2024 Garden, Greenhouse & HARVEST Tour, Week 2 | Zone 7 Gardening

[Music] asparagus [Music] Hall out the [Music] strawberries hello welcome back to Sage and stone Homestead my name is Heather I have not just one but two Harvest baskets today it's been a little bit over two weeks since our last Garden update and I already have things to harvest look at the massive difference in this lettuce bed you guys guys this is exactly what I hoped for look at these we did get a good amount of rain last night and so everything is super perky and happy a lot of what you see here is the lettuce that I planted from seed and when I when I planted this I just scattered seed in the bed and kind of roughed it in and it took a while to get going so because of that I had a backup plan growing in my greenhouse and those transplants are some of these like red lettuces that you see here I did plug some of those in some of the empty spots right before the last Garden chore and you can't even see those anymore because the lettuce that I had planted from seed is so much better established that it just took off which I'm not sad about it this is originally what I wanted over here are some of the lettu uses that I transplanted as well and they're doing well they're just not doing as well and this is what you get when something is allowed to establish and just not be disturbed bed the same thing really is happening over here in the kale bed I had planted or transplanted some of these dinosaur KES over that I started in a start tray but these red Russian KES and this one right here these were started from seed and actually a couple weeks ago when I transplanted these over these guys were barely starting to come up and look how much bigger they are so yeah transplanting is not a problem especially if that's the option that you have but if you stick some seeds in the ground and just give them some time they very well could end up doing better than the transplants that you have so this is actually the earliest that I have ever been able to harvest broccoli I don't really know what the differen is this is a gypsy hybrid broccoli I actually started these later than normal I usually start my broccoli and all my Springtime brasas around February 14th around Valentine's Day I got a little bit of a late start I think it was the first week of March and we already have heads I really I don't know what to think about it but I'm not going to complain it is absolutely Harvest day actually a couple days ago might have been more ideal the heads are starting to kind of separate a little bit but these are totally great and edible so we're going to get cutting them up so I'm going to do is take my knife cut this Setter head off here Beauty broccoli is definitely one of our favorite vegetables I only have three to harvest from right now because the birds ate lots of my earlier seedlings but I'm grateful for These Guys these are huge I am going to leave the plants in the bed they should produce plenty of little side shoots from us to get more meals off of you can see one coming in the little armpit of the plant right there it should is quite a few of those over here on this end of the bed the khma bush beans have come up really well we did have a freeze or it was really a frost just about maybe a week ago at this point and we covered them and these guys handled it quite well I'm noticing these little plants coming up through the hay this right here I'm not 100% sure what this is it might be Alfalfa I've never seen alfalfa growing green but this is an alala and Orchard mix hay that I used as mulch and I'm pretty sure I've heard that alala is a legume which is going to fix nitrogen into the soil much like these beans are so with nitrogen fixing plants what goes on is in the roots of these plants there's little nodules and those nodules are like reservoirs for the nitrogen that the plant takes out of the air and when we're done with these beans what we'll do is cut them off at the base and we'll leave those nitrogen nodules in the soil and those will be able to benefit future plantings in this spot so for now I'm going to leave the alphalpha just to what I'm assuming is Alfalfa just to do its thing because I'm pretty sure it's going to act very similarly and it's going to benefit the bed so I might as well not pull it out I do have a couple little bean plants that look like they didn't Faire super well in the frost but most of them did and so it won't be long will be collecting beans oh my bed is falling apart did you see that over here the Tomato tower that we planted this also got covered during the frost and some of the plants that I put in here did start out smaller than others I tried to randomly Place some of the ones that were more established with some of the ones that were not doing as great I don't really know what the deal is with some of these little ones but some of these actually have flowers on them already you can see these are the tiny him Tomatoes they're probably only going to get about a foot or so tall maybe a little bit taller but can you see down here where these leaves are starting to turn a little bit yellow I like to come through and pull those off those are likely yellow just because they're close to the soil and when you get disease on Plants usually it starts in the soil and those leaves are not going to get healthier and so it's better just to remove them so that the disease is slower to spread look how cute and tiny those tomato flowers are it looks like some of the Elephant Garlic that I left in this planting spot or this bed from last year is already starting to put on its Scapes this garlic scape is the center stock it's the flower of the garlic plant and when they start to do this is really when I should consider that it's going to be Harvest Time really soon but I do want to pop these off because the plant instead of putting energy into the bulb is going to put energy into the flower and the bulb is really what I'm after so I am going to snap these off but I'm not going to throw them away these are actually very very good diced up on top of scrambled eggs it's got a very light garlic flavor and a crispness that's a lot like a fresh green bean these elephant garlic plants are a little bit younger but it won't be very long and we'll be having to take Scapes off of those this is the lado kale that I transplanted right before the garden tour last week a lot of it got pretty well shocked and a little bit sunburned but it is starting to bounce back so I have high hopes for this in the next Garden Tour should show somewhat of a change I have not dealt with this bed but I do have plans for it and we'll deal with that soon same thing here I've got plans look how big my walking onions got I just purchased these Egyptian walking onion bulbs and little bulblets through ET see it might have been a month ago and look how big they are these are really cool you can tell the difference between onions and garlic in the garden onions have this round Hollow Leaf right here and the garlic has a flat leaf that's more like just a really thick Grass more like a corn stock these are big enough now we could absolutely start harvesting them for green onion and I'm sure we will but can you see this here this little flow with the Egyptian walking onions I am going to leave these on because this is part of how this plant reproduces and stays somewhat perennial in the garden what's going to happen is this is going to create not a flower but it's like a cluster of little small onion bulbs that's going to grow on the end here and eventually that cluster is going to get nice and heavy and the stock will start to kind of wear out and the plant will just bend down that heavy cluster of bulbs and place it down into the soil and it's going to essenti recede itself and that is exactly what we want so these particular little flower bulbs I'm going to leave these on our Carlos muscadine grapes have started to put on their Greenery and they're starting to reach up towards the trellis I've got another one over there this bed here is essentially a mirror image of that bed over there it's got the walking onions plus another muscadine grape but right here in the center of those two beds is my oregano patch and it is time for the Oregano's first haircut I am usually pretty brutal when it comes to harvesting in my oregano because it doesn't seem to care it always comes back nice and full and I am running out of oregano in my kitchen and so I need to revamp that what I'm going to do is actually stick these in the freeze dryer so I'm just going to grab a bunch and cut it right off about 3 or 4 Ines above the soil level and the rest of it is what I'll take there that was quite a major haircut for the oregano but that is an amazing Harvest and that will bounce back just fine I had to go retrieve another basket because of how much Harvest that was but I have a similar situation over here this is actually volunteer cilantro I was weed whacking the garden yesterday and noticed that I had an entire like row of cilantro essentially on the outside of the bed so instead of weed whacking it and letting it mulch the walkway here I've decided that I am going to harvest it and put it in the freeze dryer it looks like it is starting to think about flowering and sometimes when plants flower it can change the flavor but that actually tastes really good so just going to just going to hack away at it and there is even more cilantro in the strawberry bed I have gone through here and taken out some but clearly it likes living over here I haven't actually intentionally planted cilantro Ro in goodness this is our sixth Garden season and I think I planted it the first season so I haven't intentionally planted cilantro for 5 years and we get lots of it there are some other little weeds in here this one looks like hen bit if I happen to freeze dry some of that and put that in my cooking it's fine that's edible so what I'm doing is I'm just kind of going through here trying to keep the root system in the ground but just harvesting the tops off cuz maybe we can do kind of a cut and come again situation with the cilantro I like to use the cilantro when I make salsa and my salsa ingredients are not ready at the same time as the cilantro is and so I want to save a bunch of it so I can use it in our salsa making later there's an asparagus over here I think there's three yeah there's one asparagus Crown here one there and one over there look out huge that is holy moly here's our asparagus haul for the day and with the rain that we got last night these ones that I left in the ground here that are not very tall can you see them these ones that I left in the ground here that are not very tall yet those will be ready to harvest tomorrow they grow so fast I do want to harvest a little bit of kale today I've been sticking it in the freezer to use later I find that kale freezes so easily I don't blanch it or anything I literally will just take the little ribs off of the kale and stick it straight in the freezer and it's awesome to add to all kinds of things that we cook all the time soups casseroles and what I'll do is I'll just yank it out of the freezer and stir it in in the last couple minutes of the cooking time and it works out really well it also helps the meal cool down a little bit so we can eat it faster so what I'm doing is the cut and come again method for kale I'm just taking off some of the bigger outer leaves and leaving probably a good three to five leaves in the center and the plant is going to continue growing right out of the middle there and we'll be able to harvest and harvest until it gets too hot kale when it gets probably about over about 85° for a consistent number of days starts to get kind of bitter but so far this stuff has been all right not too bad a little bit bitter a little while ago because we were having some pretty high temperatures but we just had that Frost and things are nice and sweet again it's looking beautiful oh I love when our Harvest basket has a nice variety some of the red Russian kale is ready for its first harvest same thing just kind of picking off the big outer leaves and that's going to help bring out some of these smaller seedlings it's going to help give them a little bit more sunlight and maybe they'll get a little bit more established we do have to go look at the greenhouse a lot of stuff has changed in there if you have not seen we we are starting to transition that space into a raised bed garden it's looking really good the goats have definitely gotten to the time of year where I am far less interesting than the forage that they can get out there so I guess there's no goat intermission today I lied there's a couple babies right here that want some attention and a big boys hello good morning good morning so it's still a little bit messy in here but it's looking a little like a different kind of mess we have our birdies raised beds or some of them set in place and I have started to fill them what I'm doing is taking some of this weed fabric Thing I have I think this is 4 ft wide and I'm sticking it down in the beds you can probably see that there's a little bit of sunlight coming through underneath them I don't want any of my soil to come out from the inside so laying some of this weed fabric up against the side of the bed is going to help mitigate that this one is partway through filling so you can see I have the weed fabric here and then I do have a layer of cardboard and then some hay and then we're topping them off with soil I am leaving a little bit of space because I do plan to mulch in here it is so darn hot in this greenhouse in the summer I can't get away with not mulching um although this soil this is the Kellogg's brand soil organic soil this does hold quite a bit of moisture the top dries out pretty badly sometimes but you don't have to go far down before you feel moisture which is really good I actually walked past it without showing you but I'll put a clip of it in here my husband Levi went and picked up some wood mulch from a fallen elm tree that tree fell about a year ago so the mulch which is pretty well broken down but it's still really nice and we're able to put that on the garden so I am going to move much of that into here and then once the beds are ready our plants will be able to move in so here we have our tomato plants there's a few different there was quite a few different varieties I've labeled them on the inside of the pot so hopefully the sun doesn't bleach it out and I still know what I'm growing these are some eggplants that I started from seing I had started the tomatoes in these smaller pots like this and they were getting huge and I obviously was not ready to plant them in the greenhouse the way it is now so I bought these from epic gardening these are 5in pots and look oh my gosh this plant hasn't been in here not even 2 weeks and it's already coming out the bottom but these pots are really cool they have these air pruning strips on the side so the plants really should be able to spend quite a bit of time in here without getting root bound which is important I will be able to get them out of these pots pretty soon because we're going to be filling up these beds over the weekend and the tomatoes are going to go all along the trellis here these are our peppers and there's a couple different ways that you can grow peppers in years past what I've done is actually pruned my peppers down so they could grow in more of a bushy type habit I actually did that with some of these Peppers that we purchased from a local greenhouse and in the top here there used to be more vertical growth I snipped the top off leaving probably 3 to five good leaves at the bottom and that forced the plant into putting out these suckers and this is just going to help encourage a nice bushy habit and in theory more peppers and I believe it does my plan with these though however is to grow them kind of in like a vertical Greenhouse style I don't know if you guys have seen people gr Peppers this way but it's really neat peppers are night shades like tomatoes and you can train them into a Vining habit just like you can with your indeterminate tomatoes and that's what I want to do I've ordered the stuff to hopefully hook these Peppers to this pear in right here this pole in the greenhouse and we'll see I don't know I don't know if it's going to work but I'm going to try it you can see that I've listed the varieties of pepper that I'm growing in here I did not start these on camera these guys are just now starting to reach out the bottom of the pot so hopefully I can get them in the ground soon I do have some cleaning up to do before we can put them in though eventually there will be some raised beds over here as well but it's a kind of a process this is a really busy time of year in general and then to be putting in a brand new Garden space on top of it it's kind of a lot but it'll get done and it's going to be gorgeous I wonder if I should go grab another Harvest basket cuz I have that kale plant there and then I'm pretty sure our radishes are ready look how big they are holy moly maybe we can find something to use as a harvest Basket in here I'm sure there's something as I was looking for a little Harvest basket I remembered that I have this whole flat of cabbages these are Golden Cross cabbages apparently these can get to full size which is about the size of a baseball on this variety but they can get that big in about 45 days so if you have a short span of time where you have decent Spring weather before you head straight into the heat of Summer like we do this might be a good variety for you this is my first year growing it one of our members actually sent me this seed and I'm super excited about it cuz I kind of had a a cruddy cabbage here this this spring oh check out the strawberries I need to come back for those this is so exciting so we have three green stocks as you've seen but our first one was that green green Green stock with the strawberries and I've grown strawberries in that ever since we got it and so I haven't done a whole lot of harvesting like this type of harvesting out of a green stock I've just been picking berries the whole time so this is new for me and I like it already look at these pretty radishes my kids are going to be so excited every time they come in here they look at these green stocks they're like Mommy are the radishes ready yet I really want them kind of shake off the soil and leave it in the cup there this one looks like it's going to flower can you see the little flower buds on the end of that one this particular radish bulb too it's not very big and that's a pretty good illustration of what happens when a plant decides that it's going to flower you get a lot less energy into the root and the plant puts a lot more energy into the flower the cool thing about radishes is you can eat the seed pods so I may just leave this guy in here and we'll be able to eat the seed pods over summer so if you have a hard time getting radishes to bulb up because of the heat that is a very good option the actually the radish pods probably end up yielding more food than just a single radish I love it the kids are going to be so excited so some of them are a little bit small that are on this like north and east side of the green stock they're just getting a little bit less sunlight and it's not a problem and we'll kind of have like a succession Harvest of these and they do make like casters for the bottom of the green sock so you can spin them around I didn't really want to mess with that they do get sunlight just not as much the afternoon sun has a little bit more intensity so the ones on this side did mature a little bit faster there's our green stock radish haul for the day and these are not going to last very long I'm going to rinse them off and I'm sure the kids will pretty much eat them right away in the top of the green stock I have these little Peruvian Zenia plants and a lot like I talked about doing with the peppers I am going to top the these so that we get a bushier plant with more flowers these are big enough so we've got a pair of leaves here and a pair of leaves here and I'm just going to pinch right above that second set of leaves it's kind of heartbreaking to do at first but it yields a really pretty plant that's pretty resistant to winds and like I said in theory this gives you more flowers I feel like it does my camera actually overheated which allowed me to go inside and get my cute little ceramic Berry container you see beyond the peach tree not really I noticed yesterday when I was in here that it looked like a bird had come along and started to eat some of the berries which I have not had a problem with that here in the greenhouse before but it looks like that's not too bad the birds are leaving most of them see here's the one that they ate in there can you see that this one's funny it's like two berries fused together there are a couple strawberry crowns that I transplanted in here that did die back but they're starting to come back in the middle of the plant our peaches are doing really well in their pots over here and you can see that the alysum is starting to bloom this smells so lovely I have planted Alys a couple times and I don't remember it's smelling good like this it reminds me of a lilac if you know what that smells like really really awesome I believe these flowers are edible and I have heard if you cut them back they'll bloom more it's just it's heartbreaking they're so pretty but maybe I can stick these in the freeze dryer too I'll come back for these later this particular variety has several different colors so pretty so a few people who have been with me for a while did ask if I'm growing in the lane again this year so this is a garden space that we started last year it is essentially 100 Ft worth of trellis and I do plan to grow out here this year I haven't done anything with it I haven't even amended it so honestly what I plan to do is at least for probably half of it is going to be blackeyed peas those don't really need a ton of nutrition to get going and to get growing and I definitely need to plant some armpit melons and other types of melons and those may or may not go out here I like I said I haven't amended the row itself but what I might do is just amend the planting holes and see how that goes and what I actually plan to do is kind of weed whack these are the old planting holes from last year weed whack those down cover them with weed fabric and actually burn new holes in between these spaces might be cheating but that's what I'm going to do eventually I wouldn't mind to have like a rais bed situation out here too but that's also going to take some time we also have this space over here this used to be a pig pen and then we had some goats in here this space is in the off seon for animals and I plan to put kind of a pumpkin patch situation in here along with some corn I've laid down this weed fabric to try to blank out a space where we can maybe till up a little bit and amend I plan to just put the Dutch Fork pie pumpkins right on top of some weed fabric so that they can get established hopefully I can get that man and planted in the next couple of weeks hello good s how goes it hello so yeah it's the end of April and the garden is still not like fully planted which is fine we're bringing in a lot of harvest as you could see and with that Harvest comes preservation time so right about now is when I need to start preserving something every day not just from the garden but we've got a lot of eggs coming coming in we have a lot of milk coming in and as I mentioned we're going to be freezing some of those herbs there's a lot of stuff that I'm going to be doing so I'm curious as far as food preservation goes what are you more interested in seeing I would love to know cuz I would love to show you and I think it's time that we started the garden tours for real so I really want to be able to post them on Friday so I think it's going to be another 10 days or so before you see the next Garden Tour but then they should be weekly throughout the season it's going to be a good time

Channel: Sage and Stone Homestead

Views: 8,849

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, farm, farming, homesteading channel, homesteading channels, farm life, garden tour, 2024 garden, zone 7 garden, zone 7b, zone 7a, raised bed garden, growing a garden, greenhouse tour, spring garden, gardening, vegetable garden, growing vegetables

Id: XC8CR0UpEFc

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024