Is Your House an Old Sears Catalog House? // Why Take Out Grass to Just Replace with Grass? 🌿

hey guys how's it going so this is a recap video from the past two weeks we've put up a total of five videos since samantha grace arrived um and so we just thought we would gather up some questions from those videos benjamin's out here with us and so is samantha grace right now we thought we'd just gather up some questions from those videos and answer them for you guys hi that's good how's it going you are such a sweet boy do you love your baby sister she's sleeping right now we lucked out we lucked out huh well i could see the words you can say the words okay go ahead i can't you can't that's okay um do mama with me do mama end with you i don't know what you mean sweetie okay how's it going like that oh like hey guys how's it going can you say that hey it's good yeah good job can you tell them what your favorite movie is it's my best christmas trend stretch brush train the polar express we've watched it probably no less than what 35 times oh more than that more than that well that we're close to 75 at this point yeah and it's usually only the first like 20 minutes and then we need to start it over again okay so benjamin has gone in to possibly watch smash brush train right now okay so the first video from this past two weeks was new annuals for 2021 which we just shared some of the new ones that are coming out in the proven winners line from for this next year the ones i'm most excited about i didn't even share all of them um that one we filmed a couple of days before samantha grace actually arrived so in that video like i watch it back i'm like oh man i remember how miserable i was like i'm trying to hold on to that feeling so that i can always be thankful for how much better i feel now now that she's here um anyway i think we shared 14 or so i can't remember do you remember how many plants i talked about i don't it was it was several uh so garden dreamers said welcome to the world samantha gray she's so sweet um how's benjamin liking his new little sister he he's transitioned better than we could have ever imagined him transitioning like he just owned it like from the second she was here he was like i love her she's my best friend um he always wants to kiss her and watch like when we're doing anything he watches so uh when we're feeding her and there's russell hey russell what are you doing huh well you can't get that close come on everybody wants to like be a round baby i can't blame him i cannot blame him let me hold her up a little bit so you guys can see how sweet she is oh she's all bundled up it's actually 52 degrees outside today first day of february which is insanity it's beautiful and it's cozy so in this room anyway so benjamin is doing great we're super thankful for how well that whole transition went i don't know that we filmed anything when we brought her home because we were so just wanting to be present in that moment um did you film anything i don't think i did i think maybe i took a couple pictures yeah you know what it's kind of a blur holding her were you holding her yeah because i brought her in i think i was holding her and so i wouldn't have been filming tyrina said you really love your job or do you see it that way and i think that that comment came because we have filmed some videos we have done a little bit of work and i do love what i do i love i love to garden i love plants it's just a part of who i am and i think i'm wired a tiny bit different um than i don't know i bet you guys a lot of you guys are wired the same way as i am but i get a lot of fulfillment from doing projects from having productive days like full days that are really productive um so like jumping right back in feels super natural to me and we haven't really jumped right back in like i don't think we'll film anything else today which typically we're like okay can we get two or three videos done today and i'm like no let's just sit and chill and chat and that'll be good for the day and then we'll hang out with the kids hold on russell you're kind of getting up in my business here too close so i am very thankful that we do something that i love so much and thankful that i get to be around our kids as much as we are um so anyway yeah it just has seemed like a natural thing just to start working again a little bit uh laura said do you have a new perennial video coming out as well yes we do i filmed that one a few days ago it was really crummy outside it was like sputtering snow and it was freezing cold had heaters on in here um anyway that's kind of beside the point yes we do have a new perennial video coming out probably well hopefully in the next couple of days uh paulette said i love all your videos and noticed your greek pillar plant stand next to you could you let me know where i could purchase one i'm guessing this one right here and i think that that's called the large sicilian pedestal from unique stone i think that's what it's called you can get on unique stones website though and there's a ton of beautiful pedestals that to choose from uh i kill pretty things that i cannot wait for your container plantings i'm so excited to see your arrangements will there be another flower alley no i'm not really in the mood to do any like experimental projects i would like to do flower alley but uh one plant per pot okay so you want to you want to do it again yeah i wouldn't line them up in the same spot well not the same location but i think are you going to take care of all of i could yeah i i actually would enjoy it okay maybe it'll be so erin yeah erin will do uh possibly another flower alley but just one plant per pot which i do think is more appropriate yeah if you're going to use the same containers they're all full of bulbs right now oh but they'll be emptied out by by the time you need to plant um i was thinking that it might be kind of neat to do a like a fertilizer test like do proven winter's water soluble a spoma liquid and then maybe no fertilizer like and try or maybe one with the slow release one with flower tone like the granulated instead of doing a weekly fertilizer regimen and just see how each one of those plants like use the same plant like maybe a supertunia with just one supertunia or something and see how each one of them reacts and which one does the best and so forth i think that would be a fun experiment uh petra said congrats to you and aaron on your precious girl can you please explain what you do with your strawberry plants over the winter do you leave them in the ground in pots or bring them into your cold frame so the ones that are in containers that we are able to move we do move into the cold frame i think i've got a couple of those galvanized tubs that have strawberries in them we just cleaned them up a little bit there's that layer of mulch like straw on top that still looks pretty good so those will winter in the greenhouse the other ones like in our raised bed area which i think that's the only other place i have them i did plant some of the buried treasure red along the edge of a flower border near our kitchen they got spider mites so bad we had a bad spider my year last year and i ended up just pulling them out because it wasn't worth trying to spray them i would have had to use a ton of spray and it wasn't worth it so anyway yeah the ones outside there are zone five so they do survive our winters here i've had them winter over for a couple of years um and they're doing great alejandra said was that your phone resting on top of your cup of water it must have been in one of the videos i do remember i had a cup of water ice water sitting here and i put my phone on top because russell kept trying to drink out of my cup and i noticed a little like sick face right there but i think it would have been more sick to have a cat drinking out of my water than just resting my phone on it i don't know though have you seen the studies don't tell me i don't want to know i want to know what's on my phone rdm said i have nats on my lettuce starts tried peppermint oil soap mix ugh could you address this problem the best thing that i've been able to do for gnats is to one let the soil dry out a little bit they have like their eggs and stuff in that top layer of soil and they thrive on moisture so if you have a humidity dome remove that if you don't have a fan in the area set up an oscillating fan to create a little air movement let that top layer of soil dry out not enough to hurt the plants but enough to maybe you know make the eggs or the the bugs suffer a little bit and then i use those i do use some sprays but i like those yellow papers i know they don't look that great they're like sticky papers that you put on a little wood stick and then you can kind of place them around i'll place them around our plant room when it was upstairs and then i've got one going because i noticed one that and where there are one there are many usually like starting so i went ahead and just preventatively put one of those sticky traps out right where i saw that nat and i find that those really cut down the population and they cut it down fast anyway that's what i would try to do i mean you can do insecticidal soaps or neem or something like that but you really have to be diligent with it and for starts like little vegetable starts and things i don't really i don't really like the thought of spraying even organically i don't really like the thought of spraying things so if i can create an environment that's not suitable for the gnats and then use those sticky traps i think that's a really good way to go about it elizabeth said you are both beautiful like the flowers question do you have to go straight to did you have to go straight to zero to three month close she was in newborn clothes um she got to wear each one of her newborn outfits one time and they're all packed away so are a bunch of newborn diapers that i bought we'll just donate them um in fact i've got a box started that we're gonna take down to the relief nursery and now she's in zero to three month clothes she's got um like a little ways to go like maybe this much in length for her feet to fit to the very end but she's filling them out pretty good uh katie said aren't you a sight for sore eyes baby girl's beautiful long term will you be calling her samantha grace or samantha i will probably be calling her both samantha grace is probably what i will always call her i've called her samantha a couple times samantha grace just kind of rolls off the tongue really nicely i will never call her sammy or sam if she wants to be called that later she normally you allow other people to see nor will i other yeah whenever i see that i'm like i've never called her that so please don't color that um and like benjamin i told people like oh ben or benny is fine not benji um and now when i hear people shorten his name even though i said it was okay i'm like oh why did i do that he's just a benjamin he calls himself benjamin and if he wants to be like if he wants to shorten it you know once you know he's got a bunch of friends following him around or school days or whatever if he wants it shortened that is his decision but i i my mom is the same way i have a brother who's joseph i call him joe my mom has never called him joe it's always joseph i don't know we just like those long names they're they're pretty you were saying this morning you were going to call her mantha yeah that's weird don't call her mantha somebody was saying that if she wants like a trendy name later on it could be sammy g anyway anna said i can see erin a lot in her little face yes is that little sheet blanket that someone made you yes i opened that blanket in the mail time i will try to find that little clip but i love love that blanket it's so sweet the sweetest thing and last night it was we were she was a little had a little bit of a fussy time which she doesn't normally and so we're like what do we do she's usually just sleeping or eating i wasn't like that you know aaron's super chill i'm not like i want to fix the problem if she's crying i'm like what do i need to do to fix it and so we put her in her uh stroller and just rolled her around inside the house and she loves that movement and and i could see when i was looking down at her face and like we'd pass you he was working at his computer i could see aaron's face in her face and i just like that's aaron that's a mini aaron like her hair and her eyes like right here i think she may have my nose both kids have kind of more of a butt nose which i had when i was a baby i don't know if you did anyway i think she's got a lot of aaron in her okay next video is touching base and checking on seedlings and that was the first video i filmed after samantha grace was here and so i just wanted to give you an update on how things were going for us kind of our experience at the hospital i mean it's just kind of like a yeah just an update video and then we checked on the seedlings that i had planted prior they were in the plant room and many of them had come up and i needed to do a little bit of moving of seedlings to fill in empty cells and things like that so eve said does your seedling soil get fungus if so how do you handle oh i in that i do the same thing like for fungus snacks as i would do for like anything that's um starting to form on the surface of the soil so as soon as my entire trade of seedlings has germinated the humidity dome comes off if i'm using a seedling heat mat i turn that off so that they're not trapping in unnecessary moisture or or unnecessary heat and that's the point where i start my oscillating fan so i have that going and it just hits them like a little bit you know kind of offhandedly and usually once they get a little bit bigger i'll move the fan a little closer to create a little bit more wind around them because it creates one it helps take care of any fungal problem because they're not staying wet enough and two it creates a really strong seedling because they're having to hold up to that air movement so that's the thing you just want to create an environment that doesn't harbor extra moisture or heat so let them dry out a tiny bit i think people usually lose ceilings from over loving them over watering them as opposed to keeping things a little bit more on the dry side um so just something something to think about carrie ann said what no snow where are you at again we are getting more snow here in upstate new york our winters when winters have been very sporadic and warm and like zone eight yes mild ever since our really bad winter yeah it's like mother nature is like here you go i'm throwing you a bone after that really hard 52 inch of snow winter where we had negative degree temperatures and um ever since then we've had really mild winter so this is the third one in a row um how cold has it gotten here do you know in the teens maybe 1917 maybe or 16 16 17 has been the coldest night this winter so far which is crazy like i'll take it it's like zone seven yeah so our 10-day forecast like today's 52 tomorrow's 52 i think and then it's like 48 49 50 48 48 there's a few freezing temperatures in there but most of them are above freezing um which we went on a walk yesterday and there were already big um swarms of gnats which you know i mean you you get some good from having a mild winter and then there's always a little bit of like okay so if we have a mild winter are we gonna have a horrible mosquito year are the spider mites gonna be extra bad and so it's those things that you have to think about there's always good and bad every single situation but oh my it's been a gift to have a winter like we have had now we have had snow on and off um like it'll we'll get three inches two inches here three inches there and then it's gone either by that afternoon or the next day it melts off we're getting plenty of rain so we've got a lot of moisture this year i'm not like super worried about moisture levels are you i feel like it's been wetter than normal it has been wetter yeah um and we are in eastern oregon i guess i should have said that the very beginning we are right along the border of oregon and idaho high desert um yeah very different from the western side of the state when i say that we're from oregon a lot of times people think that we're from like the heavily wooded part nope like mild temperatures nope like we usually get really hot in the summer um and such and usually really cold in the winter but anyway in fact i actually just posted a picture of the greens i planted in that raised bed do you remember that three by six it was number november the fifth i buried a soil heat cable and then seeded it really heavily with spinach and lettuce seed and then put some super hoops i was trying out from gardener's supply with a garden quilt over the top and weighed that down with a bunch of bricks and then we've just been watering it it's probably been watered like oh i don't know five six seven times this whole entire winter and i just opened it up yesterday first time since i was have been home with samantha grace which is two weeks today and it's beautiful in there i mean just thick thick with greens and they're perfect so that was a successful experiment and i really have to uh kind of give kudos to the wetter wet wetter to the weather for that susan said beautiful time for you all off topic but what will you do with your new water feature will you relocate it so i did talk about that one a little bit in the pine removal video it wasn't harmed at all when all the trees were removed from that area it's still completely intact i think we will relocate it though because it's not going to fit the aesthetic for that area we're going to be going for a more formal feel there and as you know it's a lot more of a wooded kind of more natural feel which i think will fit in beautifully over on our new property we have two corners that are destined to be just filled up with whatever we like there's going to be really no design to it i mean i'll try to space trees out appropriately so that in the end at maturity everything fits in nicely but i don't really want i want there to be an ease about that area i don't want boxwood hedging or too much statuary or anything like that i want it to feel very natural and so i think that water feature will be great over there and i think it'll be a fun project because i was able to be there now you know greg brought brian who's his head designer and they put it together um i got to be kind of a part of it but i was a little bit more of a uh what is it a bystander what's the word i wasn't really active spectator yes i was more of a spectator and but i i don't know i think that since we have the video i'll be able to watch it back and maybe try my hand at putting it together myself which that's the whole point it's a kit for people to put together at their own home so it should be fairly easy to do christy said do you ever put fertilized water in the tray reservoir so that's in the self-watering reservoirs for the seedlings i do not i only ever put clean water in there and then i do my fertilizer over the top so i just water them in from over top like normal and i feel like i get more control that way and i know exactly how much fertilizer those seedling roots have had kay said so adorable was it mentioned where the seedling grow kit was from those are from gardener supply and a game changer if you're starting seats trust me they are an absolute game changer and worth it i think they're maybe back ordered right now but i would get on their list i know some people have said like i'm slowly transitioning all of my trays over so like every year i'll buy three or four and then phase out some of my old ones and there is a a place for old ones too like i still used an 11 by 22 standard tray with the seed of the cells in it for my onions and it just made more sense for me to do it that way for the sheer amount of onions i wanted to plant but for the most part i can fit everything in those ceiling kits and they're they're really awesome tatiana said what type of heater do you have on your sun porch so the brand of it is a redstone i think we got it at tractor supply it's little it's like maybe eight nine inches tall seven inches wide or so and it's perfect for this small room because i can close the doors here even though there's quite a gap underneath the door so air can really kind of come in here however it wants to like it would be very cold if i didn't run that heater but it's got a thermostat that if i set it properly it will turn off when it's warmer out and it kicks back on when it gets down to a certain temperature it's been really handy stacy said what's on top of your seething soil vermiculite yes and i'm not sure i actually explained the vermiculite that well the reason why i put that on the top i did it for the very first time when i read on the back of one of johnny's seeds packages for flowers that i was starting that i needed to put a layer of vermiculite on the top to help with like fungal issues forming um and for moisture retention and i've had such good luck doing that so i've been starting to use it use it on more things and i do notice when i buy like packs of onions at the garden center a lot of times it has vermiculite on the top and i thought well if the pro growers do it then i might as well give it a shot and it does really help it kind of takes the edge off of things drying out so fast i don't think it's um something i've never i saw a question about like a citrus tree somebody wanted to know if adding a layer of that on top of the soil would be helpful for moisture retention i think it would take an awful lot of it to help i mean you could mix it in with the soil which would help you know release some water or retain some water but i think you would maybe need to do a repot for that i'm not sure a top player would do it but for seedlings it sure does help balance says she's precious and looks just like benjamin you know what their uh ultrasound pictures looked identical to me now that i see them side by side i'm like i can see some similarities but i see so much of aaron in her now i don't know it's like different every day about the domes how do you know when to take them off your seedlings is it plant-specific when true leaves show or once they've germinated i do it once the entire tray has germinated which means that some of the seedlings may have a little bit more size than others but i just want to make sure all of them are up and i'm seeing green in every cell before i take that dome off victoria said do you have to thin flower seedlings this is my first year planting garden flower seeds not vegetables i'm wondering if i have to thin them even though i planted in four-inch pots um i do i thin them out the only ones i haven't thinned were the cabbage ornamental cabbage because typically when i get those down at the garden center they let them grow in a bouquet of three for most of their flowers that i've started i have thinned them out to one per pot now i mean if you have a four inch pot it's possible if you spread your seeds out far enough in that pot that you could leave two or three growing and then you could separate them out later once you're ready to plant them because that is quite a large growing reservoir but like in my case i'm growing them all in those seed starter kit trays so the cells are only this big and i just want one per one per tray or one per cell rather one plant per cell by the end and that way they have plenty of room to grow they're not choking each other out i think it's better for the overall health of the plant all right so the next video is how to start onion seeds indoors and i was just getting ready to do that because you need to do it eight to ten weeks roughly before your average last frost date and onions can take a little cold too like i'll put them out even before it even if i know we're gonna have a light frost because they can handle it typically it's an april crop for me to plant out in the garden so it was time to do it i don't think i'd ever shown it in a video so we just went with it cameron said do you start your spinach seeds indoors if so what size tray or cells do you use i do not start spinach inside there's a lot of things i don't start inside a lot of things just do fine and maybe even better when they're direct sewn straight in the soil outside once it's an appropriate time to do so which with spinach seeds in particular they are a cold crop so you can start them out quite a bit sooner than you can start your other warm season loving crops like you know your vine crops pumpkins and and melons and things like that which i also don't start from seed inside i direct so those maybe one of these days we should come out with a video and just like list everything i remember being frustrated when i was really trying to sort out all the information and trying to figure out like what what would benefit like uh would it benefit me to start these seeds inside early or should i just leave them and start them outside later what's better for the plant because oftentimes like with the vine crops pumpkins say if you start them inside and then pop them outside in the soil and then plant seeds for that exact same pumpkin variety right next to it oftentimes the seeds right next to it will germinate and come up and start growing and maybe even outgrow the one that you've started inside because when you plant your plant outside it sits there kind of almost in a state of shock a little bit trying to adjust to its new home so while that one's adjusting the seeds are up and growing and usually a stronger plant for it so there's a lot of things that like spinach excuse me that i find just better to drexel i am really good at making very short answers or something that can be answered very short in very long like like this yeah yeah i'm having some issues today oh boy nina said unrelated could you talk about your c-section recovery i myself recovered quickly after an emergency c-section and was walking around within six hours after surgery everything i read online is the horrors or extended recovery time which is so unfortunate because my recovery has been really great both times in fact i was excited when i knew i knew that benjamin was transverse breach and we were able to um like medically have a reason to schedule a c-section because i have some serious fears over like natural birth and that sort of thing like it was plaguing me through that first pregnancy and um so i was so thrilled that i got to have a c-section and it was an amazing experience my recovery was super short i mean i was home within two days lifting things i shouldn't have been lifting but i felt so good um and this time definitely was harder i've either blocked some of the pain from the first time or this time just was more painful um like the third day when i came home it was pretty rough that day um and then the day after so i'd say like it was only four days of really being down and then i was fine um i still have like four weeks of recovery like i can't lift anything really heavy and i won't i won't push it because i don't want to set myself back um but yeah i i feel like it was a really good experience again and i'm thankful that we were able to do it that way and she's perfect and she's healthy and that's really what makes the difference you know everything everything's good a jeanette said can you use vermiculite to store flower bulbs i am i'm using it in all my dahlias and my gladiolus and my elephant ears and what else do i have out there caladiums i have those all in the root cellar and they're all surrounded by vermiculite which i lightly moistened because we're such a dry climate everything's looking good so far [Music] sweet baby girl gina said not sure if i if you've said but what temperature do you keep the studio at right now i think it's set to what 63 in there it is so it's insulated so well that if we keep it like in a house temperature which we keep our house like 69.70 if we kept it that warm in there we would die it would be like sweat kind of situation it is it is very tight in there like so we don't have to keep it very warm and even 63 i'm like oh maybe we should drop it to 60. because i don't want these plants to be in like all the plants i'm starting in there to be in too favorable of temperatures i kind of want them to be grown on a little bit cooler and once you start moving around in there you get warm pretty quick so i'm excited to see what happens so for the air conditioning because that bodes well if it's that tight like i don't think we'll have that heart of the time keeping it cool when it's hot outside it's just amazing to me that in this 100 plus year old barn we have a bay that looks like it does that's as tight as it is and that's as functional as space i it'll even be more so once we have a chance to tackle painting and kind of setting it up more as to make it look like we want it to look because right now it's a little bit it's pretty harsh i mean it's really bright white in there and there's lots of grow lights which you know we just need to do some reorganizing but anyway the hvac guy said that he thinks it will be more efficient to cool than to heat really so if we're having a good experience with heating we'll probably have a better experience with cooling that's such good news i also feel like i need to apologize for the lighting in this video the sun keeps coming out and going behind the cloud and coming out and going behind the cloud it's glorious and i can't keep up i make no apologies so nice but like right now it's starting to go behind the clouds getting dark yeah so i keep trying to brighten it and darken it so it doesn't get too bright or too dark so anyway it'll look great sandra said since you used a non-self watering system how would you water your onions so i'm just watering them with a spray bottle from overhead for right now just to keep them moist and then once they're up and they've got some size and i'm not worried about dislodging seeds i'll just use a small watering can to water it no biggie miriam said could onions be started with the winter sowing method absolutely perfect thing to start in a water jug or a milk jug or whatever outside and just let them come up naturally uh jackie said is your greenhouse heated so our greenhouse that we currently have is not really a greenhouse it's a cold frame but i think we are going to look into heating it for this next winter aaron's really interested in maybe doing a double layer of plastic and then you can blow air through it to kind of create a bubble and then you run a small heater in there and that way it traps in some heat i would really love that because i would actually like to move all of our seed starting to a greenhouse that's got some heat and not have it in the studio because it does take up a lot of space it is still really dirty um and i want i don't know i want to set up our studio more as like a living looking space if that makes sense and then move all of the like grow operation stuff out to the greenhouse so it may actually become a greenhouse at some point maybe this next fall gardening from scratch said if you don't have a cat scratching around in your garden in pots to use the restroom are you even a gardener i don't think so in that video cheddar cheddar was in the background scratching around in one of my blueberry pots and i don't think he actually did the deed did he he did oh he did gross yeah he did you can see he like shook his butt oh that's gross that is gross cheddar dang it anyway gotta love it uh russell right now in fact let me just take a little video what he's doing he's currently the top dress on my lime tree lime tree russell it's a good spot yeah the next video we put up was removing our pine trees and we showed you nine trees that we were having removed from our garden some of them which had already been taken down but we had some footage of it aaron got out there with the drone and cameras and things um so i started up front just kind of explaining what we were having removed and why and kind of our reasoning most of the things we had taken out were riddled with problems oh no oh hold on anyway so i just wanted to give you a tour of what it looks like even though like our winter garden right now especially right now it's looking very stark now that a lot of the trees are gone but when we had those removed it just it like released a weight like not having those pine trees that were full of blight there and not worrying about working around you know problem issues out there it was just such a burden lifted and all of a sudden like it's decluttered out there we the tool shed's gone our friends came and got that they're using it out at their farm as a bunny house which is perfect so now i can look out windows and i see our chickens running around in their their run which i couldn't see before it was blocked and i can really see like the gazebo really shines now and our city i think they're still working on like logistically how they're going to get it moved but that'll happen soon so in the end all we'll have out there is the coop the hartley greenhouse and then formal gardens around it i'm really looking forward to doing that natalie said this is going to sound silly but what are tumbleweeds made of so it's a weed that grows around here it's a russian thistle they grow in kind of like this ball shape and then they break off at the bottom then they roll around in the wind and release their seeds everywhere all through the land so whenever we get a windstorm and if there's somebody that hasn't taken care of the russian thistles which there is natural like natural habitat around us they just will blow all over the place and then we'll have some things to take care of in the spring in terms of weeds sarah said love learning about your design process what are some of the trees that you would love to plant in all of your new spaces oh my word should i start listing them like i'm thinking about even the new space out here and how i just aaron and i decided we want big shade trees in the grassy area kind of more toward the perimeter to keep the middle a little bit more open for the kids to run around and play but like in the corners i want to do like lots of different types of maples and birch zelkova lindens um crab apples plums probably some pears um geez there's so many different trees so many different neat ones probably some oaks out there the types that don't hold onto their leaves over the winter horn beams most likely there's going to be a small orchard so it'll be really fun to start picking some things out especially out there because it's going to be so much more free and and not formal that i can just pop one of this there and one of that there and there won't be any um striving for balance of any kind uh kyle said have you ever looked into whether your house's old wing is a sears catalog house it looks fairly similar to the modern house number 111. i looked it up did you it does look similar like the layout is pretty like pretty close except for in that one there is a bathroom upstairs in between like where the plant room and where her room's going to be there's like a bathroom tucked in and there's no bathroom on the old side of our house there was an outhouse that's how they did it but um there could have been a bathroom is there plumbing that goes all the way i mean it would make sense because that's where the butler's pantry is yeah like all the water could come up the back side yeah there could have been maybe it is it is hard to say but yeah it's very very close and i i kind of like spent some time looking around at some of those old floor plans and so fun to look at those things um i did mention in the video that we would like to um kind of tear off the uh new addition on the front side like tear off all of the siding and the windows and reframe windows in to where they're matching and so we can put some fake dormers up on the roof and make it look a little bit more colonial than it looks right now uh of course that's looking like it's gonna go like what year 20 20 25 26 i think that's one of those just like master master game plan yeah it's the dream plan yeah and and if you're when you're getting into projects you just kind of want to have a master plan so that you know like well if we do this because you don't want to have to redo something right after you've done it all right you know if you're going to remodel a room well for example i was talking about painting the rest of our bedroom which i've only painted half of it's been the same for like years um anyway we talked about doing some really pretty molding some wayne's code in there and aaron's like i don't think we should do that because if we do that they're gonna re-face the walls in there like do a coat or they're going to do a flat board to create that and then we're just going to go ahead and have the side ripped off and the windows moved around to where it will mess up all the waynes coast so maybe we just paint for now so that we're not you know doing projects out of order anyway yeah uh defend yourself brother said love the channel can't wait to see what this year brings is it pricey to have an arborist take out um a tree i think it depends on your arborist i've heard some astronomical bids here i keep telling our guy like you should raise your prices like i you know you don't want to tell somebody that but they book out like six seven eight months in you know they got to us the next day because okay we got so lucky i called them and i just said hey we're ready we're ready for the pines to come out plus we've got some other things and he was like great i had i need some projects to keep my guys busy because we are booked out like solid but everywhere we need to go is so muddy right now they can't get in with their equipment which like the timing worked out great because it's nice to have a blank slate out there that's your other master plan you don't want to put the hartley in and then have big equipment come in to take the pine trees out oh my goodness i'd have to leave if that was going on like and people were taking i mean they're so professional nothing would happen but it would make me nervous but anyway so yeah they were out the next day taking these things down so we didn't even really have time to like let the decision of taking those trees sink in it was like nope boom boom boom have a baby have nut and trees removed you know let's just lay waste to the garden quick while you're trying to recover no big deal i don't know i think i do better with life when i don't have time to think about things for too long just gotta roll with it kathy said our neighbor's tree has blight the branch hangs over our yard last spring a few plants died suddenly withered one day and crunchy the next day is that from the blight in the tree most likely not um definitely if you have blight and you have leaves falling from a tree def keep it clean underneath but a lot of times those blights are more plant specific like the one that we have it's i wrote it down here it's like dothastroma dosa stroma needle blight and it really just affects needles in different types of evergreen trees and i haven't seen that particular type of blight anywhere else now i am not like up on the science of blights and things but like even fire blight is more susceptible like the apple apple trees crab apples pears things like that are more susceptible to fire blight than other plants so i don't think that's what happened to yours and that's really quick for something to take it out so i would think something else was going on dorothy said that's already so much work why would you take out grass just to replace it with grass so i explained how russell i explained how we are taking all like a lot of the things up front here out as well as a lot of the grass and then we're going to reseed everything together at the same time the reason for that is there's really not that much grass up here and a lot of it's under trees like we have the ash tree and the crab apple tree and the grass that's there doesn't grow very well because it's not the right kind of grass to handle shade so we're going to be able to seed everything properly and mix in some of that red creeping fescue is what we use in shady areas so we'll be able to mix that in underneath the shady areas so we have a nice green lawn under there as well as you know the rest of the space and we do have issues up here with clover and spurge so i thought oh this is my time i get to rip it all out and then we get to start fresh with something else um and i also don't want to see any lines yeah that's true the differentiation between like well this was planted later and and levels too like we get a decent deal on grass seed as well yeah we do we do get a decent deal on grassy and my parents garden center sells it so um yeah i think in the end it'll look more cohesive and less patchy like trying to patch things together if it was a huge lawn i would probably reconsider but this is not very much uh patricia said you know that tree that aaron bolted together how is that tree it did so great this past year it never like no side of it looked sick i expected to see at least one half of it start to either drop leaves quicker or yellow or wilt nothing ever happened and it actually looks like one of the sides started to heal together but i think it'll be telling this next year i think we'll see how it leafs out this spring and then we'll see once it gets to the hot part of summer how it handles but i'm really hopeful that it's going to be fine jan said i sure wish you'd check out the garden professor's blog to learn how to properly plant trees and shrubs your system dooms them to eventual failure really would it hurt to just take a look at root washing science is better than how we've always been told to plant okay so my opinion my opinion on the whole thing is i feel like people over complicate things big time and you know it's it's interesting too because i've grown up in my parents garden i mean their garden is 31 years old i've seen them um put it together from basically nothing to what it is now which we've showed you guys and so i've learned a lot throughout those years and there are some things that i don't do now that i used to do like i don't add compost into holes anymore for the most part we've been doing land and sea recently because it's more of an acid base and we're trying to acidify our soil so you will see me do that more and more but i don't think it's as necessary as i once thought it was and like breaking up a root ball we've been able to learn so much from growers in industry ever since we've started making videos getting to know growers out there they talk about how breaking up the root memory is not nearly as important as i once thought like it needs to be severely root bound to want to break it up because oftentimes you can set that plant back more by trying to break up the root ball um like you think you're doing a good thing and it's not really the best thing i don't know i try to keep as open-minded as open to mind as possible to learning new things but i also feel like tried and true the things that we've been doing for lots and lots and lots of years with great success are also okay and i feel like a lot of times we over complicate and that is really hard for new gardeners i think i think we discourage a lot of people because they don't know where to start and then they see all of these opinions and then very people that are very like strong in theirs like this is the way to do it you can't do it any other way i don't really feel that that's the case i feel that there's a lot of different ways you can do things like i've watched somebody who takes away like a ton of the root ball and plants trees like like to where there's a disc of a root ball left but maybe that's the way they've always had success doing it so i'm not gonna just like jump in and be like that's the wrong way to do it your tree is gonna die you know what i mean because maybe theirs have done great through the years i don't know i think plants are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for and it's hard to argue with people like your parents who have been gardening for 30 30 well more than that that's just that's just how long they've had their garden my mom's been gardening since she was born don't have trees die on them you know so it's like well i just think there's so many different ways to yeah to plant yeah i just think keeping an open mind in all things in all things is a good way to live miranda said what about the lemony lace elderberries well they got they got smashed a little bit but i think they will be completely fine um in fact elderberries you can go in and pretty much look at her she is just like you can pretty much just like cut them down right at ground level and they will come back fresh every single year so i think we'll move those out to the new property rmk said given given you enjoy a blank slate to work with did you ever consider a totally different location for your hartley such as a centerpiece on the new property yes how did you decide to keep it where the old gazebo was okay yes we've considered so many locations i thought about putting it in the back part of our cut flower garden which you know is going to be in like the north 40 out there we consider putting it right smack in front of our house we considered waiting and then if we could get a hold of the piece of land some at some point in time in front of her that has been offered to us we just don't have the money right now to buy it um if we uh if we could get that it would be beautiful to put it like oh like straight in the center of versailles out there in the middle of that grass um but i actually think it's going to be best where the gazebo is because it's halfway between our house and the barn our house is where we do all of our cooking so if we want i'm setting this up as a like an extension of our home we'll have a dining table out there we'll also have plant material as well but i wanted a place where we could easily take our food but also a place that was in a good distance from all of our supplies all of our gardening supplies are in the barn so it's a really good location i can see it from all the north windows in our house you can see it across versailles i think it's just a really nice location right there but yeah it's it's tough especially when you're doing something like that like the hartley like that's a dream for me and so picking a spot to put it seemed like um like a big responsibility did it seem that way to you you you're just happy with wherever yeah i think it was fine oh because we're only gonna have one yeah so like we gotta make sure we're putting this in the right spot but i think it's gonna be perfect uh queen bee said since you're ripping out the grass and fence will you also replace the frankenstein walkway right in front of your front door that you've been wanting to do since day one yes yes that will be torn up as well in fact i just started sketching out the front last night and i think what we're going to do it's going to be a little bit weird because this is the formal entrance of our house um and this sidewalk you know the lane or the sidewalk that goes straight out to our arbor like it needs to go somewhere so i think we'll end up like taking it straight out and maybe going a little further and then curving it back in to where it lines up with where our brick walkway comes out on the west side so it kind of is like a loop and it also will kind of lead you out to where there's parking area i don't know we're going to have to see how the whole thing comes together i i have like a little vision you do you have like i've got vision for it yeah i can see it you thought my drawing was not to scale [Laughter] i did it on grid paper yeah you did yeah and the last video was taking benjamin on a trip down to the garden center my parents just got their first brand new load of spring colors so hellebores primrose pansies violas there was some ferns there and we wanted to pick some flowers out for a container that i'm looking at right now that i'm just enjoying so much but i also wanted to take benjamin out we look for opportunities to take him out individually and he loves to go visit nana and papa he loves to go to dolson juice and get a big cookie he talks about it often so it was just a good day to take him out and do that and we had fun we watched trains and it was raining and you know jeannie said i wonder if you will also paint the trim of the stained glass window to match the new door i hadn't thought about that but yes i actually think we will take that stained glass out that's not original and i'm not a huge fan of it i don't know about you are you a fan of that stained glass i never asked you that you're not you don't like it um i'm a little bit indifferent but i'm not i'm indifferent too i mean it's okay um but it's not my first choice probably so we'll probably look at getting a different type of window there our front door is stained kind of like this redwood color but all the accents on our house are black so it kind of sticks out a little bit so we thought about either having the door painted black or getting a new door because that door doesn't like the locks don't line up it's really hard to lock we like to use those i don't what are they called aaron then this is a smart lock there's a smart lock that you can you know unlock and lock from your phone and we can't do that with this door because nothing lines up properly so anyway we'll see if we get that done soon-ish oh hi sweet girl uh samantha says i like your name samantha um you guys have such a healthy attitude toward family i love the intention of spending special time with benjamin can you plant hellebores on the ground this time of year zone 5b in colorado springs you can but i would be careful because if you uh if you planted hellebores like i did that have been forced to you know they're way ahead of my hellebores out in my garden um so they've been grown a little bit warmer than the ones out here so you wouldn't want to throw them out if you have potentially really cold weather coming your way because that can set them way back because they're just not acclimated to that so just be careful there are some growers who grow things cold in which case if you know if this grower did they probably wouldn't be full of blooms right now but where i planted these they're actually in full sun right now the heating like captures it encapsulates up here so i figured that they would be all right in fact this one has been through two or three nights in uh lower than freezing temperatures and they look perfectly perfect right now but i would just be careful about like exposure and not putting them out too early so that you don't accidentally damage some of their new growth kathleen said girl are you supposed to be driving yet it's great to see videos you know i did see several comments about people surprised that i was driving around i didn't know that that was even a restriction after a c-section um the only thing i was told was i couldn't take baths for two weeks no biggie um and then obviously don't lift anything for six weeks that's too heavy and that's pretty much it but no i was driving like five days after or six days or something like that no problems a cool new pant set is that framed black and white photo in your dad's office an ancestor of yours maybe the founder of the shop that is al andrews who did found the shop so my parents are fourth owners um al was a first owner and it was started in 1919 so just over 100 years ago uh brie said why do i get the feeling that she left all those delivery in her office when she left yeah i did um in fact they usually all the packages that arrive at andrews usually get brought here every monday um and so i do have a pile in the studio right now we may go ahead and film a mail time just because this time of year we have one we need to post we do we have one where are we still pregnant we need to post that one it's ready to go i watched it aaron yeah so i just need to post it i know my bad yeah um so we may go ahead and do that just because i said we weren't going to do it we may not still but um this time of year there's just not as much going on and honestly finding projects that i can do where i don't have to bend over or lift things that's kind of rare in gardening so it might it might be something that you see here pretty quick last was from sunshine you should let him have his own pot to take care of it so benjamin picked out one of those orange primroses which are pretty but didn't go with my color scheme up here and so when he wasn't looking when he was distracted i did put it back on the cart he didn't notice i think we're about one year away from benjamin being able to really tend his own things um or have a much of an interest like he had an interest for a moment and he would have forgotten about it by the time we got home if i let him bring home everything he wanted to put in a cart both at the garden center at the grocery store that would be insane we'd have so much junk around here he's a consumer yes he's a heavy consumer anyway i think that's it for today's recap video i was actually surprised we had five videos to even recap in the first place i didn't really know what to expect out of the first few weeks so we're just going to still take things just kind of the same and just do projects as they naturally come up that's kind of how we roll around here um and so if we have crummy days or days where we're just gonna you know focus on babies that's just gonna be how it is for a little bit so anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you're all doing really well and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Garden Answer Highlights

Views: 277,363

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Id: S7cZfKBIqdE

Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021