(upbeat music)
(Kevin laughs) - (laughs) Welcome to the
end of the season, Jacques. - It's a beautiful end of the year. We're still growing here, but
- We're still growing, San Diego casual, not a big deal. (Jacques laughs)
But, today, we figured we'd take a look at some
of our biggest successes in the garden, our biggest failures, and some hilarious moments, because it's been quite a year. - It has been; there's
definitely been a lot of wins, but you know, there's a
couple mistakes along the way, and we don't like to hide it,
'cause that's how you learn. - Yeah, we don't like
to hide it, certainly. I love to, I guess, self-flog
(Jacques laughs) and show you all of my failures. But we're gonna kick it off
with a couple of successes. First, come in, a little bit more light. - Okay, let's see it.
- Okay, Jacques, this is from the Homestead Channel. Oh, you know what this is? This is old Cabbage Daddy. (laughs) (Jacques laughs)
What do you think? How compact do you think it's gonna be? - It's gonna be perfectly compact. - Oh the faith you have in me.
- (laughs) I believe it.
- Wow, wow. Okay, it's a first.
- That's my guess. (laughs) (knife hacks)
- You can help. - That sound? (laughs)
- (laughs) Oh. - Yeah, yeah.
- It hits the same every time. That crispness. Look at that.
- (laughs) Honestly. - Come on.
- (taps cabbage) That's a perfect purple cabbage.
- How 'bout it, oh. That's really nice.
- I still have not grown a purple perfect one,
- Yeah. - and I need that.
- So the tip, the win that we had there really
was the timing of the plant and keeping a nice amount of compost on it when it was growing out 'cause it's, cabbage is really just
leaves that kinda do this. - Right.
- Right, and so, that's all nitrogen based; you want
a lot of organic matter. (upbeat music)
Next up, we've got, oh, you know what this is?
(Jacques laughs) This is, so, back in
the day, whenever I'd be on an interview or someone
would ask me, they'd say, what plant should a beginner
grow, and I would always say radish because it's such
an easy plant to grow. But I don't know about
you, I never really truly loved the radish.
- I've never respected it. (laughs) - (laughs) So what we tried to do is we tried to figure out a way to love the radish on this video. And we ended up turning it into a pizza. I have to say, though,
I remember this bite, and it looks really funny,
but it was actually good. - It was fire.
- It was like, if you told me it was a
radish, I'd be like, "Okay." - [Kevin] It looked like a little, like, Vienna sausage link,
- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- like a little cross section of a sausage.
- And then, like, the other trick was putting a
little bit of fresh salt on it and eating it.
- Mm, hitting that salt.
- It was better, but I'm still not loving it. - I would say if you really
want to enjoy a radish fresh, cut it thin and maybe do a little salt, maybe even a little olive oil. - Yeah, I don't mind it as
- You know, something like - a garnish.
- that can be good. And that point, a radish
really just is a vehicle for the salt and the olive oil
(Jacques laughs) but either way, (laughs)
you know, you still like it. Yeah, I would say, like,
I don't know if this was a true success. This isn't our success category. I don't think it's a true success; we sort of hacked
(Jacques laughs) our way into liking the radish by, - We ate it; we ate it.
- Adulterating it with all these different things. Nevertheless, like, if you
actually have a great way to prepare radishes you
think we will enjoy, then drop it in the comments.
(bright upbeat music) Moving on to one of our failures. This is the chicken run.
(Jacques laughs) Oh, my God, this was bad.
- I remember this. - So we, okay, so, the idea here was we have the chicken coop,
but I wanted the hens to be exposed to natural sunlight, have some natural forage. I could toss scraps more easily. Just a better life.
- More interactive. - And so, we literally
expanded out the custom Carolina coops that we
installed here at the homestead with a DIY design, and
emphasis on the DIY. (Jacques laughs)
Emphasis on the DIY. - On the Y.
- Everything you're seeing us do here, we undid later.
- They realized something. We are so bad at this.
- (laughs) We're really so bad at this. What we did wrong is we
didn't set it, number one. We didn't set the concrete.
- Oh, right, the concrete was still wet. (laughs)
- The concrete was still wet. So we were trying to move it,
and it was just moving itself. But then, we actually
ended up having to remove all of this chicken wire and
replace it with a hog panel, which actually is a way better material. - The end result is a success, but this initial one. (laughs) - Yeah, we called in Paul on the team, resident builder, resident expert, and he actually worked
a little bit of magic. He has a little bit more patience than we do. (laughs)
(Jacques laughs) So this ended up working out.
(whimsical upbeat music) Okay, so here's what I wanted to do. I wanted to, again, find
a way to love something. I love beets actually now. I like them roasted. I like golden beets.
- Golden beets are delicious.
- They're very nice. A beet salad actually, traditionally, and maybe in your culture,
Bulgarian culture, they love it?
- Sauteed with vinegar and tarragon, not bad.
- Very nice. But I wanted to find a
different way to love it. I saw this recipe for beet ravioli. Basically, you use the mushed up beets to sort of color and flavor the dough. So, what I did is I actually
had beautiful smaller ravioli 'cause I had a custom ravioli kit, but the problem is I had too much left, right?
(Jacques laughs) But too little to make more. But just enough to make one big one. And so, I made, (laughs) I made an epic Rav. And you'll see what happened here. Look at my face; I'm
so scared and nervous. - Oh, you were thinking the
same thing I just, (laughs) - Oh.
- Oh, and then I immediately broke the (indistinct).
(Jacques laughs) No. Then I just dumped butter. Like, what am I doing here, dude? This is so bad.
- Here's the one thing that we both have in common is I'm gonna throw you under the bus with me.
- Yeah, yeah, hit me. - We're horrible at plating.
- Oh, yeah. - If we could make
something that tastes good, it's not gonna look good.
- Don't catch me on, you know, - Not gonna look good.
- Great British Bake-Off or something.
(Jacques laughs) So I ended up giving this
to Charlie on the team. - (laughs) It's just a puddle of butter. - And Charlie, Charlie's
a happy guy, you know? It could look terrible,
he's still down to eat. (Jacques laughs)
Look at that face. I mean, he loves it. (laughs) He loves it.
- Yeah, no comment, but. - Paul comes in; here's Paul. - Paul doesn't even
eat vegetables, though. - This is the only way to
get Paul to eat vegetables. - Covered in butter.
- Watch that face. - That's no joke.
- Oh, he liked it. - He says, "That's no joke."
- That's high praise from him. - So, Jacques, was this a
failure or was this a success? - I think in the end, (Kevin laughs)
it's a success. (horn honks)
- A little bit of dirty magic.
- A little bit of dirty magic. - We're going to a blooper,
(Jacques laughs) a funny moment. (whimsical upbeat music)
My new favorite method of planting, the trowel slide-in. - I was just about to try it.
- I love the trowel slide-in. You come in, boom, pull it to the side,
- Then, oops. Yeah, when it's wet,
it works a lot better. - [Kevin] Better when it's wet, yeah. Well, excuse me. (laughs)
- (laughs) Anyway, go in there, as they say. - You know, if there's one
thing, the gardening world is rife within innuendo. It's too easy.
- I do it all the time apparently, and I don't even know I do it until I read the comments.
- Jacques, what Jacques will do is he'll drop a line either on our Homesteading Channel
or on his own channel, and sometimes your partner
is, like, in the background watching you film.
- (laughs) Yeah. And she'll just be, like, - "You can't say that." (laughs) - She'll be like, "Cut, cut,
(toy squeaks) "cut, cut, cut." Okay, this one's titled We
Shouldn't Be Allowed to Do This. - Oh, this was a hack. I don't know which one
we're gonna show here. - There it is.
- Dirty little dozen. (door clicks shut)
You think I can do this? - I think,
(Kevin laughs) I think, I'm gonna say yes 'cause I've seen you catch things that I didn't expect.
(metal clangs) (food sizzles)
- Well, here's the problem. So set the scene.
(Jacques laughs) This is a video that we wanted to do. We wanted to make a
fully homegrown burger. And, look, I mean, come on, look at this vibe set right
here; this is amazing. We got potatoes, we got
onions, we got buns. - Got the beef, artichoke hearts, little baby artichokes.
- You know what? This is where you showed me how to cook the artichoke chili.
- Yeah, the artichoke burger. - Yeah, you come in and you - Classic.
- Steam those boys real good. - Oh, yeah.
- So, I'm about to show (whimsical upbeat music)
Jacques my hibachi skills. - (laughs) Maybe he needs to
go back to Benihana. (laughs) Oh. I'm like, "What?"
- Oh, the doubt. Ready?
- Ready. - Right, and then--
- I'm not very confident. - I'm not either; look at
my face, I'm terrified. That's the idea, ready?
(Jacques laughs) - Ready.
- Hey, you did. (Jacques laughs)
- (laughs) Look at that. - Looks great. - What?
- Perfect. - What I'll say, though,
let's go to the bite. Look at those burgers, man.
- Honestly, we should do this again 'cause those were
actually really good. - Wow.
- Big boy bite. - I really took a big bite. (Jacques laughs)
(laughs) We just can't even speak.
- Hey, I will say, though, you've cut a lot since then.
- Of weight? - Yeah.
- I have, wow; look at my face, dude.
- Yeah, you've cut a lot since then; hey, maybe
it was our trick burger. - All the bullying in the comments has really gotten to me,
(Jacques laughs) and I decided to finally lose some weight. Thanks, guys, for abusing me. Appreciate it. Okay, so this is apparently success. - I mean.
- Oh, yeah. - You had amazing artichokes. and they're coming back.
- How big they've gotten this. I would say the first time
I ever saw artichokes grown was at an old friend's garden in, like, East County San Diego
in big old grow bags. - Yeah, 'cause they get big.
- And that's (snaps) what kinda sparked me of, like,
oh these actually should do really well here. Then I put 'em in that
corner that all of you probably know really well by now. Something about that modeled shade just lets them produce
like crazy, but I mean, look at these guys.
- Insane, dude. The best looking artichokes
I've seen personally. - Probably got about 25 this year, something like that.
- I wouldn't be surprised at all.
- Obviously, we just saw them in that burger, so
- (laughs) Yeah. - really good success. Jacques, this one might be our biggest success of the year.
(horn honks) - Honestly.
- Like, no doubt. - the onions, like, this big. I've never seen it before.
- I mean, look at. We'll see at the curing table. (Jacques laughs)
(laughs) Just another day, right, Jacques? (laughs)
- I mean, I'm used to it. - (laughs) We're so,
- We're so cocky. But, dude, I mean, come on.
- Look at that. So here's the thing about it, though, is just like the cabbage, we figured out the variety to grow and the time to grow it. I actually planted those
basically this time last year, somewhere around December. Yellow Granex onions.
- That's a big one. - That one tends to do
really well in the southwest. - Was it Red Rock?
- Red something, but either way, the thing
that to remember about onions is that basically the lower you are, the closer you are to the
equator, the shorter your days. It sounds counterintuitive,
- Yeah. - But it is not because if you think about the summer when onions
are really producing, the further up you are,
I think about Alaska. It's basically sunny 24 hours a day. So, there's way more light. That's a longer day. So, that was our secret,
I think, to the onions is giving them a time to grow,
- And the right varieties. - the right variety. Because these things were just absolutely massive.
- This inspired me to grow more onions this year.
- Did it really? - Yeah, definitely doubling down. - I mean, come on, look at that thing. - (laughs) It's so big.
- The biggest onion ended up being 3.15 pounds or something like that. Just a monster.
- That's absolutely ridiculous.
- All right, back to some fails here, oh.
- Oh. - Well this was the saddest failure.
- It's too sad, too sad. - I don't even wanna say it, so this was the garlic crop, Jacques.
- Yeah, it got covered in garlic rust; too much rain. Maybe a little too close together. And basically, like, the biggest head was I can't even, I don't know. - Yeah, I mean the problem is
(Jacques laughs) I planted 250 heads of
garlic in the back beds. We got way more rain than we ever expected 'cause garlic is pretty
much a easy crop to grow. - It's usually, like,
you just put it there, and you forget about it.
- Yeah, yeah. Mulch it every now and then.
- But too much rain was a problem for sure.
- Yeah. And I do say, like, I
violated my own principles. I spaced them way too close. Kind of still thinking I'm
in this really small space. - Oh, right.
- And I wanna cram stuff in. And if I had just spaced them out, I woulda got probably 100 perfect heads instead of 250, you know.
- Which is, obviously better. (laughs)
- garbage to your head. So, this video we did
with homegrown grains. So we had millet, amaranth,
and a little bit of wheat. The wheat was not homegrown this time.
- No, but it was whole. - We wanna mix in some ancient grains, so we used the Nutrimill
Grain Mill to make (laughs) some homegrown scones
(Jacques laughs) on the Homesteading channel.
- Honestly, underrated. I think that deserves more
(indistinct). (laughs) (cheerful upbeat music) We look like some kindergarten
class made some scones and brought 'em to the bake sale. (men talk simultaneously) - That's the thing is,
- That's our plating skills. - As we were making this, we first of all realized
there's no way you could reasonably call these scones. Like, they don't look like scones at all. But then, I took these little tiny current style tomatoes.
- Oh that's what they were, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Tiny little tomatoes. And we put them in, and they
started literally looking like children's Play-Doh.
(Jacques laughs) And that's why Jacque's losing his mind. - It looks so different.
- I'll tell you this, if my future kid brought
this to me and said, "Daddy, look what I made." I would have to choke back a laugh (Jacques laughs)
and say I was proud of him, but I wouldn't mean it.
- Tell us you're proud of us in the comments.
- Tell us you're proud of your two little boys.
- But what we discovered that this was actually a Cheddar
Bay biscuit or whatever. - Yeah, yeah.
- The Red Lobster biscuit. - It was like a Red
Lobster biscuit in the end. (upbeat music)
This video was actually really fun.
- Yeah, this is the first time that either of us ever
tried proper canning, specifically, pressure canning. So, we have a Presto pressure canner here, and what we decided to do
was make a zesty salsa. - (laughs) Yeah, still
looking for the meaning. I don't know what zesty is, don't know how to make it exactly, but what I will say is
the resulting salsa, once you taste it,
- (laughs) It was zesty, yeah.
- You know what zesty is, so. - It's one of those things where, when you see it, you know.
- anything else is absolutely, yeah, don't mess around.
- Yeah, 'cause there's always that fear that I've
heard, you know, of, like, blowing your house up, so.
(explosion booms) - I don't wanna do that. Or blowing your face off, honestly.
- Yeah, that's not good either.
- And this face, you know, ♪ Baby, baby ♪
- Without it, what do I have? (laughs)
♪ Baby, baby ♪ (one megahertz test tone beeps) - Hey, you know, I will say
- I'm glad we're-- - you have a fan base. You have a few; you've gotten
a few messages, you know? - Hey,
- A couple nice compliments. - We'll leave it at that. (laughs) (Kevin laughs)
(upbeat music) All right, back up to successes. Okay, so this is our peach harvest. This was the same tree that we've had basically since we started,
except for it happens to have, like, rocketed
up way past other stuff in the garden.
- And it was basically a dead tree. Like, it was in a pot, dead. We gave up on it.
- Jacques topped it off, and then, it just started
going like a rocket. We probably got 200, 250 peaches this year.
- (laughs) Yeah, that juice. - Yeah, I mean, come on. The waterfall shows you
everything you need to know. Just dripping off the chin. Ended up making a really nice peach cobbler with this. But what I would say is for
peaches and stone fruits, if you're in a warm climate,
it really just is down to variety selection.
- Yeah, absolutely. - I don't think there's really much else to know about growing them super well. I mean, there's some pruning tips that we can share with
you, more of like a vase sort of structure. But besides that, this thing just ripped. - I honestly didn't know
you could grow peaches this tasty in San Diego, and
it's kind of made me reconsider - Maybe doing it?
- Yeah, I just don't have anywhere to put it. (laughs)
- Yeah. That's the problem, right? Space; the only other thing
I'd say is what helped us this year with these peaches
was thinning the fruit out. So there were probably
about 500 small peaches. We removed about half and got 250 much more sort of sizable
and delicious fruits. So, it's painful to do, but it is necessary.
- You'd rather have fewer better ones than, like, a
bunch of mediocre ones, right? - Yeah, exactly. So this is the addition of the new hens here at the Homestead. We had six originally. Unfortunately, we lost one,
Gucci, our gold laced Wyandotte. I decided to add three
more because chicken math. - Feeling a little lonely.
- Yeah, a little lonely. Wanted to raise more from babies. Actually, now, they're
probably getting close to laying, Jacques.
- Yeah, and they're all hanging out together; they
seem to be good friends. And I'm waiting to see that buff Brahma, how big she gets. (laughs)
- Oh, boy. Yeah. We got a buff Brahma. It is, like, massive, massive hen. I don't know. If you haven't gotten into chickens, we've got a couple great
guides on the channel that you can check out.
- Very rewarding. - One of the more
rewarding things you'll do sorta outside the garden
but related to gardening. Okay, so this is a fail. I think it's probably
just the corn this year wasn't so good.
- It sounded like a lot of people had a corn problem this year. Corn and tomatoes were a struggle, and you still got it, right? There was just a lotta earworms. - The thing we had to do with
these corn, as you'll see, is basically cut off the top third because that corn earworm
really will get in there, and if you don't know what
that is, it's sort of like a green army worm looking caterpillar that will burrow in and kind of eat the top maybe third or so.
- Circle around the rows. - Yeah,, yeah, and it looks
really gross, honestly, but when you cut it, you're okay.
- Yeah, totally fine to cut it out.
- Cut, wash, steam the corn. You're in a good spot. I still would have liked a better corn. And you have a tip that
actually prevents the earworms. - That's right, there's
like a couple things. You can put the mineral oil, You can put the little rubber band once the silk emerges, and
that should stop them entirely. But you still have to do it
to every single one. (laughs) - I know, yeah, you need the adult butterfly moth to
be unable to lay an egg. - Exactly.
- And that's basically how you would prevent it. I guess the mineral oil
will maybe suffocate them or something like that, too.
- I think that's the idea, yeah, if you drop it down the silks, they just kinda get choked out. - Yeah.
(Jacques laughs) Okay, this is hanging the peppers. I just couldn't figure it out, guys. I don't know what to say. I was hanging purple
millet and some peppers. I was giving Jacques a hard time on how to tie these things up. He obviously knew better than me. You know one knot, but you know it well. - Yeah, and I got a little
obsessed with it on this video so. (laughs)
- Yeah, the overhand knot saves the day, but--
- I will say, though, like--
- There's a time and place. There's a time and place.
- tying these babies up, the restress, right, of
peppers, I have always admired when you go into, like, I
don't know, a Mexican kitchen or an Italian kitchen, you
see that hanging on the walls, and I was always like, "I don't know "if I could get there myself." It turns out, we'll
show you on the screen, these turned out amazing. They're hanging in the shed right now. Thai chilies, habaneros, Hungarian bells.
- And they feel good. Like, they're dried up,
- Serranos. - Nicely.
- Dried, no rot. It's a time-honored technique,
so we had a lot of fun doing this; it actually
takes quite a bit of time. - (laughs) Yeah, a lot.
- So maybe, like, light a fire, get a good vibe,
(Jacques laughs) but preserving those peppers, especially when you grow as many as we do, it was a great time.
- Yeah, absolutely. - So this is a, oh my,
- (laughs) Forgot about these. - You forget about this leek? Yeah, so, I would say it was, to me, - It's like a, (laughs)
- it was the year of the allium for me.
- I don't know; it was huge. - I had great onions and great leeks. I didn't have such great garlic. - Two out of three isn't bad.
- I had good cabbage, but I mean, come on, look at that leek. That thing is, like, cartoonish. - I didn't even know
they could get that big. So I don't know what's going on. You're juicing those onions;
you're juicing those leaks. - I'm doing some something. (Jacques laughs)
I will tell you. It was a special fertilizer.
- It's a dirty secret now. - No, it's just variety
and time and conditions, and it grew really, really well. I mean, what would you
say was your biggest win of the whole year?
- Biggest win, honestly, for me tomatoes were a win this year. - You had a good tomato crop.
- I had an insane amount of tomatoes, especially on the Beefsteaks. - I was extremely pleased with that. I had the same issue with garlic. My onions definitely were not as big, but tomatoes, fantastic
here, and I'll take it. - So, this is, like, not
the first time we harvested this much from the garden. For me, it was a year of
some hits and some misses. A lot going on. But I had some great wins. I'm looking forward this year to, like, really expanding out the garden, getting a little bit more precise. I was telling Jacques,
I really want to grow pristine vegetables this
year, really healthy, performant garden, and just have a little
bit of a more even balance of produce so, like, a normal
amount of all these things, but a good amount of each, right?
- Yeah, quality over quantity. - Quality over quantity. I don't know, what about you? - For me, I think it's
just going to come down to less varieties. I keep saying that, and
I keep not doing it. This year I really wanna do it because I have way more of random things, like, disjointed amounts of everything that I can't make
anything cohesive with it. So I'd much rather have
a lot of a single thing. So I could just make something, - Like one or two tomato
varieties versus 20. - Aw, let's not get that extreme. (laughs) - (laughs) Anyways, (upbeat music)
we wanted to show you some of our successes and failures, encourage you on your gardening journey. We are also learning along
with you, kind of just showcasing what we do
here at Epic Gardening. Share your successes and fails. Thanks for a great year
- Love to hear it. - here in the garden;
good luck in the garden, and keep on growing.
