In this video, we are going to
solve your shady garden woes. Whether you have a big building
blocking you, a big tree, a big house, whatever the case may be, and
you say, oh, I can't garden, I can't grow anything
worthwhile. Think again because, after watching this video, you will still
be harvesting Epic amounts of produce. What's going on gardeners? Kevin
Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow
a greener thumb. Now you might say, I have two to four hours of sun.
What am I supposed to do? Grow, eh, I don't know what to grow. Well, it would be a big mistake to ignore
those sections of the garden. You can still squeeze out, like I
said, an impressive amount of yield. So we're going to go over 12 different
vegetables and herbs that do well. Some that do really well and
some that can tolerate shade. And then at the end of this
video is a little bonus. I'm going to go over six different tips
to really help maximize your results in your shady garden. So let's cultivate that Like button and
let's go ahead and kick into the video. Let's use my front yard
garden as an example of the
three categories of sunlight that can be falling on a
particular space. So first of all, you have all these beds right here, these
south facing beds, this one, this one, this one, this one. These are direct
sun. They're getting six plus, sometimes eight plus hours of direct
sun throughout the day during the peak hours of the day too - 10:00
AM to about sunset or so. So these are really the classics. You can grow more or less whatever
you want in these beds. Now over here, and these were really the ones for the
purposes of this video that we're talking about, this style of bed or this
style of location in the garden. These ones are blocked by a loquat tree. They have a little bit of blockage by an
awning and some of the property behind there. So they're getting anywhere from
three to five hours of direct sun a day. And then the rest of the day they're
getting a nice dappled sunlight. It's not completely shaded out, but it's certainly not as bright as
these beds over here. Our final example, and the one that we're going to ignore, again for the purposes of this
video - would be a full shade. And so that would be something like
in my backyard in the shady zen oasis, that's why it's called that. There's almost no direct sun and so I'm
growing a lot of ornamentals and stuff back there. Not a whole
lot of edibles. So again, for the purposes of this video, these part shade style beds are the
ones that we're doing our 12 crop recommendations on. So let's go ahead
and get into those. Crop number one. It's hanging out in our veggie pod. Here
it is, the spinach plant. Spinach. Wow. It is an incredible,
incredible cold tolerant green. It's a great shady garden
crop and Popeye eats it. So we should obviously all follow his
suit if we want to get ripped and have massive biceps like Popeye. But things
to know about spinach. Number one, like I said, cold tolerant,
which means is heat intolerant. So you don't want to grow it in too many
spots that are getting blasted both by direct sun and by
excessive amounts of heat. That makes it a really
good early spring crop. It makes it a good fall into winter crop. In the summer you can make it happen by
putting it where - in your shady garden, right. Now the thing I'll say about
spinach is I recommend starting from seed, but indoors it's a slow germinator
sometimes can take up to two weeks to germinate even though
it's a nice big seed. And you know that can sometimes test your
patience when you're direct sowing it. So I recommend starting indoors and then
you can keep starting it on succession and just producing crop after crop after
crop of delicious, nutritious spinach. Crop number two is chard. We have this yellow chard here
that looks absolutely amazing. It is looking slightly more
pale than I would like it to, but it's been growing for a while
in a pretty shady spot. In fact, I actually forgot about this grow bag
for a little bit and only recently did I pick it back up. And lo and behold,
everything's growing pretty well. So chard is effectively something
that you can perennialize, you can just grow it in a shady spot
and just come pick it as you need it. I can come with my shears here,
clip, clip, clip, leave the rest, and it'll still keep growing
and growing and growing. And it can get pretty
massive. So as you can see, I haven't chopped this one in a
while. When you're starting a chard, remember that the seeds are compound. There's more than one seed in the thing
that you think is the seed. It's very, very large. And so within
there there's multiple seeds. Oftentimes you'll get more than one chard
plant germinating from that one "seed" that you put into the ground.
So feel free to direct sow it, feel free to start indoors.
Very cold tolerant plant. And you can just really let it be. And the nice thing about it is it pops
in color. There's oriole orange chard, there's ruby red chard, there's rainbow
chard. There's white chard, pink chard, any color under the sun
literally you can do with chard. And it puts a nice pop of color and a
nice pop of flavor into your shady garden. Shady crop number three is going to
be most varieties of leaf lettuce, really almost any variety of leaf
lettuce. You can have your pick here. Lettuce is a very quick growing crop. Of course it will grow a little bit slower
in the shade so you can pick an even quicker cultivar, something that matures in let's say 35
to 45 days as opposed to in that 55 plus. That'll help you out a
little bit. Of course, starting from transplant is going to help
you out a little bit because if you're starting the seed by direct
sowing in your shady bed, then that early growth is really going
to be stunted. So if you go ahead, start it in your seed starting system
and then transplant some really nice and healthy seedlings, then you're going
to get it off to a much better start. But almost all of them do really well. Lettuce can sometimes struggle in
high temperatures and direct sun. These very sensitive leaves
can have a hard time. It's a shallow rooted plant and so that
really speaks right to the benefits of a shady garden. The soil
doesn't dry out as much, the temperature is a little
bit more stable and a little
bit on the colder side. Crop number four, which I coincidentally just harvested
out so I don't have an example. You're going to have to enjoy this
beautiful Beni Houshi mizuna in the background. But crop
number four is a twin crop, so it's endive and escarole
or endive and escarole. Comment down below the correct
pronunciation cause I actually don't know, but these are really underrated greens.
I'm not sure why they're not grown more. I think some people might have
a hard time with the flavor, but I personally think if you throw it
into a mixed green salad it tastes really nice. They look really nice and they
grow really well in a shady garden. Now again, I know I'm kind
of beating the drum here, but this is when you definitely do want
to start indoors because I've noticed that both endive and escarole seeds are
much slower to germinate as compared to most leafy greens. The
lettuce we just talked about, lettuce is a quick germinator, anything
like an arugula, kale, et cetera, that's all a quick germinator. And then
the escarole the seeds look like little, um, kind of like little satchels and
they just don't seem to take as quickly, ten plus days. And so start them indoors, get them off to a good start and then
just mix a little variety into your leafy shaded garden. Shade loving
crop numero cinco, are peas. Peas are the quintessential spring
crop. And what does that tell you? That means that they really will struggle
as you move into those more direct days of sun, that higher level of heat. So that tells us that it also could
do pretty well as a shady crop. Now, this is an area where, of
course it's spring right now, so they're getting a
good amount of full sun, but it's a little bit more mild sun,
but these are doing really well. They'll do completely fine in
a shady section of the garden. You can even pull that off as you
move into summer a little bit. Maybe the peak of summer
might still be a little hard, but you can still make it happen. Now, another fun little hack that I've done
with peas is if you sometimes have a hard time getting them to adhere and climb up, sometimes they like to like flop out
this way and do all sorts of weird stuff. Remember, nature is amazing. They're climbing via their natural
organic tendrils that are just adhering to this trellis, but sometimes
they need a little help. So I'll take these little hooks here and
I'll just do that and that helps pull it back towards the trellis
and it'll climb up. But yeah, peas a fantastic one. You can
direct sow them, that's a nice seed. Soak it then direct sow it.
You'll do completely fine, although I will say
transplanting has worked. It's just a shallow rooted plant and you
want to make sure that more or less you don't move it. Whether you're
transplanting it or direct sowing it, just let it be where it is. Let it climb
up and make sure it's nice and moist. Maybe even throw a little mulch on top
just to make sure it doesn't dry out because again, it's, it is a shallow
rooted plant. But it will thrive, absolutely thrive in a shady garden. Shady crop number six as I munch
on my freshly harvested pea, it's another one that I actually don't
have here. Oh, that's really sweet. Man, another props for peas. So sweet,
so delicious. I don't have it here. I just harvested out a bunch of them.
It's radishes. The humble radish. I think a lot of people have
a problem with growing radish, not because it's hard to grow, but because they don't really
know what to do with it. I will say pickling radish has been one
of my best ways to use it as well as picking young and roasting the radish
or working the young radish into a nice little salad mix. Nice and fresh. Now the thing about radishes -
will they do well in full sun? They can definitely handle it, although they will bolt if
they get blasted by the sun. They just grow slower but they'll still
bulb up. You just have to be patient. So I would say if you're growing it in
a two to four hours of sun section of your garden, like back
behind the camera over here, throw another 15 days
or so on the maturity. But that's fine because you weren't
going to use that space anyways. Right? So you might as well squeeze
something nice out of it. And the beauty of the radish is I
probably have more different varieties of radish seeds than I do any other type
of plant. It's just so versatile. You have green Lobo, you have black
Spanish, you have watermelon, you have, you have Beni Hida, you have the di, uh,
the humble daikon. I mean the daikon, it's not even humble. It's a
massive plant. So radish is amazing, incredible variety in that plant.
There's just so much you can do with it. So highly, highly recommend radish.
It's a kind of a sleeper hit. A lot of people think it's a boring plant. There's way more than
you think about radish. As we move into shady crop number seven
we're starting to get into crops that are not necessarily shade lovers, but
I would say they're shade tolerant. You can still get a decent yield, although
that yield might drop a little bit. Now that would be potatoes
for number seven surprisingly, they still can do pretty well. Now, the reason I'm sitting in
front of something that's
not potatoes here is because the potatoes that I've grown so far
this spring came from my compost pile. They were some old small potatoes that
I tossed in there that I actually got a decent yield out of, and this is
definitely a shady compost pile. Not your classic way to grow potatoes, but effectively you could consider that
like a lasagna bed if you're familiar with that technique of gardening or
almost like a straw bale gardening style because of the way that the ingredients
are layered in there. But again, grow them in soil. You don't have
to grow them in a compost bin. They're still going to do well in the
shade. I would say for my personal tastes, I first of all, I love new potatoes. I don't know about you guys but that's
going to be a good way to do it. As soon as you start to
see those flowers develop, you may want to just pull those potatoes
that have been planted in a shady section because it's going to be hard
to get them to size up like crazy. It's going to take a long time. So I
like to pull, pull those new potatoes, enjoy them and plant something
else in the shady garden. But potatoes can still work in
your shady beds. Crop number eight. Another one which I have yet to plant
in this garden would be a very fast maturing, cold, tolerant
bush style tomato. So a determinant style tomato that is
suited for an early spring planting. That can actually work. You can
get a decent yield out of it. I would say Glacier tomatoes
are a decent one to look at. Really any tomato that has
the name of a cold area, any tomato that has a name that relates
to Russia or New York or Canada. A lot of those cultivars of course, are going to do well in a colder area
because that's what they're named after, right? And so surprisingly, you can still squeeze out a yield
of tomatoes in a shady garden bed. Now the thing I will say is put it in
the best sun access spot of your shady bed. So if you have a bed that's getting
two hours and a bed that's getting four hours, obviously opt to put your bush tomatoes
in the four hour bed and maybe put your spinach in the two hour bed.
But you can still do it. And so don't count out your
shady gardens. Our next crop, surprisingly would be a bush bean. Bush beans will produce in a shady garden, obviously opt towards that
higher end of the sunlight. But this surprisingly is
kind of a shady garden. This is a GreenStalk vertical tower
garden that I planted out with 100% bush beans and they're actually
starting to produce. You can see you're getting a little
bit of bush bean production here, but remember this is a vertical tower, so only half of it is getting
sun throughout the day. So to compensate for that every
morning I just rotate it one half. And so then I make sure that at least
every other day one of the sides is getting blasted with full sun. But if you think about that on
like a month over month basis, these are only getting 15 days of
full sun per day and I just rotate it. So these are still producing
really well. You can see, and you will see later on when I release
a full grow guide on growing beans vertically in this particular system, you'll see that we're going to get a
really good yield out of these. Next, we're in the world of herbs guys.
And also if you're from the UK, I will pronounce it the
way you choose, herbs. These are the herbs that you
can grow in a shady garden. So if you're from the UK, please hit the like button because
I used the pronunciation you prefer. I got a lot of comments about that
and having spent some time in London, I do appreciate the accent. So, basil,
it's a quintessential full sun crop, but again, it's one that will tolerate
and sometimes even thrive in shade, especially if you grow it for pollination
or more ornamental style gardens. So here I have an African blue basil bush. This is my favorite perennial
style basil that does really, really well in the shade. I've cut this back twice in
a pretty severe manner and
as you can see it's still exploding in growth. We have a
bee that just landed right now. So it's a fantastic pollinator plant.
I have Greek columnar basil right here. As you can tell by the
name, it grows straight up. Many of these basil varieties you see are
actually in another video I did called eight rare basils that you've
probably never heard of. So feel free to check that video out. I have another Thai basil that's hanging
out down here with these really unique flower clusters that I
think are quite beautiful. Behind here we have pesto Propecho, which you can see is that lighter
colored basil. And I also have Tulsi, also known as holy basil. So basil is more or less 50% of this
shady garden bed and it's absolutely thriving. Our next herbs that do well in the shade
would be cilantro and parsley. These ones can do really well. Cilantro especially does really well in
the shade and I'm kinda going to trim this one up a little bit. It's
looking a little worse for the wear, but this has been in a shady section of
the garden for quite some time and it's doing perfectly fine. Cilantro actually struggles because
in the heat it will start to bolt. Now I recommend getting
a slow bolt variety, slow bolt cultivar of
cilantro to help prevent that. But still the number one problem I
hear from everyone who comments here on Instagram, on the podcast and email is
what do I do when my cilantro is bolting? And one of the best things I recommend
is put it in a shadier section. Yes it's going to grow slower,
but yes, it also won't bolt. And that's really what you're trying
to avoid when growing cilantro. So you can mix it into all those classic
recipes that you love. Our final crop, before we get to our six shady
garden tips, is a green onion. Now I say green onion because I think
it's a good idea to leave the bulb onions, your shallots, your, your
just red, white onions, all those to a direct sun area of the
garden cause you really want all that energy to get sent down into the bulb. You really want to give it
the best chance to bulb up. But if you're going to eat the leaves, like we are with the green onion
then come through, chop it up, then that's totally fine. Throw it in a
shady garden. It's going to grow slower. It's going to be nice and tasty and you're
just going to get a consistent supply of that delicious allium flavor that
you want without as much of the effort. Okay, we've made it
through our suggestions, so go ahead and cultivate that Like button
if you want 20 years of good luck in the garden. But we're going to
get into these shady garden tips, so some things that you can do to
really maximize your shady garden. Now I've talked about a couple of them,
peppered them in throughout the video, but the first one would be just remember
that it is going to grow slower. Remember, most of these things are shade
tolerant, not necessarily shade loving, so they're going to grow slower, maybe throw another 15 to 25%
on their days to maturity. But you are still going to get a yield,
so that's completely, completely fine. Tip number two, you're going to have to remember
to water a little bit less often. Remember the thing that we are not
getting in a shade garden, is sun, what's the second effect of that? There's going to be less water evaporating
so the plants aren't going to need to be watered as often, so really try to
avoid over-watering your shady garden. Number three because
they are growing slower, it makes sense to transplant in instead
of direct sowing and this is for two reasons. Number one, you're going to get them off to a quicker
start because you're putting a nice healthy perfectly started seedling
into the ground. Number two, oftentimes the shady garden
soil temperatures are a
little bit lower and what our plants generally want is somewhere
around that 65 to 75 degrees soil temp, which you may not be able
to achieve by direct sowing. So start it indoors with
some seedling heat mats. I have a whole video on how to do
that and then transplant it in. Tip number four for a shady garden is
make sure to give it as much sun as you can give it. Now that means
if you have to prune a tree, like you guys have seen my
epic loquat tree out there. Once that's done fruiting and I've
harvested it and it's time to give it its prune for the season. I need to make sure and go ahead and do
that as quick as I can because that's going to open up that area. It's
going to let a little more sun in. Maybe I squeak out 30 minutes more of
direct sun a day in that shady bed. That's good. That's going to actually
boost the growth of those plants. Tip number five is kind of a more
intensive one, but if you do have a fence, a wall, some sort of thing that
you could paint a different color, lighter colors are going
to reflect more light. And you'd be surprised at how much that
can actually boost the overall light levels of a shady garden. So if there's something that maybe
needs a little bit of touch up, an old garage, an old wall and you
want to paint it a lighter color, that can actually help boost the light
levels. Our final tip, number six, thanks for sticking with me guys,
is consider growing in containers. In your shady garden sometimes you can
think of it kind of as a staging area so you have all your containers in the shady
garden and then as something needs to be moved into an area with more
sun, pick the container up, move it over and put it out there. Grow
bags are a really good idea for this. One of my favorite favorite
methods for container gardening. I do a lot more of that on the channel.
But those are my tips for shady gardens. Now there's a lot of other
plants that can work. I'm curious if you have one that's
really worked for you in a shady garden. Go ahead and drop that in the comments
and let me know the next style of list type of video you'd like
to see here on the channel. I'm putting out three videos a week and
I'm really trying to make everything as good as I can get it for you guys. The best information I can possibly get
out there because I know a lot of us might be stuck at home.
We're trying to garden more. We're trying to really like lean
into our hobbies. You know, for me, this is a business and is a hobby. So I'm definitely trying to put some
good stuff out there for you guys. So until next time,
good luck in the garden. Cultivate that Like button and I
will see you on the next video.
