever space you have available at home, whether it be a back porch or a little side yard.

So in addition to intercropping and vertical gardening, using trellises and things like this, we also like to build little container gardens to demonstrate that you can grow at any scale.

We like to use towers to let strawberries spill out of that can grow very densely without really taking over a whole bed.

Yes, which is always really important for things like mint and like strawberries and like lemon balm, things like this.

But we also use a whole series of natural soil building amendments.

That's the new method to the no till it is.

It is.

Well, getting those microorganisms.

It is.

That's exactly right.

And so we like to be good to our worms and create a nice habitat for them to live in.

And then it's important because we're not going anywhere and we want to make sure that we're giving our community members good, clean, safe and healthy food.

Well, Toby, this has been wonderful.

Thank you for having us.

And thank you for sharing the gardening expertise that you share with the children as we are raising another generation of gardeners.

Thanks for coming out, Peggy.

It's been great talking with you Amanda and Toby.

That was a wonderful visit.

I was just taken just totally thrilled with everything that I saw out there that day.

Despite the windy weather, we were able to pull that off pretty well.

So I think it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, Thanks has come on now, but I want to learn more about worm composting because that is a wonderful secret to success of any gardener.

But before we do so, I want to remind our viewers that we still have the phones open and we welcome your questions.

You can find them in or you can email them in, and we'd love to answer them later on in the show.

So, you know, vermin, culture, worm composting, how can we do this on our homes, you know, at the home?

Because it's so important with our gardens?

Well, it is.

And, you know, as as I mentioned there at the end of that clip, we really rely on biological practices.

And one way to build up our soil is to introduce things like a like worm compost that has a lot of really beneficial microbial life in it already.

So it really helps amp up our soil.

So the way we can do that is actually by creating a worm condo at home.

I love it.

Worm condo.

And how what materials do we need?

I mean, these aren't anything that we need to go to a specialty store for.

No, no, not at all.

You can you can get all of this generally right out of your kitchen or your garage.

And I know most of the things that I've moved around from place to place.

I have an extra Rubbermaid tub always.

And if you don't, well, you can just get one at Lowe's or ask your neighbor warehouse.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the basic elements are a couple of Rubbermaid tubs.

And I'll just point out a couple of the design elements of a worm condo so that we can all do it at home.

So you have your rubbermaid tub here and you're always going to want to have a cordless drill or a corded drill.

You'll notice here that I've actually drilled some holes inside of this Rubbermaid tub.

And that's going to be really important because you want to make sure that you have the right amount of moisture and the right amount of airflow moving through when you're you've got your worms detail.

Question what size holes?

Well, that's important.

That's an important question.

Exactly.

So you can see here this is about a 16th or an eighth of an inch hole.

I'm sure you can imagine what might happen if you're holding a big right form.

So every left right.

So if if your worms have learned that they don't have enough food, then they're going to find their way out of a hole.

So you want to have those holes about, like I said, an eighth or a 16th of an inch, and they go all around the tub.

The second feature, I'll point out, is that there are actually holes drilled into the bottom of this bin as well, because you want to be able to evacuate excess moisture.

Okay.

Okay.

And then not done yet with the holes.

You want to make sure you keep the the lid for your compost bin so that your weren't done so that that actually ventilate through the lid as well.

So shall we go ahead and get started making one a brand new one?

What's our first step?

Well, you can see here that I brought some ingredients to make our worm than worms need a place to sort of bed down and and live in.

And so we actually called out our bedding.

This is some moistened cardboard and paper shreds that I've brought in.

So that is I like to make worm bins in layers.

So I actually start with a little bit of just stuff mixed up, shredded paper and on your method with that.

Exactly.

And it's it's very much just like the compost that you'll do at home or in your garden, you'll kind of layer it.

And so you start with some bedding and then, you know, we all tend to buy or cook too much food.

So when we do that, there's an exit strategy and it can go right into your worm compost and you can you always want to make sure that you're mixing your worm compost again, just like your garden compost about 60% dry material with about 40% wet material.

Okay.

6040.

Yeah.

And as I, I actually brought a couple of examples of what you do and don't want to do.

You do want to cut up your your organic matter.

Pretty small.

You don't want to leave it giant.

These are worms.

They are worms.

And as I always tell our kids, no one's ever been bitten by a worm.

So that's a pretty good indicator that they have little baby tiny worm teeth.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we're going to do this.

Lots of food.

Yeah.

I'm kind of torn up some some greens that some of our market customers didn't want from the turnips and the beets.

And I'm just putting them right in there with some eggshells.

Coffee grounds, poppy growing also.

And we'll add that Starbucks, other local like your local coffee shops will give you their used coffee grounds.

So you just have to ask and they'll give them to for their garden.

Good for composting.

Yes.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Do they want to.

Yes.

And so you can see here.

So I've layered them with I've layered this, this worm bin with some dampened shreds and, and cardboard, put a little food on top and I'm just going to do it all over again.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, and actually, I almost forgot that you want to have a nice little bit of soil or compost inoculate.

Okay.

And that helps to stimulate that decomposition in your in your worm bin.

But it also, you know, helps them get a little extra initial food because this food kind of wants to break down for a little bit before they go right into it.

So I'm going to just dust in there.

All right.

And so the finished product, Yes, this is what we're getting out of our compost.

Yep.

That's worm castings and one that is all worm castings.

That is just beautiful.

Beautiful.

Just beautiful.

Now, Amanda, you told me about a quickly you quickly with me, a little homemade story of how you took this and brought it down a little in scale.

Absolutely.

So if you have kids at home, we use it with middle school students, but younger than that would be fine.

You can make a kitchen composter and a mini worm condo for your kids.

So what you want to do is you want to take some worms and you want to take the same idea, but you can put it into a shoebox size bench container, right?

Plastic container.

And then you can use a two gallon pitcher or a pitcher and you can do your kitchen compost, your kitchen scraps, your coffee grounds on a small scale.

Okay.

And then the final project, Toby, we have our shoebox on Amanda's scale right here.

Yeah, just to put our lid on.

Yeah.

So we'll put the lid on here, and then I use a catch basin here.

It's just a slightly larger bucket that you can slide your worm bin into, and it will actually catch any excess moisture and it will oftentimes release enough, enough liquid that is a worm to concentrate that you can dilute and use as a foliar spray.

Yeah, Fantastic composting.

Yeah.

We have a finished product over there.

We have a few seconds left in there.

And if we look in here after a few weeks of many worms, worms can eat up almost three times their body weight and in perfect conditions.

And this was a very full compost bin three weeks ago.

And as you can see, it is just absolutely rich, full of microbial life and worm castings that are going to go right into the soil.

Once we have a lot of fun with separating the worm castings from the worms with our students, it's their favorite part.

Well, folks, this has been great.

It's given everybody some good food for thought.

Easy steps to follow, to start their own worm business.

I'll show you worm composting at home and getting some composting.

But we're going to leave you now to go and see the plant of the month at AJ.

Sergeant Reynolds Community College, thank you.

Hi.

My name is David Seward and I'm the program head for the horticulture department at Drake.

Sergeant Reynolds.

And welcome to our Goochland Campus.

Today we're going to talk about American Yellow wood contrasts.

Kentucky, a very nice native tree, also found in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Areas wonderful tree, specimen tree with the flowers 14 inch or so long pentacles white colored.

The bees love it as a pollinator, very fragrant as well.

And the leaf gets up to about 12 to 14 inches long as well.

It's a compound leaf, so you're going to have lots of smaller leaflets with the lighter green color shows up really nice with a with another background of other other trees because it's it's a little bit different green color.

You've also got some other features that make it very nice for landscapes.

Small stature maxes out at about 40 feet tall, maybe 40 feet wide, has nice, smooth, clean white bark, very much like the American beech handles, alkaline as well as acidic soils would prefer full sun because then it's going to give you the better flowering features.

There's a lot of things going for it, mainly because of the smaller size.

It truly can be a single specimen or a small grouping.

It's in the fab a family, which is the legumes.

So it's very similar fruit to the red buds and Kentucky coffee tree.

Even the peas in your gardens, the seeds and seed pods themselves contain usually 4 to 5 seeds, which are very hard seed coat and usually going to have two segments sulfuric acid for for up to an hour to break that dormancy in them.

But it does work very well when tree is young, you'd want to be a little more pay attention to how the branching structure is.

If all of the main branches are coming down low, four or five feet off the ground, you're going to want to send it out and try to make it have a central leader.

As this particular tree grows with these, if all the branches are at the lower section, they overpower the ability of the trunk to hold it up and in a bad windstorm it could be broken apart.

So, you know, in that condition you might only get 30 years out of the tree.

But in good growing conditions, with the right pruning 60 to 70 years is not unusual for this plant.

Another nice feature about the yellow wood is the fact that it's fairly drought tolerant once it's established, and that usually takes about a year or two.

It's also hardy zones 4 to 8.

So wherever you are in Virginia, you shouldn't have any real trouble with it.

And there is available a pink cultivar called ROSEA, which has a light pink color to it.

Instead of the white.

And so that's why I've chosen for Plant of the month a big thank you to David.

A great information.

That is a wonderful plant.

Fantastic plant.

Really, really good choice.

We're always excited when we see what people come up with and you go, Yeah, I love that one.

And great information on the worms.

I know what my six year old is going to be asking for tonight.

He'll be awake and waiting to tell me he needs work.

If he does, where do I get word?

Well, there are actually a couple of Virginia grown worm producers.

There's a veteran owned worm worm farmer right in the Hampton Roads area.

So if you just do a simple Internet search, they'll come up for you.

Wonderful.

So it's very common.

Typically, you just order worms from from an Internet site somewhere that'll come through the mail.

But how Virginia grown and supported a veteran.

I like it.

I like it.

I'll be doing that.

How long between the time that I create this and then I get to reap the benefits of this?

Well, that's a good question.

There is no absolute value for that.

But it depends on how good of a worm farmer you end up being a competition.

I think the important ingredients there are making sure it's not too moist and those worms have air.

They actually like to have a damp and moist, not wet environment.

So if you are giving them a nice amount of bedding and you're feeding them sufficiently as I said, between 70 and 80 degrees and nice moisture, they can eat up three times their body weight, just like my six year old just leaving, you know, very quickly that they have more in common than you realize.

I love it.

All right.

Very good.

Wonderful information.

We have a lot of questions, folks, So if you'll bear with me, we'll get to those.

Amelia, are Barry from?

Amelia has a question about walnut trees.

He says last year he pruned some of the trees in the fall.

They have had good growth, but the walnut, she has had very little.

He was told not to fertilize at this year.

What can you do to help them?

If it's a well-established, mature tree, it's very important to be able to mulch underneath the tree with about two inches of, you know, some sort of compost or some sort of chips even from your local, I want to say arborist and to be able to improve that whole soil structure by putting that one or two inch layer, not three or four, one or two.

It's a tree.

Remember, it's a living organism.

And those roots need to get the oxygen.

The other thing is, is walnut trees typically leaf out very late and I don't know where he lives, so I'm going to say give it a little bit more time.

But your classic, you know, trees that leaf out very, very late and grow later than the other trees.

So if you're trying to compare them to a maple who started blooming the end of February beginning of March, there's just no comparison.

And here's a chance for me to throw out my little bit of information from my master's thesis.

Yes, ma'am.

Don't fertilize trees after you transplant them or print them, but water, water, water.

Exactly.

That's really the best you can always do is provide water.

Yes.

And that came for five years of college for you.

Christine in Prince George has a question.

She says she has smaller fruit than usual on her cucumber and tomatoes.

Should she pluck out the small fruit to allow for more fruit to grow?

You have fruit on your cucumbers that I envy.

I mean, I don't want to say bigger.

It can't be true.

I mean, if in my in my opinion, if you've already got fruit, that means possibly a couple of things.

One, you may have gotten a transplant that was too far along.

And I always actually do pick off that very first fruit.

If I've got a transplant that was too far along, especially if it's got fruit by Mother's Day already.

But otherwise I'd say if it's if it's full grown and you've got fruit on there, just just keep going.

I mean, we've still got longer days ahead and hotter days ahead.

So to enjoy the small tomato now, enjoy it.

Enjoy that small tomato now, but make sure you're pruning those those tomatoes and cucumbers back.

You want to make sure that you're you're essentially growing out of a single stem.

And so pick the suckers off of that tomato and try and keep your cucumber from growing all the way out.

Great advice.

Janine has a question about worm composting.

Can she use worm compost, a large scale for all of the school food cafeteria waste?

That's a that's a fantastic question.

And, you know, as we face more food access issues and and problems with us, not getting the right kind of food to our students and a lot of waste is going from those school cafeterias.

I think that that's a that's a an A on a practical level and absolutely can be done on a logistical level.

That's really a question for school administration.

But start small.

It can absolutely done.

We start with the bins and we keep them in either classrooms or in our in our supply area.

But the problem with that is, is really it's an education problem.

You want to make sure that you're educating everyone in the chain not to be putting cooked food in like dairy and any animal proteins.

You want to keep it dry, organic or wet organic matter.

But I would encourage her to march on.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's great.

Peggy, This one is from Jim in Doswell, and he wants to know, is there any surefire way of keeping deer out of his garden other than the eight foot fence?

Actually, I was visiting a friend of mine's garden, and they have a really unique method that has worked for them.

I qualify that.

They just took a single strand of wire.

They ran it from post to post about three feet high.

And then I want to say on a regular random basis, about five feet apart, they hung a strip of aluminum foil, you know, about six, eight inches down, and they put a dollop of peanut butter on the foil.

And then they electrified this little strand of wire, which you can buy a solar powered electric fence.

And the deer came up and took a little nibble of the peanut butter and got a little zap on their tongue.

Nothing to hurt them, just a little zap and taught them to basically behavior modification, to move on.

After a while, after a week, they had they just cut off the electricity and they never had a problem again.

That's the experience of a friend of mine, very interested, very heavily deer infested area.

They only had to run it for a week.

And if they if they found deer come by, turn it back, turn it back on for just.

And that was it.

And we've mentioned Richard before and I forgot as we came back to mention that if you have any questions between our shows, you can always write to Richmond at the Richmond Times Dispatch and he'll usually get back to you right away.

It's a great opportunity to hit him with your lawn questions, but he gave me a hint years ago that if you put in a regular three baud fence, but at the top of it hit a board out of 45, that that's going to do it too.

So you don't have to go super high as long as you've got that 45.

Angle it out away from the garden.

Yes, we have the inevitable vole question.

Oh, it's time.

So trying to create a rose garden.

But the voles are eating their roots.

And any suggestions on repelling them?

Well, we don't use rather, we don't grow any roses at our market gardens.

But I can definitely commiserate with the problem of those burrowing rodents.

I've always told folks who are growing small gardens at home, that's something you want to anticipate.

If you haven't anticipated it, I would encourage you to use whatever barriers, mechanical barriers you can between your garden soil and the exterior ground from that.

And I would say dig almost like a French drain ditch around your raised beds and put a couple of layers of hardware cloth in between there.

You can you do it, you can do it in your garden bed.

I would say you could also do that in your roses, as long as you're very tender around those roots and not doing a lot of damage, especially in the middle of the summer when you don't want to be uncovering a lot of that.

So I've also come in as a cycle.

So first you get Japanese beetles, then you get grubs, then you get moles, then you get bowls.

So in bowls are vegetarians, right?

So control back to Japanese beetle grub.

They'll see spawn bacteria.

Right.

So it's going to take a while.

But that also is, you know, after you've mechanically separated them from their your plant and the rest of the garden.

Yes.

How are you handling it in Albemarle County?

Do you have any voles out there?

I not that I have noticed yet.

You're very, very lucky guys.

We had so many great questions tonight.

We still have a ton more that we'll get answers to, to the viewers who senators and but I really appreciate you being here with us, Sheri, Toby, Amber, Peggy, as always, next month, we are going to go to a private garden and learn about insect pollination and also meet with the Virginia Society of Landscape Landscape Designers.

That's right here on your community radio stations.

Thank you for watching.

Virginia Homegrown.

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