Addressing Two Major Issues!

thank you hello friend welcome back to acre Homestead we've got a couple pretty serious Garden issues we need to address two in particular we've got some harvesting we need to do or get to do I should say and we're gonna make dinner tonight we are going to make a peanut pasta it's gonna be really good but first thing I need to do is get my new favorite weeding tool and I think I'm gonna go ahead and grab a kneeling pad too because we're going to be in the garden for a little bit I think that's the only thing we need in this ship I have made a grave mistake in feeding the birds and I will show you what that is in just a minute but first we need to get some more supplies before we head out into the garden I am struggling with a major soil deficiency in my garden when I did the soil test back probably about two months ago now I can show you the results right here it said that I had a major nitrogen deficiency and nitrogen is a very important nutrient for plants and I amended each bed with bone meal according to the packaging and what I should do but it was not enough and so I can see that my plants are suffering so what I did is I ordered a 50 pound bag of blood meal which is basically nitrogen so we are going to amend each bed not each bed I'm going to amend each plant with this fertilizer this is the what brand is this the Down to Earth Brand which I have purchased before I like this fertilizer it's organic it comes in compostable Packaging and I really like this fertilizer brand and it was much more affordable for me to buy it in a 50 pound bag than it was for me to buy the three pound boxes I think that's what they are they're three or five pounds and because I have 20 beds out there and my beds are so depleted in nitrogen I figured this was the way to go but each one of the plants needs to be fertilized and fed it doesn't actually have an odor to it which is great I was reading on the packaging how much I should feed the plants and it says that for established plants they need one to two teaspoons depending on the plant so we're going to start probably with one teaspoon per plant so I grabbed a half gallon mason jar and a spoon and my canning funnel now I can smell it okay we are going to work our way from the backyard which is basically just the landscape Salon area down to the garden and I'm going to show you how much my plants are suffering and we will kind of work our way down the garden so the first thing that we need to do is we need to address a grave grave mistake that I have made when it comes to my bird feeders since this landscape project started I wanted to get myself bird feeders and I got myself one there and I have one tucked over here and I just bought bird seed at the store not knowing anything about bird seed and my mom quickly she came over and she said Becky you do not want this bird seed it is going to sprout and I learned the hard way that I have now created a huge mess for myself that's going to take me a while to eradicate this problem the bird seed that I put in here has created a massive disaster for me so I need to come in here and weed all of this there's sunflower this is a sunflower that's a sunflower that's a sunflower and this is all Millet that has sprouted and it is all in here where the birds and squirrels have dropped the bird seed as soon as my mom told me that I emptied the bird seed from the bird seed that would Sprout and Josh and I had been so enjoying the birds we were a little devastated that one that I had made this disaster it's okay it will just take time for me to eradicate the problem but we didn't want to give up the dream of watching Bert out our window so what I did is I went online and I googled no sprouting bird seed and I found this and I'm really excited let me show you this right here is the culprit that is going to be going to the chickens I'm not putting any more of this in my birdhouses but I got two bags of this no grow wild bird food and it also is no mess because the sunflower seeds are already hold and so they're not going to be eating the sunflower seed and putting the hole on the ground so if you also want to have bird feeders but you don't want the huge mess with the weed problem this is what I would recommend I guess I haven't really used it I can link it down below but I haven't used it for long enough to know if it indeed is perfect for the job to keep the mess from getting everywhere I should fill it in this bucket and then this will be my bird feeder bucket so any of the extra bird feed we'll just fall into this tote foreign I have to remember to bring this inside because that's my canning funnel and if I leave it out here next time I need to do a canning project I will be very sad that I don't know where it is another thing that we are going to go put out into the garden on the patio and down in the main Garden are these little insect feeders or waterers be they're called b cups or pollinator cups this was a gift and I cannot wait to put it out they are just basically little insect waterer so instead of having like a big bird bath it's basically a little where they can sit on the edge and drink and I'm really so happy to have this I got a really beautiful letter with this and it was just awesome so thank you and I'm so excited to put these out in the garden I can link this down below they're called b cups b cups are tiny porcelain cups that collect small amounts of water for bees butterflies and other pollinators so I'm gonna put these where I know my irrigation will hit them and the cups will always stay full with water and we will get these bird feeders hung back up I'll be back for the cups these little insect cups are so fun and I have been able to put them in areas where my irrigation hits them and where I water I hand water my green stocks and these pots and so I just make sure I keep them full and it has been so fun to watch the insects so not only now am I an avid bird watcher I am an avid insect Watcher and it is so fun so this green stock here that you can see right with those round leaves those are nasturtiums growing in that green stock and I see so many hummingbirds enjoy those flowers and it's so fun and now I'm hanging up my bird feeders for the other type of birds to enjoy this bird seed and Josh and I it was funny we were talking and I I even have it's hard to see but there is a sunflower little bird bath there that is it's glass and I just keep it full with water and when I was setting that up I was setting it up right after I got these bird feeders and Josh was like your inner old lady is showing and I am here for it I love it I love enjoying my coffee watching the birds and Josh and I both actually have been really enjoying watching the birds I had posted on Instagram a few of the birds that I have found are watched come and enjoy the property and a few of you guys had recommended the app it's I think it's Merlin it's a free bird identification app and it is incredible you can take a blurry photo put it on there and it'll tell you what bird it is and that has been so fun and so I'm just really glad that I found this bird seed because spoiler alert the new bird seed is fantastic and I'm not gonna have to worry about these types of messes happening again because these seeds are growing in mulch they are really easy to disturb the roots and this is what I do every few days it doesn't usually get this bad normally you know I find like 10 or 20 Little Sprouts and I just take my little weeder and I go around and disturb the roots and I don't think I created a massive problem when I found this I was devastated I was thinking oh my goodness what did I do but if I keep on top of it because they're growing in mulch and if I don't let the roots get into the native soil I think that by the end of the summer I should have been able to eradicate this problem that I created sorry if you can hear my neighbor mowing it's a beautiful day and so it's a good day to mow but I found something that I know I did not put in my bird feeders this is crazy I found this yesterday I have no idea where it came from and that is this plant right here that I'm pretty sure is a potato and I have no idea how a potato ended up in the Landscaping I don't really want potatoes growing in my Landscaping so I am going to pull it up but it's so weird I mean I'm pretty sure you can tell me otherwise if that's not a potato but I'm pretty sure that's a potato this is my plan to keep my little weeding tool on my back deck and as I see the Millet sprouts come up they're super easy to dig up right now I will just start digging them up I can't really pull them all there's so many of them and so this is going to be a very long process to eradicate this problem that I've created but it is what it is learn more do better and I won't plant this kind of or put this kind of that kind of bird seed in my bird feeders next time but it's okay let's go out into the garden and have some fun in the vegetable garden [Music] I only have a few beds in the garden that don't have weed fabric and they definitely grow weeds so I need to get in here and weed this entire bed so that it doesn't affect the carrots we have carrots planted in here in between all the onions and these onions are definitely suffering for malnutrition I mean you can see all these weeds in here that need to be picked so I'm going to get them fed I'm going to get them weeded and then I'm going to get them thinned these carrots were not pelleted carrots when I planted them and so they were very difficult to plant so some of them are way too close together so we need to thin them out so that they're not so close together so they can actually grow in size it's a weed let that dry out there and then over here the same thing but I did not do I did pelleted carrots over here so they don't need to be thinned as much because the pelleted carrots were easier to plant proper spacing like that one needs to be Bend but they need to be weeded and they need to be fed these onions are suffering for malnutrition so we're going to get them fed and weeded these two onion beds too are the onion beds where the onion starts came pretty moldy and so I don't know if that's part of it I think honestly I think the biggest problem is the malnutrition and uh this could be embarrassing like I could be embarrassed to show you this but this is the reality of gardening and I want to share with you that it takes time and years to improve soil to build Gardens and I just put in what I could afford at the time to fill these beds so it was a mix of topsoil compost and sand and so at the end of the year I am going to top dress all of these beds with compost and I'm going to prep them amend them and get them ready for next spring and hopefully we can just over the years build up the soil it takes time to build a really nutrient dense soil and so I don't want you to be discouraged that if not everything you plant in your first year Garden doesn't produce this massive abundance that's okay we live in the 21st century thankfully we are not dependent on our own gardening abilities as much as I would love you know to be able to produce as much produce for Josh and I I am still learning in this skill and so I can still go to the farmer's market and buy local produce I can go to the grocery store and buy produce and it's something that we're going to work on building the soil together over the years it's really interesting to see how the different plants are doing because some of the plants in this same soil are doing fine and they look like they're thriving and then some like these onions are stunted one thing I am just now remembering is when my dad and I fed these beds the original time we ran out of the blood meal that was recommended for this whole entire lower row and so this hasn't been amended at all so I did go a little bit heavier on the blood meal on these two beds because they didn't get their initial feeding but now I'm going to go around and show you the areas that are really suffering and why this needs to happen very quickly so here's the bed that's right above this onion bed and it is a cabbage bed these are all red cabbages but down here these are supposed to be green these are supposed to be green and they have completely turned purple and yellowing and they do not have enough nutrients so these need to be amended very quickly here and then I am going to also feed the corn corn is a very heavy feeder and down here they need to be fed as well it takes time to build soil and build nutrients in your soil and this is the first year these beds have anything in them so I'm just learning how to go learning what to do and the fact that I have a soil test that I could lean on is awesome I can link my soil test down below but you can see this is celery celery should not be yellow celery should be green so this is seriously suffering from a nitrogen deficiency and these black beans are seriously suffering from nitrogen deficiency as well they are bouncing back because I fed them with just the all-purpose fertilizer but they need a good feeding of just nitrogen about a week ago this entire bed all of the plants were yellow and I fed them three times with the all-purpose fertilizer I had and now they're bouncing back and the new growth is green so that's good that the new growth is green they are stunted definitely but I think that if I keep feeding them they will bounce back I will show you some beans that were planted the exact same days these ones in the green stock this is what those black beans should look like right here green and beautiful and that's not what they're looking like those beans were planted the same day as these ones they're twice the size because they are planted in the green stock which has a potting mix with a slow release fertilizer in it and it's a more balanced nutrition for the plant versus these beds where the nutrition is a little bit off balance so we're learning our garden we're learning our bed we're figuring out what is best for them and we're just going going with it so time to start feeding these beds one of the really cool things is I just found a resource for some local organic compost I had gone to the farmer's market and this farmer who grows not even 20 minutes away from me had these beautiful radishes and I was asking him how in the world do you grow these beautiful radishes they're huge and he was telling me about his methods and where he buys his organic compost and I was feeling a little bit sad thinking I didn't know that there was a resource for this in my local area I tried to do you know all the research before filling these beds and I did not find this one company and I even Googled after I talked to him to try to find this company glad I bought the 50 pound bag because I'm going through quite a bit of it every bed is being amended today so that I could just see how it goes moving forward and I it still didn't show up so I have the name of the company and that is the place where I'm going to be buying my organic compost from now on that is one of the cool things about getting into your local community and talking to the local farmers and the local Growers and picking their brains and figuring out how are they doing what they're doing and how are they doing it so well because the proof is there if you can you know go to the farmer's market and you can see this abundance in beautiful you know array of produce that they're able to grow and ask them and trust me do not be embarrassed or intimidated to ask your local farmers as a farmer's market what they do because farmers are passionate about what they do and they want to share it with everybody and so that's the cool thing about kind of getting into your community and learning from the people that grow in your area so I am working with what I have here we are going to do our best to try to get as best of an abundance as we can get out of this Garden but I am also going to continue to rely on the people that do this better than I do the local Growers that grow and they know what they're doing because I can have fun in my garden I can try to learn and do better every year and then whatever I can't do I can supplement with people that do it really well now this has not been a total loss there has been an abundance of stuff that I've already gotten out of this garden and I'm grateful for every little bit that I can grow but I'm just sharing with you that if you have a garden and it is not as abundant or prolific as you want it to be the first year don't give up gardening is a learned skill it's you know continuing to just learn every year and I feel like I am a brand new Gardener this year because I'm working with a new Garden a new climate new beds that haven't been amended because the last beds I had been amending them with compost and horse manure and all the things for a long time so I'm just excited that you know we're we're starting new and we're in it together so I just harvested some broccoli those were some broccoli side shoots I had already harvested the main broccoli head and they're producing side shoots and now I'm out here harvesting the garlic Scapes this is the flowering head of my elephant garlic and we're going to bring this inside this stuff is incredible if you've never tried garlic Scapes go to your local farmers markets they probably have them for you to try now I am going to put these garlic steaks directly into the free well I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna freeze them or if I'm gonna blend them up into a garlic paste one of my favorite things that I have preserved ever are my little garlic pox I love them I think I'm going to turn this into garlic pucks I don't have the time to do that right now so what I'm gonna do is bend them stick them into one of my green produce bags I love these during Garden season because they help keep my garden produce fresh until I have time to preserve them I don't always have time to preserve the item right when I harvest it so I'm going to take these garlic scapes stick them into the fridge and now we're going to get dinner going we're going to make a really easy dinner we're gonna make a peanut pasta salad with chicken that I'm gonna meal prep I'm gonna make a good amount so that we can enjoy it for dinner tonight and then we can have it for lunches for the next couple days so I'm going to wash up this broccoli that I harvested I have some more broccoli in my refrigerator that I harvested a couple days ago we're gonna wash that up too and let me see this shouldn't take very long to throw this together but we're gonna get a pot of boiling water on this is going to be a cold salad this morning I pulled out some just plain chicken breasts from the freezer and I got those thawed I got two chicken breasts that we're gonna Grill up for dinner tonight because I thought that that would go well I'll season it but I thought that that would go better than any of the marinates that I have in my freezer right now the flavor profiles that I have of the pre-made marinades just don't match peanut sauce and then I did grab out one marinated chicken that needs to I'm gonna go ahead and Grill it at the same time so that we can enjoy salad probably for dinner tonight and I'll just meal prep the chickens and I'm already gonna be having the grill go I might as well Grill up more chicken than what we need for dinner tonight okay so let me wash the produce these are the veggies that I'm going to use salad it was great up two carrots I did some of this prep earlier and I just had these pre-graded pre-washed carrots in the fridge so we're gonna get them grated and now I have some red cabbage that I'm going to cut really really thin as thin as I can and I'm going to cut about half of this red cabbage when I'm cutting things really thin the key is to have a really sharp knife and you use your knuckle and you're actually brushing the knife along your knuckle so I put my fingernail back and then I put my knuckle out a little bit and I run the knife along my finger to try to get a really thin slice and I always keep my fingers tucked in like this not like this you don't want to hold stuff like this because then you're more likely to cut your finger so tuck it in and rest that knife right up against your knuckle this recipe is a type of recipe I love it's a one pot meal it's going to have a ton of veggies it's gonna have some pasta and it's going to have some protein so I'm not going to make any other meal tonight or side dish or anything like that because it's all in one now I've never made this particular recipe before I will link it down below I just found it on Pinterest I am modifying it a little bit and that the recipe calls for radishes I don't have any more homegrown radishes in the garden right now that are ready for harvesting so I'm skipping the radish but I'm going to add the broccoli that I harvested today plus the raw glue that I harvested out of the garden the other day so we're just going to substitute radish for broccoli and then I am going to make twice as much pasta as it says the recipe doesn't call for chicken and I'm adding chicken and so I'm going to double the dressing too because I think the dressing is going to be the best part and because I'm doubling the pasta and the veggies really I want to make sure that there's enough dressing to go on the entire thing and then whatever if I don't use all the dressing for dinner tonight a peanut sauce style dressing is not going to go to waste in this house that is for sure this is a really good kind of summery dinner I think by the time the chicken's cooked and the pasta is cooked we'll have the dressing made and the veggies prepped I'm going to cut the broccoli into smaller bite-sized pieces and I'm going to blanch this in the water once the pasta is almost done so that it's a little bit cooked but not fully cooked just so that it has a little bit of that raw flavor cooked out of it good the recipe called for egg noodles and I don't know exactly what that meant I don't know what Asian style egg noodles are so I have just this whole wheat pasta spaghetti pasta that we're gonna use in substitution for that and I can't figure out how long they're supposed to cook for let me get it in the water very least so that can start to cook I'm going to cook one pound the original recipe calls for eight ounces so I'm basically doubling it so that I have neoprote yeah I think I should have the rest of this meal put together let's get the chicken on the grill next I don't like cooking chicken breasts that are intact completely I like to butter apply them open because I think they cook a little bit faster and more evenly and so they don't dry out as much so I'm going to cut these in half and I'm gonna get them seasoned up really well I'm not going to do anything fancy though with it I'm just going to do some salt and pepper on each side because I think the dressing will have enough yummy flavor to it I did wash my hands really well for the last minute and a half of cooking I threw the broccoli in there and I'm going to let the broccoli cook just for a minute now we're going to make the dressing I did not realize how little peanut butter I have in my house so we're just gonna make as much of this dressing as we can with the amount of peanut butter we have there's a little bit of honey in here so this is peanut butter and honey now I'm going to add a garlic Puck this is coconut aminos but you could use this or soy sauce coconuts has a little bit of a sweeter flavor I have some of our chive Blossom vinegar I'm out of rice wine vinegar too so if I had that I would use that we're gonna put some homemade Sriracha this is not in the recipe but I'm gonna add it as just a little bit of Ginger sesame oil oh that's not sesame oil that's right white red wine vinegar this is sesame oil salt and some pepper I should get a whisk all right let's give this a taste test I hope that's enough dressing cheers I can link the original recipe down below that I found on Pinterest oh man that is delicious now it's more of a vinaigrette than like a peanut sauce dress here I would say you can definitely taste the peanut sauce but or the peanut butter I I would like it a little bit more peanut buttery but I don't have any more peanut butter so we're just going with what we got here so now what I'm gonna do is add all of our veggies I hope my bowl is big enough because this is a huge salad that I'm making I did not realize how much I am making here I don't know if the chicken is gonna fit in here too maybe we'll have to just put the chicken on the top and I've got a bunch of cilantro here we're going to go ahead and add I first need to chop that up I had to get a new knife I'm gonna keep this cilantro in pretty decent sized pieces I did strain the pasta and it's cooling along with the broccoli big chunks of cilantro if you don't like cilantro leave it out to add the peanut flavor I'm going to chop up some peanuts foreign crunch it'll add just a rough chop our pasta and our broccoli yep that doesn't fit very well this is a massive salad that I made here then I have to pull out the big guns my jamerrill sized Bowl so that I can stir this good thing this is something that will keep in the fridge really well and leftovers will be delicious because we are going to have a lot of leftovers and I might have to make some more dressing I might just put some more ingredients on the top because I don't know if the amount of dressing I made is gonna coat all the veggies and the pasta but my word does this smell incredible this salad was so good and it held up really well in the fridge it made a really nice Light Summer lunch for the next quite a few days I would say this recipe is inspired by the recipe I'm going to link down below because I just added a little bit more of everything because there wasn't quite enough to coat everything and this is more of a vinaigrette with a hint of peanut flavor than like a peanut dressing which is what I was kind of going for it tastes delicious I just wish I had more peanut butter but I've got this all mixed in now oh this is gonna be really good even with not the amount of peanut butter I was hoping for because I have this big bowl out I'm going to go ahead and get the chicken cut up and I'm going to cut this pretty small just in a like bite-sized pieces I took the chicken thighs off the grill too so the chicken thighs are going to be for meal prep probably will have salad for dinner tomorrow with chicken on the top because there's so much lettuce coming out of the garden it's the perfect time to enjoy salad for dinner as long as we can I just planted a couple days ago another succession of lettuce so hopefully we'll have lettuce all summer long as long as it will stay without bolting I have found that I can keep lettuce from turning bitter for most of the year as long as I keep it really watered and I keep planting it now I'm going to put these yummy juices in there because I want all that flavor because my dressing isn't quite as flavorful as I was hoping you're really good pasta salad to bring to a potluck or something like that because it will hold up really well and it's a little bit lighter than your traditional like American style mayonnaise-based pasta salad I do love that that too but this has got a little twist on a nice summer pasta salad get all that chicken in that dressing so that has a little bit more flavor than just salt and pepper has a lot of good veggies and a good amount of crunch from those peanuts I'm gonna put it back in this bowl because this is the bowl that has a lid that I can store in my fridge let's see if it fits whatever doesn't fit we'll enjoy for dinner [Music] foreign I do need to do a final taste test with all the ingredients together I have not done that yet I'm going to pop this in the fridge to chill for a little bit because it's a little early for dinner so that it'll be nice and chilled everything will be the same temperature and it will make a delicious dinner so good it would be better if it had more peanut butter in it but that's okay it is still very very delicious and that just means I need to put peanut butter on my grocery list peanut butter is not something that I stock up on have you seen my pantry tours you know that I keep a lot of ingredients on hand but we don't go through a lot of peanut butter and parameter can go bad so I don't like to stock up on a bunch of peanut butter in case it goes bad on me well friend I'm excited to eat that for dinner tonight it's gonna be perfect we'll probably sit outside and enjoy the garden it's like the perfect temperature out today I think the high was like 66 or 67 overcast just like the perfect temperature to eat dinner outside so thank you for being here thank you for being you don't forget to check out the description box for all sorts of links down there I'm really excited about my little b cups my pollinator cups and this recipe because I think if you follow the recipe it will be a 10 out of 10. I would say this is probably well I'll put a bunch of hot sauce on the top of mine which will elevate it so I'd probably say it's a solid 6.5 and then with dousing of hot sauce it'll be a seven it definitely has some room for improvement but I love chicken and veggies and that Asian flavor I think it's delicious so I think it's gonna be really good so thank you for being here thank you for being you and I can't wait to see you next time bye friend oh I can pop a couple of my other videos here you can go enjoy between now and my next upload bye friend

Channel: Acre Homestead

Views: 161,544

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Id: AQWIGVqndOk

Length: 38min 8sec (2288 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023