- Today, we are gonna be planting a ton of tomatoes in the bed
where the garlic used to be. I just harvested out over the weekend, probably 200 heads of garlic, Jacques. - They look really good. - They're sitting over there, we'll show you those in a second but, I did not start as many
tomato seeds as I wish I did. Jacques started more this season. It seems like every season we
kinda trade off a little bit. I think last year I
started a ton of flowers, this year you started a ton of tomatoes. So I'm stealing a few
Jacques tomato starts. You have a couple selections here. We have indeterminates here.
- Oh, yeah. - But then you've been really
into the dwarf tomatoes. - Big time. So, over there in the front
are the dwarf tomatoes. And the nice thing about them
is that they max out at like, three to five feet tall. And you could support them with literally just a single stake. So, you don't need a
whole complicated trellis and string and all that.
- Right. - Really easy and they're
great in containers too, but we're gonna do 'em
in the ground here today. - Yeah, yeah. So you
guys remember last year we had three different trellis styles? We had the Florida Weave here. We had a large string
trellis in the middle. And then we had a lower lean over there. So we haven't really decided
the trellising methods we're gonna use yet
for the indeterminates, but the indeterminates are
gonna go in every 18 inches, across this back row, at least as many as we
have that we wanna plant. And then the dwarfs,
like Jacques just said, we'll just put in front. Because if you look over here, we have all these leeks and onions that we have yet to pull out. And that's probably where our pepper and maybe our eggplants
and stuff are gonna go. We can dedicate this whole
thing to tomatoes if we want. So, let's see. Let's go ahead and get planting, Jacques. - Sure. - Why don't we do the Principe Borghese... (Jacques laughs) small plum? Okay. Well that one's going in over here. - Okay. So. - And you took off most of the foliage. - That's right. I already trimmed off all the lower stuff. These tomatoes have been, I
started all these on March 12th. So some of the lower
leaves are just starting to look a little rough. And since we're planting deep anyway, just make sense to remove 'em. - And this time, unlike my garlic crop, which I sort of forgot the names of because all the labels
got a little bit muddied. I am going to make sure
that we pay attention to these labels this time. Okay. What am I gonna do next? Granadero Plum? So I can go plums in a row, I guess. Oh, you know what? This is coming outta the
four-inch-deep 4-Cell. - Oh, yeah. I have a little bit of both. - [Kevin] Let's take a
look at the roots. Ooh! (both laugh) Don't mind if I do. - I mean, you could see
the advantage of the 4-Cell on the edges here. There's no wrapping of the root. - Yep. - It's just sticking out
and it prunes itself. - Goes straight out and
then kinda, basically dies. - So I'm not gonna even bother
messing with the root ball. I could just literally
plop it in the ground. Some of these are actually new. I eliminated a lot of
tomatoes from last year that I just didn't care about. - Well, that's what
happened to me, remember? - So I tried a lot of new ones. Like, Beauty King ended up being amazing. - Oh, that's right. - And then, there were a couple
that looked good on paper and did not perform well. - Yeah. No more purple tomatoes this year, I'll tell you that much.
- Yeah, man. - I'm out. - Okay, this is B-L... (Jacques laughs) B-L-Yan-B-G? What's that? Is that just called a bad handwriting? - No, it's actually Bulgarian. - Oh, is it? Okay. Never mind. - Blyan. And this one's Maglia Rose. So these are actually Bulgarian
tomato seeds that I brought, figured I'd sneak a
little into Kevin's patch. - It's called brought. It's called smuggled. Back from the motherland. - Let's just say I asked myself
and I decided it was okay. - Yeah. - But there's a few different
Bulgarian ones here, and let's just say, I have no
idea if they're gonna work. So I decided to put some in Kevin's yard. - Here's why. It's because this year,
dominated him in garlic, dominated him in brassicas, looks like I'm dominating
bulbing onions and leeks. - That's true. - He's trying to sabotage me. - So here's the thing. If he beats me on tomatoes, like, I'm out. - If I beat him on tomatoes,
he might be out of the company. I mean, he might be actually gone. (Jacques laughs) Do you wanna do two
Sungolds or just the one? - Yeah, yeah, for sure. - All right, here's the other one. This is the $15 tomato seed pack. - The Margolds? - And I have the Lucky Tiger. It's one of these fancy,
like, stripy tomatoes that are apparently delicious. - Okay. Brandywine Cherry? (whistles) - Yeah. Apparently it makes cherry tomatoes to taste like a Brandywine heirloom. - The B Dub C.
- So... (laughs) The B Dub C.
- So I'm going in from here. - So I'm actually pretty hype up. - I'll give you the
honor of the Brandywine and I'll do the cherry.
- All right, I'll take it. (slow paced upbeat music) - All right. Determinate time, dwarf time. We don't have to space it out this time 'cause we're actually just
gonna split the difference between these two so
that, ideally at least, when it grows in, you kinda get a little
visual breakage between. - A little more light through. - Little bit. So these, we don't have as many varieties and there's five unique
varieties, Jacques. - [Jacques] Yep. - Do you know much about these? 'Cause I haven't seen
these before. Boronia? Is that, it's not Bulgarian, right? - No.
- No? - Yeah, the only one I actually recognize, that I remember specifically
getting is the Rosella Purple. Which is-
- Which I have right here. - there you go. - Yeah. That's what it looks like. - That's like a Cherokee
Purple analog basically. - [Kevin] Yeah. - So they bred it to
essentially just match whatever a Cherokee Purple is. - Interesting.
- But be a small plant. - So this is Uluru Ochre.
- Yeah. - Ochre. Ochre. - Some of the names are unique. So I'll go in with the Adelaide Festival, which is the other one. - Nice. - And then-
- A little Australian mix. - Yeah, there you go. Oh yeah, actually the cool
thing about this project is that they did it in
Australia at the same time. So that they could grow year round. - [Kevin] Ah. Smart. - So they did a selection
in North Carolina and then they sent seeds
to Australia to grow it. So you could get two growth
cycles in the same year. - This is all Craig LeHoullier's Project. - Yeah, exactly.
- Who we actually had on the podcast many years ago, guys. He is known as NC Tomato Man. - [Jacques] Yep. - And honestly, has grown more tomatoes than probably anyone on earth. - [Jacques] Alive, yeah.
- As far as unique varieties. - [Jacques] Yeah. - I think he said he'd grown 4,500. - I believe it. - Which is absolutely
bonkers for any human being. - I think he grows a
couple hundred every year. - Every year.
- Every year. - And, you know, he's an older guy, he's been stacking up seasons and he's just been going all the way. By the way, the fertilization
for this guys, nothing fancy. I'm just doing a literal
handful of Tomato-tone. - I think I just found something. - A little boost? - No, I don't want-
- You found some garlic? - No, found a rock. - Oh, dang. Here.
- All right, hit me. - You're about to get hit. (musical note squeaks) - Ooh! Good aim. In with the Uluru Ochre. I'm gonna start applying gardenstraw while you're doing that.
- Okay, I'll finish these up. - Hard to beat that fresh
(bag rustles) mulch, you know? - It looks so good. (bag continues rustling) - When you can't figure out
how to perfectly reshape a bed, you just put more mulch on it. (Jacques laughs) And make it look like it got reshaped. (playful music) And yes, I am watering
over the top of these, but it's really not a big
deal at this stage right now. (bag rustles) - Yeah, especially since
it's still daytime. - It's daytime, it's mulched. So there aren't soil splashes that are gonna come up on this. And all I'm doing is
just a really quick water to kinda matte down the
straw just a little bit. (bag rustles) So we have about two thirds
of this bed planted out now. And, this is like when
you put your tomatoes in, I think, think of it as like,
the foundation of the bed. And then you come in later
and you put in your basil. I mean, we could fit cucumbers, like ground, bushing-style
cucumbers down through here. - It'd be fun to try actually.
- I would really like to, 'cause apparently they have
a really beneficial effect when companion planted. You know, your alyssum, some of the stuff that we've talked about before. - Yeah. - So, all right. Let's move on. Next up is peppers, but first of all, I wanna
show you a little update on the chickies. (door handle rattles) They're getting a little bit bigger. A little bit thicker. Take a look at these girls. Starting to really get
into lavender's coloration. I honestly don't even think you could call that lavender as a color. I mean, I am colorblind, but she looks gray to me, guys. You tell me what you think. So I've been thinking, I might have a name for the Cream Legbar, and that name is Rufio. So if you know, uh oh, don't
come out, don't come out! Argh! (laughs) But if you know the reference of Rufio, leave it down on the comments, but she's got a little
signature look that reminds me of a character called Rufio. So, lemme know what you think. But, now we gotta plant
some peppers with Jacques. So let's go do it. By the way, look at the garlic. I told you I harvested
this out this past weekend. So some of them split underground. And these ones, I think I may
just let them sit like this and use them as bulb garlic or
clove garlic for next season. So I can just let these store and then when the time comes next season, you pop the clove out and plant them. 'Cause these are actually
pretty large cloves. But, the real story is these
honking bulbs right here. So the storage process is really after what's
called the curing process. And that's what we're doing right now. When you see them sort of sitting here, they're sitting here in a cool, sort of dry place for about 10-plus days. I mean, at least 10 days. You can go up to three
or four weeks, honestly, if you want to. You're waiting for these roots to dry out. You're waiting for the tops to dry out. You're waiting for this
skin to get papery. You can kinda see how it flakes away here and actually makes it really
easy to clean as well, 'cause you can just pop off one
layer of skin really easily. And then what you will do
is trim this, cut this. And you've got a nice head of garlic that you can store for the long haul. If it's a hardneck garlic, it'll store for about
three or four months. If it's a softneck, you
can go six to nine months. So, I gotta lot of
cleanup to do pretty soon. Now let's get to the peppers. So here we are. If you remember, this was
actually our radish madness bed from a many, many episodes ago. We threw radish seeds on here and used a rake and just scraped it in. And actually, it turned out
to have an incredible amount of radishes and turnips. - Yeah, we just don't like
radishes that much. (laughs) - Yeah, that's the problem. And the turnips, let's just
say, you guys know what we did to those turnips. Didn't turn out that well. (Jacques chuckles) Jacques, you have some peppers here. - Yeah. - Actually, quite a few. I see shishitos here, I think
we should plant all of 'em. - Okay. Let's do it. - I love shishito peppers.
- Yeah, I know. That's why I brought them. - Yeah, they are a little floppy, huh? - Yeah, some of 'em-
- Look at that. - Like, these ones are starting
to unroot a little bit, but if we plant 'em a little
deeper, they're totally fine. - Yeah. So we got Pludine Capila? - [Jacques] Yeah, Plebadine Scapilla. Oh this is Bulgarian? Okay. Okay. - That's the only one. The rest are standard. Let's just say I already have four in my- - Really?
- garden grown right now. - How are you gonna
space your peppers here? - I did closer to 16. I almost did 12. - I was thinking 12 for the space. - Yeah.
- Yeah. I was thinking 12. - Because I think that one
of the problems with peppers is that they like the little
micro climates of being close. And so they get a little more humidity and they get protected from sunscald. So, she does germinated
really well for me this year. - [Kevin] It's honestly
one of the better peppers. It's like just like a good guaranteed all around performing pepper. - And it just tastes really good. - And it just tastes great. You blistered these bad
boys, you're in business. Little pop, pop, pop, pop. No big deal. - You make it look so easy. - I mean it is. That's the thing. Gardening's easy guys. (playful music) - Cool. So, you mulch it up.
- Most of the peppers in. We'll throw us some mulch. We'll plant these in a couple days later, but, yeah, just time to get some mulch on. So guys, I'm really sad, but I completely missed the
very first dragon fruit flower of the season. I knew it was coming. Did not know it was blooming. I was not at home over
the night last night. And look at this. It is, this looks like it's opening. It's actually closing. And so, our garden hand here, Paul, who's probably made into a couple videos. He did some pollination here. This is the sugar dragon. So, I think we should get
our first dragon fruit here in about 30, 40 days. But I didn't come out here to
cry over spilt dragon fruit. I came to harvest this bed out here. So coming along. So over here, the bed
that we planted out many, many months ago has really
started to fill out. And in fact, you can see these
calendula are going crazy. So what I wanna do to preserve
these is just deadhead. And you can actually see, if you look at this really closely, you can see some pm's,
some powdery mildew. So, I wanna try to remove
that as much as I can. It's gonna happen. I think, you know, powdery mildew, a little bit overblown sometimes. It's just gonna happen
to some of your plants and there's not much you can do about it. So, I wanna come through deadhead as many of these spent flowers as I can to keep the calendula going. Freshens it up, you'd be
surprised how much better it looks when you clean up, you
know, 10% of the flowers that are totally spent and dead. It just looks way better,
way more attractive, especially when you cut. So you could deadhead this way or you just chop the top off like this. That's great, but now you have this sort of wonky looking stem here. So what I like to do is cut it really low. Just cleans the entire plant structure up. And then look, you're only
left with either these or these guys, which are about to bloom. So, I'm gonna do that in a little bit, but I wanna harvest out a couple things that I think are probably
getting pretty ready. And that would be some of
these little mini cabbages that we planted. So, this is some spinach that
has gone a little too long, but these mini cabbages are
actually in a good spot. So, if I get down here,
give it a little chop. I believe this is the
Mini Kisaku 50 cabbage. So yeah, it's been eaten up a little bit. Probably, cause it's going
into summer on a cabbage. So you might wanna pull
some of those away, but that's a nice little mini
sort of Napa style cabbage. And I'll pull one more for you guys, just to show you what it looks like. Take a look at that. So just sort of scrap
all the outer leaves. These are all eaten up
and a little messed with. Not bad, right? Perfect for some kimchi or
really whatever you wanna do. So I'm gonna harvest a
couple more of these out. Ooh, look at that. This is why you gotta peel it back because look what I just found. Some real rotten damage there from bugs. And so, this one, I
might just have to scrap. They got a little too deep
into the tissue of the plant while it was heading up. So this one is perfect for the chickens. So let's see if they wanna eat it. Today's episode of will
the chickies eat this? We need a better name for this segment on the Homestead channel. Comment down below what
you want it to be. 3, 2, 1. Oh that's a yes.
- Yeah. - [Kevin] There you go. Now Gucci went in, did
a little taste test. Now, what I've noticed
is Gucci usually leads and then lavender's like, "Oh, if Gucci's in, I'm in." There. Oh, oh, oh, there you go. So now two are in, four are out. Now, Butter's like, "Okay." Okay. Well, either way, I
guarantee if I come back tomorrow, that's gonna be gone. Okay. The chickens are feasting
on that rotten cabbage. We're gonna harvest out a
little bit more of these. Jacques in deadhead. There's a lot more coming
here on the Homestead. Actually, wow! Look at this. - What do you got? What is that? - One spinach.
- Oh, it's a spinach. - One spinach. But look at the, okay,
so take a look at this. No, this is actually a
teachable gardening moment here, right?
- Let's see. - Okay. So we planted
this pretty dense, right? We planted spinach kind
of down this middle line. This does not get a ton of sun here. Why would it look like this, right? - [Jacques] Stretching out. - It never had a chance, right? And look what it did to its stock. I mean, honestly,-
- It's so fluffy. - it's a little disturbing. Like, you know.
- It's a new cultivar. - You know what? Here's what you do. Here's what you do. You cut these off right here. You whip up some like pudding, you know? Oh, hold on let's go right there. You serve it in this
at a fancy restaurant, a hundred dollars. - A little caviar on top. - You know some chef would sell this. You know they'd fill it up
with tapioca and be like, you know, like stretch,
spin, it's tapioca, like. It's $700, you know. Anyways, we're gonna
clean this bed out guys. Stay tuned. There's a
huge project coming soon on the Homestead channel. We're installing more solar panels. So I'm gonna do a one year solar update, including the install
of 14 more panels here. Because look, we're in a
weird, weird time right now where energy prices are
going up, gas is going up. The price of wheat is going up. It's a good time to start building some more self-sufficiency, more resiliency on your house. Even if you're in a suburban environment. So that's kind of what epic
home setting's all about. So stay tuned, good luck in
the garden and keep on growing.
