30 Minutes to Start a Victory Garden

if you happen to be a very happy and accomplished Master Gardener this video is probably not for you because in today's episode we're talking to a lot of us really normal folks that have grown up with either a completely brown thumb or we just have never even tried to garden before or just haven't ever had good success I want you to stick around because in the next few minutes I'm gonna take you through just some of the very basics that are going to help you get started if that's your experience don't go away [Music] do you happen to be completely new to gardening perhaps you've never even tried it before and you're not sure where to start or you're a self-proclaimed brown thumb I want to give you just a couple of things that are going to help you get started to feel like you have a chance this year because if there was ever a year to start a garden this is the year I'll say that every spring just so you know but this is the time to do it if you haven't before and it's worth trying even if you've never had good success I'll tell you I absolutely had a brown thumb before thankfully I had the hope that one day I would be a little bit like my grandmother's both of them had completely green thumbs and of course they both lived in the heart of America in Iowa where it seems like you just look at the soil and it will grow something green and beautiful out of it you guys have the best growing soil up there in Iowa well I don't live there and I can't just make things grow by looking at them so I want to give you a couple of tips that I've learned over the years that are going to help you just to have kind of a little bit of a grip on how to get started with gardening now I used to live in an apartment and I want to tell you I grew an immense amount of things out on the balcony of my apartment so it's possible for all of you urban homesteaders that wish that you had some sort of real ground to plant in but don't don't give up hope get something going in a window or out there on your patio and if you have terrible soil or you live in the desert there's always hay bale or straw bale gardening that you can do and I have a video episode specifically on that that I hope you'll take the time to look at if you want to get a straw bale garden started where you live that's for if you just have maybe a patio to deal with with no ground you can actually do a hay bale garden or or all in pots so one of the things you're going to want to know how to identify is soil now if you start a straw bale gardening you don't even need soil which is great but you are gonna invest a little bit of money in those bales if you grow in some sort of pots you can absolutely knock yourself out by getting large and small pots you can get window boxes and planting them there's so much of a full garden you can grow just in those but for that you're going to want to make sure that you get the potting soil that is for container gardening it's slightly different than the garden soil now I made the mistake myself before because I thought oh I'll scrimp isn't all dirt the same as long as it's from Miracle Grow or somebody that has some fertilizer and it won't it be good and garden soil is a little bit less expensive don't scrimp if you're going to go with some sort of pot system you're going to want the best soil that is made just for pots okay so container soil potting soil that's what you're going to want whereas if you start out in the garden you are probably going to need a supplement it with some nutritious garden soil if you want success I've done it both ways and it has succeeded both ways but it is easier if you have a little bit of that good yummy already perfectly fertilized soil that's just the right balance of everything where you're going to plant your seeds or your plants next if I am just starting out and for those of you who have green thumbs go ahead and get things that are already started there is no shame in that whatsoever and someone has taken the time to make sure that this little parsley is healthy and strong and at least oh maybe four inches tall that's going to give you a whole lot more chance of success than if you tried to grow your own parsley from seed for the first time if you absolutely have a brown thumb so don't even be shameful about it at all you go out and get every single one of the plants you need if you have that available to you at a garden center somewhere nearby all right also if somebody like a neighbor has starts of plants man that is perfect right now this is some hen and chicks that I have growing here these are not edible but they're so fun to get growing around the house but right now is the perfect time at least where I live this is right at the cusp of May that we are filming this and the rosemary is in perfect form right now right when it has got its purple little flowers out and is bursting out in the spring this is the time to take little cuttings of it you can actually just cut some of the newest growth off about three inches you're going to tear off the the leaves that are right there at the bottom so you have just little nubbins showing you're going to dip it into some growing compound and the Miracle Gro growing compound is fantastic but there's a lot of different brands out there that you can get dip it in that and then stuff it down just in a little pot with some potting soil and give it a chance to grow it's going to sprout roots quicker than you realize maybe just within the first 10 days of it being in there and as soon as it's taken root you can pass it out to friends or you can ask a neighbor for a little cutting and there are so many plants you can get just from little cuttings like that that's a fantastic way to give yourself a chance rather than trying to grow from seed because for instance rosemary itself is very difficult to grow from seed so imagine it already being labeled as difficult and then for someone with a brown thumb to get it started probably doesn't really have a chance okay let's talk about a few of the tools before I head this way of course I personally think that if you have a garden hat it makes you feel official so if you need one get one if you don't have one ask and see if one of your grandmothers has one or your grandfather's because if they've been out in the guy and they know the value of it that's the old version of sunscreen and it's truly natural so get some shade on your face to protect yourself from the Sun secondly get yourself a good set of gloves and when I say that I want you to invest in some that are gonna last more than one season these are some of my favorite these are by I don't know I think it says C II Schmidt work where I get these at Tractor Supply and they have a real leather palm on them and it is so much better than anything I've gotten that is fake leather they last longer they work with my hands I've thrown them in the washing machine and and washed them up when they got really muddy and they just take a licking and keep on ticking so get yourself some good gloves now this I'll tell you I scrimped on I got this at the dollar store and it works almost as well as inexpensive let me tell you what you're gonna run into you don't need to spend a lot of money if you are someone on a very low budget absolutely get everything you need you can get so much of this stuff I'm showing you at the dollar store or makeshift for free but I will say you need to be warned ahead of time that the metal is going to be much thinner and more pliable it's probably not stainless steel it's probably gonna Bend under a lot of pressure and I have noticed even this year as I've been planting with this that this is not real stainless steel and it's already bending when I get real rough with it so plan on that and either go lightly or if you can afford it get the right tools for the right price but either one will make your garden grow let me tell you some sources for seeds now I often go to the to the dollar store and they will have sometimes for 50 cents 20 cents sometimes a dollar you can get a packet of seeds and even though it's gonna have an expiration date of maybe a year away don't worry about that there are so many seeds that are gonna be viable for many years so don't even think about throwing away seeds at least put them in the ground even if they're expired but you can get seeds cheaply at dollar store now here's one I love Baker heirloom seeds this is Baker Creek heirloom seeds you can get them from their catalog I have some of this purple corn already planted for my garden in my garden this year and I can't wait to see it come up it's super sweet and I love anything that grows in strange colors so I have the rainbow colored carrots I have purple corn I have rainbow colored oh my goodness I have these wonderful rainbow color atomic Tomatoes that I've started for this year but be gracious with yourself knowing that all seeds are not equal they don't all just grow immediately without a little extra care and love so get the ones that you know are going to be the easiest if you're just starting out and pay very close attention to the back of them if it says it needs full Sun or lots of water or extra loamy soil or something just pay attention to that on the back also every time I get a chance I try to do it like grandma did because cherry pits peach pits apricots I have some juniper berries I have loofah seeds from last year's loofah that grew and I saved the seeds from those so many times you can take produce from the actual store just like you received it scrape out the pepper seeds from the pepper and get them planted and you're going to have success you will be amazed in fact one of the things that I was praying about at the beginning of the year that I felt like the Lord was telling me was don't let any seed go unplanted and I know he didn't mean literally every seed of loofah I can't grow that many seeds this year but I'll tell you I'm not going to throw a single seed out I'm going to give it away I'm going to plant them I'm going to have some reason to have them be in the ground but none of them is going to just get thrown out I will give you this one cushion if the seeds happen to be from some very tropical environment and you don't live in a tropical environment you're not gonna probably have really good results these are tamarind and tamarind is a wonderful treat with fantastic seeds in this pod and I can use this for the deliciously tart orange e-type tropical flavor that I get from tamarind but if I'm tempted to think I can plant these seeds in the middle of Tennessee and have success I'm fooling myself so you might pay attention if you're not where bananas grow naturally if you try to plant banana seeds they may not grow well where you are so it's not that you have a brown thumb it's that you're just not in that same area where they came from before I go further let me say this there are a lot of folks out there that are going to tell you don't even get started on your garden until you've taken a sample of your soil sent it off to the agricultural folks in your state and had them test the soil and tell you what its makeup is so you know what it's missing and what it needs you don't need to do that but I would say that you do need to for sure know what zone you live in so you can look that up online for your exact city or your zip code what growing zone you live in I live in 7a that's important to know and there are seeds that are going to absolutely flourish in that zone those are the seeds you want to get you can stretch just a little bit like my parents live in zone 7 be where they are and they have morel mushrooms everywhere and those are one of my favorite things so the last time I went to visit them I got some of their morel mushrooms that are dried and you can take and we'll do it in another episode but you can spread these spores of morel mushrooms out where you live if there is a complementary zone that's really close to the other zone it was growing in you get the idea and I'm going to have a wonderful crop of these I hope this year let me also just say this I would really recommend you do this now or in the very near future if you are trying to be prepared for the days ahead this right here is a virgin seed supply 80 heirloom vegetables and it's over 10 thousand seeds in this little packet right here it was sealed and I have unsealed it just so I could see what was inside but it has so many different kinds of vegetables that are available in the event that there was a breakdown in society and I needed seeds and didn't have access to all the dollar stores and heirloom seed catalogs at least I've got one of these little packets this one is for cherry Bell radishes and it has every kind of thing in there you could ask for this is serrano peppers and I'm just gonna encourage you get yourself a little seed supply like that maybe a little kit there are all kinds of different ones you can get from different companies and stash it away somewhere without unsealing it for the days ahead when you might really be thankful to have a garden that you can start if you remember back in grade school there were the options of taking perhaps a paper towel and getting it moist and putting a few seeds on it folding it and putting it into a plastic ziplock bag and leaving that unsealed and setting it on a windowsill remember that and in that windowsill you're going to get warmth and light just enough to sprout those little sproutlets and then you can get them outside where they can be planted that's a wonderful way I'm gonna show you a little upgrade from that same exact concept this is how I started my tomatoes and my basil seeds this year these are just regular egg cartons and I wanted you to just see I cut the top off the egg carton and I planted the tomato seeds right in some of this soil the very soil that I'm going to use out in the garden so this is actually garden soil with a little bit of fertilizer already built into it I've started the tomatoes that way and these happen to be the atomic grape tomatoes from wild-boar farms they are from the Baker Creek heirloom seeds and I can't wait to get some of those little rainbow colored tomatoes growing but that's what I've got growing here and then next to them I have the basil and you can see those are just happy and excited to be alive and they are just doing great the basal I'll plant all among the tomato plants now I can't use all of these so I'll be giving some of them away but the basal will go right around the base of the tomatoes to make this easy for watering I will show you I had plastic one plastic container for eggs that I got I think those were egg lands best you know those always come in the nice plastic container and I want to be able to use that because look at how it has a wonderful top that you can cut off of the egg lands best plastic containers and it makes like a little greenhouse so this is what this has looked like on my windowsill for the past two weeks and that wonderful little top that comes with that I've cut off so it's free on its own and just lay it over and that kind of keeps the moisture in but it also keeps it warm especially at night so it has its own little greenhouse effect going on that's a very simple way to do it and another simple way that I've seen people do is with Strawberry containers these are dirty I haven't used them yet but if you have gotten strawberries or some sort of berries in containers like this you'll know how they have all those holes already in the bottom and top so this makes a perfect little greenhouse type environment you can just fill it about halfway up with some wonderful potting soil that already has a little bit of fertilizer in it plant your seeds in there about two inches apart so for this big one I might get I might get eight and for the smaller I might get six little starts and this is a fantastic makeshift greenhouse I do want to say you probably don't want to use something like this even though these little easy foil loaf pans come with their own little type greenhouse top and you might think oh that would work perfect yeah but there's something about the aluminum foil that probably isn't the very best also you couldn't just take these out and plant this in your garden like I really could I could cut these cardboard sections apart and and literally just plant that right in the garden so it didn't get traumatized from being uprooted and replanted in the garden where I would have to do that if I did this in this tin foil so I just want to encourage you get creative use whatever you've got it's gonna be great it's gonna be certainly better than nothing but I would recommend probably against this all right there is so much more we can cover but let's at least just go out to my garden just for a minute and you can see a few of the things I've gotten started let me show you what I'm talking about about saving what you get at the store so for the last couple of years I've had a fantastic little mini strawberry garden just by saving the heads of the strawberries that I get at the store and throwing them all in the same pot so I know this isn't very pretty to you right now but by the end of the summer I'm gonna have wonderful strawberries anytime I come out to the garden just from throwing all the refuse of the strawberries into this one pot rather than throwing them into my compost garden leftover from my apartment days I do have a lot of containers so I use them every year and this year I've got spinach and Swiss chard and arugula all planted like a little salad bar for myself and the arugula is the first one to come to life and it's just so cute I just love it the little tiny four leaflets have all just burst out in here you can just barely see little tiny Swiss chard 'lets little tiny minis coming out and I'm excited to watch them and this over here is the spinach with just a couple of little sproutlets but I'm excited it's going to do great and this white that you see around here is just some eggshells that I had in there whether you're going to garden in the dirt or in some sort of container situation I would encourage you make it easy for yourself I've seen people that get painters kneepads and wear those I love this little Smith and Hawk and kind of a thick gel type knee pad to kneel on and it sure makes it more bearable but if you happen to be to say absolutely they make those wonderful little carts with a seat right on top so you're never having to get on your knees at all those are fantastic for the garden and I would encourage you to get that this little corner of my garden I have allocated for just herbs only and so not for any specific reason it's just a good placement for them but I put them all in here and kind of keep track of them a little better and they grow almost all through the year here I've got creeping thyme which is wonderful chamomile which is fantastically medicinal and very calming and it helps you sleep well at night then I'm going to be planting this parsley which I have not grown before so it may be that I kill it but I'm gonna give it a good chance and because it's its first year I'm not trying to do it from seed I'm just using a start from the store then I have this very old sage that I love it makes fantastic teas and seasons my meats absolutely beautiful and it reminds me of home where we have thousands and thousands of acres for endless endless mountains of wild sage and so when it rains this sage smells like home and I love it also in here I usually plant at least one happy big sunflower or two and those already make it bright and beautiful out of my kitchen window but you might already be noticing some of the strategically allowed weeds I guess that's what everybody else calls them I don't like calling them weeds but there here's some dandelion and here's some wild violet that I've allowed to grow and in minimal quantities and very purposefully I allow EADS to grow in my garden that have wonderful properties for either edibles or medicinals and so they are allowed to stay for now over here we've got some rogue for sure poke and that grows really common here in the south and I have to tell you you might be seeing it the day before its death because it only tastes good when it's really young like this so I'll probably eat it in the next day or two and I will try to kill it from that point on because poke is not something that you want to a to take over it will grow huge and just literally fill this whole area if I let it so you have to kind of keep it in check but I do like it when it's young so I'll probably be harvesting that right away and Polk is not technically an herb it's just a rogue rogue grower there then I've got this rosemary and you can see it's very old and decrepit it has served me so well for years and years and it's just it's just holding on to life beautifully and I'm so thankful for that right now like I said it's at the perfect time for me to go ahead and take some of this fresh growth and get it so that it can propagate more by I'll probably take ten or twelve of these little starts and have ten or twelve new little rosemary plants that I can give as gifts when I have friends come over or I can start them so that they'll be the next generation of herb garden mmm the very best last year I had a hay bale garden or straw bale garden you remember that and we have an episode on that specifically if you'd like to watch it what you have happened the very next year if you don't get more bales which I couldn't this year because of Co vid so I have allowed all of that wonderful composted straw to turn into beds of fantastic kind of a great medium to even plant in and in my opinion everybody needs some good sunflowers growing so you notice that I in this I have planted a bunch of sunflowers these will literally grow some eight feet some up to twelve feet tall and they will be massive heads they're the Jumbo kind so they'll be bigger than plates and they will make fantastic sized sunflowers that you can eat as a snack but then also the squirrels will come and have a hay day and it's just as much fun watching them enjoy them as it is to eat them yourself so right there I've got some wild wide leaf plantain that I'm just going to leave alone I love that and it's so medicinal it can stay going here in the corner I've got a fig tree which I am so excited about I've never grown things before but I got the little start for this at the store they won't grow quite this big that's about double the size but they are pretty big and they're they're that beautiful coloration and they are so sweet if you've never grown figs before but you can in your area boy I would encourage it they're wonderful and then next to them I've got my banana peppers I'm not a real fan of the super hot peppers but I love the sweet banana peppers so well that I've got a little plot of them growing here and I'll put a couple of things in between them that are companion planting if you want to get detailed you can google that and find out about companion planting that's pretty cool but we won't get that complicated today along the front side of the cattle panel trellis that I used last year that I left in place I have planted my yellow longneck squash and you notice there are a couple of feet apart because last year I noticed I planted a way to close they were very crowded so I'm learning give everything a little bit of more breathing room especially those that like to climb and vine all over the place this will be beautiful and covered in not only squash vines that I've had - yes carefully tie up as they go because they get a little bit heavy but this will be covered with those and also those wonderful squash blossoms that are so delicious to eat fried up along this whole side of the garden I've got wonderful sugar snap peas that I love and can't hardly get enough of so I've put a little wimpy trellis right behind them because they do have those sweet little tendrils that like to climb up things and they'll grow up this trellis and just be beautiful along this west side of the garden you can't see them here but along this back side of the trellis I've got pull beans that will grow up this beautifully and literally have their blossoms and their beans growing that I can pick easily all through the summer also along the back here I've got three zucchini squash plants growing and given them room to grow I'll train them up the trellis because they won't automatically take off and grow up it themselves but they will be trained and do wonderful I have learned again to space them out well there's your snippet of a tour now I haven't even covered everything nor have I even planted my entire garden but I hope it gives you a spark of hope that wherever you are and whatever circumstance you find yourself in that you can grow and that there is truly no such thing as a brown thumb only those who might not maybe take as much care as they could at getting some things started so if you haven't already I hope that you will take the time to go ahead and start something growing in your area it might be in a pot in a sunny window by the way I meant to mention this earlier the south side of your house is always going to be better so look for those south-facing windows they always get the most light you want to try to aim for six to eight hours a day of light hitting whatever it is that you're trying to grow that's going to make a huge bit of difference and good water of course if you can have distilled water or just fresh well water that's ideal or spring water but just out of the faucet is going to work for those of you in the city give it a shot tell us how it's going for you what you have started growing this year in your garden and I would love to hear as a side note what weeds medicinal or edible you have allowed to grow strategically in your gardens you know I love to do that and so that's why you see a few of these things growing around me that aren't standard for that everyday garden all right we haven't covered everything but we love to hear from you so let us hear from you this week take the time to share this episode with somebody that you love and let's meet back here next week until then god bless you and go out and be a blessing to somebody today bye for now [Music] hey before you go I would love to share this word of scripture with you this is out of the Old Testament of the Holy Bible it's in the book of Isaiah chapter 43 verse 10 it says this you are my witnesses declares the Lord and a servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he before me there was no other God formed and there will be none after me now go spread the word [Music]

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 45,354

Rating: 4.9581151 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Homesteading, Prepping, Preppers, prepsteaders, wisdom creek, Garden, Victory Garden, seeds, modern pioneer, self sufficiency, Heirloom seeds, gardening, urban homestead

Id: U7wkIVJEzY8

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020