successful gardener

Turning a New Leaf

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I’ve been “up on the mountain”, as the locals refer to the part of Patrick County, VA, where my mother lives, giving thanks for the gifts in our lives, and helping Ma with some winter lawn and garden chores. One of those tasks is collecting fallen leaves and twigs for compost and mulch.

Leaves are a great source of organic matter and nutrients. According to Texas A & M University, leaves contain 50 to 80 percent of the nutrients a plant extracts from the soil and air during the season. That’s a lot of free fertilizer! In addition, the leaves will provide a lot of food for bacteria, fungi, earthworms and all the other critters that live in the soil. This creates a healthy soil in which your plants will thrive.

Photo courtesy Jeff Rieves

Photo courtesy Jeff Rieves

One of the simplest ways to utilize the leaves that fall in your yard is to use them where they fall. Leaves make great mulch for all kinds of plants. One look at a forest floor will tell you that. If the volume of leaves that fall is too great for the area, or if they might smother the plants if left untended, you could rake the leaves into shallow windrows and mow them, blowing them back into the bed or into a pile for later use. Chopping them like this can reduce the volume by 50% or more. A bagger would be handy to collect the shredded leaves for use in other areas. That’s what we’ve done for the last couple of years “on the mountain” with some success, depending on the weather and the mower we have available. Wet weather slows things down, because the leaves tend to stick together and bog down the mower. A dry fall results in a dusty chore, but does make it easier to collect your leaves.

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Another way to use your leaves is in the compost pile. Leaves are a great source of nutrients for the decomposers that create compost for your garden. Shredding them is not necessary, but will reduce the volume and speed up the creating of your homegrown fertilizer. A simple wire cage at least 3 feet high and as wide as you can handle will contain the leaves and keep them from blowing around your yard all winter. Adding a little “green” (nitrogen bearing material) will heat the pile up, as the critters in your pile do their best to provide you with a great soil building product.

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You can build a garden “from the ground up” by using an old method that has become new again. “Lasagna Gardening” is a method that uses leaves that are simply piled on the ground and left to rot. This is technically called sheet composting, but it allows you to build your beds by placing the leaves wherever you need or want a new flower/vegetable bed. Many gardeners use newspapers or cardboard to smother any weeds that might sprout through the leaf bed. Leave the organic material in place over a period of time (usually 3-6 months) and the newspaper/cardboard/leaf mixture will have decomposed enough to plant into. If you are in a hurry, you can create pockets of soil in the mix and plant directly into that.

So this fall, turn over a new leaf and keep all your leaves instead of bagging them up for curb collection. You (and your plants) will be glad you did!

The Successful Gardener Says: Go Forth and Multiply

The process is simple enough: Dig a clump of plants, then pull, cut or break the sections apart into the size you want, then replant.

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This Old Testament admonition to the children of Israel is a call to action for gardeners in the Fall. While more gardeners are always welcome, in this instance, we are multiplying the plants in our garden. Many perennial plants can be divided into several new clumps of plants. “Wait a minute”, I can hear you say, “you said we were to go forth and multiply. Now you’re saying we have to divide! I know there’s new math, but I’m pretty sure multiplication and division are two different functions.” In math, that is true. But this is a post about gardening, so I can use the terms literally, not arithmetically.

Seriously, Fall is a great time to divide perennial plants of all kinds. The process is simple enough. Dig a clump of plants, making sure you have adequate root system in the clump. Then pull, cut or break the sections apart into the size you want to plant. This could be a simple division into two pieces, or multiple divisions into individual plantlets. The first divisions can be quite hard, especially if you’ve let the plant increase for several years without division. Some plants are naturally difficult to divide, like Siberian Iris. I’ve had to use a pick and an axe to dig and divide them. But as you loosen the root ball (which is rarely ball-shaped, BTW), the individual plantlets will loosen their grip, and it gets easier.

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Plants will bloom more profusely when divided. Irises of all kinds give you more blooms after division.

Why do we divide plants, if it’s so much work? There are “multiple” reasons, of course. First, we all want more plants, and why not create our own? For some plants, division is the preferred method of propagation. If we want a specific hosta cultivar, that’s how we get one. Many plants grow better over time if they are divided occasionally. Shasta daisy, one of the premiere plants in The Living Garden, will decline over the seasons if not multiplied ever few years. Plants will bloom more profusely when divided. Irises of all kinds give you more blooms after division. And if you have a very vigorous plant, division is an easy way to keep it in bounds.

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I’ve written earlier about multiplier and walking onions. If you haven’t harvested, divided, eaten (some of them, anyway), and replanted some of these perennial vegetables, it’s time! Asparagus, however, will be much easier to divide once all of the foliage has died back.

You can wait a bit on other plants, too. Hostas, irises, and daylilies are a bit easier to divide once the foliage has gone dormant. You can, of course, go ahead and divide them now, if you want, but it will put more stress on the plant.

One more tip for you. Make sure that you get roots and crown with each division. If you can get some “eyes” or buds for stem growth the following season, though these aren’t always visible. In making sure you get all parts of a plant, you will have a much better chance of success in your planting.

Get out there and divide some of your plants in order to multiply the opportunities to enjoy your garden. It’s that enjoyment that makes you a Successful Gardener!!!

Article and photos by Jeff Rieves

Eat, Play, Love*: Edible Landscapes

Fruit trees provide shade, their flowers attract pollinators, and the fruit fills our bellies.

Fruit trees provide shade, their flowers attract pollinators, and the fruit fills our bellies.

Everybody loves to spend time outdoors, especially in a beautifully landscaped yard. We tend to segregate our plantings, though. We plant an herb garden here, a vegetable garden there, a perennial flower border somewhere else, but there are lots of ways to include more food plants into all of our landscape, a technique called edible landscaping. Many of our food plants give us shade, seasonal interest, flowers, and a lot more. As an example, here’s my list for “The Top 10 Plants For Edible Landscaping”. You’ll notice that not all of these plants actually provide food. However, they do make it easier for you to grow more food with less fertilizer and pesticides. So, here’s the list.

  1. Pecan trees - shade, food.

  2. Apple/pear trees – shade, flowers, food.

  3. Rabbit eye Blueberries – seasonal color, food.

  4. Muscadine grapes – shade, screening, fall color, food.

  5. Strawberries (perennial matted-row culture) – groundcover, food.

  6. Fig trees – structure, winter interest, food.

  7. Living Garden plants:

    Aromatic herbs – beneficials, foundation planting (some), seasonal interest, food.

    Daisy flowered plants – beneficials, aroma, flowers, beds/borders.

    Umbrella-flowered plants – beneficials, aroma, flowers, beds/borders, food (some).

    Nectar plants – beneficials, aroma, flowers, beds/borders.

    “Beetle banks” ornamental grasses – beneficials, seasonal interest, beds/borders.

  8. Perennial vegetables:

    Asparagus

    Perennial onions

  9. Pole beans – food, seasonal screening, soil improvement, some color.

  10. Clover/buckwheat/vetch & other covers – soil building, ground covers, flowers, seasonal interest.

Honorable mention:

Blackberries – food, seasonal interest, screening, security.

Malabar spinach – seasonal interest, color, screening, food.

Persimmon trees – seasonal color, understory, food.

Pomegranate trees – seasonal color, understory, food.

Sunchokes (a perennial sunflower) - flowers, beds/borders, beneficials, seasonal screens, food.


Cover crops feed the soil, attract beneficial insects, and look pretty, too!

Cover crops feed the soil, attract beneficial insects, and look pretty, too!

If you want to know more about these great plants, come join me for the next Successful Gardener class at Renfrow Farm.

Edible Landscapes, Tuesday, October 9, 6:30-8:30 PM

Renfrow Farm, 409 W Charles Street, Matthews, NC

We tend to look at our food crops through a single purpose lens. How much food will this plant yield? But many of our fruits and vegetables look great in the garden! Come learn how to add these plants to our landscapes. We’ll feed our souls beautiful gardens while we feed our bodies good food. Details and registration here.

Remember to enjoy your garden, because THAT’S what makes you a Successful Gardener!!!

Jeff Rieves, Matthews' Own Successful Gardener

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Jeff Rieves * Threefold Company * www.jeffrieves.com * jeff@jeffrieves.com

If you've been to Renfrow's in the spring and had a tough question, they may have directed you to a bearded man in a tie-dye shirt lingering around the seeds. That's Jeff Rieves and he's the subject of our ‪Local Business Interview this week.

Jeff recently moved to Matthews, and I, for one, am excited to have such a valuable resource just up the road on John Street! Don't miss his upcoming classes at Renfrow Farm, an urban farm located on John Street. 

Jeff Rieves has been a gardener his entire life, though in his younger days, often a reluctant one. Jeff brings years of experience to any class he teaches. Growing up on his grandparents’ farm, gardens, orchards, chickens, and milk cows were simply a part of life for him. After a few years in other endeavors, he planted his hands in the soil of Chatham County, NC. Jeff spent the next 20 years as managing partner of Southernwood Farm & Nursery, growing vegetables, cut flowers, plants, and children.

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Later he served as an original instructor of Central Carolina Community College’s Sustainable Farming Program, was the Chatham County Director of the Small Business Assistance Center, an agent with the NC Cooperative Extension Service, and helped create The Teaching Garden, an outdoor classroom and demonstration garden, to further his concept of SIMPLE sustainable horticulture.

Since 2013, Jeff has worked as an independent educator, consultant, and agripreneur, continuing his work to rebuild the Local Food culture. He currently teaches at Renfrow Farm in Matthews, and other venues in Virginia and North Carolina.

Currently, Jeff travels the southeast teaching his philosophy of simple, sustainable horticulture. He consults with individuals and businesses, concentrating on helping small farms and food businesses.

What brought you to establish a business in Matthews? David Blackley, the owner of Renfrow Hardware, has been a supporter of my work since my days in Extension. When I went out on my own, David was one of my first clients. When he offered the chance to hold classes at the Hardware store and at the Farm, I knew it would work well. It has worked so well, in fact, that I have moved my base of operations to Matthews.

As a gardener myself, I feel like we have the perfect climate to grow a large variety of things. What’s your favorite edible to grow? What’s a favorite ornamental that thrives here? In NC, You can have something in bloom or producing food almost all year long. I like growing a lot of things, but the most productive thing for me lately has been Irish potatoes, particularly the white Kennebec. But I did have a single “California Wonder” green pepper that lasted from March to November, out-producing all the rest of my peppers combined. As for ornamentals, the crape myrtle is hard to beat, especially since the US Arboretum has introduced so many new varieties. It loves the heat of summer and blooms a long time.

What does the phrase “Preserve Matthews” mean to you? Retaining the quality of small-town livability that makes a place so vital. Right now downtown, we have a mix of new and old that is easy to walk to, provides quality products and services, and is not dominated by big box stores. On the other hand, if chain and discount stores are your thing, they are just a short drive away.

Rieves is set up at Renfrow Farms to teach a class on home composting. Photo by Charles Lybrand.

Rieves is set up at Renfrow Farms to teach a class on home composting. Photo by Charles Lybrand.

What’s another business in Matthews you love to support? Renfrow's, obviously. The selection of seeds, supplies, and service is the best in the Charlotte area. I also like Brakeman’s, the new coffee shop. Mo’s Barbeque is a great place to eat. And while it isn’t a business in the strict sense, Matthews Library is just fantastic.

Do you have any promos or specials you'd like to offer our community members? One of my most popular services is the home garden and landscape consultation. I’ve designed and installed all kinds of landscapes, from formal herb gardens to Permaculture homesteads. In an hour visit to your home, I can solve problems in the landscape, identify those “mystery” plants we all have, show you some opportunities to improve your gardens and help you enjoy your garden even more! You get one hour of access to 30 years of experience and knowledge for $100. Readers interested in a home garden or landscape consultation gets a 10% discount, just mention this interview.


This interview was originally posted on Preserve Matthews' Facebook page.