2021 Summer Garden Tour AFTER 30 DAYS AWAY!

today is an exciting day because this is my first time stepping foot in my garden in an entire month if you've been following along on instagram you probably know that when i'm not here working in the garden i work full-time as a firefighter here in sacramento and that i've spent the entire month of july deployed on wildfires here in northern california and it's been a really hot and dry july which of course has contributed to those large wildfires but it's also made me a bit nervous to leave my garden for that long mostly though i'm excited to see how much has changed in that time because as gardeners we know you can leave your garden for a weekend this time of year and you come back and it looks completely different so i'm excited to share this experience with you we'll take a look around the garden and i also want to share some of the maintenance that i'm doing today to kind of get the garden back on track and i'll share some of the things that i've done previous to this to allow me to leave my garden for a month in the middle of the summer and know that it's not only going to survive but it's going to thrive without any attention at all [Music] if you watched my summer garden tour from last july which i'll link at the end of this video you probably already recognize that my garden this year looks completely different than it did last summer last summer i had all these nice neat rows running north to south along the north side of my yard here and this year it's kind of like a hodgepodge with a little bit everywhere and that was always meant to be a temporary plot last year with a permanent plan of having fruit trees all along the pathway here so in spring i planted 12 bare root fruit trees six on this side of this pathway and six on this side of the pathway and i have a full video on that so i can link that for you here if you're interested in checking that out but when i put in those fruit trees of course i took up the space for where my vegetables were growing and also started shading a lot of the area where you know vegetables were getting all the sunlight and that's fine because the eventual plan that i'm implementing currently is to have raised beds all back here so i'm in the process right now of getting the irrigation in and then i'll build eight raised beds back here in front of my detached garage and that will be the permanent location for my vegetable garden but this year because those weren't ready yet and the fruit trees were in i just kind of had to improvise and make spaces for everything so i put in a ton of peppers along the pathway here i put in all of my tomatoes between the fruit trees and the fence here and the cucumbers on the trellis over here and i'll give you a closer look at all these crops starting with the cucumbers [Music] here we are in the cucumber garden and once again the top performer is this striped armenian cucumber technically a melon not a cucumber but very similar flavor to cucumbers you grow them in the same way one of the advantages though is that they can get really large and they don't become bitter like other cucumbers do the seeds inside will get large just like an old cucumber but they won't get bitter opposed to like this pickling cucumber that's been on here way too long started to turn yellow and this right now would not taste very good in fact let's do a little uh taste test just to see why you probably don't want to eat a cucumber that looks like this i mean honestly it's not horrible the skin is very bitter the flesh itself is a bit spongy um just kind of bland so i'm here's a pickling cucumber that's clearly been on the plant too long it's not poisonous or anything but if you see a yellow cucumber like this that's not like a lemon cucumber that's supposed to be yellow probably not gonna be that good to eat as opposed to this armenian cucumber and this looks really big like if you uh mostly cucumber varieties if they got this big they'd probably start to get bitter in thick skin this is a great size for an armenian cucumber almost the perfect size you can also harvest them smaller or you can harvest them larger than lit this let me show you one of the cucumbers that i'm growing right now another striped armenian look at this thing this is the same variety as another striped armenian cucumber this thing is massive as i said it's technically a melon not a cucumber which means it's actually still going to be pretty good part of it was sun scorched so this side was getting direct sunlight so it's basically like a sunburn almost like a scab so this part's not going to be that good but it doesn't mean the whole thing's gone bad so let me show you if i cut into this right here you can see on the inside it's got a bunch of seeds that looks a lot like a cantaloupe or a honeydew or another melon so if you just oh and it smells sweet too smells sweet very similar to a honeydew it's like a mild honeydew at this point when it's small they taste just like a cucumber but at this point like a mild honeydew so take a little slice of that a little bit sweet a little bit acidic but completely delicious and this is a cucumber i think this one was on the plant when i left so i think this has been on there for like a full 30 days just this massive thing and then if you wanted to one thing i don't talk about much is saving seeds but if you're growing heirlooms and they're not cross-pollinating you could save the seeds once it gets that large also with me i grow so many varieties on here that the chances of them cross pollinating is super high so i just buy new seeds each year but yellow cucumbers unless it's meant to be yellow that's probably done large cucumbers unless they're meant to be large they're probably done an example would be this one right here um this variety this one's a diva cucumber so this is like supposed to be a small cocktail greenhouse cucumber from johnny seeds supposed to be about a quarter of this size so this is way too big this will probably not be that great the skin is thick a little bit bitter seeds are a little bit fibrous in there you know they taste like seeds uh not a whole lot of flavor in that cucumber this one's gone way too long again completely edible tastes better than uh probably most grocery store cucumbers you'd get but still something that is not i mean it's way past its prime as far as harvesting which really that's one of the only disadvantages of being gone so long is that when you got crops like cucumbers that get ripe and their harvesting window is a few days you go outside of that you're going to miss them in their prime but actually this is still pretty good considering it's like three three to four times as large as it's supposed to be all right well as far as maintenance with my cucumbers right now i've got them on this trellis i've got a full video on how i build these trellises i love trellises trellising my cucumbers and my winter squash because it allows me to get them off the ground which helps with airflow and pollination disease resistance you don't get a bunch of fruit sitting on the ground and rotting there takes a lot less space so really i plant them all along this trellis and the only maintenance that i do with these cucumbers is i kind of help them find the trellis initially you have to bring them to the trellis and then sometimes once they get at the top and they topple over i'll kind of bring them back up and wrap them back around so my maintenance for this for today is just going to be kind of helping these vines find their way back to the trellis wrapping them around a bit and that's it well per usual these striped armenian cucumbers continue to be the highlight of my summer cucumber crop they always produce really well all through the summer heat waves and they're delicious so i keep planting more and more of these all right that's it for the cucumbers for now let's go check out the peppers [Music] here we are in this year's pepper garden it's about a four foot by 20 foot row where i'm growing five different varieties of peppers mostly sweet peppers one spicy variety that i'll start with it's a fresno chili called the flaming flare and fresno chilies are my favorite spicy pepper to grow because they've got a medium heat very similar to a jalapeno pepper but i think they're more consistent with their heat you know sometimes you get those jalapenos that are completely mild sometimes you get those jalapenos that will just burn your face off i think fresnos have a good medium heat to them making them perfect for hot sauces but what i really love about fresno chilis is that they also have a nice sweetness to them when they turn red like this which is when i like to harvest them so they're great for eating fresh like this but i usually use 90 of my freshner chili crop for making a hot sauce i'll make like a sriracha style hot sauce or something else and they're perfect for that so fresno chili's this variety is called flaming flare next one this is called an azvarsky i think that's how you pronounce it pretty similar in flavor and texture to a red bell pepper but i think a lot more flavor a little bit sweeter so they're great for eating fresh they're good for canning or drying all that stuff then this classic italian heirloom frying pepper this is called a jimmy nardello if you're not growing these yet you should be growing these they grow in a lot of different climates they are very productive and they're delicious and they're just a really cool heirloom i think they've been around since like the late 1800s so jimmy nordello add that one to your garden if you're not growing it already this is an escamillo pepper another one of my favorites ripens when it's this bright yellow color another really delicious sweet pepper way better than those yellow bell peppers you'll find in the grocery store escamillo highly productive sweet pepper no heat at all grow that one and the last one in the row are the carmen peppers one that i talk about somewhat often they've been my favorite sweet pepper for quite a while now favorite because they just produce really well here in northern california in the heat and they've got great flavor they can be as large as those escamillos this year the fruit size has been a bit smaller but still getting a lot of them off the plant so carmen peppers a great sweet pepper to grow let me talk a little bit about this pepper crop this year normally i like to set up my pepper rose and all my garden rows really in a north to south orientation but because i'm in this transition this year and just kind of trying to find the right space wherever it's going to work for the garden i'm in an east to west orientation and the problem with that is that the plants don't share sun and shade as well as they would if they were in the north to south and so what that causes is the plants on the north side are a little bit more shaded so they're not setting as much fruit whereas the plants on the south side get a lot of sun all day sun so they get some sun scorching so you can see this pepper right here it's sunburnt it's kind of scabbed on this side looks all good on this side so this is sun scorching and the way you can prevent this is to have north to south rows and plant closely together so you don't have sun all day long on your plants like this or you can put shade cloth over them there's a couple different ways fortunately as a home gardener it doesn't really matter that much you know get some scars like this on your peppers it doesn't mean they're inedible if i was a market gardener i couldn't really probably sell i definitely couldn't sell this to you know a grocery store maybe at a farmers market but probably we just have to go in the compost for me as a home gardener i can easily just cut off the little scar on here and the rest of it tastes just as good so a little bit of sun scolding along the peppers here on the south end and as i said that's mostly secondary to the fact that i had to set it up east to west i've got this concrete pathway right here which also reflects a lot of heat so if i wanted to prevent that i could use shade cloth over them or i would set up my rows north to south so i would have less of them exposed to all day sun that's really the biggest problem with this crop right now this year how it's set up and probably won't happen again other than that i space my peppers here about 12 inches apart i top prune some of them mostly experimental with the smaller ones i feel like i get a little bit better crops from them by top pruning them early in the season and i don't really trellis them i'll stake them and other than that just by planting them close together we'll kind of lean on each other and hold each other up and that's worked pretty well for me so far so that's it for the peppers right now if you have any questions about my peppers ask them in the comments below next we'll get over to always the most popular crop the tomatoes [Music] so here i am in the tomato and tomatillo section which is just an overgrown jungle right now it's probably something you've experienced before if you grow tomatoes or tomatillos in an area where they grow well and you've tried to use something like a tomato cage which is way too small and flimsy or you've used a different system that either didn't work well or it just didn't really keep up with it and that's kind of where i'm at right now i use the florida weave system i've got a full video on that that i'll link here it works great but you can't just leave it for a month and expect it to be all good it does require some maintenance so after being gone for all of july and these plants got another three feet plus on them it's kind of overgrown its system and the system is very basic very simple very effective it consists of a couple of posts at either end or about every 10 feet and then this poly string running from post to post that pulls the plants into it together so you know as you leave for a while they're going to grow out and kind of get crazy so today before i take you through the tomatoes and the tomatillos in order to make enough room to get through there and show you everything i'm going to add a couple more layers of string to tighten this up and then i'll take you on through so as i said more details in that video that i linked but pretty simple i'll make a knot right here on this end tie this poly string to it you can use natural twine if you want to but it's going to stretch and probably break through moisture and sunlight so for this i prefer this synthetic poly string then i'll take it down the row bringing all these branches up inside it [Music] then i'll just tie this off at the end here and if i needed to add another layer of string i could do that now but this should do starting here on this end this is where i have my tomatillos and this year for the first time in a while i'm only growing one tomatillo variety you might remember this from last year if you saw that video this is the queen of malinalco tomatillo this beautiful long yellow tomatillo that tastes nothing like the tomatillos you might find in the grocery store that are green and somewhat bland and bitter these are sweet and tropical so delicious right off the plant tastes almost like a cross between like mango with hints of banana and maybe some pineapple a little bit citrusy and i got the seeds initially from baker creek but last year they weren't selling any of them so fortunately i had a few of them left and i decided this year that i would grow nothing but queen amal and alco tomatillos so they wouldn't have anything to cross pollinate with and i can save all these seeds so you see in the center of this tomatillo there's a bunch of seeds kind of looks like a strawberry in here so i can peel off the outer flesh i can still eat this and then have all these seeds to save for later so i'll plant a bunch of these next year if you can find these seeds in the store i highly recommend them if you can't be sure to follow me on instagram there's a link in my video description below and i'll probably have a lot of these seeds to share this winter and next spring after the tomatillos i have my tomatoes all set up in order from the largest beef steak tomatoes to the smallest cherry tomatoes so the largest one that i grow are these striped germans if you can see this these ones aren't quite ready yet but look at the size of this thing this is still green it still has some pounds to put on this one's going to be probably like a two and a half pound tomato another one right next to it i want to be gentle to not break these off but do this these are growing on the same stem right here and they are huge so a couple that i'm waiting on while i'm waiting on those i've got some smaller ones so you can see what they look like when they're ripe just these beautiful kind of reddish pink and yellow looks like a sunset and then you slice into them and it's all variegated on the inside not only are they beautiful very very delicious a nice sweet heirloom tomato striped german this one always has a place in my garden and it's always been the largest one that i grow anywhere from two to three pounds for the largest striped german tomatoes then right next to the striped german i've got one that's new to me this year it's supposed to be another very large yellow tomato it's called dr witchy's yellow and look at this thing i haven't eaten one of these yet so i can't really tell you the flavor notes but it's just this completely orange tomato looks kind of like a pumpkin pretty big especially for one of the first ones i've got some larger ones that are still green on here here's another one that's a bit smaller um that is good all right dr which is yellow and then coming down here i've got black beauties these ones are black on the side that hits the sun and then the shaded areas usually get kind of pink or um red so here's a big old black beauty if you grow them in areas where you get a lot of fog and not quite as much heat and bright sun they're almost entirely black the ones i've seen but as they mature they become more of like this red pink color very good tomato and they get pretty large i've got a huge crop of these back here so i'm gonna walk back here and harvest a few of these and show you here's a few more of these black beauties these have a little bit more black on them but as they sit on the plant longer and these are probably like a week or two past their prime they're gonna start to turn more of this maroon color starting to look like more of a cherokee purple but these ones still have quite a bit of this nice deep black color high in antioxidants and always delicious speaking of cherry key purple this is just a classic heirloom tomato and it's probably the tomato that i've been growing longer than any of the other tomatoes here i think i've probably been growing these for like 12 years one of the things i love about them is that for an heirloom they're very reliable if you've grown heirloom and hybrid together you've probably realized by now that usually hybrids are a little bit more productive less susceptible to disease and pests and they just kind of put on better crops through the season most of them just because heirlooms can be a little bit more finicky but as far as heirlooms go the cherokee purple is a very reliable heirloom at me at least for me here in sacramento and even further north in california i used to live in reading for like seven years and that's where i first started growing these and they did great even up there in the heat so cherokee purple are a really good one another thing i like about cherokee purple is that they're pretty easy easy to find at nurseries you can usually find seedlings for these a lot of the varieties i'm growing here i have to start them from seed because i can't even find these varieties as seedlings at my local nursery but cherokee purple usually can so if you're not growing those yet add them to your list and right next to the cherokee purple are my all-time favorite tomatoes to grow the italian red pear it's a large red pear-shaped tomato and i can only find the seeds from italy i haven't found these at a nursery or anywhere locally i always order them in from italy and it's difficult to describe what i love so much about these tomatoes but has something to do with how much flesh is inside them like look at that there's not even any seeds right there at all look at the very inside tons of flesh um super sweet pretty medium acidity as far as flavor goes i've never tasted a more delicious tomato than these italian red pear so if you can get your hands on some order the seeds from italy and plant these things we're getting down toward the end of the tomato row and starting to get into the cherry tomatoes this first one is a little bit larger i think than a cherry tomato this is a purple bumblebee i've also grown the pink bumblebee and sunshine bumblebee or sunset bumblebee i don't know something like that anyway these bumblebee ones they're delicious they've got really cool stripes to them and they've been very very productive for me so i'm growing a couple more of these this year very good ones my all-time favorite cherry tomato these sun golds they're just like candy straight from the plant especially when they're warm like this in the middle of summer so good and then these berries crazy cherry are a new one for me this year i actually haven't even tasted these yet a little pointed cherry tomato from wild boar seeds very mild for a cherry tomato actually it got some sweetness very low acidity similar like balance of sweetness and acidity to the sun gold where there's not that much acid mostly sweet but a much more mild flavor for these very good and then next to them these are new for me i'm excited for these to you they probably don't look like the ripe yet and they don't look like they're ripe yet to me either but these are a sun green tomato so supposedly this one's ripe right now at green mom that is pretty good and it has a unique flavor so it doesn't it's not as sweet as the sun gold definitely not as sweet but certainly a ripe tomato a ripe sweet cherry tomato when it's completely green so how do you even know when it's ripe if it just stays green for these green ones usually for me it's about feeling them and they will have a slightly more like warm green color to them when they're ripe if i look at this cluster right here i can see some smaller ones that are still pretty firm have a little bit of a whiteness to them and then as i go up this cluster they get larger softer the skin becomes a little bit transparent a little bit yellow and this one's ripe yeah pretty good pretty interesting looks just like a completely unripe cluster of tomatoes completely green but yeah that's pretty good sun green tomato okay that's it for all the tomatoes and tomatillos i showed you my trellising system another thing with these tomatoes i know i said i was going to share some tips on how i'm able to leave my garden for so long and it doesn't die well one of them you might have noticed is mulch so i put down at least a four inch layer of mulch at the base of all my plants and really it's just kind of throughout the garden here and it helps to maintain the moisture here in the soil and reduce evaporation also as it breaks down it's going to feed the soil feed those beneficial and beneficial microbes that are in that soil so a thick layer of mulch is a great way to protect your crops through summer heat also beneath that mulch i've got automatic irrigation drip irrigation in the entire garden i'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that because i have a full video on how i set up my irrigation system for this vegetable garden so i'll add a link to that here but in general i run it two days a week in mid-summer just twice a week we do it for long durations but twice a week even through our summer heat waves when it's over 100 degrees sometimes up to 110 degrees there's really no need here at least with my soil composition to water it more than that so a couple tips there let's move on to some of the squash that i'm growing i've got some really unique varieties that i think you're gonna like and then i'll talk about the basil and some of the other herbs and a couple more tips [Music] here we are now in the summer squash section of the garden which is always the most wild section of the garden because these plants just grow so fast and so large they kind of take over everywhere whether it's a summer squash like zucchini and zephyr squash or winter squash like delicata and butternut squash usually i'll separate those two and i like to trellis the winter squash but this year because of the way i set everything up i just kind of planted them all together so i've got summer squash in here my favorite of which is the zephyr squash and then i've got winter squash in here i've got a couple of different winter squash varieties one of the cool ones that i'm growing this year is this miniature butternut squash called an 898 squash from row 7. these tiny little butternut this thing's perfectly ripe right here i'll bring this inside probably and store it in the basement until fall and roast it up they're all this size some of them are a little bit larger some are smaller pretty cool little butternut squash and then i've got a cool delicata this is like a round delicata usually they're a little bit more thin and long but i love delicata these are great just sliced up and roasted so i'll store that one in the basement as well but my favorite squash that i'm growing in this section is kind of like it's almost like a summer squash or a winter squash it can be used as either it's a type of trombocino squash and it's called a center cut squash so ideally you harvest these when they're about this size and you use them just like you would a zucchini only they've got a better flavor than zucchini they're a little bit more nutty a little bit more firm so they hold up better in cooking it's like the perfect size to harvest this you can harvest them a little bit smaller a little bit larger if you want but once they get larger than this similar to zucchini they kind of become bland and difficult to eat but the advantage of these over zucchini in that area is if you leave it on the plant even longer it will eventually turn into a winter squash i'll see if i have one around that i can harvest and show you what it looks like okay i did not find any in the garden here that were that far along but check this out this is one that i actually harvested last fall so fall of 2020 this has been stored in my basement so it's kind of like a butternut squash only a little bit longer and yeah this has been stored for like nine months now and i could slice this up right now and roast it and it's perfectly good so this is the exact same squash harvest it early like a summer squash leave it on long like a winter squash so many great advantages you can't do that with zucchini if you miss your harvest on zucchini i don't know good for compost maybe the chickens maybe zucchini bread but you can only eat so much zucchini bread so center cut squash great early great late just a great crop and unlike zucchini and other summer squash it grows into a long vine that you can grow up a trellis so that's hard to do with most summer squash varieties because they don't really have the tendrils that will climb up center cut squash they'll do that for you so that's the highlight of this squash garden let's check out a couple of herbs and then we'll send you on your way [Music] i grew a pretty wide variety of herbs here in my summer garden but three of my favorites are mexican mint marigold italian large leaf basil and papalo a papalo that's probably one of the more rare ones that i grow this is a popular herb in mexican cuisine it's often served with barbacoa they'll just put it in a jar on the table and just kind of snack on the leaves as they are kind of like a heat-tolerant cilantro substitute doesn't taste identical to cilantro but similar enough and this stuff just thrives in the heat when cilantro here this time of year is always going to bolt and then italian basil has a place in every garden the key to growing a large bushy basil plant like this is top pruning it so even if i don't need to harvest you know basil for a meal i'll still come out and either snip off or pinch off the top and i'll cut it right above a leaf node like you can see right here how there's these two branches coming out if i cut it above there then this will turn into two more branches and that's what creates a big bushy plant so this is just one narrow little plant that was constantly top pruned and that's how it becomes this big bushy basil plant with lots of leaves the leaves also help to shade the plant so in the hot summer it's going to thrive that much better it's not going to be affected by these heat waves that we're always getting here in sacramento and then mexican mint marigold it's i think it's a type of tarragon at least it tastes almost identical to tarragon it has that licoricey flavor to it that not everybody enjoys but i love it this stuff is super productive has these cool little yellow flowers you can eat the flowers you can eat the leaves and in fall the plants gonna die back to the roots and go dormant but then in spring it pops up again into an even larger more lush plant and it's got leaves all summer long so that's pretty much what's growing right now in my summer garden and i have to say i'm pretty happy with how it all looks after a full month of neglect i didn't expect to come home after a month and find it looking so good i knew it would be overgrown like this but i thought at least there'd be you know something dying or starting to die or a pest or disease taking something over but that wasn't the case the only thing starting to take over are some of these weeds some of this yellow nutsedge that i think i'll probably be battling forever so the last thing i'll do is just feed everything with an organic fertilizer but i'm not going to really show you that process in this video because last summer i made a full detailed video showing exactly what fertilizers i use and how i use them and talking a lot about organic fertilizers for summer vegetable gardens so very specific so i'll add a link to that video here if you want more information on that and then next week i'll be pruning all of these new fruit trees so i've got apples and pear and peaches and nectarine and aprium and necta plum and persimmon and i'll be pruning all of them so of course i'll be making a full detailed video showing that whole process and i'll be making a lot more videos coming up i've got a bunch of raised beds to build and irrigation to put in so if you want to see more of the upcoming videos on how i'm creating this new urban farmstead hit the subscribe button if you enjoyed this video hit the like button and if you have any questions at all about my garden or questions about your garden ask them in the comments below happy gardening everyone [Music] you

Channel: Urban Farmstead

Views: 3,718

Rating: 4.9906101 out of 5

Keywords: Garden Tour, Garden, gardening, homegrown, vegetable garden, urban farm, DIY, how to, organic, organic gardening, farm, farming, grow your own food, how to start a garden, garden tips, gardening tips, grow food, grow vegetables, how to plant a garden, Summer vegetable garden, growing tomatoes, how to grow tomatoes, summer garden, how to grow cucumbers, how to grow peppers, how to grow food, permaculture, homestead, homesteading, sustainable living, garden inspiration, diy garden

Id: bNjvuiSRNvQ

Length: 35min 1sec (2101 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021