It CAME BACK to LIFE! The Garden has OVERCOME the Scorching Summer Heat!

hi everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead well today i am in the garden i have some things to check on some things to probably harvest and there's one thing that we have decided to be done with for the year and so i'm going to be doing some harvesting and then pulling all of those plants out now i'll be real honest that we have not been in the garden much at all for the last few weeks because we really thought all hope was lost out here in the garden we've had terribly high heat this summer for this region of southern missouri we've had weeks and weeks and weeks in the 90s and in the hundreds and that is just not normal for this area especially not for the length of time that we had that amount of heat also within all of that was a quite a significant drought at one point we were 15 plus inches below where we should be at that time of the summer our garden plants were suffering so badly even though we had drip irrigation that came on every day for an hour and a half the heat was just so intense that it was really affecting the plants so like i said we thought all hope was lost and so we just didn't spend much time out here but over the last couple of weeks we've gotten some rain and the heat has let up and so there's a possibility that some of the garden may be salvaged so today i want to go through the garden with you row by row and show you the good and the bad if there are some things that can be harvested i plan to harvest those things but my big project first thing is we're going to rip out all of our tomato plants there are a few reasons why we're just going to be pulling the tomato plants today you know the tomatoes have really suffered the plants have suffered the tomatoes themselves have suffered from the heat and the drought but also there have been a lot of bugs that have taken advantage of the weakness basically of the tomatoes and tomato plants and they have invaded so we have a lot of stink bugs i've also been seeing leaf-legged bugs and the tomato hornworms have moved back in the tomatoes themselves have been suffering from a lot of that bug damage when stink bugs and the leaf-legged bugs when they feed on the tomatoes themselves they put their mouth parts in the tomatoes which introduces bacteria and that bacteria can multiply and create rotten spots on the tomatoes so there's a lot of tomatoes that are just not in good shape and not salvageable the plants themselves have gotten heavy and fallen over so you'll see when i show you the tomatoes that the plants are in disrepair and if we were going to continue with the tomatoes they would need to all be tied back up the main reason that we are pulling all of the plants is because you know we just have so much going on right now that the tomatoes and the tomato plants are just not something that we can continue caring for as you know we are in the process of putting a house on the new farm property we expected that house to be put in place in may but it's not happening until the end of august maybe even the beginning of september and so that has really tied up our ability to really take full advantage of this garden so something had to give out of all of these things and one of those is the tomato plants just need to be pulled out the peppers and other things that are still in the garden we can continue enjoying them fresh we will have time to process them they don't come on in big flushes like the tomatoes do and so for all those reasons the very first project that i'm going to be working on in today's video is harvesting the good tomatoes and pulling out all of the tomato plants any tomatoes that are bad or any green tomatoes we're going to be putting aside and feeding those to the pig so that there is no waste and all of those will just be used to grow bacon so let's get started on the first part of our project today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well this part of today's project is finished i'm so happy kevin came and helped me finish because it was taking a long time and it was a lot of work so i'm happy that he stopped what he was working on and came and helped me so i have harvested all of the good tomatoes all the bad tomatoes i've put in buckets for the pigs i've pulled out all of the tomato plants from one full row here and a half a row here so what that means now is that we can move on to some of the things other things in the garden what i would like to do is to take you row by row to show you kind of the status of the plants that we have left some things have made a miraculous recovery and other things just couldn't hold on long enough and succumbed to the heat of the summer and i just want to show you where everything is at right now my hope also is to have some time today before i need to move on to other things have some time to do some harvesting so that i can bring that stuff back to the homestead and get that processed so i would like to start by showing you all how the peppers are doing so this is the other half of that half a row of tomatoes i planted these with peppers and i think they're a total of 14 pepper plants now earlier in the summer i did a big harvest of all the bell peppers and those plants are right here they are emerald giant and at the time that i picked all of these peppers there were absolutely no blossoms on them so i thought that these plants were going to be completely dumb done for the year but if you look closely these plants are getting blossoms on them which is fantastic there are a couple peppers that are growing and so i'm really excited that these might have a comeback the nota penos that i have here not opinions are not hot or not spicy jalapenos the first harvest is ripening to a red and they are getting blossoms on them here for another harvest so i am really happy about that you can see all these gorgeous red peppers in here these are all the red roasting peppers that i grow the variety is called ajvarsky and their first harvest has turned red and now it is time for me to harvest them they are also putting on new blossoms which is awesome now these ajvarsky peppers even though i prefer them red which is their fully ripened stage as a green pepper they are fantastic they're they're mild and they're not spicy so when you pick them green they taste like a bell pepper so these blossoms even though it's fantastic that they're gonna put on more peppers i'm not sure that there is time enough for them to ripen to the red stage but that's okay with me it looks like the ones that are on there right now are going to produce a nice harvest of the red ajvarsky peppers and those that grow now i will harvest green and chop them up and use them as bell peppers these are jalapeno peppers and it looks like their first set of fruit is turning red and they also are producing blossoms so we're going to get a second harvest of jalapenos and then the last type of peppers that we have down here are something new to us the plants are looking great all the plants are looking fantastic look at that but these chili peppers i don't remember the name of the variety we've tried one of them they're not super spicy they're not putting on a ton of fruit but we're giving them a try they may or may not make it to the next garden for next year well that is how it's going with the peppers nice surprise that they're starting to bloom again and we might have a second go-round of peppers let's move on to the rest of the garden next up in the garden is an entire row of green beans now our green beans we normally get two or even three harvests in the early part of the summer green beans are actually the first thing that i will generally can or preserve they're just the fastest and the first ready for processing this year we got one picking out of the green beans then the heat hit and all of a sudden all of the blossoms that were there ready to produce another harvest fell off the beans that were still on there that were too small to harvest at the time that we did the first harvest they were rubbery then they tasted terrible so basically that's still where these green bean plants are they are producing a few blossoms but the green beans that they're producing taste terrible they have no flavor uh they're rubbery so basically we just need to tear all of these plants out the green beans are essentially done for the year if you remember though we did plant some green bean plants in the greenhouse because we knew that these green bean plants were done for so we will still have green beans in the future probably in the next month or so they're just about to blossom that we can use for fresh eating we did get some of these we did get these preserved for winter that first harvest but that's just going to be it for green beans aside from the plants that we put in the greenhouse we're really excited you guys to have a greenhouse that we can produce vegetables all year round for fresh eating it actually really takes the pressure off of how well the in-ground garden does for us here so we even though this is basically almost a complete fail and complete disaster for us we still number one produced enough to have some set aside for the winter and also we love fresh green beans and we're gonna have more of those in the greenhouse okay next up in the garden i'm just gonna pan over here next up are the soybeans so these soybeans they're edamame soybeans which means they are grown specifically to be eaten fresh they grow in a little pod it kind of looks like a pea pod and inside of there the beans grow and they get nice and plump and you harvest them in the pod you steam them and eat the soy beans inside of them fresh just with a little bit of salt we like edamame it's actually pretty much the only soy or soy beans that we consume we eat it as a snack occasionally so we thought we would just try it this year now a couple years ago we tried edamame growing them and i'll tell you guys the plants that we grew the first time were about 12 inches tall that's all the the taller they got they gave us a mediocre harvest at best so we were not expecting these giant plants you guys oh my gosh let me move back these plants here they would say they're probably three and a half to four feet tall i'm five five if y'all didn't know that before i'm not a tall one i'm five five and these guys are like armpit high for me we had no idea that these plants would get so tall we were planning for 12 inches again and we thought for sure they weren't going to produce blossoms we thought for sure they wouldn't produce a harvest for us but let me bring you in closer and show you what's going on to our surprise they're putting on beans you can see they're a little fuzzy you can see the beans inside of them are not very plump yet it's going to be a while before they are ready to harvest but you guys this is a total shocker for us it is totally surprising that number one they got this tall number two they've survived this intense heat and number three they're actually going to produce a harvest for us so that is absolutely fantastic right next door to the edamame are the okra and the okra is another thing that we thought was a total goner total flap for the year now during this intense heat the okra started looking like it was at the end of its life now i want to explain to you what normally happens for us anyway in this area for okra at the end of the summer when it's starting to turn fall the okra which generally is like seven feet tall these guys you know are probably four feet tall so they've they've grown quite a bit in the last month anyway at the end of the season usually the okra will start getting like a big ball of flowers all in one spot i mean there could be a couple per plant but all of a sudden rather than them putting on okra like all around the plant all of a sudden they'll have like a big central ball of blossoms that will then all of a sudden put a bunch of okra pods on right like centrally we have noticed in the past that the okra pods don't taste as good so we decide at that point in the past to just let them go let the pods get big dry out and then that's what we use for seed well about a month ago these okra plants were starting to do that they were starting to put on a central area of blossoms and it looked like they were going to be done for the season it looked like they were they were just trying to be done for the season so we were just you know we just left them alone thinking they're done well all of a sudden i come out here to see what's going on in the garden after it's cooled down a little bit and after we've gotten a little rain and you guys all of a sudden they're growing taller they have lots of blossoms they're getting lots of new okra pods and it's amazing there's like a whole regeneration rejuvenation of the okra now you can see that we do have some big ochre pods that need to come off because you guys we just thought that this garden was completely done with but we have blossoms we have small okra that we can start picking so we're really excited that we can come out here and we might be able to get a good harvest of okra after all this area is another giant surprise you guys this is where our watermelons are and our cantaloupe about a month ago or so all of these plants back here looked terrible they were turning yellow some of the leaves a lot of the leaves were dying and all of the fruit all the melons both the watermelon and the cantaloupe that were of any size whatsoever they all ripened all at once we had 27 cantaloupe that ripened within the course of three or four days and all of the watermelon ripened i think we had about 20 watermelon now we did a bunch of freeze drying we actually froze a bunch of it uh to have you know in the winter and smoothies and to continue freeze drying it but we are totally shocked that they all ripened at once and we thought this area was a complete goner you guys looked awful okay well all of a sudden like with some of the other things and because the heat has kind of died back a little bit look look at these plants they're going crazy and to my surprise it is putting on watermelons and we have some really decent sized watermelons in here here are two right here if i keep digging i'll find more and more here's one here's one here's a little one starting and actually i don't know if you already saw this on the ground here but i just found this ripe watermelon it's small it's a weird shape but we even have a new ripe watermelon now the cantaloupe too look at crazy vines blossoms all over the place just more and more blossoms and when i look closely and do a little digging i'm finding cantaloupe there's another one in there i'm not sure if you can see it [Applause] so is there enough time for them to grow big and ripen i don't know we have about 45 days until the first frost the potential you know sometimes it's early sometimes in late but it is really exciting that these guys are trying to do another round and they have survived and are trying to overcome the terrible heat and the drought one thing that did not survive the terrible heat was the winter squash you can see the plants are completely dead this was spaghetti squash and down there are the canada crookneck winter squash now the spaghetti squash i could tell when they were starting to die back that the squash that they had put on were not going to ripen they weren't they didn't have enough time to produce everything that they needed to inside they got soft a lot of them started to get bug damage and the insides of them didn't develop all the way now the canada crookneck squash on the other hand they put on some small smaller squash than normal and it looks like they were able to get through their con their complete like life cycle i guess for a lack of better words and we have some good squash i want to take you through uh just show you some examples of what's happened with the squash and i am going to pick the squash that are still good and bring them home to the homestead the squash that didn't completely develop properly they're kind of squishy this one didn't completely develop and because it has such a thin shell on the outside or skin on the inside it has started rotting most of these spaghetti squash are not good they're not savable this one actually has some weight to it it's nice and hard so i might be able to harvest that one this one here is nice and heavy no signs of deterioration or mold or anything so i think that this one is a keeper down here these are the canada crook neck squash most of these look like keepers again nice and heavy no sign of any kind of rot or anything there are bugs crawling around but most of these squash are still viable they're small but viable so i'm going to harvest the ones that are good the good ones will go in one basket the bad ones will go in another basket bad ones are pig food [Music] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] well that's the end of the squash for this year about a half of a basket is gonna end up going to the pigs and i have about three quarters of a basket of good squash ended up being seven spaghetti squash and a bunch of small of the canada cook neck squash so could be a lot worse and so i'm happy with the harvest that we have over the winter now i am going to do some quick harvesting with you of the peppers but before we head over to that direction i do want to talk with you about the last thing that's in the garden and that is our corn you guys look at how tall this corn is like i said before i'm 5'5 that is well over seven feet back here it got so tall it's pretty amazing now this isn't sweet corn i want to remind you that this is called dent corn it's a dry corn that we can use for corn flour cornmeal or animal feed you could make grits we don't really eat a lot of grits here but you could this is the kind of corn that you would use for that we're trying it out for the very first time this year this variety is called danny corn it was developed by our friends danny and wanda from deep south homestead they live in mississippi they've been trialing their corn in different parts of the country they've been sending people their corn seed to see how well it does and it's been doing great all over the country so this is our first growth of this i think it's doing well you know it's grown tall it's producing ears it tasseled uh the ears have silk and it looks like they're being pollinated well so we're really excited this is dry corn like i said so you don't pick it early like sweet corn you let it dry on the stalks like this so we'll see when it's completely done and drying how well it does but under the circumstances you guys it's doing great okay let's go over to the peppers i do want to pick a bunch to take back to the homestead so i can get working on that the rest of this week so let's head over there and see what we can get the peppers that i want to harvest for sure today are the ajvarsky peppers that are completely red i love these peppers like i said for roasting this is actually a pretty small one other years i've gotten really big ajvarsky peppers but i'm gonna harvest the red ones leave the green ones and see how we do look at how beautiful these are well that ended up being a nice harvest of the ajvarsky red roasting peppers you guys that's all i have for today i'm exhausted but i have other things to move on to on the homestead things to do we covered a lot of ground and we got a lot of work done together today in the garden i hope you enjoyed spending some time with me and learning how the garden has done even though we had terrible heat and a drought and it looks like some of it's coming back thank you so much for being a part of our life we appreciate you guys so much hey if you're enjoying our channel and you haven't subscribed yet we sure would love for you to hit the subscribe button below also remember that really the best way you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 115,196

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

Id: H0lRAuc171k

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022