HE DID THIS ALL BY HIMSELF! Tropical EDIBLE GARDEN PARADISE in Tennessee!

[Music] hello there kay here and i am in baxter tennessee today at my friend daryl luck's incredible garden which i'm going to share with you from winter hardy banana plants to castor bean beautiful ornamental plants to all manner of vegetables and of course his how many uh varieties of bamboo 35 35 we're going to take a tour and you don't want to miss it so stay tuned hello again everyone welcome back to my garden finally when it's lush and beautiful and we're going to go around the front here first because it's going to get hot there and other areas are a little shady so we'll take you on a tour this place is full of rocks this my property it's i've been blessed with rocks and it's my task to put them where they need to go so i had a big slope here and there was a cedar tree that had grown out so much it was covering up the edge of the house almost so i stripped all the branches off and i fill this is actually filled with pure compost that i made here on the property is this there's no soil in here so and so everything i grow here just thrives so much for many years now of course i just brought the rocks in from up there on the hill and it probably took me i don't know a week to build this at the most the tp doesn't look that great right now because i'll tell you all right on this side with the orange flowers i know what that is that is don't tell me okay that is um scarlet runner scarlet runner beans which i'm real thrilled about i'm growing too but mine are this tall okay well then on this half of the teepee i decided to do yellow crowder peas which i also love this is the third planting and it's finally took the first two were eaten by a vole and so i kept coming out and they weren't coming up and the scarlet runners were starting to grow and nothing was so you need a cat i need a cat the kind of rock work i do of course it's dry stack there's no cement or anything and a lot of people that work with rock they'll use some tools and chip off you know make to make them fit better or give them a nice face or whatever i just it's kind of a challenge to me to just use the rocks as they are and try to make them look good and and so what that involves is putting a rock in place and looking at it and now that's not the right rock moving it and bringing another one in and that's how i do it yeah i was about to pull them up you see how this is collards here and it's eating up really bad but now it's putting on we got a lot of rain and it's putting on new growth that one over there looks real nice and so you know and there this is a kind of kale right here same thing it was all eaten up looking it's coming back and so i just fill this up with you know that's lima beans growing along the front wall there it's a bush there's your cabbage yeah there it is causing me the trouble and these are the crowder peas you were talking about yeah up against the teepees the crowder peas and how close do you plant your peas about three inches you don't need to thin them when you're um i don't they just they do fine yeah okay and then anywhere i had blank space i came out in a plant these are bush lima beans oh look at that i'm growing bushlines look at this that's either deer or rabbit has shown up right here oh no yeah they're eating them a little bit that's got another one yeah this is the best way to cage a tomato this is concrete reinforcement wire and yeah it's bulky when you buy it you got to buy a big heavy roll of it but you can make a whole bunch of cages out of one roll and i i just cut there's 13 squares i found that to be the the perfect size 12 is a little skinny 14 is too big so i do 13 of these squares around and it makes and then if you cut this in half you can get two pepper cages i do that sometimes for peppers but this i leave uh some of the wire i cut at the bottom i cut the bottom strand off so they're they're like little things to poke in the ground and i just and it holds you know you mulch it in and the wind doesn't blow them over and you said you've had these for decades yeah i made these probably 30 years ago i've moved all over the place and i always take my tomato cages everything else you leave but the only thing i leave is bamboo i leave bamboo behind everywhere i go so there's a nice kale planting over there oh wow eating off of that this tomato and this is the first one that gives us ripe tomatoes this year now are you concerned about these leaves that look bad well it happens every year and what i'm happy about is it's just now starting usually they're looking kind of rough at the bottom already and this year it's been so wet i guess they're getting adequate moisture they're all thriving right so this kale looks amazing except what happened here yeah i just saw that i don't know what happened to that one looks like it rotted a little see it's almost too wet lately here so here's where the the oh yeah it meets the ground so you can just walk right into the teepee i just pulled a bunch of weeds recently scarlet runners look fabulous and what what are the white flowers mixed in i don't know it might have been something from last year i just noticed them last night so you only planted the scarlet runners this year yeah wow and see what's nice about the teepee is when you're when you're inside the teepee and it's all covered up it'll soon be totally covered in greenery it's real shady in here and all the beans hang down away from the teepee so it's real easy to see you don't have to hunt in the foliage to to find your beans yeah next year for sure we're doing yeah we'll get you into my place yep you got to have a tp yep tell me about this plant because i know you grow these really huge ones yeah that's this elephant ear i one year i had this whole bed full of elf in here i grew so much because it was that pure compost they made they made giant roots the size of grapefruits and stuff i sold hundreds of roots that year wow it was amazing but i left one in here and this is an ornamental yeah it's just for looks all right this is the second bed now that i've built in front of the house uh i just had a slope with a lot of bermuda grass and i build up with compost and soil manure and last year's the first year i planted in this bed it was all potatoes and so this is year number two to use this bed and every every potato you see growing in here i have some these are all volunteers from last year they're the ones i miss digging up i guess so i i left them wherever they popped up and i'm you know i put in some tomato plants and then i filled this is all again those bush lima beans all filled in down through here and there's a few zinnias up here for so mom could look out the window and see some flowers but they're not there's a flower getting ready to come we've had a few flowers and now they're getting ready to do some more i made three mounds here and in each mound i planted three different kinds of melons one is the moon and stars melon one is the uh crimson sweet melon and then the other is my i've had this for years kept seeds it's a banana melon it's called it makes a long yellow melon that it's exactly like cantaloupe inside really delicious but you got to catch it just at the right time you got a few days of perfection and then it goes downhill fast but they put out so many melons it's just amazing and my melons are trying to come in and cover my limas i'm trying to send everything that way and i'm sending them out over the edge and i'll let them go out in there did you just stick seeds in here because i did see some melon starch no i had started all these ahead because i wanted to get a head start otherwise you don't get melons to october or something you know that's the moon and stars melon and and the melon itself will also have some little spots but also spots may be about that big around completely yellow maybe a couple of them well that must make you just wild with glee because you love yellow i love yellow i actually i've never i've seen this in catalogs since i've never grown that type of melon before but all three of these are thriving beyond my expectations right now so was all of this compost as well uh there's a little soil mixed here and but a lot of manure and uh leaf mulch was put in here this will become a bed and eventually over there will become a bed with another tp set up on that one so i'll have tp at each end of the house oh nice and you're going to build a teepee on the virginia creeper tree yeah i have to get rid of the virginia creeper i think it looks kind of interesting right now it's not hurting anything this is the thing you bring manure from other farms and you bring in all kinds of new weeds and grasses this is johnson grass now fortunately looks like corn i can almost pull this wow yesterday i was able to pull some of this i want to get it up by the roots yeah see because this is just good compost in here so it's pretty loose like if this was in soil you'd never pull the johnson grass up like that but i just want to get rid of it wow something else in there it's got jaggers on gotta get rid of that well i can do that later but i almost got it it actually was kind of pretty but if it's invasive that's bad oh you do not want johnson grass man it's i didn't know any grass was that high yeah it really spreads and it's real invasive yeah this whole bed along the front of the house here this is all spearmint and it's pretty well taken over i hardly have any weeds pop up anymore i see a couple i should get but that almost looks like borage but it's not is it i doubt it i don't know what that is it's a weed spearmint tea yeah yeah iced tea leaf still some birdhouses available tell me about your birdhouses well mom and i spent the winter sitting painting fixing up bird houses i sold quite a few k bought a lot and my friend denise bought a lot and i sold a few others on lsn and stuff but i have some left bird feeders you know i wouldn't have thought it but these with kind of the chain they love those uh-huh they love that style because it's so open they can see everywhere yeah well i guess you could call this the main entrance uh at least as you come in the driveway it's a main entrance to the gardens behind my house i have another garden down below it has its own entrance and it's fenced in we'll get there later but this is what i i can grow that the deer don't bother usually i have a little trouble i'll show you a few things but broccoli they don't bother my broccoli kale they nibble occasionally but they don't bother my kale much squash i can grow all kinds of squash watermelon now if it's a bad drought they'll come and get the watermelon and eat it if you have melons there but they don't hurt the plants early on and to any night shade you know potatoes tomatoes peppers eggplant eggplant and all that they're not going to mess with them i mean they do nibble on the tomato leaves a little bit and the potato leaves i think it's probably a young deer just trying something new because they usually don't do a lot of damage you're confusing the pests by mixing different plants together yeah and i think that just having that mix is i mean that's the problem with our big agriculture you got acres and acres and acres of just corn one variety you know it's just it's not healthy you get a pest in there it just takes over so you know i might have a pest bother one plant well you'll see some of my broccoli got eaten up pretty bad but but the heads are beautiful we're gonna have some for lunch today yeah there's two kinds of beans here these are yes rattlesnake rattlesnake is on that half okay this is right here let me pull one of these this is a gold marie it's a yellow flat potted romano type bean and they're coming on i now you just pick this is this ready to cook yeah that's ready we can have it for lunch today oh great okay and we'll pick some more okay but uh i'm a little getting scared because these are looking so good and they're about to really deliver and both varieties are give gobs of beans right so next week i'll start canning and be canning for many weeks probably why are you scared because it's a lot of work going to be a lot of beans and when you see you know those beans on that tp are going to come in and i've got a whole bunch of beans down in the garden by the creek and at some point i'm going to just be swimming in beans well that's awesome all right now we were in the other teepee which totally surrounded us and you could go inside a little doorway and you had tp all around you this one is like a half a tp but i had to do that because this is where the tree was growing it was another cedar tree that i stripped down and i had these other terraces already built so i had room for a path through here so i just had to have half a teepee but it's the south side so you still get shaded when you come in and here you see the beans are hanging this is magical if you were a child you just go nuts oh yeah i just used to love any kind of little house type thing when i was a child right right yep oh what are the purple that's the the rattlesnake beans oh right i haven't grown them in a couple of years i saw some beans down here this morning getting started but these were i had to do a second planting on these because the deer messed with them when they're young i mean when they're first coming up when your beans are just you know six or eight inches tall or just small like that hey petey come here yeah so anyway the deer love the beans when they're young and tender and small if you can get them past that if once they get going up the trellis they don't bother it so much so you know i'm risking having this here because the woods are right there you know the deer i see deer up here all the time but the closer i get to the house the less they seem to mess with things and you'll see later i got a bed right behind right off the porch and i got lima beans and and bush beans growing there and they haven't touched a thing we're in july yeah and look you've got i mean the bugs are on there they've eaten the leaves bad but she's going to say there's a ladybugs they're not are they oh i didn't see what you're saying it's the bug that looks like a ladybug that actually does damage uh-huh i forget well they are not bothering the heads at all and they ate the leaves pretty bad and then we got a lot of rain and new leaves came on and you know you know what at that point in time they were about the heads were about the size of a quarter but the plants looked horrible and i i came out here and i actually pulled one out of the ground and i said you know what there there's bugs on them and every i'm just going to give one plant a day to the chickens and they can eat the bugs and the leaves well then i came out i didn't do it the next day i came out another day third day maybe and i noticed the heads had grown quite a bit and they actually looked like they were going to be pretty good so the chickens don't get it yet and all the heads are beautiful i've eaten four or five so far i know chickens love broccoli they love brassicas yeah what is this thing with the yellow flowers that's mullen that's the mullen plant the biennial oh yes okay yeah with the fuzzy leaves yes now have you already harvested leaves or no uh i like to harvest leaves the first year because that's that's when it's new and young and it makes real big leaves and everything because that's when you need to to dry them for medicinal yes right i mean you could use these i mean it's still mullen but they're so much nicer and fuzzier and bigger in the first year this is butterfly bush isn't it that's beautiful so is this one it hasn't started flowering yet i don't have any butterfly bush i don't have any butterfly plants wow milkweed nothing i've so much to do yet yeah what is this over here this some kind of squash that's all volunteer oh wow i assume it's butternut squash because for some reason i always grow butternut squash every year whether i plant any or not i always have a good butternut squash harvest well that's good because i just i literally planted your butternut squash seeds today okay well there's time oh yeah they come pretty quick you get them every year i grow different things in these beds you know i rotate rotated around you know this might have been potatoes last year and now i've got peppers and yellow squash tomatoes that's a marigold so you know it's just i just move things around and change it every year now this bed behind me that looks all empty is where i'm going to grow my fall broccoli and my fall kale which right now are about that tall under lights i just started them a week or so ago so this is what this will be in the fall and i might even use the the row cover tunnel if it gets too cold toward the end to keep them going longer and uh did you say this is hay yeah this is a hay i bought from denise's friend it saved me you know it's been so wet this year if i hadn't bought that hay i think i would have lost my garden to weeds i mean a lot of my garden it's just been an unbelievably wet year and this hay this is actually this bed had weeds about this high all the way across and all i did was lay them over and cover them with hay that's it that's all i did and i'm going to go in here next week and separate the hay and pop in my my broccoli and my kale so you didn't use cardboard or anything no hail do it how many inches of hay i don't know three or four wow yeah it's packed pretty tight when those in those round bales it's really compressed tight so you know you can grab a sheet you know a couple inches and you really put a lot on there something that someone suggested to me was to just go to home depot and get a bale of straw because there's no weeds and you know it's easy to deal with and i can actually probably lift it myself and get it in my truck right but you don't feel positive about using straw for mulch right i mean the square bail part is true it's easier to handle but and if you're in a pinch and you ha that's all you can have sure it's not gonna hurt to use the straw but you know i don't like it it slips and slides you slip on it when it's when you first put it on and but the main reason i don't like the the straw is it's it's not giving any nutrients when it breaks down to your it's silica i mean you're adding some sand basically is all you're adding which is okay but with with hay you're getting the the seed tops where all the nutrition that's where all the nutrition is and so when that breaks down you're actually getting something that's good for your soil you know help build your soil wow so this is that little plant i gave you this is the little blueberry cherry that kay gave to me when it was about i don't know eight or ten inches tall and i put it in here and of course now when you grow in these cages see your job is to come out every few days and what you're trying for is to have all the branches be contained inside the cage until they bust out over the top then they'll grow and they'll hang down and you'll get even more of a harvest so if they poke out down here like this one yeah so yeah it's a problem i didn't get to that in time see and and to try to do it now i'd probably break the branch but you could clip but sometimes i do it like that i tuck it back in and it'll find its way up through there so it doesn't have to be every branch it's you know but it makes it neater and easier to harvest and stuff it's not hanging out in the path and i just always used to think that you had to keep tomatoes thinned out because if they're crowded like that they're you're going to get more diseases inside there well you know it it's uh it is thick growth this year and you know it's been a lot of rain too i kind of thought i'd have some problems from the moisture but everything's just thriving everything is thriving this year that's why i'm here [Laughter] darryl just gave me a castor bean plant is that what it is the red one justin got it in the ground yesterday so i'm looking forward to that and this is my crop of ground ivy yeah do you want to talk about that i could mention it i'm going to show you okay see okay all right all this stuff is ground ivy okay it sends out runners it spreads everywhere like here i just planted this rose bush and i didn't get around to mulching it with hay which i'm gonna do here shortly but you see what's happening this starts to climb uh it'll it'll come up and and cover over your plants i mean if you don't fight this stuff so you know i've we'd eat it once in here and i don't think i'm going to weed eat again i'm just going to i'm going to put hay over everything here and that'll that'll knock it out so i mean it'll never kill it off in the winter early spring it'll it'll start coming back just tell us how you got it here that's heartbreaking this it didn't live here until i got here the previous farm i lived at for a short period of time down along a river boy when you live along a big river you get all the bad weeds johnson grass and this stuff ground eye and and that place was covered up with it and i still didn't know about it or how bad it could be and and i had a potted plant that i had put in the soil and i put in a pot to bring it over here and i planted it down near the creek and that's where it started and now that this stuff is everywhere if there's sunshine it's growing there all over my whole farm and i do battle with it constantly how many years did it take to just cover the place i don't know five or six maybe it started out one little one little thing yeah and i didn't see it happening so it spread to be something pretty big before i saw whoa what's that and i was like wait i remember that from that other farm it's like uh-oh and it's too late yeah when it first got up here into my gardens i seriously thought oh my gosh i'm gonna have to move i can't garden with this stuff i seriously thought i was gonna have to move but over the years i've sort of figured out the way to work we work together i mean one thing the chickens like to eat it so you know and it's edible and medicinal for humans so you know it has uses and what i've found is like in the fall maybe i harvest stuff and the ground ivy will just take over well okay that's a good ground cover to get me through the winter and what do i do in the spring i go in and weed eat that stuff down and all that nutrients all the nutrients go right back into the soil so you know it's very prolific grower if you're using it in that way for biomass gather it up and put it in a compost pile you'll get a lot of material so you know it's okay in some ways down by the road i have a bamboo grove and it's a grassy area out in front of it used to be grassy now it's all this stuff but that's okay because i go i weed eat it right before the shoots start coming up then i can see the shoots and harvest them and then when that's over the ground ivy just takes over and i don't have to mow anymore i mean you know it gets about that tall and just it looks nice so i use it tell me about the bamboo shoots and when you harvest and what is the season and all of that i mean if you're going to grow bamboo you do need to have some acreage okay you don't want to do it in suburbia right next to your neighbor's fence or anything like that but if you have a situation like that where you can have a bamboo grove and then the area around it you keep mowed okay and that's your harvest zone because the bamboo is always going to be trying to spread in all directions and as tall as as your bamboo variety is that's how far out it'll send roots trying to get out and make a bigger growth well that's good that grassy area is for that purpose and so when the shoots come up and there's the season you know each variety it's generally april may and june and they only try to send shoots up for a month or two and then that's it until next year so as long as you're out there and you do your harvesting well the rest of year you're just mowing a grassy area and you know keeping it looking nice and you got your bamboo right there yeah so all these botanical gardens that have bamboo groves they have employees to do that a few weeks ago this was a beautiful three rows of potatoes all mulched in real nice it was pretty and and don't let it fool you i mean i'm getting gobs of potatoes out here this is probably the best potato harvest i've ever had but look at the ground ivy it's everywhere it's covering up the potato plants you know it's gonna be hard for me me to find where the plants are but but it's okay i mean you can see where i dug some out already over in here even with all of the bug holes your potatoes are good oh yeah i'm getting big ones nice i've i this year i did something different okay all the years i've ever grown potatoes i do the the cutting or chitting i believe you called it you know i used to cut them into little golf ball-sized pieces and and put them out and you grow potatoes and but i was always disappointed with the harvest and and i can't say that the switch of methods this year is the reason it might just be all the rain we've had but this year i saw i think it was mi gardner uh i think i said where i saw it but that he showed you how to on a potato there's a little place where it originally broke off the stem and that's the bottom end of it and at the top end that's where all these sprouts and so he suggested stack them up in a carton or something and have them all upright and in your house you know and let them go ahead and start sending up some little shoots and then plant them in that way with that you know with the shoots up a whole potato no cutting you're planting a hope and i tried to get golf ball size or kind of smallish but i planted some pretty big ones too i have never had i'm getting big potatoes lots of potatoes off each plant it could be the rain could be that method i don't know but great harvest this year here's another castor bean plant now i gave kay the red phase one this is just all green stem and green leaves but this this castor bean gets bigger than any of them and just look at the size of these leaves i mean and it'll get bigger than that even you know and you said the leaves are poisonous the whole the whole plant is poisonous i'm only growing it for ornamental purposes i just it looks tropical i like to give a tropical look to my place so i have banana canna castor bean you know things that you know just sort of look tropical the poison that's in this plant just so you know i mean you don't want pets or kids around this it makes these little beans caster beans and that's actually what people use to make ricin the toxin that you've heard about that's real bad so you know it's a dangerous plant if you've got kids or animals that might eat those those seeds wait am i walking across that's okay that's okay although you see all these little green things almost all that's going to be lamb's quarters oh really and how do you know because i throw lambsquarter seeds all over all my beds every year oh you do okay cool i need to grow that yep here's another banana plant i have up here by the chicken run normally i dig these up and root them and pot them and sell them i didn't do that this year and so what i'm doing is coming up about every two weeks and just taking the machete to them and hacking them back because i just want the three main ones to get all the energy of the roots and grow as big as possible so and then at what point do you does it die off or whatever frost first frost will kill it oh and then what does it look like just it turns brown and and actually i leave it it looks kind of cool hanging there like a big sculpture or something you know i left them up till january february this year scarecrow yeah it's still interesting looking you know you can go out any now it is fun to go out like if you know the frost is coming and so it's still green and juicy to go and the stems may be that big around at the base go out there with your machete and see if you can hack through that in one swoop if if not two will do it but you know it's so juicy uh but but it's it's really thick by the end of the season i'm serious it'll be we have to get our kicks like for farming right yeah one of the fun things you do out here in the country if you can hack through a banana in one sweep one swing some people in the city go to their favorite coffee shop i come out here and hack on banana plants what kind of variety is this because this is the potato leaf yeah this one oh it fell off it was uh something oh wait oh it's brandywine oh okay brandywine is a potato leaf yep okay yep and there's some of the milkweed plants yes these and a lot of these tomatoes up in here are berkeley tie dyes are these the uh uh tennessee native milkweed yup i didn't plant them they just came up oh really oh yeah look at that i just broke that oh that's the risk i i'll show you that's a trick i've learned let me take you over here when you're tucking these into the cage and you do like i frequently do you waited i waited too long like right if i grab this and try to bend it i'll probably break it but if i go down about a foot and pull the whole big branch it just slides right in sure and so that keeps me for now that morning i don't know why i didn't do that on that one i just broke one off but in here this water i'm very excited about this is the huge mullet another mullen yeah my goodness i had no idea it turns into something that big okay go ahead i'm very excited about this particular watermelon right here i have one plant i it's an old variety i used to grow called orange glow oh yeah it really has orange flesh and it's super sweet and my seeds are old and i planted a whole bunch and only one came up and here it is and there's flowers if i can just get one melon i'll be back in fresh seed again yes true and then i got a variety of squash up there there's summer squash and winter squash there's about three or four different kind mixed in there and if we go right up here you can taste some wineberries although the main wineberry planting is down below okay let's go four your favorite shade of red kay that's when they're ripe the deep maroon wine berries so it's got to be more like a garnet that's the color of a garnet there'll be a lot down below too okay here i got a little handful here oh that looks like jewels doesn't it in the sun wow aren't they great you got to see that bed right off the back porch okay and then we'll go to the pond and then down to the garden okay this looks like summer squash zucchini or something uh the leaves are wilted in the sun yeah that's typical right yeah that that they do that's not anything preserve moisture they're just conserving the moisture they have and in the evening when the sun gets lower they just inflate back up and it doesn't it's not a sign of a weakness of the plant or anything no gourds and squash family pumpkins they all do that you'll be very happy to know that i planted gourd seeds today yeah what kind uh it's called speckled snake oh yeah it's making creek seed that's cool okay this this is just off the back porch so mom and i sit out here in the evening and this is this is or an early morning and this is the bed we can see the best this is the only thing i didn't plant here it's a volunteer watermelon somehow got here i guess i'll see what that turns into i got some yellow beets there's more lima beans the busch lima oh the petunias are beautiful yeah they're pretty ones this is a bush bean but these things really produce it's a cherokee is the name of this one so it's like a yellow bean yeah just a yellow regular yellow bean and then the smaller looking plants here this is that dragon tongue that makes a really interesting looking bean yeah you're right but these are even prettier than the rattlesnakes and they're flatter yeah these are flat ones and we got a few flowers and you know we got our little canna show going on up there i think it's one but you know where that came from that property that i looked at for for k hey girls i guess you could look at the chickens since you're up there hey girls these are pretty too petey what do you think is it getting hot okay chickens we could do you show the chicken house and we'll go in and let's do it all right here we are at the chicken house okay let's go see how the girls are doing now i got this little room you can come in you don't have to go in with birds you can come over here and gather eggs just like this whoops i won't disturb her she's in their land right now okay but anyway you can just gather your eggs there but then you can go on into where the chickens are and i have a sand now i need to close this right yes well what about petey peter outside pity back outside go on back he goes what did i do what did i do hey girls how are we doing hi girls they're so pretty girl are you come and see me hi girl she's a good come and see me what's her name this is sweetie she lays the big brown egg and so does big red that one right these are like sisters and these two lay the biggest eggs the great big ones you get ah how old is she now would you say well we got him in this we got him in uh wait a minute she would be march april no april may june so she's 14 months old when did they start laying um probably about november december or something like that you know they were chicks and i got them in april just couple day old chicks you're a good girl yeah would you like to get there you're going to go outside with the girls there you go this is a place where when they whoever had this place before and they made this road for logging purposes i assume they just pushed rocks all all up on this hill they were just scattered you know piled up and stuff and so while i had a skid steer here i used it to move some of these really big rocks and basically almost all the rocks you see here to make these three terraces were laying right here i just had to scrape them off the hill and put them in a nice pattern if you look at the bottom that's one big slab that goes across there and i didn't even know that was there i was just trying to widen the road area a little bit and i discovered that ledge and so i just built right on top of that to take my walls across there worked out pretty nice do you have queen anne's lace all over just yeah it pops up it just pops up wild sure so we'll come down off from the pond area and just come on down to this is my lower level garden down by the creek and this is all fenced in to keep out critters but uh they they haven't been bothering it this year okay look see it on that side where we can see all those bamboo poles sticking up maybe five years ago i had this entire garden done up with those plus i wove them across so 10 feet high it was like a basket going all the way around and no deer went in there when i had it like that but you know what i let it fall apart and the deer still aren't going in there i i don't know why and they're not i mean i have sweet potatoes they love sweet potatoes right all they have to do is jump the fence and go eat them they're not doing it so this used to be a goat shed cannas are beautiful those are cannas right yep oh yellow where are the japanese beetles huh oh here we are they're starting some damage yep they don't hit them too hard this was a goat shed yeah this is old goat shed when i had goats years ago and uh oh you had ghosts and uh this was uh well milk and guts yeah milk oats yeah filled this up with hay this lasted me a long time i keep my hand there tell me how you plant sweet potatoes because i was going to ask you anyway yeah well i just i came out here and i made a mound you know nothing real high you know six eight inches made a mound and i plant them about a foot apart and then and i keep the rows about four feet apart which really you should do more than that probably because in in another month or two you won't see any of this hay it'll all be vines of sweet potatoes they will totally cover this with greenery and beyond but that's all yeah that's what i like about them you know a plant them a mulch them forget it forget it so it's time to harvest them and then this trellis here behind you is just uh different kinds of beans yeah i got a cattle panel i used some bamboo just this one's falling over now just to let the beans have something to climb on wow and that row back there is uh called the hungarian october bean it's really to be used as a dried bean but i'm going to eat some fresh too and then this is two different kinds of pole lima beans i'm trying out for the first time that i picked up at that seed exchange i was telling you about you know the things i like i've seen people they take these cattle panels they're 16 feet long and they just you know put it up in an arch and bend it down uh somebody i can't get a 16. yeah you'll need a flatbed trailer to bring it to you 16-foot flatbed the only way you'll get them onto your property there's your juicem artichoke oh yes which could spread if you yeah i'm hoping it does i hope it fills up a good area here do you eat them uh yeah i haven't yet i'm trying to let it build up but yeah they're great to come out in the wintertime and dig them up just like you can just eat them raw like an apple they're real crunchy really i've never eaten one right yeah they're great this is my main wineberry section it goes all the way around the outside of the fence and then i got uh three trellises running down in between pd likes these two you probably agree with that here pete thing that i say often daryl is that a garden is never finished and it's never done that's right there's always something to do it doesn't matter if i'm inside the house or outside the house and it doesn't matter where i look i see stuff it needs doing you know i probably have this much space to grow and if i had the imagination to develop it all well you can do these in shady you know edge of the woods kind of territory these the when i was a little kid i used to eat these all the time and i would find them growing right where the woods met the field they would they they had a zone and that they loved it they took over we you can take some more cuttings off these and try again oh really it's not too late i don't think so and they're real easy to pick and uh if you pick a whole bunch of them you get kind of sticky they have a little stickiness to them i don't know but it is so sweet they're so delicious wow and you say they do have thorns well yeah they're a little short you know they're not anything that's going to tear you open or anything but if you do get one in you it's hard to get them out because they're so small and it'll bug you for a while is this one ready yeah that could be picked yeah the the deeper the red the better i mean you know let's see if i got one mostly there like that one see it's still got the orange color to it i mean it's edible it's good it's just not gonna be as sweet as those dark red ones i do have one caution because you want to watch what you're doing when you pick these things because stink bugs love these things and i just did it a moment ago i picked one without looking and i got stink bug in there too did you put it in your mouth well i didn't feel the bug but he must have just been on it and i got the taste oh yeah they have a horrible taste you know how they stink that's how they taste okay all right one more thing i was going to mention about the wine berries is once you have them on your property the birds and the animals they're going to eat them and their droppings will end up everywhere you'll find these things coming up in your woods and around your place you know they spread like crazy but in the woods where it's real deep shade they're not going to do much you might get a few berries but if they hit a sunny spot they'll they'll take over there too and that way it's invasive but to me that's it's a good invasive it's food you know i don't mind a food plant um making home in my in my woods you know and i take a walk in the woods and i can eat as i go that's how it used to be in the old days tell me about cannas do they just spread underground is that yeah they keep spreading yeah look look kate this was all i wanted was about a two foot row out from the from the shed all this is spread out i mean i'm gonna dig all this out i wanna i'm gonna go on i'm gonna put it somewhere else because i just wanna go back to my little you know i used to have my walking trail used to be here i had to keep every year i moved my walking trail over because of the canna oh give me a few if you if you want to get rid of oh yeah yeah they're yellow they're nice they're about half half the way there now this is concord grapes so they get about the size of a nickel in diameter so they're you know not quite a dime yet yeah another reason to have a grapevine on your property besides the grapes and it looks beautiful but is you can use the leaves when you make dill pickles you one leaf per jar is part of the recipe to make a dual pickle batch and then here this is more scarlet runner beans more yellow crowder beans and down at the end are the red noodle the chinese yard long bean but see now this is just fenced this high so now that these are doing i'm going to come down here i i'm going to do it i'm going to put some bamboo i'm going to build a little bamboo rack up here for them to climb higher the squirrels have just yeah usually before these pears get pear apples get that size they get eaten by the squirrel so i'm a little encouraged that maybe he's going to leave him alone ever since i built this pond dam it's kind of hemmed in this garden and i think the deer are afraid to come down in here and the squirrel for some reason so it's like ever since i built the day i'm having less critter problems down here okay but see that groundhog is doing a good job it's holding everything in place that's true and it looks nice instead of a big brown stripe across there i got a green stripe across there it looks looks okay look here you see squirrel now you know when you come here to see me i usually try to send you home with a plant or at least seeds or something and this is a weeping willow tree but it's not just any weeping willow tree this is a special one back when kaye was looking for her property last summer denise and i did a lot of driving around looking at properties and showing her pictures and talking to her on the phone about it well one place i went to had an awesome hand dug well i was so impressed with that thing that remember that place on the corner of that property was a dying an old dying weeping willow tree but it had one branch that had some good greenery on and i took a clipping or two off and i rooted them and that's from that property you thank you yeah you know i told mom did you ever see where people they'll take like a a wheelbarrow and it's tilted over in their front yard they look like soil spilling out i said this would be the perfect plant to do because it would spill out and go across the ground and everything you [Music] know [Music] [Music] i mean you've been gardening for decades what would you advise somebody who's just starting who's just starting uh start small and start with things that people tell you are easy to grow so you experience some success like potatoes potatoes is a good one because you can start with just a grassy yard and get all that tilled up and put potatoes in and then mulch them and you'll have a harvest yeah you know so but then you know always expand every year make garden a little bigger grow a plant you never grew before you know try different things make some trellises do some things you know and just keep expanding save heirloom seeds yeah and learn how to save seeds for sure you know if you buy heirloom type seeds to start with then you'll never have to buy them again if you if you keep them up yourself i have a lot of things like that so what do you like best about gardening it never ends uh it's just there all the time you know if i look out the window it doesn't matter what time of year it could be snow on the ground and there's garden related things i could or should be doing out there or in here you know so but if it's good weather there's always a zillion things to do you're never you're never gonna never be bored if you're a gardener so here we are in daryl's bamboo forest and i want you to be sure and go back and watch the videos we've done here before because he went into a lot of detail about the varieties and all the collection and all sorts of information but right now daryl wants to address something that people are concerned about in terms of bamboo which is a lot of people feel like it's invasive right so you take it away yeah well and it is an invasive plant and what they mean when they say invasive is it spreads quickly and can take over a large area and if it's a plant that we like like my wineberries certainly call wineberries invasive but i like that because i like wineberries and i like bamboo and so you know not just for the shoots to eat but for the using the canes for different purposes in the garden around the house for crafts for different things and just for the beauty of it it's from the house watching it sway in the breeze there's so many things i love about the bamboo and the thing i hear the most from people is well you shouldn't be bringing a foreign meaning from another country uh you know species of plant and bringing it here to our pristine ecosystem that you're going to mess up by bringing this in well that's what i want to address i'm going to tell you just a quick little story when i was a little kid you know i was in grade school or whatever and i read about they they were describing america back in the 1700s 1800s you know when the settlers were first coming and making their inroads into the interior they said in those days a squirrel could run or travel from the atlantic ocean all the way to the mississippi river without ever touching the ground and as a child i just imagined this gigantic forest with big trees and spread out and the squirrels running across the branches in ancient forest and i thought wow that's what it was like but i was wrong america wasn't like that at all fifty percent of what that squirrel was going to be traveling on was bamboo okay not this kind of bamboo not big nice bamboo like this these are from china and japan different places america's bamboo is kind of skinny and gets you know 12 or 15 feet tall and it's not a good quality wood if you use it out in the garden it doesn't last but a year and so you know but we had bamboo they had these things called cane breaks that were vast areas usually down along river bottoms and things like that but they they covered such vast areas that a lot of people if you go in there you get lost and you lose your direction and there's nothing you know it's a scary place to be you know half of eastern united states was bamboo okay now why not why be so afraid of it i mean yeah we could go back and just try to have cane breaks of the old thing we had but why not switch to something more useful japan china a lot of countries that have multiple species like this and they make so much use of it we could be doing that too and when it gets into a forest it doesn't just totally take over and wipe out all the trees if it's a tall trees i mean bamboo has trouble growing in the shade so you know in a sunny area it's going to move into it but once it gets to the woods yeah you might see one here or one there so i don't think it's such a big worry what are we so afraid of you know let's turn it into a paradise yeah you know i'm so fortunate to be able to live close to these guys and denise and we just had an incredible lunch daryl prepared chicken stir fry with garden vegetables everything was from his garden from the bamboo shoots which he dries and he collects in the spring and dries and reconstitutes rehydrates and to squash and potatoes and carrots and everything was from his garden kale broccoli it was great onions so thank you so much for spending this time with us please subscribe to my channel and look forward to many more interesting and educational videos to come thanks so much thanks darrell if you enjoyed this video please watch these and don't forget to follow me on instagram facebook and twitter and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Kaye Kittrell Late Bloomer

Views: 159,964

Keywords: Organic, Grow Your Own Food, Urban Farming, Urban Gardening, Late Bloomer, Late Bloomer Show, Kaye Kittrell, Grow Your Own Vegetables, Sustainability, Green, Flowers, Tennessee, Tennessee homestead, homesteading, homesteader, gardener, how to garden, gardening in Tennessee, edible tropical terrace garden, garden tour, Darrell Luck, lucky garden, growing bamboo, learn about growing bamboo

Id: Q_YIeNTQ26c

Length: 50min 44sec (3044 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021