heerful music)
Hello, and welcome to Lifestyle Gardening.
I'm Kim Todd and we're so glad
you could join us for another show.
We've got another great program ready for you,
including a look at a commercial grower of hops
here in Nebraska
and an interview with a local craft brewer.
We'll also be helping new gardeners
get a new garden space going
with tips on removing turf.
And our landscape lesson this week
is what to do with pine needles.
To get started,
let's talk about an exciting new crop here in Nebraska,
hops.
We took our cameras out to Plattsmouth,
to the Nebraska Hop Yards,
where we heard about the challenges of growing
hops in our state.
- One of the reasons why we looked at getting into hops
was because of what was happening
with commodity in Nebraska today.
My husband's a third generation
row crop farmer
and we started to look at different things
that we could grow,
as opposed to just corn and beans.
Part of our market research
showed that craft brewing--
With the craze that was going on with craft brewing,
the brewers needed to have hops to support that,
so they also wanted to have local ingredients.
So in addition to the trade shows
and conferences that we went to,
we also did some marketing analysis
to support the efforts that we were putting into place.
They're saying that craft brewing
continues to grow in the numbers.
The regular beer that we're all used to drinking
when we were growing up
like Budweiser, and Millers, and Coors,
the younger generation
doesn't have the allegiance to those beers
that we did.
They wanna see where their ingredients come from,
they wanna be able to create new recipes,
they wanna be able to be a part of what is going on
with the brewing.
We started last year with 2.5 acres
and 23 varieties,
to see what would grow well in the state.
What's disease resistant, pest resistant,
and drought resistant.
We're also very interested in expanding
the growth throughout the state of Nebraska
and different regions that we have.
We believe that hops will grow really well
in the Panhandle area,
because they don't have the humidity that we have.
But we also found great results
with some of the varieties
here in the eastern part of the state.
The process for harvesting
is that we actually take some of our wet hops
and through the Water Sciences Department,
we've been working with Dan Snow.
They're able to take the wet hops
and give us feedback
on the alphas and the betas.
The alphas and the betas are the most
important part of the hop.
And that's what the brewers use
to identify the IBUs
for brewing in their recipes.
Then we would go ahead and cut the binds.
We'd get them run through the harvester.
There's a 7 to 10 day window,
when those hops are optimal
for their alphas and betas.
Once we know that we've in that window,
we will go ahead and get our schedule together.
We start early in the morning,
because once the hops are cut,
there's a short amount of time.
They're 80% water
and they start to oxidize very fast.
So you really have to have your team ready,
you've gotta have your harvesting equipment ready,
and you also have to have your drying equipment ready.
But the equipment that you'll see today
would be used for a small grower.
The Wolf 170 can support 15 acres in a harvest season.
And then we are also working on a prototype dryer
that we have with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
that has an academic research and development grant
tied to it.
And we are using the prototype this harvest
and then we're hoping to commercialize
that piece of equipment next year.
One of the biggest challenges
that we've found with growing hops
from a small scale is the equipment barrier.
There's not a lot of equipment for small harvesters
or small dryers
and that's one of the reasons
why we're partnering with the university
on trying to see if we can
help support new growers with smaller equipment.
Here at the Hop Yard,
we have 23 varieties that we've put in
that are public.
And then we also have three wild hop varieties
that we have found here in the state of Nebraska.
The challenge with having different varieties
is they all come to harvest at different times.
So to try to coordinate all those varieties
can be somewhat challenging.
But the reason why we have all the varieties
is because we wanted to see
what grows well in the state,
what's disease resistant, pest resistant,
and drought resistant.
And what the Nebraska brewers have told us is,
don't tell us what you can grow,
tell us what grows well here in the state,
because if you can grow it well here,
we'll adapt our recipes or come up with recipes
that fit the varieties that you're able to grow.
- With the recent explosion of craft brewers nationwide,
it makes sense for an agricultural state
like Nebraska to get into the game.
Nebraska Extension
is supporting this effort
with research projects of our own,
which you might've seen this summer on Backyard Farmer.
We'll be sure to keep you up to date on growing hops
both commercially and in your own backyard.
This season, we're trying to encourage new gardeners
with basic tips on getting started.
Last week, we talked about soil
and getting it ready to install a garden.
If you have is turf in your backyard
and you need a place to get growing,
you'll first need to get rid of that turf.
That's the topic of the week on Go! Gardening.
As part of our series for beginning gardeners,
we're going to talk about what happens
if you want go garden
and you're dealing with existing turf
or what passes as turf.
A couple of different situations here,
one of them being an old bunched grass,
probably a fescue,
filled with both annual and perennial weeds.
Dandelions and bindweed in particular.
And we're going to use a different method
of getting rid of that turf
than we will on a really beautifully established lawn.
We talk about essentially four or five different methods
of getting rid of the turf.
You can dig it or till it.
You can use glyphosate or another herbicide
if you are into using chemicals to get rid of it.
You can solarize or you can smother.
In the situation where you have perennial weeds
or a lot of annual weeds,
one of the things that has happened
is there is a seed bank
that has likely been built up in the soil.
So if you think about that,
if you kill and till,
whether you are killing with glyphosate first
or you are tilling after you kill with glyphosate,
in either way, if you are disturbing that soil,
you're bringing that seed bank up.
And you're likely going to be fighting those weeds,
perennial and annual,
for quite a while.
So in this particular instance
where we do have the combination of broadleaf weeds
and an old turf,
we're going to recommend a couple of different options.
One of them is solarization
and solarization is best done
with see-through plastic
So think about what happens there.
The see-through plastic allows the rays of the sun
to heat up and kill that particular turf.
Now, you also think about what happens
if we use dark plastic or something like a Slip 'N Slide.
In the heat of the summer,
Slip 'N Slide on your lawn
regardless of what its composition is,
will really cause great damage.
So you can do that as well.
It's not as recommended as highly.
The other is to actually smother.
And smothering the turf is exactly what it sounds like.
To smother the turf,
we use newspaper,
we use something biodegradable like cardboard,
that will actually literally cut out the light
from reaching that turf.
If you want to convert some well-managed turf
that's relatively weed free
into your place-to-go garden,
you have some other options.
You can certainly still solarize
or smother that turf,
but you can also strip it.
You can use a chemical to begin with
if you wanna kill the turf.
If you don't wanna do that,
use something like a sod stripper
and that's going to be easiest.
A sod cutter will allow you
to get that turf off the soil surface mechanically.
Or if it's a small space or you want the exercise,
go ahead and use a flat bladed spade.
You cut the turf into some sections that are manageable,
you slip the blade under the soil,
under the surface of the crown of the turf,
and then you simply peel that turf back.
And then once you've got that done,
you can go ahead and dig,
which is really not something you wanna do with
a turf that has a big seed bank in it.
What you do then is you either dig by hand
and chunk that soil up very, very roughly
and allow the freeze-thaw action to do its thing.
You can use a tiller,
but again, ideally you want big pieces,
as opposed to a very fine surface.
In the spring of the year,
if you've stripped the turf
either mechanically or by hand,
you may have some of the rhizomatous little pieces
of that turf grass come back up into your garden.
Pretty simple to get rid of those.
Again, you can either till
or you can pull by hand.
Or if you're going to mulch your garden,
go ahead and mulch right over the top and smother them.
A weed and turf free area means a lot less work weeding
and keeping those unwanted grasses
from choking out your vegetable or flowerbeds.
Of course, these issues are going to be reoccurring
throughout the course of your garden adventures,
but it's always best to start with a clean slate.
Growing things under pine trees
can really be frustrating.
The cones and needles make a natural mulch
that pretty much blocks out everything.
Don't fret, though.
You can use those needles and cones
for mulch in other places
or you can put them in the compost bin.
And that's the topic of this week's Landscape Lesson.
We get a lot of questions during Backyard Farmer
about what to mulch with
when we're mulching our landscape.
We also get questions about pine needles in particular
and all of that stuff that our good ol' pine trees drop.
The cones, the immature cones, some little branches,
and certainly the needle.
This is a great example of what happens as pines age.
These are old Scots pines.
And of course, they started life as a little transplant,
became a Christmas tree, if you will,
and then over time, they have lost their lower branches.
They still drop needles however
and a lot of cones.
And as you can see,
they have created for themselves,
under their own canopy,
a beautiful pine cone and pine needle mulch.
The upside of that is you don't have to use wood chips,
the ground is covered with the mulch,
a lot of weed suppression happens,
and it's certainly easy in a condition like this
to be able to see the weeds that do pop up
and then take care of them
either by pulling by hand or hoeing.
Or if they're particularly persistent
and you have to use a chemical,
you certainly are not having to spray
or figure out what is a weed and what is not.
The downside of using pine needles and cones
as a mulch can be that
this is where some of the spores
of those nasty diseases of pines
can overwinter.
So if you are in a situation
where you have poor air movement,
you know you've had some of the pine diseases,
you probably are not going to want to use the pine needles
and the cones as a mulch.
In that case, you can certainly rake them up.
Put them in the compost pile,
but know that it's going to take them
quite a while to deteriorate.
You can buy pine needles
in bags or in bulk
not very often and not in very many locations
in this part of the country,
because it's not really a go-to mulch.
It does become something, however,
that is great if you do have it occurring naturally.
You also need to know, though,
that of course every single year,
those needles and those cones
are going to drop,
recharge the mulch that is underneath.
So if you have mulched with wood
or you've mulched with kind of a fine shredded material,
you are going to end up with pine needles
dropping every single year into the other mulch.
If it were me and these were mine,
I would go ahead and use the pine needles that are here.
This is a spot where we have good air circulation
and air movement.
So the likelihood of these pines being diseased
and having that inoculum in the needles and the cones
is pretty unlikely.
Make sure you pay attention to the health of the trees
to determine if you're just going to let
those cones and needles lie where they fall.
And again, they can be used
as an ingredient in your compost,
it just might take a little bit longer
for those cones to break down.
You know, we've taken an in-depth look
at hops last season on Backyard Farmer
and we heard about a commercial grower
here in Nebraska earlier in the program.
Right now, we're going to have a special treat for you
as we talk to a local craft brewer for Zipline Beer.
Marcus Powers is our guest
and we asked him,
"What about Nebraska hops?"
You know, there has been so much interest in craft beers
and in local foods.
We thought it'd be really fun,
especially since the university is involved in hops,
to hop right over to one of our local breweries
and talk to co-founder Marcus Powers
about just exactly what does it take
to be a craft brewery
and try to figure out how to use some local products.
So Marcus, a local brewery,
local products, local ingredients.
How exactly did you get started doing this?
- So when we started, it was really important
to us to use a lot of local ingredients in our beer
and one of the biggest surprises to us was the challenge
in finding quality local ingredients
that would work for beer.
One of the first things we thought about was grain.
And grain is really difficult because it has to be molted
and molting facilities don't exist in Nebraska.
And there's a lot of, I guess,
different types of barley, and wheat, and oats,
and they have different growing regions,
and it was something we weren't experts in,
but kind of leaned on the local
agricultural sector to bring those ingredients to us.
So one of the first things we found
was that we could have
rolled wheat and rolled oats
and rolled rye,
just like you can buy in the grocery store in little packs.
We could buy them in bulk
from a business in Marquette, Nebraska.
And so that was our first forward into local ingredients.
And then we started looking at the hop market
and there were some new hop growers,
but a lot of them were hobbyists
and they didn't know exactly
what to do in terms of some of the minute perfections
we need in brewing,
to dry the hops at a specific level,
to give us the testing,
to know what the oil levels are that we needed.
Just the stuff that a hobbyist
doesn't really have the funds to get into.
And then it goes all the way down to packaging 'em
and oxygen-free containers.
So hops was a little difficult for us
to find locally at a quality.
We needed to sell products
to people that we felt like were of a high quality also.
- Marcus, talk about the backyard.
I mean, Backyard Farmer and Lifestyle Gardening
is about people in their own backyards.
What is your connection to craft beer in your own backyard?
- I started in my garage like a lot of brewers.
And I kinda got a little crazy
and built a bigger and bigger system
that was taking up more and more room
in our, well,
both in our basement and our garage.
And I decided I kinda wanted to figure out
how to grow some of my own ingredients.
So of course I ran a couple ropes
up the side of our house and planted some hops.
I planted a bunch of different raspberries
and cherry bushes.
There's some weird styles of beer
that actually don't use hops.
It's an old style called gruit.
So I kinda got into this whole like--
I wanna try to make as many ingredients
happen in my backyard for my beer
to save money
and also just because it's fun
to be able to grow something
and then use it in that way.
I figured out pretty that I'm not a very good hop grower.
And so, I never had a lot of success with my own hops,
so I've been hoping that we can find somebody
who knows more about that in Nebraska than I do.
- One of the things about the tasting room
is you don't serve food
and yet you have this intriguing relationship
between the tasting room
and your nextdoor neighbor.
Talk a little bit about that.
- So, we're sitting in our second location
and it's called the Beer Hall appropriately.
We have these long German style tables
to bring people together.
And one thing we've really never got into
was food, as you mentioned,
just because food's not our expertise.
We know how to make beer
and run a brewery,
but not on terms of creating our own food
and plates and the service that goes with that.
So we were really luck out here.
Art & Soul is our neighbor
and we really developed a relationship
where we help create a small menu of items
that kind of fit with the beer mentality.
It's fun to be able to have an opportunity
to work with food
and to be able to get people using local products involved,
besides beer, into our business,
and whether that's through the pass-through window
or whether we have a popup catering outfit
come in and use some local ingredients,
those are all great options for us.
- So on that note, we wanna say thank you
for letting us do this
and we really do look forward
to local brews
made with some local products potentially.
- [Marcus] Thank you.
- Growing hops in Nebraska has really just
taken off in the last few years.
Nebraska Extension is researching the viability of growing
our own hops varieties
and as Marcus says,
if the quality is there,
you could be enjoying your own Nebraska grown hops
in a frosty mug sometime soon.
Alrighty, let's take a few minutes now
to answer our viewer email.
We'd love to hear from you
and perhaps you can share a picture or two with us
by sending an email to byf@unl.edu,
attached please, as a JPEG.
We had a question from the Council Bluffs area
about Endless Summer hydrangeas.
We get this one a lot on the regular show.
Chances are, we're going to keep getting
this question about hydrangeas
as long as they are on the market.
We have kind of a pet name for them on occasion
and that would be rather than Endless Summer,
which was the way it was released originally
as a hydrangea that blooms beautifully blue
and/or pink, depending on the pH of your soil,
for the entire season.
Instead, we see it being an endless bummer,
meaning that it may bloom early,
may not bloom again at all,
may bloom with much smaller flowers
in subsequent years.
And that's actually what has happened with this viewer.
Beautiful foliage,
a little bit of flowering now
in the second, third, fourth, fifth years,
but not much.
Realistically, what has happened,
that hydrangea was bred for flower buds
on both new wood, current wood, and older wood.
So if the plant died to the ground
as big leaf hydrangeas do in this particular climate,
you would still get flowering
on that newer buds
that would form later in the season.
Unfortunately, these hydrangeas really need
a lower pH, especially if they're going to stay blue.
Most importantly, they're heavy feeders
and they also need a lot of moisture.
One of the recommendations that we might make
is if you really want to try to encourage
those great big flowers.
Instead of trying to grow them in beds in the landscape,
put them in containers.
We have a tendency as human beings
to pay a little bit more attention
to what is in a pot on the patio,
rather than what is out in the back 40.
We had this particular viewer send us
a very strange picture of carrots.
She is kind of from the northeast corner of the state
and she has carrots that really
don't look very edible at all.
They have split open.
She talked about in her question,
which we really appreciate,
she talked about the growing environment.
First off, she has grown carrots in this location before.
Her soil sounds like it's maybe a little bit heavy.
She also is--
She's mulching with a wood pellet
that has a mineral additive to it.
It's kind of the standard bedding material.
She's also using chicken poop.
And she did not say anything about whether
that is composted chicken manure,
but if it is not,
we never recommend using fresh manure in a garden.
While composted manure of any sort,
especially if it's weed free,
is usually a great idea.
But the fresh stuff can burn,
it can release too much of the wrong nutrients for the crop.
Typically when carrots splits like this,
it is a matter of really inconsistent watering.
And when they really split open
and they look kind of fleshy or gooey,
what's likely to have happened
is watering was inconsistent during drought.
No water applied at all
and then all of a sudden,
a lot of water.
So those cells actually expand,
grow a little bit too quickly.
Essentially the skin cracks or breaks
and you've got sort of this cracked carrot showing up.
So first of, you wanna make sure
you till quite deeply for the carrots
in enriched soil, a well-drained soil.
Make sure that you are not putting down too much
fertilizer at any one time.
Nitrogen, NPK, a balanced fertilizer will work really well.
But be consistent in your watering practices with carrots.
We have one more story to tell you this afternoon
and it focuses on an easy way to solve erosion
as well as planting native ornamentals.
Kay Kottas from Prairie Legacy
is here to tell us all about ornamental plant mats.
- So what we've done is,
we have pre-planted
local ecotype vegetation
into coir matting.
And then we grow this coir matting
for a number of months,
until the roots become very well established.
Then that allows us to roll this matting material
similar to what you would a sod roll.
We bring that to a site
and then we install that.
What that helps us do then
is to get this instant vegetation,
so that we can outcompete weeds.
And we don't have to worry
about waiting for seeds to germinate,
we don't have to worry about waiting for those seeds
to actually go through
some cold stratification process
necessary to break dormancy.
We've already done that before we've sown the seed.
And so, we get this very instant garden.
So this sort of thing
is very beneficial if you,
for instance, wanna establish a pollinator garden,
we have what we call the pollinator patch.
If you don't know what species are true natives
and you don't what species are weeds, for instance,
you don't have to worry about that with this prairie patch.
We can just put this mat out
and you know that every plant in there
is a plant that you want to establish.
And because they already have roots,
they establish very quickly.
So why is that better than just buying a plant
and putting that in?
Well, you get more plants per square foot in this mat
than you would get if you wanted to put plants out.
And in addition to that,
you don't have to worry about mulching around it
or somehow keeping those weeds down
and trying to figure out which plants you wanna keep
and which you don't.
Okay, so the mats we're about to put down
have a couple of different types of species.
We have brought our upland mats,
which we call the Prairie Patch.
And we have also brought our mesic mat.
And so we have a little bit different species
mixed in each based on the conditions of the soil
that they're gonna be placed in.
So in the mesic mat,
we have species such as monkey flower,
which has a very good root system.
So we have that nice rhizomatous root system
that will really establish quickly
and grab the soil.
We also have some marsh fern.
And these are both native species.
They're a local ecotype.
In addition to that,
we have some liatris pycnostachya,
or some tall gayfeather.
And all of these are well established
for mesic areas.
So once we get this matting material placed,
we'll wanna water it in very good,
so that those roots will head for the soil.
After that, though,
this already comes in a mat.
It's got this coir material around it.
So it really acts very much like a mulch,
so we don't need to mulch it,
because it's already got this matting material around it
that's holding the moisture in the soil,
it's keeping the roots protected.
In other instances,
you might want to put some matting material out
to keep water from eroding along a stream bank
or down in a water garden.
And in order to do that,
you've got to either sow the seeds out
and then wait a year for those seeds to get the proper
climate conditions to stratify and then germinate,
or you can take something that's pre-vegetated,
such as this and roll it out.
And it's going to be a little bit cheaper
than putting plants out.
This isn't really a substitute for seeding
and putting out matting material,
this is a substitute for planting
already established plants
and trying to get something that looks good
weed free in a short amount of time.
- Ornamental mats like these
are really a great way to get something started quickly,
which could benefit gardeners old and new alike.
These plants have proven to be hardy for our area,
so your chances at success are pretty good.
Thank you so much for joining us again
for Lifestyle Gardening.
Next time, we'll be taking a look at making compost
and we'll hear more about hops breeding
here in the state.
We'll also see what's being done about cedar trees
invading our prairies.
Don't forget to check us out on Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter.
So good afternoon, good gardening,
thanks for watching,
and we'll see you all next time on Lifestyle Gardening.
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