How to Keep Up a SUCCESSFUL GARDEN and Avoid Overwhelm

our entire Garden is planted now most of our seeds have germinated and the seedlings are well established we're getting past the crazy Rush of early spring but now it's on to a new set of challenges we're in the middle of strawberry season here in zone 6 which means hours of picking capping and preserving the rain is slowing down and the days are getting warmer it is so hot out here which also means the weeds are coming on strong summer is made for picnics kaying and camping trips So today we're going to show you how we manag to have a large garden that feeds our family for the whole year and still have time to do other fun stuff off the homestead and do it all without losing our minds the battle against weeds has officially begun it's June here that's when weed pressure starts I'm going to guess that most gardeners would say that weeds are their biggest stressors in the garden but we have a secret sauce that really helps us to stay on top of the weeding also on top of the watering and it also has really improved our soil summer is the time where everybody seems to want to socialize and we're no exception our kids really enjoy pool parties and doing stuff with their friends as do we and so this phase of gardening is essential to make so that we can actually take part in all of those activities and not just be like tied down here to our garden after all the mulching is done there's this like phase in the gardening where everything is mulch so the weeds aren't taking over um The Mulch is also keeping water in the soil it really help helps to keep the soil moisture even and so there's not a lot of watering that has to be done but then also nothing is ready to be harvested yet and so the garden kind of like takes care of itself and I call that the garden honeymoon and I really like to take advantage of that time to just like I don't know regroup and rejuvenate a little bit before Harvest time comes around this year I'm really really hoping that we can take a couple days to just go find a little cabin in the woods somewhere and just hang out as a and connect I don't know yet if that'll happen but I admit to having my hopes [Music] up potatoes need to be healed and that is exactly what it sounds like it is they need a hill of something around them because as they start growing and get bigger the potatoes actually start like kind of growing out of the ground the Sun hits those potatoes and it makes green spots on them those green spots don't taste good they don't store as well and there's actually some people that say that they're toxic whether they are or not I don't know but either way you don't want your potatoes to have green spots on them so we used to do it the traditional way and we used to like take this dirt and ho it up onto the plants to heal it up and that is just a lot of hard work especially if your dirt is really hard and chunky and ours was very much so and so one year we decided to try it with leaves and we have never looked back since then it is so much easier and it's actually very good for the soil our potatoes turn out a whole lot better that way these potatoes should have been healed like a week ago so I would recommend healing them when they are smaller than this it makes it a little more difficult to get it under the leaves and everything it is so hot and humid out here and it's important for us to stay hydrated and our favorite way to do that recently is with element's new sparkling drinks they come in a 16 o can and they are crazy good we still use the stick packs for like ice coold water bottles and half a pack of that chocolate goes into my protein chocolate milk every morning I love the extra punch that it gives and the extra benefits element is an electrolyte drink mix that we really love because it's got the minerals in it that we need but no sugar coloring artificial ingredients or fillers element is the official hydration partner of Team USA weightlifting it's used by many other professional athletes and others like Navy Seals FBI and Marines this stuff is totally legit being in the heat like we are when we're working out in the garden is one of the biggest stressors that can be on your body and you really need an electrolyte to back you up and it can really help with like headaches fatigue muscle cramps weakness and hormone regulation the sparkling drinks are now fully available and you should really try those you can also get a free sample pack of eight single serving stick packs with any drink mix purchase that's a good deal and it'll give you some variety to try out different flavors get yours at drink element.com moreand farmers and that deal is only available through our link so go to d r i n k k l mn.com more than Farmers to get yours today cheers the next thing that's due to be mulched is these Tomatoes I like to let these get really established before I mulch them because tomatoes are heat loving and I really want the soil to stay warm enough so they can really Thrive before I mulch them so far this trellis has been doing really great I do feel like the tomatoes like the actual stem is more vulnerable with this kind of trellis than when they were actually inside of a cage and I think a lot of the reason I think about it is cuz my kids play soccer in this front yard here and I'm just like constantly nervous about my tomatoes so we've just been setting these cages in front for now and I don't know we'll probably move them later it looks a little weird if there's a lot of weeds I really like to just take care of the biggest weeds before before we put the leaves [Music] down we used to use painters paper and straw to mulch stuff like this but there were a few drawbacks to that painters paper and straw both cost money to get we can get these leaves for free from lawn service and I also didn't feel like the paper and straw did as much to enrich the soil like the leaves do paper and straw is just straight up carbon these leaves they're dead leaves but it's alive like there are living organisms in there and I just feel like it really feeds the soil we noticed a big difference in how loose our soil has been since we started using the leaves it also works a lot better to mulch because the leaves will create like a mat and it will make so that those weeds don't pop up through there nearly as easily it didn't take much at all for weeds to pop up through that paper and straw doesn't make much of a mat it's just loose crisscrossing stuff those weeds just came right up through while y'all are watching this work I'd like to just clarify something real quick somebody in a recent video asked if I was wearing Michelle's sandals for real let me assure you they are not my feet are like twice as big as Michelle's besides that we've also been getting a lot of questions and comments about being Barefoot in the garden we do this for the health benefits Without Really nerding out I'll just say that being grounded to the Earth is linked to a lot of different health benefits and you can look them up for yourself I've been running in barefoot shoes for several months now and my knee pain is a lot less than it used to be fully Barefoot is the way to go though but sometimes there are a lot of thistles around or something so I wanted to get some sandals the ones I'm wearing are super flexible and allow your feet to spread so you get the feeling of walking barefoot with a little protection I'll leave a link for them in the description in case anybody else is interested in being a nerd like [Music] me another reason that I really really focus on getting my tomatoes mulched is because you really don't want the rain to Splatter on the ground and then have that dirt um Splash up onto your plants that can really cause fungus tomatoes are just high maintenance when it comes to fungus so we really have to Baby them one of the biggest lessons that I have learned in my decade of gardening is that maintenance is so much easier than trying to repair a problem so staying ahead of your garden is just so essential to having a really good gardening experience I try to see issues in advance and take measures to take care of them before they completely happen that way I'm not just going from crisis to crisis in my garden this goes for staking Tomatoes trellising anything it's going to be aund times harder to try to put a tomato cage up over a huge tomato plant than it is to put just put the cage on right away when the plant is this big you just save yourself so much time and trouble I used to just be a day late and a dollar short for everything in my garden and so there was just a crisis happening all the time I personally think that it's much better to have a smaller garden and do it really well maintain it really well get a good yield from the small garden that you have than to have a really big garden and then it not be very fruitful because you're not on top of things it can be so discouraging so discouraging to put in a massive garden and barely get anything from it you may as well have a small one one that you can take care of really well in my [Music] opinion we have one more big project to do in the garden this evening but before we get to that I have something else that really needs to get done some of you may remember that we got ducks a while back and chickens and they were both in this Bruder right here for a while the chickens got moved out on the pasture the ducks have still been in here and I moved this little chicken C down here from back behind our house where we put in the new patio but I haven't had time to build an enclosure or get it set up or anything and now this tree limb here fell down I'm not sure what happened if lightning hit it or it looks like it's just old up there and it broke and it's in the way haven't had time to clean that up yet and I need to get that cleaned up before I can put the pin here so until then as a very temporary situation I'm going to set up some electric fence up here in the front yard not actually going to turn it on the electric but have a fence up here so the ducks have a little more [Music] space Oh this is so frustrating these electric fences are a blessing and a curse for [Music] sure I know this area will get really nasty if I leave them here very long so this is just going to be a shortterm thing but at least give them a little bit of space for now they're doing all right in there but that gets nasty really fast we got to keep it clean with fresh bedding and stuff really often and they just don't have very much space and I want to do better for them than that then hopefully soon I'll be able to get that chicken coop all set up for them barefoot sandals do not give much cushion for putting in fence posts and this ground is hard now in the words of a famous Homesteader in main release the quacken don't worry Morgan I won't steal that you can go outside there you go this will just be open for them to get out here during the day I'm afraid that maybe an animal come in get them during the night or something so they'll definitely still be closed up in there during the night but they'll at least have some Freedom during the day also going to let the kids put a little swimming pool in there so the Ducks will also get their first swim swim might be a strong word might be more like just their first Splash this little setup is very temporary we'll fix something up pretty cool for them once we have them in their permanent home now let's see if we can get a duck to go in the water hey ducky you want to try the water here you go what do you think of that I think we'll let them find it on their own we're finally ready to get something put around our raised beds so that we so that we don't have to keep weed eating around them and I got the weed fabric to go underneath but I forgot to order the staple things to go along with it so as much as I don't want to I guess I'm going to need to run a town and get those because I really want to get it tonight also need a couple other things from the store so make a little trip out of it but I'm hoping to get back before it gets dark so we can quick get this done [Music] it was still daylight when I got back but we still had to pick all of the strawberries and there were a lot of them by the time that was done it was too late to work on anything else I'm good job good night duckies we've really been debating on what to do in here around these raised beds to stop the weed stop the grass we looked into pavers but they're so expensive looked into gravel but I just don't like the idea of like putting compost in the beds having it come off into the side not being able to scoop it out or walking barefoot on it also just either one of those cost money my man van is up like getting close to 300,000 Mi things like falling apart and I really badly want a truck so saving for that I don't know if you noticed in some of our videos we did get another vehicle because our other van was also getting up close to 300,000 Mi that was the one that Michelle was driving around and I was a little scared to send her out very long distances with that thing so really needed to upgrade our vehicles and so we're really buckling down to try to save for those saving money where we can so I think we're going to do just with what we have right here right now and that's leaves we've just been weed eating around here and it just takes a lot of time also if the weed eating gets away from us then we've got weed seeds going and getting into the garden and we don't want that either so we know we need to do something I I guess for now we're just going to do it this way whatever we do it's going to need weed fabric so the weed fabric is going to be here if we decide that next year we can afford to do pavers or if we get some wood chips dropped here or whatever we do the weed fabric will still be [Music] here staying on top of all that goes along with having a garden big enough to feed your family for the year really comes down to coming up with ways to make things more efficient very nice you are going to have to stop right there though why I didn't get this part done yet oh we get more efficient in in our garden every year because we're always looking for ways to improve we figured out that a little extra time and sometimes money upfront can save a lot of time and money in the long run there's still a lot of things we could do and some of the things that we've come up with aren't perfect at all Michelle will say something about that in a second but the point is is that we're continually growing and improving and things get easier every year don't judge your gardening experience by your first or even second or third year grow and improve and it'll keep getting better I think this will work okay but what I would really recommend if you are going to do this and if I had it to do over is I would plan out where my raised beds are going to go how many I'm going to have I would roll out all the weed fabric before the raised beds go down maybe cut some holes like smaller than the raised beds on the inside of where they would be set the raised bed on top that would hold all the edges down there wouldn't be weeds coming through these cracks it'd be a whole lot neater cleaner and I think work a lot better but we didn't do that so this is what we're working with now I think it'll work all right it's really hot out here and needless to say this is a lot of work which is exactly why I really want to put pavers in here something that we don't have to replace every single year I feel like if we put wood chips in here every year we're going to have to dump fresh ones on and I personally would just really like something that we don't have to redo every year which is why we are doing something kind of janky this year so that hopefully next year we can have have exactly what we [Music] want it is so hot out here it's humid and upper 80s and I've about had it so I'm gonna go inside and Cody's going to work out here for a while yet until he gets tired then he'll probably come inside too it's all done it's so hot out here I'm ready for a break it looks really good I guess we'll see how it holds up this year I know this video was a little bit shorter than the last one but that last one took me forever to edit and I can't do one like that every week so if you want to keep watching I'm going to put a really good video right here for you to watch next [Music]

Channel: More Than Farmers

Views: 39,305

Keywords: homestead, organic farm, simple living, how to grow food, homesteading, homesteading family

Id: fKxale5Yssc

Length: 17min 44sec (1064 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024