5 Crops The More You Harvest The More They Produce!

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi Gardner channel I am so excited about today's episode because in this episode I'm gonna be sharing with you five crops where the more you harvest the more you get this is a great way to maximize space if you're growing in a small kind of small confined space maybe it's a patio maybe it's a balcony or you know fire escape things like that or maybe you're just confined to just containers maybe you're a beginning gardener and you really want to take advantage of those first couple years of being a beginning gardener getting hooked into gardening and really seeing the benefit of your garden right off the bat and seeing a return on your investment as soon as possible these are two really important things to take into consideration when growing crops right so if you're planting say carrots carrots you plant one seed you get one carrot when you pull it up it's done and so if you have a small amount of space you're not really maximizing that space and using it as efficiently and as effectively as I think most people would agree could be done with things like beans so beans are one of our crops that we're going to get into which is the more you harvest the more you get because I always like to to talk about exponential harvests so this is this is an example of an exponential harvest the more you harvest the more will actually give you and that's because there are certain crops where they'll put their energy into fruit a set amount of fruit and when you harvest that set amount of fruit it actually encourages growth it encourages the plant to grow bigger and actually produce more fruit this is a response and it's actually done to protect the plants future generation so if let's say this bean plant produces 10 beans right off the bat if I leave those 10 beans on the plant is not encouraged to produce any more beans because its objective is to produce viable seed those valuable seeds are hopefully going to drop and produce new plants which are going to continue on the genetic strain of this plant so what we want to do is we want to pull those beans off if these if if you harvest crops that fall into the exponential growth category the plant will actually send a signal back down to the root system to continue growing the root system and then the root system is directly proportionate to the to the foliage on top so when you harvest the beans it's gonna send a roots signal down to the root system say we need more nutrients we need more growth increase the root system increase foliage and then that foliage obviously will set even more fruit because if it did not successfully fruit the first time with say 10 beans hopefully giving you 20 beans will will kind of guarantee that one seed will become viable and because we're not out we're not out in nature you know we're actually coming in and harvesting we can do this very readily by just coming out and picking now the beans you know if you just left them to their own devices this would not be an exponential crop but because we can come in here and literally pick them every time we see them we can guarantee increased harvests and as long as we keep the soil fertilized and you know and very conducive for growth these plants are gonna continue producing more and more and more for you so let's get on into it I'm gonna talk about these five now because they're a super benefit to to anyone like I said that they're short on space or or even wants to just maximize their food production out of their garden so like I said beans are the first one I already kind of pretty much talked about beans they give you a first little flush of beans it's always very small in the very beginning but you got to pick it you got to be early you don't want them to start forming seeds if you if you start seeing seeds for them these are our drying beans so don't you know do as I say not as I do but we're leaving these beans on the plant meaning you're gonna have about 75% less production because these are drying beans they're soup beans so these are the these are the midnight black turtle bean and so they're not yet 100% formed but you'll see so you want to pick your beans before they do that because that right there is a signal that these are mature beans the plant is gonna stop growing right if you pick them young before they you know when there's still snap beans they're still tender they're still delicious very immature you're gonna harvest all those off those 10 beans and it's gonna put on a new set of new bunch of flowers and leaves and that's going to give you maybe 15 or 20 beans the next time around you harvest all of those it's gonna send another signal and the plant is going to continue growing and continue producing so the fastest way to ink your production is to keep harvesting so now we're here with the second crop which are peppers peppers are another crop that the more you harvest the more you get peppers occur much like beans in flushes and this is kind of a common trend that you'll see amongst most of these plants is a few outliers but most of these plants things will occur in flushes they'll put out a first flush of flowers that flush of flowers will produce fruit and once that fruit matures if you don't pick that fruit it pretty much will stop stop sending out more flowers and fruit because it's trying to ripen that fruit and and get the seeds mature and viable so if you pull off the peppers you know as soon as they start to turn color or if you just light green peppers you're in luck you're gonna pull all those peppers off and what it's going to do is it's going to send a signal back to the root system it's going to increase the root system it's going to increase the flower production and the and the leaf production it's gonna set even more more flowers the second time in a second flush and here in Michigan if you put if you regularly pick your peppers you can get to very easily two sometimes three flashes of of fruit and the third flush is always the biggest we always talk about that that you know when we when we were looking at our growing season if we're getting our second flush which we are most of these peppers are on their second flush now if we can get our second flush by about the first to second weekend in August that the third flush is going to be ready to to be pulled off the plant by right around October so that's right when our first frost comes and so it's kind of a timing thing you got to be quick with it and sometimes you know if we're if we're just waiting on a few peppers to ripen up we'll pick those knowing that knowing full well that if we can pick them to give enough time for that third flush to come on those two peppers we harvest early that might be on ripe are gonna give way to 30 or 40 peppers they're gonna be ripe come October so just something we kind of look into but it's definitely a plant that the more you harvest the more you get the third crop that is notorious for its exponential production is zucchini you leave 1 or 2 zucchinis on the plant for longer than a week and you're gonna have Sookie knees the size of newborn babies I mean they're just absolutely massive they're baseball bat size but if you keep harvesting them when they're small it's gonna send the signal to the plant that it's you know that that that that fruit is I'm not gonna produce viable seeds and it's gonna continue growing and continue producing zucchinis grow extremely fast and so that's why they're notorious for this they grow faster than any crop in the garden and they produce faster than any crop in the garden and so if you can come in there and you can regularly harvest the zucchinis you're gonna have more zucchinis than you know what to do it by the end of the year this plant back here is one of our largest and best producing plants of all time in the mi gardener garden we've never had a plant produce as much as this one has and that's because we've been you're regularly harvesting we've been regularly fertilizing when it needs some more fertilizers to keep it growing we'll give it a little side dress of trifecta this thing has just kept producing and it's been an absolute champion of the garden it is produced over 35 zucchinis from just a single plant one plant 35 zucchinis and it's showing no signs of slowing down so that is definitely one that I recommend growing because seriously the more you harvest the way more you get it's definitely a king at doing that so let's look at the fourth crop now the fourth crop that falls into this category is leafing herbs so this is kind of a grouping category there's a lot to fall into this category and it's any herb that produces leaves now this is a great option to grow for anyone that is tight on space or ease looking to save a lot of money because herbs are some of your most expensive by weight of anything in the garden and they're also crop conveniently that the more you harvest the more you get so they're totally a win-win in my opinion and they are like I said any herb that produces leaves so I've got sage here I've got thyme over there I've got basil over there and over there and over there and over there because I've got basil just about everywhere and then also things like parsley oregano mint you name it there's a lot of plants that fall into this category but it's any herb that produces leaves the more you harvest the more you get now if they start to flower if basil starts to flower if time starts to flower if sage starts to flower any of your plants as soon as they start to flower you got to clip off the flowers because the flowering is gonna trigger the plant to stop growing and stop producing it's going to start to turn woody and then that is when it starts to flower once the plant turns woody it's going to really slow down production so regularly come in and prune the plant trim the flat back and you're going to be benefited by not only having a lot of herbs put up in storage and ready to dry or ready to you know using your cooking but it's also gonna give you twice as many herbs the next time around because what they'll do is they'll actually fork they'll forms a little side shoots and those side shoots will then produce more leaves and those will continue to grow and you'll clip those back and they'll fork again this is that this kind of exponential growth where one main stem turns into two two turns into four or five and five turns into 10 or even 15 different side shoots and side branches that all grow and so that's where you know you have one little spindly basil plant but if you chop if you chop that thing in half by the end of the month it'll look like a bush if you keep regularly pruning it back so leafing herbs are some are probably some of the most productive crops in the entire garden if you look at just the sheer amount that they produce for the shear on us you know for the lack of space they take up it's it's pretty incredible and it's something that I recommend anyone tried growing because they are definitely a crop where the more you harvest the more you get the fifth crop where the more you harvest the more you get is cucumbers I love cucumbers for this because it's a plant where you can grow pretty much one as long as you keep it healthy it's a lot like zucchini where it just keeps producing and producing and producing because it encourages more vine growth and the more vine growth you have the more cucumbers you're going to get and so if you if you accidentally leave your cucumbers on the vine like I accidentally did here they turn all yellow and gnarly the production drops dramatically as in like 75 to 80% reduction in production that wasn't supposed to rhyme but it sounded kind of cool so you have about an 80% reduction in production if you leave your cucumbers on the vine you know they once they start to produce fruit and and one starts ripening the plant pretty much just slows down production entirely so it's a lot like zucchini like I said where you know you got to stay up on it you got a harvest and if you do it regularly you're gonna get a lot more out of it so this plant back here is pretty much done for like I said I accidentally left this one on I just didn't even see the I didn't even see the free and that's actually prompted this video because we were noticing that our cucumbers were dropping dramatically in production and you could tell by the end of the vines you know they weren't they weren't producing anything I thought okay well I'm I'm fertilizing the plants look really healthy why am I not getting any fruit so I kind of just went on a mission to find out what the problem was and that's when I found this underneath a couple leaves deep down inside here that I'd obviously missed and that is exactly why you know all along this plant there had been not been any fruit production in like two weeks and it's because this thing had been sitting on there for like two weeks so keep harvesting and you're gonna really benefit and you're gonna reap the rewards of harvesting because they're gonna keep giving you more so that is the five crops that I have for you and you might be wondering Luke where are tomatoes do tomatoes fall in this category and they don't actually tomatoes do not stop producing they are a vine and vining crops like tomatoes don't stop producing even when the fruit starts ripening this is why it did not fall into this category it's still a great crop to grow and you still get a lot of tomatoes but the more you harvest does not mean the more you're going to get especially when it comes to an indeterminate tomato you can leave those Tomatoes on literally until they fall off the plant and it'll just keep producing more Tomatoes the higher up it goes because they'll produce all season long regardless and that's the difference between a perpetual harvest like tomatoes and an exponential harvest like cucumbers or any of the other five crops that I mentioned so there's a little bit of a difference and maybe we'll do that if you want to umm if you want me to do a video on crops that are perpetual harvesters let me know in the comments box below or if this video gets over a thousand likes I'll make that video because I want to make sure you guys want it but yeah I think you'd be I think it'd be important to uh to cover but like I said let me know in the comments box below do you want a video on perpetual harvest versus exponential harvest so all right I'll catch you guys later on tomorrow's episode hope you guys enjoyed hopefully you learned something new and as always this is Luke from the mi gurnard channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 351,711

Rating: 4.9585981 out of 5

Keywords: crops, organic, garden, produce, migardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, harvest, production, 5 crops, gardening

Id: EIhvlXB9jjs

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019