Goodbye Garden...Hello Greenhouse!

[Music] do [Music] hey everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead we're so excited that the weather has cooled off a little bit and we're thinking that fall might be here this morning i actually got up early and went out deer hunting i didn't get anything but it was 51 degrees when i went out this morning and it was amazing it was so nice to have those nice cool almost cold mornings uh starting out our days but the cooler weather also means it's time for us to start tearing down the garden kevin and i yesterday took out all of the tomato plants that was a big project a good project done but before we do much else there are some seeds that we want to be saving from the flowers and some of the beans and things that are in the garden to make sure that we have fresh fresh seed for next year and before we just start taking everything down yeah by the time we get to this part of the summer or the end i guess it's the beginning of fall the only thing that's really still growing in the garden are our peppers we have a really long growing season here in southern missouri and peppers will really keep growing right up until our first frost now last year our first frost was on october 14th so it could be coming you know any time now really so we just have to play it by ear hopefully we'll still have some good harvest from the remaining peppers but uh everything else in the garden is pretty much done at this point but today we're not worrying about peppers i've got peppers on the agenda for a couple days from now today we're going to be harvesting some seeds wanted to show you which ones we're going to be harvesting and saving for next year and then just tell you a little bit about the seed sieving process for those plants and then later we're going to take a trip down to the greenhouse we want to show you guys how all of the plants that we have started for the winter are coming along i think you're going to be amazed we have a ton of food growing that we're going to be able to grow all winter long so let's head out into the garden first and start saving some seeds well the last few years i haven't had a whole lot of time to devote to growing flowers so this summer i thought you know what i'm just going to do something i hope is very easy i've always loved the the thought of having a row of gorgeous flowers throughout the summer right on the outside of the garden so when kevin and i were designing the garden layout for this year we tilled up a spot right outside of the garden here and i just i took all my zinnia seeds a lot of them are really old i didn't know if they were still good or not and i just kind of mixed them up into a bowl and i just sprinkled them in this whole length of the garden to my surprise several of the types of seeds were still good they germinated and they turned into a really wonderful display of various colors of zinnias right outside the garden now i definitely want to do something like this again in the future now it is the end of the growing season so they're not looking as beautiful as they did throughout the summer they're still looking good i can still cut a bunch of these for arrangements in the house but because i used all of my zinnia seeds at the beginning of the summer to plant this i don't have any left so i want to save some of these seeds because there are some of my most favorite colors and i'll be able to plant them next year for free so let me just show you some of the beautiful colors that i have here i really felt blessed over the summer because those that germinated are actually my favorite zinnia colors and they're just gorgeous these yellow zinnias right here are just i really love yellow it's just so bright and cheery there's this purple with a yellow center that i absolutely love it's kind of a hot pink maybe light purple color and then one of the things that really shocked me over the summer is just how absolutely gorgeous these red zinnias are i'm actually really kind of more of a pink and purple and yellow flower kind of lady but these gorgeous blood red zinnias they just struck me all summer long there's one more color that did well only a few of them germinated but it really helped with the bouquets that i brought into the house way down here and those are these beautiful white zinnias so i want to show you really how easy it is to gather and save seeds from these flowers and then you'll have like as many seeds as you could possibly want for next year harvesting seed for flowers is so easy you guys basically you look for a flower that is completely dead because all of the seeds are still attached around the top so in this case these are the purple zinnias here and i know that because i'm just following the plant by where there is a purple zinnia and here is a flower head that's completely dead i'm not i'm just going to snip it off now because we have had rain in the last couple of days it's possible that this flower head is not completely dry so i'm actually just going to save this entire flower head in an open jar i've labeled the jar these are my purple zinnias and the flower heads that i'm collecting i'm just going to put them in the jar and i'm going to let them dry 100 in the house now i do want to show you what these zinnia seeds look like so i'm going to take some of them off this flower head in my hand so that you can see what they look like once i get into the house and these are all dry this is like exactly what i'm going to do when they're when i'm ready to really harvest the seeds you just pull them out like that you can see there's a seed right there and you can separate all the seeds from kind of this chaff for planting or you can just keep them together and like plant it all together and it'll be fine the seeds will germinate the chaff will just kind of decompose add some nutrients back into the soil but that's really as easy as it gets for flowers i'm just going to put all of that in here right next to that flower head that i just harvested is another one here it's completely dead it's completely brown i can pull some of these dead petals off i probably wouldn't need to i'm just going to harvest that put that in my jar i'm just going to harvest you know four or five of these kind of dead flower heads and that's what i'm going to use to replant these purple ones in the spring now the process is the same for all of the different colors and i have a jar a different jar labeled for each different color so i'm just going to go through and harvest as many of the kind of dead flowers as i feel like i need for each color and i'll be set for spring [Music] now these white flowers over here there aren't a lot of the flower heads that are dead this one is kind of partial it had a bunch of seeds above it but they've already blown away or the birds have eaten them so i'm going to take that one and this one here is on its way it's you know still has a little bit of white petals here the dead ones here so i have two options really i can wait and come back hopefully remember to come and harvest seeds from here or what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut it anyway and just make sure that it gets a lot of air flow so it can dry out really nicely in the house and hopefully enough of the seeds are mature enough that they'll be basically you know good fertile and will germinate next spring i'm going to just take my chances on here hoping that these are going to be great and then if i think of it or if i'm walking by here and i see more later on in a couple weeks i'll probably grab some but i don't want to miss my chance to get some of these white zinnias because these had the fewest number of flowers that produced this summer so i want to make sure that i don't miss out on planting a lot of them again next year all of you know that my favorite thing in the garden are tomatoes but since we already pulled out all of the tomatoes the okra are my next favorite thing and that's what we're going to save seed from next so this year we grew my favorite variety of okra and actually this is the only variety we grow anymore these are the clemson spineless they always do well they always way over produce what we expect and so for that reason we plant them year after year now okra is super easy to save seed from in fact there's really nothing to it at all all you need to do is you need to find some of the pods that are completely dried up and you can see we've left a lot of pods on here one because we've already harvested everything we possibly need or want and really by the time we get to this point where the plants are this big even the smaller okra when they first come on get woody super fast so these last ones on the plants we always just let these uh dry out and save for seed so we find one that's completely brown and dry kind of like sarah did with the flowers we're just gonna cut it off and you can see that this pod is you know like i said completely dry inside of this pod is all of the seeds what i like to do honestly is just cut about 10 or 15 of these which is enough for about a dozen families to plant okra but if you count about 10 or 15 of these i just bring them in the house and i save them in the pod all winter long then next spring i will actually cut the pod open and take all of the seeds out but i'm assuming you guys want to see what the seeds look like so we're going to cut this one today i'm going to cut the tip off and we'll just kind of once they get dry from sitting all winter a lot of times they'll just crack open on their own but you can see when we crack this inside of there it is just filled with seeds there are probably a hundred or more seeds in this one pod i would imagine and they're a good sized seed and so really if you were to save if for just a normal size garden if you were to save one pod each year this would be way more than you need for the following year but because we like to save some of these and we actually package them up and sell them at the farmer's market in the spring i'm gonna save more than we need so i'm gonna cut probably 10 or 15 of these if i can find them today and then we're going to move on to the next thing while we're over here by the okra there's something i want to show you guys look at these peppers right here these are tabasco peppers you know like tabasco sauce that you buy in the store these are tabasco peppers they always kind of remind me of christmas trees they just when they start to be all different colors and the way that they grow kind of straight up in the air reminds me of the bulbs on christmas trees anyway these are just getting to the point where they're going to be ready to harvest let me tell you these are hot little suckers i like hot peppers one year i took just a tiny bite of one of these out of the garden and you guys i about passed out it was that hot it was insane now sarah uses these to make homemade tabasco sauce i think if you guys are interested she might do a video about making homemade tabasco sauce let us know in the comments if you're interested in seeing that but i can tell you there is nothing better than homemade tabasco sauce all right we're gonna move on i think we have some beans to harvest yet and then we're gonna head down to the greenhouse now you'd probably never know it if i didn't tell you but this row was a row of green beans our contender green beans and we've left we've let them completely die back and let a lot of the pods that we didn't need anymore because we had enough green beans harvested and canned we let them mature on the plants so that we could pick them and harvest the beans inside for seed now unlike okra where you only need like 12 seeds or less for an entire year's growing because you plant them so far apart with green beans we plant these like six inches apart so for a 50 foot row or if you're doing two rows or a large volume you actually need a lot of seeds so we have let some of these pods just dry on the vine we can just pick them the way that they are put them in a basket bring them into the house and let them completely dry out so there's no question that they're completely dry just put them in the basket and then i can open one of these up and show you what the seeds look like now the beans right now look pretty sad the bean pods themselves it looks blackish brownish but inside are the gorgeous beans that you'll use for seeds this is something that is very nice to do on a cold day when it's too cold outside in the winter too snowy rainy icy whatever with your hot cup of coffee by the wood stove is to open these up so that's one of the main reasons why we just harvest the pods right now and we do the bean harvesting later during the winter so we're just gonna harvest as many of these as we can and because we grow a 50 foot row of these beans we need at least 100 seeds so we need quite a few of these pods we also like to share with our friends and also sell some at the farmers market in the spring so we need quite a few so i'm glad that we left quite a few of them on here to dry and ripen so you guys beans are another really simple thing to harvest your own seeds you can buy them once have a great harvest leave some of them on to die back and then harvest your seeds for next year then you only have to buy the seeds once well we're down in the greenhouse and you can see all of our buckets here behind us now we planted all of these just a little over two weeks ago we've got 58 of these tubs in here that we're going to be growing in this winter and while things are just starting to die off and wrap up in the big garden here in the greenhouse new life is starting and things are just getting started for the winter this is going to be really exciting for this fall winter and early spring to have all of this fresh food growing for our family if we can provide fresh food for our family over the winter with a greenhouse like this it actually takes some of the pressure off on growing so much in such big gardens in the summer so we thought we'd just take you real quickly through the greenhouse today show you how everything is doing there's only two different things out of all of these buckets that didn't that didn't come up and i think really it's because it's still just a little too warm for those things so we're gonna have to try them again but let's go down the rows we'll real quickly show you how each thing is doing and remind you of what we're growing so on this row here and really the star of the show right now are the sugar snap peas we have three buckets growing and they are doing really well we're about to bring some tomato cages over to put them in here so that they have a place to grow onto we have two buckets of bunching onions which we'll we'll use of like green onions we have a bucket of chives now this one didn't come up i think we had a bad envelope of seeds so we're going to replant that but the garlic chives are coming up and they are doing really well next up our cilantro last winter we grew cilantro and it was the best growth that we ever had in cilantro was over the winter so we're going to do that again we have three buckets of carrots and all three of them have germinated and are doing well and then a bucket of ruby red chard and three buckets here that i'm actually still waiting i'm going to be putting garlic in here but i don't have them planted quite yet down the center two rows we only had one thing that didn't come up i'll show you that in a minute but let's start here at the back these first two pots here are kale we have red russian and dinosaur kale these next ones here these are beets and these are radishes then we get into the two buckets that didn't come up these are parsnips parsnips are notorious for being hard to germinate and we didn't do a very good job at it i do think that it is at least partially because it is still just too warm i did a little research and parsnips really like 50 to 60 degree weather for germinating we've still had days in the 90s so it has just been too hot so we're either going to try those again or put something else there like maybe some more radishes that's something that'll come up fast we get down here we have turnips over on this side over on this side we have rutabagas and bok choy and then down here all of these buckets from here all the way to the end are different varieties of lettuce we have some nice red lettuces we have some just some nice green lettuces we have some romaine type lettuces at the front so all of these buckets here are lettuces and they are coming up great now these first four buckets here we had cucumbers planted but we decided to just take them out because we knew we were running out of time before they would actually produce cucumbers before frost so we decided to pull them out and we planted kohlrabi in here they have germinated but they're a little bit behind schedule they'll do fine they just have some catching up to to do next up we have spinach now the spinach germinated and it has been so hot they're kind of suffering they're holding on they're hanging in there and growing we hit them with some fish emulsion the other day and it seems like they're kind of perking up a little bit they also get a lot more direct sun here and so it gets hotter here which spinach really doesn't like but they're doing well and i think they're going to do well over the winter we planted a lot of that and then here at the end we planted some collards and they are doing well also now everything that has its first true leaves we've gone through and given it one treatment of the fish emulsion we're going to continue doing that at least once maybe twice a week until they're doing really well we have some plans for some other kinds of fertilizer throughout the winter and the fall so we'll talk to you guys about that as we get to that point so as you can see everything in the greenhouse is doing great now we planted all of these in hopes that the weather was about to start cooling down and once you know as soon as we planted everything it seems like the weather just shot back up we've had a lot of days in the last two weeks that were up in the 90s we still have one day coming up where it's forecast to be 88 degrees all of these are cool weather plants and they love the cool weather and so far they just haven't gotten a lot of cool weather to thrive in but under the circumstances they're doing really well we're super confident that once it cools down they're just going to take off and we're just really dreaming of the time that these are just abundant and huge and we can bring you guys out here to just see how wonderful everything is doing this is an unheated greenhouse we're going to be able to show you that you can grow in an unheated greenhouse all winter long food that you can eat and you don't have to worry about it all dying yeah we were amazed last year in our other greenhouse just how well everything did not just staying alive but actually growing all winter long it was really eye-opening to us and it really gives us a lot of hope for what we can do in this even bigger greenhouse so you guys we look forward to bringing you more videos about the things that we're growing here in the greenhouse especially over this winter we hope you stick around to see all of that in the next coming months so what are you guys doing on your homestead right now are you starting to wrap up your gardens as well i hope that you are saving some of your seed seed remember this last spring was in pretty short supply sometimes it was hard to find which makes it all that much more important for each of us to be saving our own seed let us know what's going on on your homesteads right now we would love to hear from you you guys if you're enjoying our videos make sure that you hit the subscribe button below and really the best way that you can help us here on the homestead is really just to share our videos on your social media we would love it and appreciate it until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 116,736

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: IsKjXy21eCU

Length: 23min 31sec (1411 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021