Harvesting Huge Vegetables from Our Summer Garden

welcome to the fall Garden just kidding it is not actually fall here in Alaska quite yet but it may seem to be so we have had a lot of rain recently we had a warmer spring and that was a little surprising actually it definitely helped our garden but things have shifted and now we have entered into a very rainy season in fact it's reminding me a lot of like an Oregon winter day so real cloudy overcast it's actually still summer time we are only in early August but we are starting to prep for winter because it is just around the corner and every Alaskan knows that it comes sooner probably than you want so you have to start prepping actually in summer time for winter which is what we're doing today so we're going to be doing some harvesting we have some neat things to show you in there that I'm excited about and we're just going to be taking you along and showing you what we're kind of up to at this time of the year does look spectacular out there I like to come to this gate and I like to look at the Garden it gets a really cool sunlight in the evening late evening hours we're losing our sunlight fast but it's really really beautiful out here the nasturtium planter box that Eric built for us last year is doing really well this year in the past our nasturtiums usually have a lot of leaves and they really Bush out this year it's just flowers and I can't complain it's beautiful but it's not really a problem for solar or electric fencing that we have around the garden that's for moose protection if they were to Bush out I think that they would actually run into that fence and we would have to chop them so that hasn't been a problem this year we're gonna head inside first thing we have when you walk in is our garlic and that is not quite ready to be harvested yet you can see the tips are getting yellow so it's not really looking very beautiful it's not doing much more growing at this point it is bulbing out and dry weather would be ideal at this point we just don't have it I guess that's not too surprising since it's August I'm kind of glancing over and noticing that I missed a few of the escapes I see a handful of them I was supposed to harvest all those but I guess I missed a few of them I can jig up a little bowl and show you what it's looking like right now so they're not ready yet it's going to be probably a few more weeks we're gonna wait till more of the leaves turn yellow and the individual cloves are a little more distinguished than they are right now this weather is not ideal for these because what happens is they'll get wet the skin will get wet that's covering each clove and you won't have that skin for the storage time so I mean it's definitely not ideal but I think they'll be okay every season they're pretty much always okay it is usually rainy in the month of August in Alaska I recently went through and weeded this row last year we had a really bad problem with chickweed and we still have that problem with chickweed but it actually got a little bit better surprisingly so what we did for that to improve is this year we put topsoil on our rose right before planting and we did not use our actual compost so the compost that Eric and I make and turn over we wanted to give it a year before using it again and that that made a huge difference we had a lot less mainly I just get it on the sides of the Rose and I come through and I pull it because it grows incredible really fast especially in wet weather we made the decision to invest in a weed whacker this year is my favorite tool absolutely love having that again it's not probably the best permanent solution but it works really really well so we went through weed wrapped in between the rows and it just it works fabulous I cannot complain next season's garlic is going to go in this row we've already done a little bit of prep we had our mustards and greens in here we went through and cleared those out got them over in the compost pile they serve their purpose not only for us and the chickens but also the bees the bees love the mustard flowers we're gonna add more compost to this row so far we just have some mushrooms breaking down and they are quite literally breaking down with decomposers pretty cool there's like hundreds maybe even more bugs on this little stem right here this mushroom stem I'm going to put that back down Eric and I like to commonly do that we'll put like the tops of plants if we don't use them back on the rows to break down it encourages bugs to come and just break it all down and give back to the song We like to give back to the soil a lot that's the nutrients they are responsible for the nutrients and the health of the soil which in turn gives us an awesome crop right I think that's something that is overlooked a lot with gardening we are virtually creating like a little ecosystem out here that's honestly probably my favorite part about the whole experience I didn't invent this style of gardening of course this is commonly referred to as like no dig where you minimally disrupt the soil so come along and you'll just chop the stem of a plant rather than ripping it out and disrupting it when we first started the garden we did what was called like lasagna style so you're really layering like these organic amendments to break down over time and that's just what we continue to do so it seems to work out for us and this row will get some more nutrients and the garlic will be planted come jump off it's time to harvest some big vegetables I've got the big pruners for this job we're starting with a kohlrabi it's massive in here let me get down to the base of it there we go I think that's probably the biggest Kohlrabi we've ever grown we don't usually let them get to the size I think this is kind of a freak accident because we have had such cool wet weather and Kohlrabi really likes that type of weather so it will swell up and get really big even more impressive than that we have some massive turnips they are purple top turnips so they get pretty big if you let them go longer and again that that wet weather is helping increase their size but these boots are just like seriously big we're gonna go ahead and grab this one right here yeah these have never gotten this big before like it's gorgeous too that's the best part sometimes they split but man what a perfect turnip there's a little slug on him but hey wow it's beautiful there's actually another one there that's a little bit bigger so we're also going to be harvesting that one too what a good looking turnip oh it is bigger it's massive oh my God [Music] I think I'm gonna weigh this one I mean that is that's huge I don't know how big that really is I can't I can't honestly really compare it to anything just a very large gorgeous turnip and so sometimes these can get kind of like Woody when they're old or there'll be bugs in them but this one looks really good I'm thinking that crazy rain we've been having is what's making this happen wow questions there you go three of the biggest turnips we've ever grown there I recommend purple top if you haven't grown it now we don't usually let our zucchinis grow this big because we don't think they're as good as eating as when they're this big but we just kind of missed this one and I figured we would let it grow there's a nice little worm of some variety on there crawling around gorgeous zucchini foreign a great year for cauliflower this is a big one but it is a little past its prime that's totally fine it's still gonna be really good eating I'm not actually harvesting this one today it has a little while more to go getting dense in there but it looks good we don't have a name for it we just call it the big the big cabbage have you checked out the big cabbage today the other cabbages are taking their sweet time so they're not quite ready we have a bunch of different varieties may not pronounce them right but I'm going to tell you all of them because they are all awesome we have upper Villers mermaid's tail dawinda Red Express we have a flat Dutch variety and then we have Fiddler kraut we have another little patch of cabbages this one on the end is Presto that's a favorite of mine we've got Red Jewel and then we have Copenhagen which is another favorite of mine it produces this beautiful big green head we're actually gonna be harvesting this one today perfect cabbage [Applause] all this is gonna go to the chickens Eric and I actually have quite a bit of harvesting to do today we're going to be doing some major canning coming up so we have got to get to work I don't actually know which one do you want to use this one coming this is [Applause] all right this could have been some varieties what do you want to use the green onions here let's start eating maybe a lot of them okay it's when you get to the skinny ones those are some green onions [Applause] foreign s wasn't a great year for the onions exactly but that is okay we still got a decent Harvest here the rain is not really helping them out so that is why we're making the choice to harvest all of them so we have a little bit of rot starting on just a few of them that may be some bug damage actually but that's gonna be okay we're gonna process those onions usually tell you when they're ready to harvest because they will bend like this one and then you will know that it is done growing and it's ready to be Harvest usually you can pull them out lay them on the soil lay them somewhere dry for a few days it takes a few weeks to cure them we don't really have that option because we do not have sunshine in the forecast sadly we've got more rain so we're going to be hanging these up to dry outside for a little bit and then we're going to have to transport them inside dry them in the cabin another usual year for us so not a big deal I've been pretty persistent about growing onions from seed it's the most economical but recently I had started trying growing them from the bulbs and those are really cost effective and you do usually get a bigger onion so I don't know if that's something I'm going to give up in the future I may I may be buying bulbs instead of starting hundreds and thousands of onion seeds in the cabin even if they didn't fold over I still have to harvest those ones we're going to be leaving the green onions and the leeks in the ground for now on to the squash foreign [Music] it's a really good looking one huh this is a pumpkin and it may not seem like much we got one squash about one squash per plant now every single one produced One and some produce two but not very big this is probably the biggest pumpkin I've ever grown here our squashes don't do that well and we got really lucky this year with that warmth that is the only reason I'm holding this beauty right here so I have something to look forward to this winter generally speaking you would let them ripen on the vine so they would turn orange and their stock or stem would dry up and look different it would be like a tan color and that's when you want to harvest them we just can't wait until then if we were to wait another two three weeks there's a chance we could have a frost in these will get damaged foreign this is my squash collection and pumpkins for the year the service let's go down here you know what I need to do just need to cut the sunflowers there's one plant called caligarista yeah it looks a little different but it's a you can just have to say it's just like the same [Music] thing I like when they turn purple that's cubanelle next to the left that's a snacking paper oh my gosh probably start to get a little soft they're running now it's gone oh yeah there's a little bit of mold in the center of this plant yeah they're not good they weren't getting enough circulation I wonder why so weird oh the screen houses freaking stuffed we plant stuff in here when it's small and you're like oh yeah just all spaced out one day I was in here and I put my head of bars I always love to be I don't remember there might be no he actually was he was buzzing right here behind my freaking ear he wasn't mad or anything but he's got kind of crazy pretty fast [Music] it's like a snacking pepper that's a good one whoa this one's loaded there's like 15 on here surrounds get a lot of peppers on them is what it is though not as big but there are a lot of them oh my gosh this is Jimmy nardello look at him wow not that many peppers on this plant but we're going to be making something with them so I'm gonna be harvesting these and Eric and I have finished I think with our peppers and cucumbers it's wild in here we need to trim our tomatillos because we need them to fill out and then the Tomato aisle we don't even come down here it's just totally like blocked off there's a lot of tomatoes they're not quite ripe yet but we're gonna leave those a little bit longer we're just kind of I guess jumping the gun here we're getting things done a little earlier because we know that winter is coming over here it is raining again so I think we're gonna call it quits for the night and pick back up tomorrow outside foreign [Music] we're harvesting some of our fennel this morning we have got other stuff harvested that we wanted to get to yesterday Eric and I worked into the evening hours to get our onions hung up that took a little bit while but they're looking good and there's still more stuff that I want to harvest foreign foreign [Music] we're topping our brussels sprouts and cutting off the leaves they are usually a little bit thicker at this point they have a lot more time to fill out and I usually feed them very heavily throughout the season with nitrogen so they're heavy heavy feeders but doing this usually encourages them to make bigger little side shoots which is the Brussels sprouts so hopefully that'll work foreign we got all the leaves off that we wanted let's go check out how the potatoes are doing well they were slow to start but they finally took off they still have plenty of time to grow we let our potato vines or the the plants we let them die back before we Harvest them so it's still a long time until that happens I've been trying to dig up and see if we have any in there so I'm gonna try right now and we'll see if I can find one maybe I maybe I can all I found was this little purple potato but that's okay because the growing season is not over yet we've got all the harvesting done that we wanted to do for the day we have lots of King to do and we will see you on the next episode

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 522,405

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, homestead alaska, off grid cabin, off grid in alaska, cabin in alaska, homestead off grid, life in alaska, homestead living, off the grid alaska, off grid couple, alaskan cabin, simple living, debt free living, garden alaska, high tunnel garden, growing food, alaska living, summer alaska, gardening vegetables, growing vegetables, growing food for the year, planting food, cold climate garden, alaska garden, garden harvest, garden tour

Id: VtJWYKjR7hU

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022