My Front Yard Vegetable Garden Layout | Summer Tour

[Music] can you put a vegetable garden in your front yard absolutely yes hi guys i'm april from resprout i did it i became the crazy neighbor and i caused pedestrians to do a dead stop at the end of my driveway over there and i managed to grow 632 pounds of food last year all in my front yard so today i'm going to give you a quick summer tour share some tips do some harvesting along the way and show you exactly how i plan on getting to my new goal of a thousand pounds [Music] first off how awesome is it that this is my view when i come out my front door and it's right off my kitchen for my pre-dinner harvest this is my perennial bed right now this is my only perennial bed i keep all of my pollinators in here too i got some gorgeous lavender this smells so amazing i just rub my hands over it every time i walk out the door i always check before i do that though so i don't grab a bee seriously the bees are all over this stuff they love it with the cabbage moth my arch nemesis next to the lavender i have some echinacea also called coneflower my black-eyed susans are in the back which haven't bloomed yet i got those as a transplant from my awesome mother-in-law i'm a big tea drinker so in the front here i have a bunch of tea plants camellia sinensis i have a couple at various ages tea is actually an evergreen plant so my plan here is eventually to plant a whole bunch of these under my front window as a foundation planting so my house will look somewhat normal this is the soaker hose system i have running through most of my garden i'll link that below but let me know if you guys want to know more and i can do a setup video on that these are a variety of raspberries called shortcake raspberries that are small bushes and i have these planted as a border i just transplanted these though so they look a little scraggly they probably won't produce this year here's my current bush i inherited with the house and some salvia next door to that bees love this stuff too once it blooms [Music] so i have seven beds in my front yard they're all three feet by 13 feet i used to have four foot wide beds and i found they were way too deep to comfortably reach into and three feet is definitely the sweet spot for me and because i'm a total nerd i keep extensive records and i actually have a naming system for all the beds the front garden is numbered one through seven south to north and the trellis area is labeled by letter west to east so this is bed seven my beet bed this year i have a large japanese maple that shades this bed in the afternoon so i always have to put crops in this bed that are a little shade tolerant so this year it's beets i haven't planted lettuce in quite a few years and beets are the reason why not only do the young leaves taste just like a really great butter head lettuce but the older leaves you can cook with like spinach they don't bolt in the heat when you most need salad greens to go with your tomatoes and at the end of the season you can pull them up and you get a crop of beets as a bonus this year i have two varieties a red and a yellow variety this red one i think it's called luts i'll put a full list of all the varieties and everything i mentioned today in the description below also you'll see these all over my garden finally after years of searching i finally have the perfect plant marker system these are stainless steel labels with clear labels that i make on a label maker this variety is known for its great leaves in addition to its giant storage roots i've planted this a few years in a row and it's definitely a keeper variety now this other variety is a new variety for me called touchstone gold it has yellow roots which is handy if you don't feel like staining your entire dish bright pink just because you're trying to hide some veggies in there you can definitely see just looking at the bed that the lutz has much bigger leaves i might look for another golden leaf intense variety next year if the touchstone keeps these small leaves bed six is my strawberry bed i have an ever bearing variety in here called tristar i posted a video recently about planting these i'll link that above these are so young i don't think i'm going to get much this year but they're sending out runners and getting established so i'm excited what next year is going to look like bed five is my potato bed i have two varieties in here a russet and a red these finished flowering a couple weeks ago so i can actually start harvesting now for new potatoes so with the potatoes this year i'm doing an experiment i've been reading up on a continuous harvest planting method that basically turns potatoes from an annual into a perennial crop so i'll let you guys know how that goes every year i have a miscellaneous bed and this year it's bed four you can almost call it my italian bed i got some zucchini i had some issues with blossom enrot because of the drought we were having so hopefully that will clear up with our recent big thunderstorms look at this monster this is what happens when you don't check your garden for one day after a thunderstorm this is insane here's my basil this is enough to keep me in basil all summer and then i do a clear cutting harvest in the fall for my annual freezing of pesto i'm going to harvest some of this too making sure i get the flowers so they'll keep growing next to that i got my napa cabbage i have some sort of pest on here that my regular spraying of bt is not helping if anyone has any ideas let me know in the comments i've been cutting the outer leaves of these almost daily for salads these are giant though look at these it's probably time to take one of these here's my eggplant which is just starting to flower my fennel which is almost ready to harvest i'm gonna wait until it gets a little bigger though i've been harvesting the fronds for salads for almost a month now this is the bell peppers which are just starting to flower too i need to get out here and steak these and the eggplant soon this is the garlic i planted in the fall i made a video recently about harvesting the scapes which i'll link above this is another experiment i'm running in my scape research i ran across an anecdote that you should leave one scape to flower and when it does that will be your sign to harvest the garlic so here's my one scape it's been straightening up over the last week so hopefully it will be time soon this empty bed is bed three i'm in the middle of turning that one over i had some edamame in there that didn't germinate very well i was planning on planting chard but i had such a huge spinach harvest in march and i have the beets growing and some kale that's doing really well so i'm thinking a bit of char might be overdoing the greens a little bit let me know if you guys have some good ideas hit me up in the comments bed two i am so excited about i love love love broccoli but i've always had huge issues with cabbage worms this year i sprayed with bt only once and they are doing amazing only a little bit of damage these are probably a couple days past harvest so i'm going to grab some of these now and i'm going to harvest the whole bed for the freezer probably tomorrow and then turn that bed over into another broccoli crop for the fall i have the broccoli seedlings already which i'll show you guys in a minute bed one this year is my carrot bed again this is another bed i'm super excited about i've always had germination pests and wheat issues in the past with carrots and i've never gotten a good crop but i got serious this year so i'm gonna grab some of these carrots too so my plan with this bed is to harvest as i need over the next month or so then harvest the whole bed once they're big enough store them then plant another round of carrots that i can start harvesting in the fall and then keep them in the ground all winter if you guys watched my spinach harvesting video you saw the whole winter garden setup i had last year so i hope to be adding carrots to my winter garden collection so that is my front garden area [Music] i wouldn't call this my driveway garden but this has become my container and seedling staging area these are window boxes that i keep my herbs in i had these indoors over the winter so i was able to harvest all winter long the plan is to mount them up under the front window and get some use out of the vertical space during the growing season these are self-watering containers and even in the heat of the summer i only need to water these every three days so in here i got some chives italian oregano bay rosemary thyme greek oregano french tarragon marjoram garlic chives sage some parsley and cilantro that's gone to seed and some dill that's been destroyed by swallowtail caterpillar right now this is where i'm keeping my seedlings this area has worked out perfectly because there's a roof overhang here so they don't get drowned by the rain but i have great southern exposure here and i'm not killing any grass this is my replacement cucumbers and some napa cabbage this was a great tip i got from jean martin fortier's book the market gardener cucumbers are super prone to disease and inevitably dime in season so these are my replacement plants that i have ready to go that i seeded in early june the napa cabbage seedlings are going to replace those huge cabbages in bed four these onions are going to replace the garlic when i harvest that and this is my fall broccoli crop which is going to fill up bed two when i harvest that later and some radicchio that will go in bed four with the napa seedlings you'll notice i don't use the standard plastic flats these are stainless steel trays what the restaurant industry calls hotel pans or steam table pans they come in different standardized sizes this is the full size you can buy these by the case i like to use washable crayon to write varieties and dates on the side super easy to clean up indestructible you can sterilize them and you don't fill up the landfill with those flimsy junk flat chase so that's my driveway garden if you will [Music] this is my trellis area on the side of my driveway here i purposely put all the vertical crops over here because i didn't want them blocking the front of the house this is my blueberry hedge i have a bunch of varieties in here right now the birds are getting all these i had some bird netting here but it actually killed a bird so i pulled it off the day i found the body do not use this stuff my plan is to instead of the burn eddy to wrap these guys in some insect netting or row cover and see if that works a little better at um keeping the birds away so the beds over here i number these by letters to keep them all straight beds a and b are my new blackberry trellises i just finished up a video on this build if you guys want to see how i made these bed c is my cucumber row all the rows here are 13 feet long and two feet wide except the blackberry beds which are three feet wide i got an insane amount of cucumbers last year 150 pounds and i attribute that entirely to the varieties that i had i've tried at least 10 varieties over the years and these two varieties saber and market more are disease resistant and hearty when all the other varieties next to it were already dead but yeah after getting that many cucumbers we downsized from two trellises to one trellis i have a couple open spots where a cucumber plant died so i'm gonna pop in some of those starts that i have in the driveway and the rest of the starts i'll probably pot up since they're getting big this row is a row of damsel slicing tomatoes i started super late i did my math wrong when i was starting the seedlings and found out i was short by a whole row when i planted them out because these plants are so young though you can see the spacing a little better this is how i space all the plants in the trellis area one row on either side of the trellis a plant every 12 inches with the placement staggered so the plant is not directly across from the other that gives each plant roughly 12 square inches of spacing and this trellis netting has six inch squares which means each plant has their own vertical line to go up and i make sure to prune them to one liter and then i get the soaker hose going down the middle between the two plants you can see the size difference between this row and the other tomato row next door this is what 53 days difference looks like i started these cherry tomatoes on march 29th and the damsels late on may 22nd i have two cherry tomato varieties in here this one is montecino which is a new one for me this year this one is taller by almost a foot and this is the first tomato that is going to be ready check this out i try to come out here every day or every other day and pull off the suckers and keep weaving the tops of the tomatoes back and forth between the trellis you definitely gotta keep on top of it so i have four total rows of tomatoes the first slicer row the cherry tomato row a paste tomato row and another slicer row 13 feet rows with two across at 12 inch spacing so 26 plants per row and a total of 104 plants this keeps us in tomatoes every day during the season and last year i was able to can 12 jars of sauce hopefully this year i can do a bit more people ask me all the time what do i do with all of this food and i say i eat it it's called italian food most of the rows i have two varieties in i try to keep one good variety from the year before and then test a new variety like you can see in this row the two varieties are clearly different this is a bed i just cleared my spring peas out of there's some sort of volunteer squash back there i'll probably leave him there i just prepped this bed a few days ago and i'm gonna direct seed some green beans in there for fall and this is my fourth tomato row the paste tomato roll unless there's a tomato emergency i don't eat these during the season i freeze them and then can them later for sauce when i have a spare minute and this is my miscellaneous bed in my trellis area check this out i got a little baby butternut squash already squash does not like to be trellis so you have to be very firm with it prune it to one liter or it will sprawl all over the ground which is how it likes to grow and just like the tomatoes you gotta come through every couple days wrap it around the trellis in the right spot to keep it on target or it will just pick its own direction here's some pumpkin this is a variety that's good for both the flesh and for hollis seeds some sweet corn on the end here this tends to fall over so that's why i got it here in the trellis area so i can tie it up when i need to this is my watermelon row with another volunteer squash in there same rules apply with the trellising gotta be firm check this out i already got some many watermelons here see these things are crazy these trellises are about seven feet high and the watermelon is already at the top going sideways now and because i didn't correct it early on it's too late to argue with it i'm not gonna rip them down this one's getting pretty heavy so i need to get some support hammocks out here soon i have a pile of cut up t-shirts i use to create hammocks that i tie to the trellis so the watermelon doesn't pull itself off the vine from just the sheer weight of itself down here i got some super young watermelons i had some seed supply issues this year because of the pandemic so i had to direct sew these super late i have no idea if it's even going to work out we will see this last row my cantaloupe row same issue had to direct sow some seeds late and these are the more mature cantaloupe that were started on time these guys like to sprawl too so you have to be on top of the trellising if you're gonna do them vertically and here's them sprawling these last two rows always look a little more pathetic because they get quite a bit of shade from this elm tree in the first half of the day i might be taking this down soon unfortunately once i do that i'm hoping to do something with this space here either a greenhouse or some espaliered fruit trees i think i can squeeze maybe three to four rows of espaliered fruit here let me know what you guys think i'm torn greenhouse fruit i don't know i want em both back here is my fence bed this is a new bed i actually created it in an hour from this sad expanse of compacted crab grass it does get a little shade from the fence and the trellises so i thought this would be a good spot for some summer greens and that the summer greens would probably appreciate the shade so i got all of my kale here between this and the cabbage and the beet greens i can make two big salads a day oh and then also i have random greens like the broccoli leaves from the broccoli plants and i have some volunteer arugula in my foundation bed too so yeah we got plenty of salad and then over here this is the first time i'm doing this this is peanuts probably not the best spot for them because they like a lot of sun but that's the only space i had left so we're gonna see how that goes i get some old shrubs i need to dig up and then i can continue this bed the full length of the fence i should be able to triple the length of this bed when i finally get around to doing that and that is the trellis half of my garden if you can believe it when we bought this house there were five huge mature trees here and it was full shade every part of the day it was dark and dreary and even the grass didn't grow when i tried to mow it it would actually become a dust storm it was awful everyone told us that we should put a driveway turn around here like the world needs more space devoted to paved parking and now look at this life it is so amazing i am so happy and it this is the area that makes people stand at the end of my driveway and point and check this out this is everything we harvested today if you enjoyed this tour let me know by hitting that like button questions tips just want to make fun of my obsession with black hit me up in the comments be sure to subscribe for more garden tips and tutorials if you know anybody who would be interested in this video please share with them and i would love to stay connected with you guys so sign up for my email newsletter keep gardening like a boss and i'll see you guys soon [Music] you

Channel: ReSprout

Views: 563,237

Keywords: gardening, garden, front yard, vegetable garden, vegetable garden tour 2020, raised bed garden, raised bed gardening, raised garden bed ideas, front yard vegetable garden ideas, front yard vegetable garden design ideas, front yard vegetable garden design, trellis ideas, trellis gardening, trellis cucumbers, trellising tomatoes, trellis gardening ideas, trellis tomatoes, trellising cucumbers, trellis watermelon, trellis squash, trellis for peas, front yard garden

Id: 229ldChKFuI

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020