This TOMATO HACK will save you 6 weeks!

good morning everybody Welcome Back To Living Traditions Homestead it is a beautiful maybe even a little bit cool morning here in Missouri which is exciting because we've had some hot temperatures so we are enjoying this this is actually the first morning in a long time where we have come out of the house and not been like oh the air is so thick and humid today was also the first morning where we didn't have to wear our rubber boots because the grass is actually dry this morning which is amazing so we are going to try to get as much work done this morning while it's still nice and cool out and before that sun breaks through the clouds why don't you come with us we're going to start off in waddlesville we got all of our morning chores done but we thought we'd stop before we do waddlesville because there's a couple things in here I want to show you quick before we let the animals out all right I told you guys that as I make more improvements here in waddlesville that I would keep you guys updated on what's going on so there are two things that I added since the last video I want to show you because we have so many birds in here now uh they're having a hard time all eating just out of rubber bowls so I went ahead and I made two of these eight foot feeding troughs so now everybody can have plenty of space to spread out and have their morning breakfast so that is the first thing that we've done that is working out really well we've been using for about a week now and then the other thing that I did is another thing that we had at our Homestead in Arizona that I wanted to recreate here and this is a watering station for the Ducks these automatic waterers I've done videos about how to make these in the past out of these cattle mineral tubs they have holes around the inside or around the outside and then on the inside there's a float valve this keeps the water level right at the bottom of these holes so that the animals can stick their head in there and drink out of the water this is just a water heater pan that I made into a lid for this I just keep a rock on top of it we had these for our ducks when they were in the chicken moat area and the problem with just having them on the ground is that the Ducks stick their head inside of the water or splash water around onto the ground and then they dig a big hole and eventually the water is kind of sitting on an island surrounded by water so what we did in Arizona and what I've done here again now is I built this platform so that the Ducks need to go up on this platform this has half inch plastic coated wire on it so the Ducks walk up on this platform to get a drink when they splash the water around it falls underneath the platform and they can't dig and make a big mess this is actually working out really really well there is a little bit of a hole underneath here which I am going to fill in um that was there it was an old Pig wallow as soon as I can find somewhere on our property where I can dig some fill dirt I'm going to fill that in because it really doesn't need to be there the water needs a place to drain um but this is working out really well it's preventing the Ducks from making a big mess and everybody has a fresh supply of water all day long which is essential for the Ducks well the Ducks and the geese are letting me know that they're ready to come out for breakfast let's go get their food and let them out [Music] [Laughter] [Music] good morning [Music] um [Applause] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] all right let's let the silkies out right away [Music] good morning silkies [Music] thank you [Music] now we've had a lot of questions when we let the birds out in the morning about the especially the Ducks how kind of ravenous they are about their eating we've actually had people say maybe we're starving them and we need to be giving them more food I'll tell you guys we actually feed them on the high end of what's recommended for the Pekin ducks we're giving them just about a half pound a little over a half pound of food per day per duck they do this for about two or three minutes and then they go and start drinking and moving on about their day and they don't even finish all of the feed that's in the feeding troughs until evening so they're not starving I can tell you we've been raising ducks like this for about 10 years now every time we've raised Ducks they all eat exactly the same way they run out in the morning and they just gobble it up it doesn't matter how much you give them so trust me we're not starving the Ducks and they only do this for a few minutes first thing in the morning [Music] foreign [Music] now that morning chores are done we can really get down to work today we're going to be spending most of our day out in the greenhouse we've got several things to be doing out here to kind of wrap up the spring early summer growing season and get ready for the late summer fall growing season there are a couple types of plants that are completely done for the year growing for the year and then others that are kind of at the end of their life that we're just gonna you know call it quits on those plans pull them out there are some seeds that we want to plant for a second growing season kind of a second harvest opportunity for us here in southern Missouri we have the we have a long growing season which gives us an opportunity to grow some things twice and we're going to take advantage of that specifically with cucumbers zucchini and we're actually going to do something that we've never done on video we're actually going to take some suckers off of some tomato plants and plant them for like a fall tomato Harvest right we don't have time at this point to start new tomato plants from seed but we can take some sucker branches off our existing plants get those going and we should get a later fall Harvest off of those so those are that we're going to be working on today and bringing you along lots of other things kind of intertwined there but we're going to get started so the first thing that we're going to do today is we're going to get rid of the four tubs of green beans that we had growing in here we picked a ton of green beans off of these plants we had five plants in each tub so we had 20 plants total they were done producing probably about three or four weeks ago but we've purposely left some of the pods on here and we left the plants in here to completely die back so that we could save seeds for next year's planting so today what we're going to do is first we're going to go through it we're going to pick any bean pods that look like they still have beans inside of them and then uh later uh probably off camera honestly we'll take these all in the house and we'll save all of the bean seeds for them but basically saving bean seeds is really easy you just let the pods dry on the vine and then you can see when you crack them open that you've got all of your beans that just are inside and those are what we'll use to plant again next year we're not going to plant a second round of green beans this year in the greenhouse that we could we would have time to do that but because our pole beans out in the outside garden are still producing so strong we really don't need a second round of them here in the greenhouse so for today we're just going to pick all of the dry pods put them in a basket and then we'll pull all of these plants and then these buckets are actually going to stay empty until fall and these will be some of the first buckets that we plant with lettuce and things for over the winter oh [Music] these are the Cucumbers that we have growing in the greenhouse they are Market more variety there are still a few on here that we are going to harvest today but we are ready to change these over to a whole new batch of cucumbers the plants are looking a little sad they're looking like they're ready to be pulled we are going to be planting a different variety not the cute not the market more cucumber in here but we are going but we are going to be planting bait Alpha cucumbers here there's still a climber but overall they're a smaller cucumber they don't have the big spines on them like these do that's just just a completely different type of cucumber although they will climb like this we have just kind of a string type trellis that has been working really well for us this year we will be using that again on the new on the new variety of cucumbers it makes it very easy for these to grow up it's very easy for us to install so we're going to continue using this type of thing in the greenhouse it's also nice this time of year because to you know just pull these out we just need to cut it down we can just roll it all up and and kind of get rid of the plants so that's what we're going to do today so let's Harvest these cucumbers and then we can start changing them over and planting new seeds [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] now that those plants are out I'm just going to kind of disturb the soil a little bit just kind of mix it in again it'll make a nice smooth top here for us to plant and start the new seeds all four of these buckets are set to be replanted and I am going to be putting two cucumber seeds per pot about half inch down again these are the bait Alpha and you can get these from migardener.com that's where you can order seeds two seeds about half inch down just lightly cover them [Music] easy as that now that we're done with the Cucumbers it's time to move on to tomatoes now here in our part of Missouri our first Frost isn't until mid to late October and here in the greenhouse might even be a little later than that so we have plenty of time to keep growing plants in here even summertime plants before we get to our first Frost so what we're going to do today is we are going to first of all we're going to pull these Tom berry plants these were the ones that I did the experiment with that were supposed to be the world's smallest tomato they didn't end up being as small as we thought they would be but they still ended up being productive plants but as you can see they're about at the end of their life there's still some green up at the top and there are still some Tomatoes I'm gonna try to harvest as many of them as I can today before we pull the plants but then we're just gonna call it the end of the season for these what we're going to plant in their place is I'm going to take some sucker branches off these Tomatoes right next door these are the large red cherries these are the my favorite cherry tomato they're a nice big red cherry tomato and by taking a sucker Branch off of these we'll be able to start two new plants of these that will start growing up and hopefully get us all the way until our first Frost so I'm gonna climb up on my ladder because as you can see these Tom berry plants have grown all the way up and they're all the way up to the top of the greenhouse and they're kind of intertwined with the large red cherries next door to them so I'm gonna climb up here I'm gonna try to pick as many of these little Tomatoes as I can and then we'll pull the plants you can see you know a lot of these did end up being quite small the ones that grew originally down toward the base they were bigger but these ones that are growing now are pretty small I still don't think they're the world's smallest tomato but they have been fun to grow now the reason that we're doing all of this business with suckering the large red cherries today is because it's much too late at this point for us to start new tomato plants from seed for fall we would have had to do that probably six weeks ago or more but by doing us taking a sucker Branch we've we're skipping all of that time so we can kind of jump into the future and just get right to the part where the plants are already growing we don't have to wait for seeds to germinate we don't have to wait for them to start sprouting and all of that we can just take a piece of an existing tomato plant and plant them on tomato plants anywhere you see little hairs on a branch that will all grow into Roots when you plant that in the ground it's kind of hard to see these guys up here because they're so intertwined I don't want to hurt the large red cherries that are next to them I might end up just picking those while I'm up here too you can see this is all the Tom berry up here and like I said there are still some green ones up here but they're just not doing good enough for me to keep them going when I would rather be growing more of the larger a cherry I'm gonna move my ladder so that I can I think it's trying to attack me I heard that I was going to pull it out I might get up here and pick these large red cherries now while we're talking about the Tom berries I want to say thank you to all of you who have sent me seeds I received seeds from several of you for especially the spoon Tomatoes a lot of you are saying that those are the ones you think I need to try next year so I will almost definitely be trying those spoon tomatoes next year but I'm excited for all the different tomato seeds you guys have sent me you guys know that I've never met a tomato I don't like all right let's get these out of here we're going to take these individual Clips off and just work our way back down if you haven't seen the video about how we trellis our Tomatoes you can go back and watch that from the spring but basically we grow our tomatoes on just a single string that runs up the Vine and then we use these tomato clips that look like this that clip around that string and hold the plant onto that string so we've just got one string running from the base of the plant up to this pole up here and then we use these clips to hold it in place and that's what helps it grow up so now I need to take all of those clips back off as we work our way down the Plant [Music] so Kevin touched a little bit about how we grow tomato plants here in the greenhouse we grow them up one string and to prevent them from getting super bushy all over the place we remove the side branches as it grows up those side branches are called sucker branches a sucker branch is a branch that grows off the main stem like right where a main Leaf comes out that will turn into another branch that will produce more tomatoes and in this situation we don't want the sucker branches because we want to grow vertically but in general people take sucker branches off of their tomato plants so that all of the plants energy can go into producing the tomatoes just from the one tomato plant not the side branches or sucker sucker branches so hopefully that made sense I'm saying that because we don't have a whole lot of Sucker branches on these tomato plants because we've been taking them off if they as they've been growing up but as they've gotten taller and taller I've been less and less motivated to take the sucker branches off because it's up here high and I need to use a ladder so the good thing is we want to harvest some of those sucker branches so that we can plant new tomato plants in the greenhouse before fall so I want to show you just really quickly what a sucker branch is I was trying to explain it beforehand but you can see here the main stem of the plant so this is the main tomato plant this Branch here is a branch that will grow fruit it doesn't grow where a leaf Grows Right Above It this here is a tomato leaf and out of the tomato leaf is a sucker Branch so this Branch generally we would remove when growing tomatoes like we grow them in the greenhouse so we can remove this sucker branch and it will root in the ground or in the soil and turn into a brand new tomato plant now this one does have a couple baby tomatoes on them and I'm actually going to cut those off oh so that this plant can concentrate on growing taller we're going to cut these leaves off here because we're going to plant it deep into the ground and then this hopefully will turn into a flourishing tomato plant so this new tomato plant or this sucker Branch we're just going to dig a hole in the dirt and we're going to stick it down quite far in to the dirt now I'm going to water this today but I'm also going to continue watering it really more often than I water the rest of the tomato plants this needs to be wet like all the time until it has really great root structure if you have ever kind of taken a sucker off of a tomato plant and put it in a jar of water you can see how long it takes to get the roots which really isn't that long at all within a few days you can see tiny little Roots starting to grow but in order for the roots to start growing this stem needs to be pretty wet for quite a long time so we did Harvest another sucker Branch off of that same plant and I'm going to move that I'm going to do the same thing that I did over there just dig a nice hole in there this soil is so nice and loose I could probably just poke this down into the ground back fill I'm actually going to get rid of some more of these leaves here [Music] and we're just going to keep this watered it will hopefully grow a wonderful root system and start growing tall and we will treat this exactly the same way as we've treated the rest of our tomato plants once it gets bigger we'll run a string up to the top of the greenhouse attach it to that single string string continue taking off the future sucker branches and hopefully we'll get some great harvests before first Frost the last thing that we need to work on in the greenhouse today are zucchini as you can see the plants are definitely at the end of their life cycle they are also being overrun by squash bugs now the good news is we got a ton of zucchini off of these plants we have five of these tubs planted with zucchini plants and I think Sarah said she picked somewhere between 40 and 50 zucchini off those plants that's a pretty darn good harvest but just like the other things we're working on today here in Missouri we can plant a second round of zucchini and the good news is this time of year the squash bugs are about done and they shouldn't really affect that second squ that second planting of squash plants in fact if you talk to a lot of the Old Timers in our area they will tell you to not even plant your zucchini plants until this time of year because then you pretty much Miss the squash bugs the conclusion we have come to over the past few years is just that we're going to plant this first crop of them knowing that they're going to get covered in squash bugs eventually but we still get a pretty good harvest up till that point then we just pull them start over and get a good second harvest as well there's nothing that we have found that is effective on the squash bugs that isn't a really harsh chemical and we're just not willing to do that to our plants and trust me we've tried everything over the years so today we're going to pull these plants we're going to replant new seed and we're going to hopefully have a beautiful second round of zucchini in another month or six weeks [Music] foreign on there that's the most that's still alive [Music] just like the Cucumbers we are going to plant two seeds per pot the variety of zucchini that we like the best is called Black Beauty and you can find those through migardener.com as well so pretty much the same as cucumbers we're just gonna put these seeds about a half an inch down in the ground we're gonna water these well until they come up and we are hoping for a really great late summer early fall Harvest well this is an exciting day getting the greenhouse started for fall I know it's hard to think about fall when it's still you know almost 100 degrees outside well into the 90s but if you don't start thinking about it ahead of time you're never going to get those plants ready to go and as far as far as it does go it's kind of like a cheat now we we didn't have to think about starting seeds weeks ago or eight weeks ago right if we can kind of cheat and just steal a sucker Branch off that's pretty awesome because six weeks or eight weeks ago we were busy with so many other things the last thing we wanted to think about was having to start seeds right and this is also a cheat you guys to keep in mind that if a time comes when seeds aren't available and there are certain varieties that you like like you know how much we love the Jetstar Tomatoes well those are a hybrid we can't save seeds from those but we can take suckers off of them and then keep that going and if we really needed to we could even keep a sucker like that going in the house over winter we may not get fruit off of it over winter but we could keep that sucker going and then take more suckers off of that in the spring to plant in our garden and really have a never-ending round of the Jetstar tomato so keep that in mind as kind of a cheat or a shortcut so you don't always have to be planting seed so you guys we are so happy that you joined us today today to do chores in waddlesville and see all the fun poultry out there and to join us in the greenhouse to do just a little bit of last minute last year plant last of the year end of the year planting hey if you're enjoying our videos make sure that you hit the Subscribe button and also remember that the best way that you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our Homestead take care and God bless God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 77,530

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

Id: RlTDn8-5cfI

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023