Nationwide Average Says: You Can Grow Food Like This Too 🙌

oh my goodness what a harvest welcome to that 1870s homestead friends my name is rachel and there was no way i was going to be able to take you guys out in the garden today to do this harvest because it's just so hot and muggy and i am like soaking wet sweating and a disgusting mess so i decided before i even went out there i'm just going to go do the harvest bring it inside and show you guys what a midsummer harvest looks like with the intention to share with you how much food you can grow in a very very small space my while i have almost seven acres i garden for my family and our family's needs in a very small footprint so i want to encourage you if you're just beginning gardening and it's okay if your garden wasn't that successful if you're just starting out but look forward to what you can achieve and if you're just interested in gardening for food security with everything that's going on in the world what's possible so this is just harvest number one we'll have many many harvests similar different varieties different food crops but let's get into it and we're going to go basket by basket around the counter top and see what we've got nationwide the average size of a backyard in suburbia across the nation is 60 by 100 or 70 by a hundred something like that seven six thousand to seven thousand square feet whatever dimensions you use to make that up my garden is probably 42 by 42 square feet so um you still have backyard to play set up your barbecue set up your patio table set up the kiddie pool whatever you need to do to use up some free space potentially but if you have the average typical size suburban backyard you're either going to be able to fit a garden similar to my footprint or even expand a garden maybe even put in fruit trees so i'm just gonna i want to share this to inspire people that you do not need this huge land to grow your family's needs with respect to like canned goods and sauces and condiments and all the fun things you can do it right where you are today so i'm gonna go in here and let's just start with basket number one what did we bring in and i'll talk about some of the things that i've already put up from the garden so in basket number one and i get asked all the time where do i get these baskets because they're so nice to just rinse out and wash your produce um i got them just a tractor trailer supply you can find them at rural king family farm and home basically any supply store like that so we have lots and lots of broccoli shoots little side shoots so i've already done the big broccoli harvest but what i did was i just cut off the crown the broccoli not the crown but you know the big bulk stem crown and then for a month or more i've been harvesting side shoots and so let's pull all this out and let's see if you just leave your broccoli plants how much more broccoli can you get and i've done this probably four times so far and a couple times i've missed but can you guys see that nice little pile that's a nice that's probably a sir um side serving for todd and i and maybe a guest so i'm going to you should blanch it i never blanch anything because i'm a lazy homesteader i'm a lazy gardener um everything i do here is just the fastest simplest method so all i'm gonna do is throw this in a ziploc baggie squeeze all the air out and throw it in the freezer and we'll have future broccoli beef over rice with just this nice little extra harvest i got out of the garden so if you want to eat it fresh mix up some your own homemade ranch dressing dip dip it in whatever you want to do you can grow your lots and lots of broccoli now like i said it was super super hot out today so my basil's looking pretty sad because it was like the second thing i harvested while i was out there but this is probably the fourth or fifth big basil harvest i've harvested off my basil plants and they're all just growing in between my tomato plants so i usually just chop this up and i'll put some in the freezer bags or we still have tons of pesto from last year so i won't be making any pesto if you guys have any ideas like cool ways to preserve basil let me know basil makes great addition to lemonade iced teas a lot of it i have hanging in my dining room from the light fixture to dry naturally and i'll crush that up and we haven't bought basil from a grocer in a long time now a few more broccolis look at this glorious little basket look at that first big harvest of tomatoes nice beautiful beautiful tomatoes all different varieties so that's going to be my tip to a first time gardener too is grow yourself a bunch of varieties of tomatoes because variety is the spice of life and that certainly is true when it comes to making salsas spaghetti sauces barbecue sauces anything that is a tomato product you're going to get so much more depth of flavor if you grow a lot of different varieties than if you just planted one standard type of tomato so throw in some of those yellows and oranges and reds and pinks and greens and you're going to get that wow factor all right so that's all that's in this basket lots of different tomatoes cherry tomatoes i will show you that this one was from two days ago so that was kind of the first nice harvest of tomatoes so i think with that amount of tomatoes i could easily do a nice serving canning session of salsa but i'm gonna try i've not mastered ketchup yet so that's on my list this year to master ketchup um so we're gonna try our hand at making ketchup with this first round basket number two is the heaviest all right so i grew celery for the first time last year and i learned you don't need a lot of celery to make celery but you know what when all my starts do well i end up planting them all so this is all celery so i learned last year being my first time growing it you can do kind of like almost like cut and come again maybe a couple crops of celery that's beautiful celery and um cut it back probably mid-summer and then you'll have a fall crop so that's what i did this year i also will chop the leaves off freeze dry those we'll have some our own homemade celery salt celery seasoning add it to maybe not celery salt celery powder really good to add to stuffings all that kind of stuff chicken salad anything that you would put celery in that you want celery flavor if you don't have enough celery then you can just use your dehydrated leaves for celery flavoring now what i do with this you can can celery it is going to basically turn mushy though so we freeze dried a lot last year for this batch this first round i'm just gonna dice it and i'm gonna put it in freezer bags and freeze it okay this is a fun one what is this i don't know complete volunteer it is obviously a cross of a yellow summer squash and probably a pumpkin probably maybe a zucchini i don't know but we're going to open it up see if it's something usable if it's usable i will probably shred it and add it to my shredded zucchini if it looks more like pumpkin inside we might try making some canned pumpkin or a small batch of pumpkin butter but we're gonna cut into this and see what it looks like before i decide what to use it i've already already harvested one exactly like this and i fed it to my pigs so just because you get some wonky volunteers that you might not like to eat i bet your animals sure would so if i end up deciding that whatever's in here i don't want it my pigs will want it all right now let's see how the best way is to show you this okay so we have a nice harvest of dill so i've got a lot of pickles to do so it's all in here kind of all over the place but i went through the garden because it's just growing randomly for me and harvested a lot of dill let's see if i can show you this the last harvest of peas probably i kid you not it has been 90 degrees here these are mr big p from hostools guys there was still flowers out there today it is july 24th and we have had so such a heat wave this summer and it's just surprising to me that they're still holding on and producing but i would guess that this is probably my last good harvest and it's probably gonna be like once i shell them all maybe a quart and a half zucchini one zucchini two zucchini three [Music] zucchini four so four zucchinis and then i have one two three four four on the counter from two days ago that i harvested and more dill what else okay we still have some cucumbers cucumber one two three four five [Music] six seven [Music] eight more dill for the cucumbers and pickles get all that out of there before i lose track of it and then i have one two three four five on the counter and i probably have seven in my crisper drawer in the refrigerator so we're ready to make our first round of pickles i am all out of my favorite oh spicy honey pickles guys they are so so good they're a little like a little tiny hint of heat but that honey sweetness with the jalapenos and banana peppers in there you guys have to try them i completely made up the recipe and was like i didn't have sugar at the time while i'm gonna use honey and see how that turns out i just had a huge cucumber year a couple years ago and so these are all gonna be made into my spicy honey pickles because we need to restock now that that's all empty that is what i have of peas to show so what can you do with zucchini oh my goodness shred it you know make your zucchini bread mock crab cakes guys they really taste like muck crab cakes i mean like crab cakes so good i've got a recipe on the channel for that um mock pineapple cube it up like kind of like little pineapple wedges can it and pineapple juice with a little bit of additional sugar and it will taste just like good replacement pineapple you'll be able to fool anyone if you throw it in recipes sweet and sour chicken pineapple upside down cake you can pretty much fool a lot of people so i'm going to be shredding this i add my zucchini to anything that i'm bulking that i need a lot on the pantry shelf so if it's chili base if it's spaghetti sauce if it's salsas what else do i add it to basically you get the idea anything that cause zucchini will take the on the flavor of anything and it adds a lot of bulk and you can almost do 50 to 50. zucchini with apples to make a big batch of applesauce so i'm going to just be shredding this and when the time comes i'll use it for what i need in the meantime it'll go in the freezer basket number three you ready are you getting excited about growing your own food yet in your backyard can you see it can you picture it this is a lot of food guys and honestly this is just the beginning there will be weeks and weeks and weeks like this where you're just bringing baskets and bass baskets of harvest in so in basket number three now i had a pitiful year with my green beans so i just recently planted additional green beans for fall crop because basically what i'm pulling in right now from the few bush beans that came in i'm just trying to pull them all out it's enough for a good dinner size maybe a little bit more so i'm pulling all the beans out my dog just got one that dropped and then we're gonna talk peppers guys i have [Music] i'm trying to guess 8 16 no [Music] 6 12. maybe 20-ish or so pepper plants in my garden and that's in two raised beds so what i brought in today this is almost a basketball we've got some nice bell peppers green and the purple beauties those are absolutely gorgeous and if you're just new to growing your own food you want lots of color so that's where a lot of your vitamins come from your balance of minerals you don't want to just have greens and reds or yellows and greens or oranges and greens definitely not all greens you want a lot of color so anytime you can mix in a new colors whether it's reds oranges purples they're all going to give you something in in the increase that you wouldn't get in a standard whoops my cucumber film no brew stop okay my my harvest is overflowing so for the majority we've got bell peppers and um in both varieties mostly banana peppers i'm going to be pickling these i'm very interested these are sweet banana pepper aren't those huge guys like look at this i get to the telephone i would i'm very interested in doing stuffed sweet banana peppers i've seen recently stuffed peppers pickled how great is that so take some cabbage some carrots um i can't remember what else she did but then you stuff your peppers and then you pick one so we might try some of that this year and then there is just the beginnings of jalapenos coming in so i probably got oh i don't know a nice bottom layer of jalapenos so we're probably just going to add those let's see i like to for when they're just trickling in like this to just do um jalapeno poppers i will make up a batch of spicy sausage mix in some cream cheese some shredded cheese [Music] half of my jalapenos stuff those and then just blanc flash freeze them on sheet trays vacuum seal them and then you've got them for quick appetizers quick football snacks during football season things like that so that's probably what we're going to be doing as they're just trickling in because my favorite thing to do with jalapenos is cowboy candy and i have still probably and i've given cases and cases of cowboy candy away because we made so much last year [Music] but i would say i probably have three cases left of cowboy candy so i will do another round just to make sure we're rock solid but whatever you like to use peppers for i've made my own hot sauce before that's so simple and we might do that even this year let's try new flavors of making our own fermented hot sauce but that is first pepper harvest of the year now let's move on to this proud basket all right final big push so almost i harvested almost all my red cabbages today i think there's three or four still out there and then maybe two or three still up in the green stock but these are nice nice very very firm heads of cabbage oh this one's really heavy okay beautiful i mean bowling ball eight pounds i'd say six or seven at least four some of them feel heavier than others so this is all going to be turned into pickled cabbage pickled coleslaw you get the drill if you're not new if you're not new here you know it's one of my favorite things to preserve pickled cabbage pickled coleslaw it's super simple super easy and i talked about pickling a lot of things today like maybe i didn't mention it but we've got the pickles we've got the pickled banana peppers i'm going to be doing the pickled cabbage i have a recipe on my channel called one brine to room rule them all and that's how i accomplish things like today when there's just a lot of things to get done don't over complicate it make one brine whatever your standard is pickle all the things with the same brine and you don't have to worry about all these different recipes different flavors because then when you pull it out to use it you can season it your own way a couple um green cabbages a little smaller i didn't do as good with my green cabbages and actually what i learned oddly all the pests even though i didn't have the cabbage moths i had the rolly pulleys and the slugs underneath my garden tent this year they do not bother red cabbage i don't know why but they eat up the green cabbage but these green cabbages came out of my green stock garden planter so i will forever probably grow my green stock my cabbages in container gardens away from the ground and the pest so and then there's one more over here so that is a lot of cabbage let's see a lot of cabbage [Music] okay now [Music] stay there look at this that's all beets guys i had the hardest time as a first-time gardener learning to grow simple crops simple crops for other people beets was one of those things i just couldn't figure them out but [Music] i don't know put it in front of my face how big is it it's like a half a face half a face and they're beautiful so last year was my first year do i know what the secret was not really i soaked my beet seeds that was one thing i did differently in this year multi-sewing method where you sew like three beet seeds together look at this big boy wow and i have some beautiful beautiful golden beets you probably can't see it on the camera too much but it's like orangey yellow so these all get turned into pickled beets see you're hearing the one brine to rule them all is really gonna help me today so i'll probably start with getting these roasted we eat pickled beets during the winter like three times a week honestly it's our favorite go-to condiment our um side dish and so all of these and this is probably i would say half the harvest the rest of the harvest we're still smaller size i'll let them grow out they'll fall and then we'll do a final harvest of beets so i've talked oh my gosh almost about everything i did bring in one onion the other day just to be able to um i think i was showing my my stepfather how big they were no i was showing you guys when i did the garden tour how big they are like palm size wise i think that they're pretty much done now the outside leaves haven't completely started dying back like just these ones but this has been harvested a couple days so i'm just waiting to see that sign of the outside leaves dying back but they're all falling over so pretty soon we're going to have to just go out and harvest them so that they don't rot in place last basket what was it one two three four one two three four basket number five my favorite new thing this year that i'm growing in the garden and for first time beginners just forget about trying to grow standard spinach do yourself a favor and just learn from all of our challenges where spinach just bolts on you and it's difficult to get a lot of produce in for enough to preserve this year i learned my lesson this half basket is all spinach i've never harvested this much spinach period in a single year and this is my third harvest of malabar spinach so i have these two bags of malabar spinach i've already eaten a bag um i was waiting to process those two i need to wash this up i'm gonna try canning my spinach this year for the first time normally i freeze it because i get such little amounts that it's not worth doing a canning session over but this year with the malabar spinach we're going to have canned spinach on the shelf for all the winter spinach pies to make my stomach so so happy because spinach pies is one of my all-time favorites and so i'm going to get this washed up but this is a huge bumper crop of spinach let me just show you if you're not isn't that beautiful listen [Music] this is july 24th like i said that's crunchy and that is sweet in 90 degree heat outside that's not possible with standard spinach so that is why i'll always be growing this forever more you don't plant it early in the spring like you do normal spinach you wait so because it's a heat loving crop you wait till and plant it like a summer crop so thanks guys for coming through not to brag that's not what this is about not to show you oh look at this because honestly it's been a really hard year for me in the garden i've hardly gotten out there much at all just because of a lot of things going on in my world with work and just family related activities so i've dealt with wheat pressure and all of that but guys we have a huge growing food playlist and it's meant to inspire you all so that you can start where you are apply what you know and practice growing your own food so you can have good nutritious organic healthy food sources that are cost affordable that's the main reason i got into this i wanted to eat organic i wanted to just bring all that produce in my household but it's expensive so how do you combat that expense you know you you put in the muscle power and the and the time to learn to grow your own food and it is so rewarding it is so fun it gets you active it gets you outside it's um you know you're getting filled with the vitamin d being in the sun it's just like i was just sitting outside today if you don't know part of my job is when there's a major storm event and we have power outages downed power lines i'll have to go out and secure some downed power lines and make sure that the public is safe from those events call in the right type of crews to come in and repair it and i was out all last night from 1am till 8am came home took a 3 hour nap and i knew the only thing that was going to make me feel better to center me to just take the weight of that hard work off was to just go and be in my garden and just do this harvest so there's a lot of peace and joy that can be found in in working hard and in feeling that reward coming into your home so i wanted this video just to be an encouraging video and i hope that you took it away that way so thanks guys and i will talk to you on the next video it might be canning up some of these goodies so come back i hope you join us bye guys

Channel: That 1870's Homestead

Views: 58,733

Keywords: michigan, homestead, farming, organic, farmhouse, summer garden tour, garden tour, homestead tour, corn, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, celery, beets, spinache, malabar spinache, volunteer garden, sunflowers, flower garden tour, zone 6a, southeast, no till gardening, no dig garden, grow your own food, food independence, break the supply chain, shorten the supply chain, organic gardening, growceries

Id: W__vUqdTUeU

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022