Containers In This landscapes
Victoria, the homeowner, loves her tiny house and landscaping, as do her neighbors. And, one of their most
frequent comments are in regards to the containers. Michael Carr, of Michael Carr Design, discusses what people
are looking for in pottery today, as well as the design, beauty and durability of the CONTAINERS IN THIS
LANDSCAPE. Eric welcomes Michael, welcome back to GardenSMART. It’s great to see you. Michael thanks Eric, it's
great to be back. He always enjoys these segments. Eric loves to get caught up on what's going on in the world
of containers, it's a never ending cycle of fashion. Every year Michael is creating new designs, and that’s in
response to what consumers are looking for.
For More Information Click Here
Water Feature
The first is the wonderful WATER FEATURE that the homeowner absolutely loves. There's something about the sound
of water and the way that it attracts wildlife that is magical. This is a newish design and a wonderful way to
have a portable water feature that can pretty much go anywhere in the garden. Michael spent three years working
on this fountain design. When you look at it, you think, what can go wrong? But there are all kinds of things
can go wrong. So he studied a lot, he wanted to feature the whole piece so included the bowl that matches the
pot. When he gets home he wants go to his peaceful spot and fountains are perfect. You hear the water, it just
gives you that peaceful feeling. And that's what he wanted to feature here. He created the container with the
volcanic on the top because it adds just a little bit different look and gives it that old world look. But it
still brings in color as well.
For More Information Click here
Strawberry Jar
Eric would like for Michael to talk about the STRAWBERRY JAR. This is a design that is unique to Michael and he
thinks it's a really smart way of making this concept work. Michael had customers asking for what they called
strawberry jars. He looked at what was currently available, he studied them and thought, this thing is tall.
It's got little bitty cups or holes to drop in plants, it’s tall but only has relatively small holes. So there's
no way that a plant could have much in the way of roots. Then you water it from the top and the water is going
to drain to the bottom. Gravity is gonna take it down and all of a sudden all these pieces towards the top don't
have enough water to survive. So Michael just collapsed it down because he wanted all the plants to get water
and fertilizer. He created eight holes around the bottom, mixed it up a little bit so it's not just straight
across.
For More Information Click here
How Raul Makes His Furniture
One thing Eric loves talking with Raul about, and it goes well beyond what he makes yet is the heart and soul of
his business, is how he MAKES HIS FURNITURE, particularly the conservation and ecological component. He is
principally a forester, an ecologist, and secondarily, someone who makes furniture. Raul explains, when he
started the company the whole idea was to figure out a way to take the limited amount of wood they take out of
the forest because the forest only yields a certain amount of wood per acre, per year. And they can take a
portion of that. But what can they do with it? To pay for forest restoration and to expand the vision, he
started developing these high end products.
For More Information Click here
Carts On Wheels
Eric would like to talk about some of the individual pieces that Victoria selected for her tiny house. She
wanted pieces that could be utilized both indoors and outdoors. Raul discusses several notable pieces of Forever
Redwood furniture that Victoria has chosen. For example, several CARTS ON WHEELS she will use to prepare food,
she selected a storage bench for the bedroom. It's a four foot bench and beautiful. The top opens up and stuff
can be put in it but it can go outside as well. She had them all customized, made them a little bit lower. One
thing that was very important to her was being able to interact with the garden so a lot of her furniture will
easily move between the indoors and the outdoors.
For More Information Click here
Care Of The Furniture Outdoors
And this furniture is really, really well ADAPTED TO THE OUTDOORS. All one has to do is re-oil it every once in
a while. Don't ever power wash it, typically don't sand it, just let it age and develop its own character over
time. It will darken a little bit over the years, it might get a few cracks but after, you know, 10 years, so
what? Raul admits that his face has a bunch of cracks. He doesn't mind it. In a world where everything seems
disposable, it's amazing to Eric that what Raul makes will last for 10 years, up to 30 years. If you get the
very best of the old growth redwood, of which there is very little left, the wood can last a long time.
For More Information Click here
Open Air Cooking
Bob Atkinson, with Big Green Egg, provides a great overview of the equipment, and in the process prepares a
wonderful meal. Bob, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Bob is proud to be here. If there's one
thing that Eric loves more than gardening it's cooking. And he thinks the only thing better than one or the
other is doing both together. Eric has his Big Green Egg set up in his garden for a number of reasons. Of
course, the scenery couldn't be better, but there additionally are huge advantages, especially in the Southeast,
of moving that heat out of the kitchen. And he thinks it just enhances the whole experience being out in the
OPEN AIR COOKING.
For More Information Click here
How This Grill/Apparatus Works
Eric would like to talk through the way this APPARATUS WORKS. A lot of people may have a little bit of fear
going into it. A lot of professionals cook on these, causing folks at home to think that must be a really
complicated piece of equipment. But with a few simple tips actually, anyone can succeed. First of all, this is a
ceramic Komodo style cooker. It's an ancient technology. The Big Green Egg founder, a guy named Ed Fisher,
started the company 50 years ago and initially imported these things from Japan or Taiwan. Those were clay
cookers and folks in those countries had been using them for millennia. Ed Fisher realized that he wanted a
greater temperature range so found a manufacturer that could make them out of high grade ceramics rather than a
big clay pot. So now with ceramics they have a range of temperatures that allows one to cook from 70 degrees up
to 1,000 degrees, which Bob wouldn't necessarily recommend, but you could.
For More Information Click here
Charcoal
It's fueled by CHARCOAL that they basically get as salvage out of the Ozark’s. Southern Missouri, northern
Arkansas is known for its wonderful oak and hickory. Every little town has a mill. They collect all the scrap,
then put it in their kilns and make a natural, pure lump charcoal out of it, no additives, no nothing. It
imparts a great flavor.
For More Information Click here
Different Parts Of The Grill
Let's take a look inside. Bob, if you will, break down the DIFFERENT PARTS. This is the cooking grid. You can
use it like a grill and cook directly on it but if you want to bake or go low and slow, you insert the deflector
plate. They call it a convector, but it's really a deflector plate, and it keeps the direct flames off your food
and also helps to create more of a convection effect inside the cooking dome. So, again, it's easy to use, easy
to light.
For More Information Click here
Preparing Our Corn
Let's get to work on PREPARING OUR CORN. We're going to do one of Bob's favorite feasts, which is a spatchcock
chicken with corn on the cob.. He loves summer in the South, he has fresh tomatoes right out of his garden and
sweet corn. And what goes better with roast chicken than some corn the cob. It's perfect. What Bob does to get
the full flavor out of the corn is to steam it in the husk and then finish it over a screaming hot grill at the
end to really get the caramelization on the kernels.
For More Information Click here
Technique Called Spatchcock
Eric loves cooking chicken on the grill and Bob is going to show us a TECHNIQUE CALLED SPATCHCOCK which is a
wonderful way to get really even heat. Plus it's a quicker way of cooking a chicken. But it's mostly a technique
that's used to get really even, uniform cooking. The correct chicken makes a difference. Bob has cooked chicken
from every store on the planet, pretty much but prefers an organic field raised chicken. The quality of the meat
really doesn't make a difference, if you're cooking it on the Egg, it's gonna taste great. So spatchcocking is
really easy. All you do is just flip it over, and what we're going to do to spatchcock is go for the tail, cut
the backbone out and that will allow us to open this bird up and get the seasoning on the inside. Not only will
you get a nice, even cook on it, you’ll also be able to get the seasoning on both sides as well.
For More Information Click here
Cooking the Bird And Corn
Bob cooks indirect at 375. This is about a 4.5 pound bird and at 375 indirect, we can have this thing cooked
beautifully from the time we put it on to pulling it off in less than an hour. When we pull it off that's when
we'll put our corn on. That's all there is to it. LET’S GET COOKING. Many people think that cooking on an Egg is
a Saturday endeavor. They think it takes all this time to get it to temp and then a lot of time to cook. But
that’s not true. By the time we prep this chicken, the Egg will already be at cooking temperature and since it's
only going to take about an hour to cook it is a very practical, a Tuesday evening event.
For More Information Click here
Battery Operated Blower, Mower And Pruner
Now that our project is complete, finding the right tools to keep everything properly maintained really makes
the job so much easier. Selecting well made equipment saves time and delivers a precision that can be seen in
the final product. Victoria is excited to try her hand with her new BATTERY OPERATED BLOWER, MOWER AND PRUNER
They're all lightweight and powerful, making them a perfect fit. Plus they’re quiet and non polluting. Just what
Victoria wanted.
For More Information Click here
Garden Smart has followed the progress of this tiny house from a rough, uncared lot to a completed home with
beautiful landscaping. But there is more to do.
Victoria, the homeowner, loves her tiny house and landscaping, as do her neighbors. And, one of
their most frequent comments are in regards to the containers. Michael Carr, of Michael Carr Design, discusses
what people are looking for in pottery today, as well as the design, beauty and durability of the CONTAINERS IN
THIS LANDSCAPE. Eric welcomes Michael, welcome back to GardenSMART. It’s great to see you. Michael thanks Eric,
it's great to be back. He always enjoys these segments. Eric loves to get caught up on what's going on in the
world of containers, it's a never ending cycle of fashion. Every year Michael is creating new designs, and
that’s in response to what consumers are looking for. It's difficult to create thousands of new items every
year. You think you're done, but there's always more to do it. Pots have been around for thousands of years yet
up until the last few years there weren't that many choices for great looking containers. But nowadays customers
want something new. Michael treats his business intentionally like a fashion business. His personal aesthetic
with containers is he likes a lot of really high color and vibrant colorful containers that really draw the eye.
They are like statement pieces in the garden.
Eric would like to talk about the selections that were made for this garden. It's a very compact planting and the
containers are wonderful focal pieces. He loves the fact that stylistically they're all quite unified so it
feels cohesive, it feels intentional. In this particular case, we're in a tiny house and not a big yard, yet it
looks great. Michael thought we should really stick with the same color scheme to pull it all together in this
spot. And now that everyone is done and the landscape is complete he thinks it worked really well. Let's talk
about a couple of the statement pieces here.
The first is the wonderful WATER FEATURE that the homeowner absolutely loves. There's something
about the sound of water and the way that it attracts wildlife that is magical. This is a newish design and a
wonderful way to have a portable water feature that can pretty much go anywhere in the garden. Michael spent
three years working on this fountain design. When you look at it, you think, what can go wrong? But there are
all kinds of things can go wrong. So he studied a lot, he wanted to feature the whole piece so included the bowl
that matches the pot. When he gets home he wants to go to his peaceful spot and fountains are perfect. You hear
the water, it just gives you that peaceful feeling. And that's what he wanted to feature here. He created the
container with the volcanic on the top because it adds just a little bit different look and gives it that old
world look. But it still brings in color as well. Once the whole piece is together you don’t need to look for
all the different pieces that together make this container a water feature. It's ready to go. We need to talk
about just the cold tolerance of this container. Eric has one Michael made in his garden and he has wonderful
pictures of it just covered in ice. It's completely frozen and it makes this beautiful ice structure. So if
there are any concerns about whether or not these can handle cold temperatures - they absolutely can. And that
was part of that three year process, you try to test all the things that could go wrong. Micheal had the same
thing happen, it was on purpose to test to see if it could hold up to the freezing temperatures. It did, it's
beautiful and then when it thaws out it continues to work fine. The pump stops moving, but that's not a problem.
As Eric thinks it's actually beautiful to see.
Eric would like for Michael to talk about the STRAWBERRY JAR. This is a design that is unique to
Michael and he thinks it's a really smart way of making this concept work. Michael had customers asking for what
they called strawberry jars. He looked at what was currently available, he studied them and thought, this thing
is tall. It's got little bitty cups or holes to drop in plants, it’s tall but only has relatively small holes.
So there's no way that a plant could have much in the way of roots. Then you water it from the top and the water
is going to drain to the bottom. Gravity is gonna take it down and all of a sudden all these pieces towards the
top don't have enough water to survive. So Michael just collapsed it down because he wanted all the plants to
get water and fertilizer. He created eight holes around the bottom, mixed it up a little bit so it's not just
straight across. He designed it so the gardener could take quart plants and just drop them straight in the
holes. Then at the top, for the feature piece, he created an opening where you can drop a gallon plant in it.
All of the water, all the fertilizer stay right there where the roots are and it's just been fabulous. You can
use it for cactuses, succulents, you can use it for strawberries, or any combination of plants. It just makes a
gorgeous feature piece. Victoria, the homeowner, decided to make this her herb garden, which is a wonderful
application.
Michael, thank you so much. He has created some great new containers. They look great in this landscape, they
really set off this whole design. It's great to see you as always, and congratulations on all the new designs.
They're wonderful.
With a tiny house, a big consideration is utilizing space efficiently. And finding the right furniture is a huge
issue. Furniture that can be utilized both inside and out is very important. We next meet Raul Hernandez, the
founder of Forever Redwood, and the man behind this amazing furniture. Raul, welcome back to the show, it's
always a pleasure catching up with you. How have you been?
One thing Eric loves talking with Raul about, and it goes well beyond what he makes yet is the
heart and soul of his business, is how he MAKES HIS FURNITURE, particularly the conservation and ecological
component. He is principally a forester, an ecologist, and secondarily, someone who makes furniture. Raul
explains, when he started the company the whole idea was to figure out a way to take the limited amount of wood
they take out of the forest because the forest only yields a certain amount of wood per acre, per year. And they
can take a portion of that. But what can they do with it? To pay for forest restoration and to expand the
vision, he started developing these high end products. They’ve now developed over 350 products and people love
them. The key is to use only the highest quality wood and that's the main motif on all their designs. Instead of
making something modern that's flimsy they go the opposite direction. And very few approach conserving the
forest this way, Raul’s company stands alone in that endeavor. Eric agrees, it's old world craftsmanship.
Everything is strong and almost overbuilt. And Raul takes pride in that, it does take a little bit more wood, a
little bit more time and a little bit more love.
Eric would like to talk about some of the individual pieces that Victoria selected for her tiny
house. She wanted pieces that could be utilized both indoors and outdoors. Raul discusses several notable pieces
of Forever Redwood furniture that Victoria has chosen. For example, several CARTS ON WHEELS she will use to
prepare food, she selected a storage bench for the bedroom. It's a four foot bench and beautiful. The top opens
up and stuff can be put in it but it can go outside as well. She had them all customized, made them a little bit
lower. One thing that was very important to her was being able to interact with the garden so a lot of her
furniture will easily move between the indoors and the outdoors.
And this furniture is really, really well ADAPTED TO THE OUTDOORS. All one has to do is re-oil
it every once in a while. Don't ever power wash it, typically don't sand it, just let it age and develop its own
character over time. It will darken a little bit over the years, it might get a few cracks but after, you know,
10 years, so what? Raul admits that his face has a bunch of cracks. He doesn't mind it. In a world where
everything seems disposable, it's amazing to Eric that what Raul makes will last for 10 years, up to 30 years.
If you get the very best of the old growth redwood, of which there is very little left, the wood can last a long
time. The way foresters practice nationwide, even worldwide today it's all about volume, it's not about quality
anymore. How do we know when a piece of wood needs to be oiled or that it's dry? There's an old trick and that
is just touch the wood. If you touch the wood and the temperature is the same as the surrounding temperature,
the wood is fine. If the temperature is a lower temperature, it's still losing moisture. It’s very simple. Put a
little oil on a rag and just lightly rub it in. That's all you have to do. Just give it a little bit of suntan
lotion. Sometimes people will call Raul and say, "Oh, my table doesn't look as good.” Well, when was the last
time you oiled it? Never? Well, when did you buy it? In 2008. Okay. At that point, you're going to need to sand
it. If you've left it outside for over 15 years to just get beat up, then sand it lightly, dust it off, and it's
brand new again. It's amazing. They're lifetime heirloom pieces that we can pass down through the generations.
They're so comfortable, they're so beautiful, and they really make it feel like home. Eric thanks Raul, as
always he did an amazing job here. Thanks, Eric.
Part of the design of this tiny house was that the front porch would roll right into the garden so it's a space
designed for entertaining, and having the cooking apparatus, having the grill right off the patio is great for
entertaining. Since Victoria loves to cook, particularly outdoors, that fits beautifully with the size and space
of her tiny house. After much consideration, she chose a unique outdoor cooker.
Bob Atkinson, with Big Green Egg, provides a great overview of the equipment, and in the process
prepares a wonderful meal. Bob, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Bob is proud to be here. If
there's one thing that Eric loves more than gardening it's cooking. And he thinks the only thing better than one
or the other is doing both together. Eric has his Big Green Egg set up in his garden for a number of reasons. Of
course, the scenery couldn't be better, but there additionally are huge advantages, especially in the Southeast,
of moving that heat out of the kitchen. And he thinks it just enhances the whole experience being out in the
OPEN AIR COOKING. Bob is the same way. He loves sitting outside on a Sunday night roasting a chicken. Just him
and his cat hanging on the back porch, enjoying the backyard, his tomato garden and all that, it's great to take
the kitchen outdoors. Plus, there can be a lot of odors, especially if we're cooking something like fish that we
want to keep the smells out of the house. So cooking in the garden is great way to go.
Eric would like Bob to talk through the way this APPARATUS WORKS. A lot of people may have a
little bit of fear going into it. A lot of professionals cook on these, causing folks at home to think that must
be a really complicated piece of equipment. But with a few simple tips actually, anyone can succeed. First of
all, this is a ceramic Komodo style cooker. It's an ancient technology. The Big Green Egg founder, a guy named
Ed Fisher, started the company 50 years ago and initially imported these things from Japan or Taiwan. Those were
clay cookers and folks in those countries had been using them for millennia. Ed Fisher realized that he wanted a
greater temperature range so found a manufacturer that could make them out of high grade ceramics rather than a
big clay pot. So now with ceramics they have a range of temperatures that allows one to cook from 70 degrees up
to 1,000 degrees, which Bob wouldn't necessarily recommend, but you could. It will cook pizza, it allows you to
cold smoke, go low and slow or one can sear steaks at a high temp. Eric does that, he makes pizzas even bakes
bread on it. Bob was at an event last week where they made brownies. It works great on a number of different
kinds of food - pizza, roasts, big prime ribs, anything really.
It's fueled by CHARCOAL that they basically get as salvage out of the Ozark’s. Southern
Missouri, northern Arkansas is known for its wonderful oak and hickory. Every little town has a mill. They
collect all the scrap, then put it in their kilns and make a natural, pure lump charcoal out of it, no
additives, no nothing. It imparts a great flavor. The quality of the fuel matters a lot. One never, ever needs
to use lighter fluid with this. The air flow allows one to light without the use of any kind of petrol
chemicals. It's just beautiful pure charcoal and it's easy to control the device based on the airflow, you can
cook at any temperature you want.
Let's take a look inside. Bob, if you will, break down the DIFFERENT PARTS. This is the cooking
grid. You can use it like a grill and cook directly on it but if you want to bake or go low and slow, you insert
the deflector plate. They call it a convector, but it's really a deflector plate, and it keeps the direct flames
off your food and also helps to create more of a convection effect inside the cooking dome. So, again, it's easy
to use, easy to light. This is their pure lump charcoal, bring the charcoal right up to the edge of the fire box
and that will be a full load. With that much charcoal, especially at low temperatures, you could cook on that
for 10, 15 hours and not use a whole load. The ceramic keeps the heat in and unlike a metal cooker where all the
heat radiates out the top. If it's 500 degrees on the inside, it's 325 degrees on the outside, the temperature
differential on an egg is about 175 degree difference between the inside and the outside. And why that makes
sense and why it's important is that if you're losing all the heat, you have to keep pumping hot dry air into
your cooker, and that dries your food out. With this, once we get this thing up to temp we can dial it back,
then barely have it open, just enough to keep the fire going. By doing that all that nice, hot, moist air stays
in there, so your food doesn't dry out. To get the fire going it has one piece that we'll put right in the
middle of the charcoal. We'll close the top vent, open the bottom vent all the way and in about 15 minutes,
we'll be up to 375 degrees, ready for our chicken.
Let's get to work on PREPARING OUR CORN. We're going to do one of Bob's favorite feasts, which
is a spatchcock chicken with corn on the cob.. He loves summer in the South, he has fresh tomatoes right out of
his garden and sweet corn. And what goes better with roast chicken than some corn the cob. It's perfect. What
Bob does to get the full flavor out of the corn is to steam it in the husk and then finish it over a screaming
hot grill at the end to really get the caramelization on the kernels. He simply snips off the top of the husk,
then soaks it. When our chicken is cooking and in about 45 minutes we'll put it on and get it nice and steamed
up. It’d just that simple
Eric loves cooking chicken on the grill and Bob is going to show us a TECHNIQUE CALLED
SPATCHCOCK which is a wonderful way to get really even heat. Plus it's a quicker way of cooking a chicken. But
it's mostly a technique that's used to get really even, uniform cooking. The correct chicken makes a difference.
Bob has cooked chicken from every store on the planet, pretty much but prefers an organic field raised chicken.
The quality of the meat really doesn't make a difference, if you're cooking it on the Egg, it's gonna taste
great. So spatchcocking is really easy. All you do is just flip it over, and what we're going to do to
spatchcock is go for the tail, cut the backbone out and that will allow us to open this bird up and get the
seasoning on the inside. Not only will you get a nice, even cook on it, you’ll also be able to get the seasoning
on both sides as well. And with it laid open we'll get a lot of nice smoke on it as well. Cut that backbone out
and then what he does is give the breast a little snip and it lays open. For seasoning he starts with a little
olive oil. The olive oil helps it brown, but most of all gives you a little something for your seasoning to bind
too. We'll start on the back, and put olive oil on it and spread it around. This is salt and pepper and garlic.
The salt will help tighten the skin up because you want that nice, crispy skin on it when you're done. Bob also
has a chicken rub, it's got a little paprika and some other things in it. Bob likes it because it adds another
layer of flavor and it adds a little color as well.
Bob cooks indirect at 375. This is about a 4.5 pound bird and at 375 indirect, we can have this
thing cooked beautifully from the time we put it on to pulling it off in less than an hour. When we pull it off
that's when we'll put our corn on. That's all there is to it. LET’S GET COOKING. Many people think that cooking
on an Egg is a Saturday endeavor. They think it takes all this time to get it to temp and then a lot of time to
cook. But that’s not true. By the time we prep this chicken, the Egg will already be at cooking temperature and
since it's only going to take about an hour to cook it is a very practical, a Tuesday evening event. It does not
have to be reserved just for the weekend and Bob thinks that’s what makes this a wonderful, everyday piece of
cooking equipment. Think about what we did. We came out here, we lit it, went in the kitchen, prepped our
chicken and by then it was time to come back out, we're right at 375, where we want to cook this. So we’ll put
this seasoned bird on at 375 and we'll be pulling it off in the next 55 minutes to an hour. At one hour at 375
on the nose Bob and Eric check back and oh it looks good enough to eat. Now, we'll let the chicken rest and
we'll finish with the corn and we'll be ready to go. And its a great meal. Thanks Bob, the Big Green Egg is
outstanding.
Now that our project is complete, finding the right tools to keep everything properly maintained
really makes the job so much easier. Selecting well made equipment saves time and delivers a precision that can
be seen in the final product. Victoria is excited to try her hand with her new BATTERY OPERATED BLOWER, MOWER
AND PRUNER They're all lightweight and powerful, making them a perfect fit. Plus they’re quiet and non
polluting. Just what Victoria wanted.
With modern rose breeding, it is now possible to grow garden roses that have large fragrant blooms and excellent disease resistance. Click here for an interesting, informative article about modern roses.
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