FULL Garden Tour | August 2023

hey guys what is up welcome back to roots and refuge Farm my name is Jess if you're new here I'm so glad you're here if you're not new here I'm also glad you're here I'm out in my garden for a very casual and laid-back garden tour video if you've been here very long you know that I do these videos throughout the growing season I have for the last six years now two different Gardens we've moved and we've been building this Garden this is the second season that we've been working on it it's not quite to where I Envision it but we're getting there I usually say it takes a solid three years to like really build a garden out to really establish soil and ecosystem and I can see a massive difference this year in my garden versus last year and I hope for just as much improvement next year so I'm growing in the Midlands of South Carolina right on the edge of Zone 7B and 8A I kind of lean towards the seven side of things um I tried to lean into the eight side of things and killed a bunch of citrus plants last winter when it got really cold more like seven lows right now it it is early August and I would tell you that historically growing here in South Carolina and then in Arkansas before this my garden is usually completely toast by by August because usually in this area and where I was in Arkansas it was we had already had so many days by August that were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit 38 Celsius I'll tell you this year has been significantly cooler than that we've had a lot of days that haven't even exceeded 90 32 Celsius which is really wild it's very unusual for here we have definitely had hot days there have been weeks that it is in the high 90s but I don't I think maybe we've had one day that was over 138 and because of that the garden still looks largely good I mean there's definitely a lot of crispiness there's a lot of stuff that's had to be pulled out at this point but for it to have this much still producing and in August is very foreign now I know a lot of you live in places where you're just really starting to harvest and you're going to harvest in through September into October and then you'll probably be getting your Frost around there for us we don't really get across until early November and with that being the case what August looks like in the garden for us is a lot of things are finishing up and we are putting in the things for fall we're pulling out the stuff that's coming to an end some things we're pulling out even though they are still kind of producing but they're just not producing great so we go ahead and pull them out to make room for fall but this year we just have we have a really big Garden so we have a lot of rooms there's still a lot of the scraggly stuff hanging on so the way our garden works is we actually have multiple zones and in those zones we grow in different styles so in here this is obviously a raised bed garden we also have an in-ground no dig Garden we have a tilled area and I'll tell you I may focus a little bit and this Garden Tour more than usual about what we're going to do differently next year when I come to the end of a season I like to really think about what I liked what I didn't like while the season is very fresh on my mind people ask me all the time how do you keep records this is it baby I make videos back I watched these later this is this is my garden journal it's you guys and I highly suggest that I know a lot of people like a written Journal I am a journaler and so like I journal in my life but as far as the garden goes I'm very Visual and video helps me so it's actually how the garden tour started it was me doing this more for myself than anybody else and you don't have to have a YouTube channel to make videos for the sake of Records you can totally just make videos on your phone for you to watch later um I think posting them and sharing them is great because it helps build community and connection with other gardeners but just making some videos on your phone of what you're planting when how it's doing maybe like a little weekly clip that you go through and film your a little garden tour for yourself that you can look back on in the winter whenever you're starting to make your garden plan so down here at the very end of the raised bed garden now there's no fences in this Garden you can see it's all just kind of open that's going to change that's something that's kind of high on the list next year is to get all of the fencing in we're going to have Arbors and Gates and everything entering in we don't want to build that stuff till we were done building all the infrastructure because obviously getting equipment in makes the infrastructure building a lot easier down here I still have tomatoes they're still coming in slowly not nearly as much as they were but I definitely have fresh tomatoes to eat regularly my plants are looking fairly sick I've stopped pruning off the sickly Parts because at this point I don't really care that much I still have tomatoes for fresh eating and then I still have enough to make a batch of salsa here every once in a while now on this row I had cucumbers which did not do very well my cucumbers and melons both really floundered this year I'm not 100 sure why I think probably the culprit was just that we had a whole lot of rain and being cooler than usual with all the rain they just all got really crispy I didn't really see pow that's usually what happens with Cool Rain they just didn't they just didn't do well they they all just kind of shriveled up got a little disease this is a weed this is actually called dog fennel and uh Benjamin my baby who is eight will tell you rub this on your skin it'll make the bugs go away it's will taught him that and anytime he sees dolphin and we were at the lake last week and he was there he's like Mom there's dog fennel everywhere we we don't even need any bug spray we have the dog fiddle I was like you're right Ben so I didn't get a lot of cucumbers I still have like a cup like look at this I still have a couple of little plants and they're trying to set a couple of fruits but it's just it's just not going well and that's okay um here I have a few beets I grew these I harvested a couple of them they did not taste good so I just left those in there I'll probably feed them to the animals root vegetables really Thrive uh when it's cool outside those would not have bowled up at all uh or we would not have any roots on those beets if it had been as hot as it usually is I threw those in when I realized how cool the summer was going uh but it's still a little warm for them to taste that good now we're starting now to sew root vegetables throughout the garden to harvest late this fall and into winter and as it goes into winter you can just leave them in the ground and that is when they taste great because those plants are storing all of the sugars that they can in their Roots because they're just trying to survive the winter to be able to make seeds next year and so growing your root vegetables when it's cool means you get the sweet and good flavor so beets carrots radishes turnips rutabagas man we go wild on those throughout the fall and into the winter and eat a lot of those things when they are at their Prime there's a couple of really lovely Tomatoes This is actually a mix-up I have this labeled as Dr witches but it's definitely not Dr witches is yellow and this is red but it's been a really good tomato I may end up saving seeds from one of these um just because I really liked it so a lot of the pepper plants that are out in the open have been kind of struggling but they are still producing the peppers down in the high tunnel are thriving they've really enjoyed the shade cloth even with it being a cooler year the eggplant we've harvested tons of all year we've had flea beetles and this has been the case for me with eggplants for a really long time is having flea beetles and my eggplant leaves always look like this but we still get fruit and this is kind of one of those things that if I have a pest that's causing a cosmetic issue on some of my plants but I'm still getting fruit I usually don't do anything about it um I and embattled the flea Beetles for a long time but then I realized that they weren't actually hindering me getting the Harvest so I just left them alone so all my eggplants have holy leaves but tasty fruit we've eaten lots of eggplant this year all throughout the garden we have really large basil plants that have gone to seed at this point I'm not harvesting these however I've left them for the pollinators just because I don't need the space so they can have that now some of the basil plants I have been pulling these flower stalks off of trying to keep them as usable as possible like this lettuce leaf basil but at this time of the year it's just really hard to keep them from going to seed you just have to be very Vigilant to praying light here I hadn't pruned this in the last couple of days and it's covered in flowers this lettuce leaf basil though I think has made it to the top of my favorite basil it's got great flavor it has these really really beautiful leaves I think sometimes this is called Mammoth Leaf maybe there's another name for it those are the two I've seen it called but it's great since I've been gluten free I've missed tomato sandwiches honestly that's been really hard and unfortunately a lot of gluten-free breads are still I mean I don't really grains and so a lot of gluten-free breads are still grains or they've got lots of like processed stuff in it so one of the things that I have done this year is slice tomatoes and get a couple pieces of bacon and a little bit of mayonnaise and wrap it up in a basil lettuce leaf and eat that and it's it's good I mean it's no tomato sandwich I'm not gonna try to sell it to you as if it is but it is very good and it hits the spot I told you guys early in the season that butterfly peas take a while to take off but once they do take off man they go wild so here's my blue butterfly peas which make a really lovely tea that is a really rich blue and then also the lavender butterfly piece which this is my first year growing these and I've just been mixing them together to save the flowers you just take them and you lay them out to dry and then put them in an airtight container but yeah so this is a trombonesino squash that is no longer with us [Music] um these areas are ready to re-sew I know Will has resoned some things we had our family vacation this last week and so aside from yesterday I haven't been out in the garden much in the last week but I know Will has sewn some seeds I've got to get him to run me through and tell me what to wear but I don't believe that these areas are sewn I think he did it in the high tunnel so this is the bitter melon which has been really cool to watch this grow of course this thrives in a climate like ours being in an Asian vegetable it likes humid and hot and that's what we've got down here we have more areas that are being better ready to resew I don't have anything going on here we'll end up doing more green beans here we'll do sweet peas out here we'll do the English shelling sweet peas that you eat I'm planning on growing a lot of sweet pea flowers this year but I think I'm going to do those down in the high tunnel and then also out here we'll do lots of root vegetables I'll probably put some brassicas out here but most of those are going to go in the high tunnel the root vegetables are great even outside because if it gets too cold for them they are just going to die back on top but the roots will be okay where I am if you live in a place where your ground freeze is solid it might not work that way but where I am where the ground doesn't freeze solid you can essentially just use the ground as your root storage kale would probably be okay out here collards would probably be okay out here those are a little more hearty however the heading things cabbages and broccolis and cauliflowers and even brussels sprouts I'll do those in the high tunnel because they're not quite as Hardy they can handle freezing but they will get a little damaged If it freezes like hard hard whereas kale may get a little bit damaged but it's usable but of course if the edge of your head of broccoli gets damaged then you're you're losing a lot of the part you're trying to use whereas a little bit of the kale leaves getting damaged you still have a lot of kale loose teeth so kales and collards will be outside more root vegetables will be outside in the high tunnel will be the heading things here's a little update date this was a parsley plant and it is covered in Swallowtail caterpillars almost always say caterpillars because of having children that said that have to catch myself so I've seen a few little chrysalises hanging around someone suggested taking these in and putting them in an enclosure for my kids to observe and also for protection from the birds and I love that idea I actually found a really cool like net enclosure on Amazon that I ordered and hopefully by the time it gets here we still have some swallowtails here that we can put in there and observe here are some more holy eggplants as well as a big bolted basil that is really here for the bees I harvested lots of little cherry tomatoes off of my dwarf tomato project at this point of course all of the tomatoes are struggling with the Heat and the ones in the green stalk are no exception so this is about to get reset because I'm going to grow something for fall in this goodness look at this this thing is constantly covered so behind me here are the Thai Soldier beans also very popular amongst the pollinators so I grew these this year in lieu of the red noodle beans that I usually grow on a trellis Thai Soldier beans are very much the same texture as red noodle beans I call them squeaky beans they're an Asian variety they're not really meant for like boiling or anything like that like you might do with regular green beans no I don't care for boiling regular green beans or any vegetables for that matter I'm very much a saute or a roast girl even with green beans I just think there's better flavor and if you're doing any sort of squeaky Asian Bean like noodle beans or asparagus beans yard long beans or Thai Soldier beans you you want to saute these um they're pretty good pickled also but putting some oil in a pan some garlic maybe onions and then sauteing them until they're just kind of soft is my favorite way you can throw if you really want to like lean into the Asian flavor throwing some like fish sauce in or hoisin sauce if you want it sweet that's how I like to do it it's a beautiful plant though and this is actually listed on seed packages as a bush bean and I've not been my experience I mean here it is reaching the top of a six foot trellis but as you'll see it grows always um so this is one row that was planted right along the bottom of that trellis and it has really filled out this whole area and honestly choked out the other stuff which is fine but good to know if you're trying to plan maybe a more tidy space I don't think I've ever done anything tidy in my life so this works for me I mean for me when a plant is wild and unruly I just it's more endearing to me either bolted basil here that's cinnamon basil here I have some bolted radishes I had tried to do some light radishes playing with the cool weather they were extremely bitter and so I just kind of left them I figured maybe I could save some seeds or get some seed pods from them so I have this one melon plant that I planted late that's actually thriving I do have some baby melons on here I've not pushed this thing up the trellis a whole lot I probably should honestly I was kind of nervous to mess with it because I was dealing with so many plants shriveling up and dying but this one I just left alone but I do see baby cantaloupes on here and I should be able to harvest some of these this will be the only small amount ones I got all year thankfully the Watermelons are doing well so at least there's that no I mean normally I get tons of melons that's what like our big snack through the summer and this year nada zilch this big lovely thing is lemongrass it smells amazing lemongrass is one of my favorite scents this will be harvested before the frost comes and hung to dry for tea here I've got some sunflowers that have obviously started to go to seed with sunflowers like this when they start going to seed I let them mature I leave them in the garden until you want to wait till the back of the heads is dark like this one maybe not quite ready yet the back of the heads get dark they're going to hang it's going to obviously be heavy you have a lot of bird pressure or squirrel pressure throw a pillowcase over the top of this or you can get some like tool netting from like a fabric store tie it over the top and secure it I grow a lot of sunflowers because I love them they're just one of my most favorite flowers the pollinators love them they're beautiful they're very restorative for soil we don't eat a lot of sunflower seeds or anything so though I may save some seeds to plant I don't really go through great measures to protect them because mostly we cut the heads off and put them like in the barn and then just throw a head full of seeds to the chickens every couple of days just as a treat so mostly I grow those for the aesthetic for the enjoyment and then the use we do is we use it to offset animal feed sometimes we'll throw a sunflower head full of seeds to the pigs but mostly with item for the birds look at these Thai Soldier beans so this is a dill plant that was completely Stripped by swallowtail there's one and right next to it is a fennel also swallowtails like fennel the Thai Soldier beans have grown all up over it which may actually be a benefit to protect those caterpillars from the birds so I've got some different things in pots here that are doing okay these are sweet potato vines these took a long time to take off but by the time the frost comes these will be all over the ground here which would be really cool that's Ginger that bed is mint so it's all gone to seed most of the stuff is cut back oh I didn't go over here here's some Tomatoes just scraggling in in some cases I would pull these tomatoes out to give this space to something else but since we have so much space I'm just going to let them go as long as they're producing anything at all same thing with these Peppers these may actually end up coming out because they've really kind of they're not doing super great I feel like there's some deficiency in this bed these areas are going to be re-sewn um the cucamelins still producing though not as prolifically about as I've experienced in the past there are there are enough here though I'm not that worried about it now we are in the era of the okra um it is everywhere we planted a lot of it it must be harvested harvested every day or else it gets too big and we are just like swimming in Okra right now and will be for probably another at least six weeks I mean it starts peaking in August and just goes hard until it cools off here are my asparagus beds they're starting to do what they do in late summer starting to kind of dry up they've started putting on seeds that's where all these little red looks like Christmas ornaments those are seeds birds take those all over the farm we have asparagus growing absolutely everywhere it's a weed here this I leave until after the frost and then I cut all of the Dead off and mulch it and leave it to until the spring when it starts coming up and then we Harvest lots of asparagus quick look here at the cottage Garden this is actually I have to address this right now I usually try to not pull weeds and do stuff like that on garden tours but this is bindweed it is wild Morning Glory gardening Pro tip never walk past fineweed so buying weed looks a lot like sweet potato vine so that's because sweet potatoes are in the Morning Glory family um sorry zucchini Kitty has come to put her face in my coffee while morning glory is not it's a noxious weed and it will completely take over any area where it is allowed to grow so anytime I see any like Morning Glory sweet potato looking thing growing somewhere I did not mean to plant sweet potatoes I pull it out I remember when I first started gardening I loved Morning Glory and I even planted Morning Glory but after dealing with vine weed pretty persistently namely in Arkansas I had it really bad in Arkansas [Applause] I don't love it anymore and I haven't dealt with it terribly in my garden here but I've any time I see it I pull it and like here I can't walk past it because if I forget and this somehow goes to seed then I'll never it will be Eternal in the garden oh wow look at that beauty so I threw these seeds out one day I was just out here and I mean I just threw these are banaries oh look at that spider that's interesting these are banari's giant zinnias and one day I was out here and I just decided I would throw these in some Cosmos which you can see down there here's some more of the zinnias and I just thought through these annual seeds out and I'm so happy I did this pop of color has just brought me a lot of Joy here this Garden is wild it's overgrown and honestly it's it's I don't want to say it's too full because you want that for a Cottage Garden but there are things that I don't love like I love these Baptists when they bloom but when they stop blooming they kind of flop over you know they take up almost a five foot radius and so there are things out here that I want to be different so we're actually planning on reworking the space I think there's one of the baptisas that's just kind of laid out in the walkway another thing is the barrier we put under these Stones did not work out well so it's got Bermuda grass growing up all in it so I think we're gonna actually like completely redo the space over the winter I mean it's it's lovely now but it's not what I want it to be and I realized um I realized that I went up to Ohio with my friend Matthew and I'm dealing with a lot of ornamental gardeners and in my mind prior to that that in building this space it was like well it is what it is and then I finally realized like people redo Landscaping all the time like this is not a massive area and we can redo this we can save the plants move things around I think that's totally doable in a perennial garden and I just hadn't really thought about that so I'm looking forward to reimagining this so real quick in the greenhouse I just wanted to look here so I showed you my little accidental uh kiddie pool Garden in the greenhouse which is where we were potting things up and some extra things got thrown in here now these pepper plants are smallish but they're very healthy because the shade cloth is really protecting them so I just keep watering this just to see what happens there's some alyssum in here some pepper plants there was a tomato plant it didn't it ended up drying up all the tomato plants are just struggling at this time and I thought this was kind of interesting and I'm kind of curious to see if maybe I could keep Peppers alive like after the frost in this glass Greenhouse all right through this little while corner see in the August Garden everything is just a little wild it's all huge this is pineapple sage got some oregano poking out down there it's just massive random volunteer tomato growing down out of the bottom of this bed cool cool so one thing that I'm looking forward to finishing for next year is like all of the areas I think where you see the black paper we kind of paused here just because it's hot and we got to the point that we were like this Garden is what it is for this year and the the remaining projects we were like well we'll finish that over the winter for next year so that's going to be the fences as I said the Arbors and then a lot of these areas getting the rest of the gravel in reworking The Cottage Garden area we're going to build some structures here it's old shade cloth over these rows where I will continue to grow tomatoes in the future this is actually the area I intended to grow tomatoes we put some in over around the Pavilion this year because this area wasn't quite ready yet we'll do it a little differently next year but although you see little elements here like the bathtub and the different stuff but I'm planning on having like a table out here like a seat you know another seating area we're going to do a veggie wash station we have a lot of of things that we want to do holy smokes look at this make sure I'm not putting my arm in any spider webs I'm just going to break this off hold on check that out random late asparagus spear that's huge that's funny should we try it and see if it's any good it's not bad it's definitely pungent this is actually where the majority of my current tomato Harvest is coming from is down here um in the beds that we planted like almost two months after the original a lot of my seedlings were stunted this year for a variety of reasons soil imbalance as well as having the shade cloth on too long and some really cold nights in the greenhouse and so my plants really weren't ready to go out at the normal time I didn't plant these out until kind of the end of May I think almost to June which is very late to be putting tomatoes out for us and I've been pleasantly surprised now I don't think it would have gone so well had we had our normal hot summer but these are still even setting blossoms which is extraordinary so we're still getting a lot of tomatoes they are dealing with some of the late season diseases that are really common but as I said I'm just going to leave it until there's nothing left to harvest all right we are now up in the in-ground area now I skipped over this middle section there are some sweet potatoes growing there however that's all that's going to happen there that area is also getting reset to be more perennial berry bushes and all of that kind of a project you know before next season so not in any massive rush to do that will is currently working you heard the equipment going earlier he's currently working on resetting like he just took out all these spent sunflowers and put more compost down this area we will grow in until it freezes we've got lots of cow peas out here where your succession Zone squash succession Zone corn we've let the flowers go Bonkers because it just makes my heart sing and then after the frost here we will bring in the electric netting and put a flock of chickens in here and they will largely just clear this out they will spread any seeds that are left in here that's why we had so many volunteers and they will poop which will fertilize so they kind of help with the pest pressure cyclically because they eat any like cocooning things or stuff that's in the soil but until the frost comes I don't know we I think we moved the chickens out here like a few weeks before the frost last time and we may do that but it just depends on where everything is like we have this this planting of the chicken and dumplings cow peas that we're planting to save seed for we want to give them time to produce and dry that is really what's dependent on when the chickens get this Garden oh look there's Will's camera he must be making a video [Laughter] [Applause] so here are our artichoke plants we moved these out of the high tunnel and we'll figure out what to do with these what we may do when we bring the chickens out is we might actually move more artichokes like to one of these rows and just leave that out of the fence that's the beauty of electric netting you can decide the parameters of your fence pretty easily all of this is more okra this is Kibler okra which is a local heirloom and I think it's interesting because the leaves are kind of of a different shape they're a little more round whereas a lot of okras have like the whole Land Before Time tree star look so this is Texas Hill Country okra down here we've got burgundy okra we have quite the okra Smorgasbord all right okra flowers just Majestic they're so beautiful they are relative of hibiscus which you can really see that in the flower in the marshmallow family um down here is let's see Star of David that's what this one is it's a nice squatty okra I really like those I like the real wide ones and here interspersed with a couple of squash plants some peas there's lots and lots of holy basil what we have done with this holy basil this year to prune it is literally just come in and weed eat it the top of it and it has continued to produce like crazy we've made lots of tea I've given quite a bit of it away I'm going to dry a lot of it that's kind of next on the list so this Garden has been my favorite Garden this year I wasn't expecting that I've loved having my raised bed garden that's made it feel more like home to me because that is uh this is such an artistic expression but this wild and Wayward volunteer Garden which many of much of this we planted but a lot of it is volunteer man it just makes my heart saying it's so pretty and it's like not the right time of day to be shooting videos right now as far as light goes but when I come out here in the evening and the Sun is setting over here I kid you not this whole thing just glows it's beautiful so this High tunnel last winter I had attempted to make this more perennial I decided I didn't like that my Citrus didn't do well the artichokes were huge um so this year we did peppers in here and over winter we're going to do cold vegetables so producing as much food as we can so we're tons of peppers these Peppers will actually go for a while probably until Frost or until I decide I don't want to give them the space anymore which I will probably give them the space until very close to frost I mean they're just producing so much and I can preserve Peppers really easy by drying canning pickling fermenting and we're eating peppers fresh every single day um I can come out and get some sort of pepper pretty much every day to put in something that I'm cooking or to just snack on so over here um this is already re-sewed will actually did this and he's got it marked it's like different lettuces brassicas Roots I think here's cauliflower and and he just direct sewed these in here that works right now in August because there's a 50 shade cloth over this now some of you may live in places that your highs every day don't exceed 85 Fahrenheit or 26 Celsius in which case you can probably direct sew your winter stuff in August if it does exceed that temperature and it is likely to continue exceeding it you really need to start those inside or at least in a shady place here direct sewing those under the shade cloth should work because this is blocking so much of the UV that they're not really experiencing the fullness of a South Carolina August and September back here on this back row we have lots of radishes coming up interspersed with the ginger that is still here also this took quite a bit of time to take off this year I believe because the shade cloth so I'm thinking the ginger is going to go out after this year the beginning of next year I'll just start with fresh ginger and I'll give it some sort of more permanent place probably in the raised bed garden somewhere where I won't have chicken scratching it up in the winter because this didn't it I mean there's a lot of Ginger growing back here but not nearly as much as we could have ginger likes that hot so the shade cloth is not beneficial to it here I have lots of ground cherries that are pretty much throwing in towel so these are coming out really soon and again I mean just an incredible variety of peppers and look at these so these are not the super hot ones I don't think yeah um yeah there's no clue there's no telling um oh Lord who knows I can't even remember where I got these seeds but I do remember that they're they look like that really hot one but they're not they're not thankfully they're not a tiny bit of heat up there at the top have you eaten one of these oh those little tiny things what is this called um I can't I don't I can't even pronounce it they're not hot though oh very flavorful really fruity serum no I think I think it's this one this is the tag that's right next to it I googled this one the other day and I couldn't find anything on it yeah I have some pepper seeds somebody sent me I think these came from someone who sent me some really rare stuff that's good it's really good we should save seeds for it a lot of flavor just after dinner pepper dessert there's some really good ones I bite them very cautiously because there's been a lot of pepper Mix-Ups this year and um I I've fallen prey a couple times to extremely hot pepper plants so I love this space right now but I'm gonna keep loving it because we're going to keep it full of food now over here this is the wild High tunnel we haven't done anything with this is getting high on the priority list as we come to the end of the year we're going to be resetting this space and building in some areas to grow to really utilize it so that it can be full next spring and the last stop on the garden tour the Wild and Wayward August in ground Garden this thing is slam full of food largely local heirlooms lots of chicken and dumplings cow peas lots of Kibler okra lots of sunflower heads full of seeds that will harvest for the birds and what I'm very excited for is this is a local heirloom pumpkin called The Dutch Fork pie pumpkin this one is really close I've been looking at it and it's getting to where I almost can't pierce it with my thumb I'm affiliating it's just a little bit longer to ripen before I harvest it man I'm super excited to have grown pumpkins and I'll tell you a local heirloom if you can find one that was developed and grown in your region is really going to be the most resistant to pests and I'll get back to that I want to I want to talk a little bit more about that but I'm going to cover a couple more things and we'll go sit down in the shade and talk so the watermelon patch didn't go as planned there's actually a ton of watermelons in here yesterday my friend Daniel was over and we came out and we found this really big ripe watermelon and just busted it and went and sat on the dock and ate it with our hands which was really fun lots of different varieties there's a lot of fruit out here which just goes to show sometimes it's not perfect but it still feeds you so a quick word on local heirlooms before we conclude I love growing all different kinds of plants I like growing some hybrids I love heirlooms because I love stories I love unusual varieties I've shared with you in the past I didn't grow up gardening and the motivation to really stick through the hard work came for me and growing things that I couldn't just go buy at the store so that's where my love of heirlooms has come from you're not always going to be able to buy local heirlooms and you don't always need to buy local Airline looms now there is truth that a plant that was developed in a climate similar to yours is going to thrive more in your climate so if I buy buy seeds that were grown out in Idaho in a place that's very dry typically more cool and then you bring it here to this really high humidity likely very different soil conditions and you know a lot higher heat that plant May struggle now here's here's the rub if you were to plant that plant here grow it save seeds from It Grow It Again save seeds from it again at that point you have something that's very acclimated to your climate it's probably going to do a lot better three generations into growing Where You Are I do not think the fast rule that you can only grow seeds that grow in your area I don't think that's necessary and in fact most of the seeds that you saw growing plants today did not come from this area in the case of something like winter squash now I'd struggle really badly with squash bugs and boars that's something I've shared historically the way I handle it with summer squash is I just keep planting more and anytime a plant succumbs to the pests I have another one that's ready to produce right behind it but with winter squash you can't do that because it needs 100 plus days to come to maturity and so I have really historically struggled with growing winter squash because of the squash bugs the same bugs that plague the summer squash plants also played the winter squash plants they're the same plant family and that is where finding a local heirloom something that was developed in this area is going to have more of the solution for that particular problem that I have so that Dutch pork pie pumpkin is one of the very few pumpkins I've ever really successfully grown I have grown some in the past but not prolifically not nearly as much as I've been able to successfully grow other things and in fact in that in-ground Garden which is got multiple different plants none of them at this point have died of squash bugs now the bugs are there they've got to be there I mean that wild garden has not had bugs picked off of it we've not been doing that which tells me that what we're thriving with is resistance that you might not be able to Source local heirlooms the best bet for that is talking to people who Garden who may have their own saved seeds that have been acclimated to your area so seed swaps are really great for that Master Gardeners groups or any sort of gardening group that you can connect with through your library or any sort of Community Center or anything like that Facebook groups where you can connect with other gardeners I feel like that's kind of your best bet and you can ask seed companies if you ask them where do you Source your seeds a lot of them will tell you local Growers whereas there are some seed companies many of them are getting their seeds from Growers that are all over so it won't necessarily serve you well to buy us seeds from a company that's growing where you are because they may be sourcing them elsewhere all of that to say don't let that be like a make or break rule where you have to do that but I would say if you're dealing with a particular issue in your garden that you're like man I keep trying to grow this and it keeps failing try local try to find some seeds that are already acclimated to your region and see if that solves your problem well guys thank you for hanging out with me on this nice muggy morning in my wild in between season Garden I mean I think it still looks pretty awesome to be honest for uh for the time of year I'm thrilled to still be getting fruit out of the garden in mid-august it's amazing so thank you again for hanging out with me today and all the days that you do and bless you until next time foreign thank you

Channel: Roots and Refuge Farm

Views: 27,710

Keywords: Roots and Refuge, Roots and Refuge Farm, organic gardening, growing food, backyard farm, homesteading, how to garden, gardening inspiration, vegetable gardening

Id: HsM68bUfFZ4

Length: 39min 39sec (2379 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023