Starting a Small Vegetable Garden part 2

Hi there garden friends and welcome to my little cottage at Oak Hill in south of Sweden. It's late May and I am sitting, planning, keep planning my little vegetable plot here at the hill and it's been a while since we were here last time and to be honest with you I have nearly spent any time at all here last couple of weeks, months except for some work with my mulching. It's been freaking cold in Sweden and it is still cold the night time so I have been busy taking care of the more important garden at home where we live and since this is not that important I have tried to keep away you know when it does not feel that comfortable to be out working but since we were here last time I have been able to put on a lot of silage on my beds and also you see I have finished this bed climbing up through the hill so I now have two beds to grow and I simply love it. I love the view and I love the fact that I did it because it's kind of hard work to do this. May sounds easy but it's a lot of digging involved and well it's kind of heavy to be honest. I will show you in another video later on how I did the but this is how it ended up and I'm very happy about it. So what I also did is that I put some silage on top of some of the other beds and I have chosen those beds because I am going to grow like hungry plants here. Cabbage and some artichoke and pepper and let's check my plan well cucumber and also the squash I think so they need a lot of like nutrition in the soil. Hey hey! That was actually my neighbors at home they provide me with lots and lots of grass clippings but this cottage is a few kilometers away. Well the peppers and the cabbage etc they need plenty of nutrition in the soil or where they grow so I cover the bed with a thick layer of silage and what I also did is that I have sown parsnip way too late they will not be able to harvest in early autumn and I also planted out some leek. I have planted the leek well close to each other so I didn't space them that much and that is because I aim to harvest them when they are quite small I don't aim for the the heavy leek you know thick as my arm if I if I aim for that I will space them better but in this case I grow them close together and that will go perfect. I didn't cover this bed with any and that is because I usually don't do that when I made sowings into a bed you do not want to cover a sowing with like grass clippings or silage or straw or anything because it will prevent the the germination to to be successful. Some seeds that germinate are very very tiny and they cannot press themselves up through this layer of manure or silage or grass clipping so you simply do not want to to mulch the bed until the plants are a bit taller. And you see also maybe I should start should have started with this to mention the spinach. As you can see I have some spinach from the sowings I did in last episode. Today now I have I have a plan I brought some seeds I am going to sow a few things pre-cultivate them I also going to sow a few things directly into the ground. I am going to plant some cabbage and some chive I think I brought with me too and I had to have like a discussion with myself about the tomatoes. I'm going to show you the tomatoes later on. I have like 50 plants they are ready to be planted out and I am actually going to use the third space here even if it's not finished yet and does not look as good as the two other beds. But as you may see this hill is very windy when it's like calm and very peaceful at home where we live this this garden is always very windy and except that it's sunny in daytime but in night time we expect like four degrees celsius tonight and if it's four degrees celsius it could be more likely like freezing depending on if it is like four degrees five degrees below zero freezing it could be either both so we are not safe yet to plant out the things that are very like vulnerable they they don't stand frost at all. So I now stand with the choice I keep them indoors but to keep them indoors I simply have to transplant them into bigger parts. I did not want to do that but I think I have to. Do you remember the plan? Let's have a look and it is still in Swedish so you will not understand anything but this is where the spinach grows so I'm going to remove that and replace with carrots. This bed is with leek and parsnips and I brought with me some chive. I'm going to put two plants the end of this bed. Here I am going to grow the pepper, the artichokes, cucumber. None of them are ready to be planted out today. This bed with the woven edge is for the brassicas like broccoli, the kale, some filderkraut. It's a cabbage with pointed head and I also have a cabbage pointed head a red one, kalibos. I should do that today I think and in the palette colors over here I'm only going to sow the carrots and then none of these beds are ready to be planted either. I have to wait for warmer weather but here I brought with me a few things that I'm going to sow today as well. Some summer flowers, the squash, melons. I'm going to try melon. This is crimson red, it's a watermelon. This size is like amazing for a cabbage and I must say I really succeeded with the pre-cultivation and to be honest with you I think the brassicas are one of the vegetable family that I am best in growing. These are my favorites and this is filderkraut. It's a very tall variety of pointed head cabbage. It's wow, it's really something. This is like an ordinary kale, green. It's tricky to choose. I love them all. Let's go for one black kale and one broccoli. I am not sure if you have ever heard of broccoli before but broccoli is a mix between the black kale and broccoli so it's like two in one. Some people wonder how to plant in a bed that looks like this, I mean where it's no soil and it's very very easy. You simply make a hole like this. There is no soil in here. I make a hole. It should be moist in here and then I put this silage around this plant like this. I think it's very interesting that the fact that people are very convinced that you have to grow in pure soil when you grow vegetables or flowers when you can actually grow in more or less like a heap of something that will become soil and I hope I get some good results so that I can show you. I have soil underneath, let's say 20 centimeters below. Oh you must have a look at this. Oh my precious, look at this. It's not necessary of course to have this size of a cabbage when you plant them out but they will keep much better from like huge damages from slugs in this size. I cannot plant out in a garden with slugs, you know the tiniest cabbage plants not possible. One thing to keep in mind when you plant cabbage and kale and kinds of things is that those are big plants. They need space. Some of them they grow more upright like the kale, broccoli, yeah different varieties of them. While the cabbage, different varieties of cabbage, the savoy, the pointed head, ordinary cabbage, they could be like one meter from this side to this side of the plant so they need a lot of space and you can decrease the space by simply removing the outer leaves but when planting do not plant them too tight. They will grow better if they have some space. This looks beautiful doesn't it? So happy to see this. It's very important when you do this kind of planting in silage or straw or manure or whatever that you check so the material is moist and if it's dry you have to water the plants very carefully before. Just put the whole pot in a bucket of water for example so that it's like wet and then you have to water carefully a couple of days afterwards but now I managed to to do this planting just before a rain. It's going to rain tonight so that will solve itself. Well I think let's move on to the spinach. This is really boring. I mean plants like this flowering I mean it's not even useful to to bring in so I only harvest the the bigger plants and I will let the rest of them go to the compost I think. You may think this is a bad idea and I if this was like the only spinach I had I might be more careful but we have tons of spinach at home and they are like all over the place. The leaves the size of the leaves are the same as my head so if I compare when I was completely new to gardening I could feel very disappointed at myself when I didn't reach a result that I I wanted but by now I am more used to watch also the failures and thinking of them as a normal part of the process. And also it's important to keep in mind that even though things don't turn out in the best way most perfect way you still learn things right. I could have harvested this as a like a baby spinach but right now it's way too much work for me and I don't have use for it. In the outer base I have put onions spring onions. The things I have in the bucket are pure green manure and I use this frequently in both my gardens so instead of going to the compost heap and just leave it there I have sort of a compost heap in the garden. I choose one bed let's say two or three beds if it's a large garden where I dump things and in this case I dump things in this bed so I simply put it here and with the help of worms it will be nice soil and one thing I have noticed as well is that sometimes if you have slugs in the garden they will go for this instead of the more important vegetables. Oh there was a hole in this hello this will dry here and will be some extra food for worms. Two rows of carrots well there are a few things you should know about carrots. In my climate in Sweden we have a short season it's May now and already in September we have the first frost even in south of Sweden some years not but most likely so there are not like a huge amount of time to grow things so I tend to use two varieties of carrots I use the early varieties the fast growing early varieties in Sweden we call them summer carrots and I also grow the late varieties slow growing varieties in Sweden we call them fall carrots or winter carrots and the summer carrots they tend to mature is well be ready for harvest in only three months from sowing and the late varieties may take like five months four months or so on. The fast growing early summer varieties like Nantes I have they are super nice to eat like fresh but they don't store that well and in my case it's tricky to store root vegetables as well because we don't have that space indoors for example so I use a clamp and a clamp does not keep the summer varieties that good so at home I grow mainly the late varieties and some early varieties also in different places and I repeat the sowings so I make like a sowing like this and then I fill up with a next bed let's say three weeks four weeks later and so on to have the fresh harvest late in the season so usually I make the first sowings in winter time already winter sowings and then I have the spring sowings and I also sow the early varieties in summer time the latest I sow the summer varieties are in July and they will be ready for harvest in October November in my part of the country in northern parts of Sweden I would say maybe June will be the latest the summer carrots are possible to you know when they are not that big so I don't mind if the seeds come quite close to each other so I simply pick up some seeds between my finger and my thumb and I sprinkle the seeds in the row and you notice of course I have already watered before I sprinkle the seeds and I hope you wonder why so I get to explain it this way makes it very fast to sow the carrots and winter carrots I sow one by one with the spacing let's say three centimeters between each seed because winter carrots may be really really big over the neck of the carrot all right so the water carrots are really boring to wait for that's the truth and it's not a very nice vegetable to grow along with kids because you have to wait so long for the germination and it may end up from sowing to maybe like 30 days it's a month from sowing until you spot the little plant in the soil and meanwhile you have to keep this place moist so that the seeds will grow in a good way and that can be really tricky to do actually so my way to do it is to water this row before I put the seeds in the ground it will give them a very very good start and I do the same with parsnips nearly everything that I sow directly into the ground in a couple of hours it's going to rain so I don't have to think about that for now well I just wanted to show you the tomatoes they are looking great but they are ready to transplant to be put out in the garden and well they are now planted in a pot that is too small this is a nine centimeter pot and it's it's way too small see the roots are definitely ready to to grow in in the ground and these are the pianolo tomatoes I told you I'm going to grow the we call them in Sweden like everlasting tomatoes like principal geese and etc so I have three or four varieties of the pianolo tomatoes I also have the subarctic plenty and a variety called ukraine purple it's well it's like this beef tomato a large tomato purple variety I think I chose it only silly I know but I chose it only because it would be possible to see to watch from the road people are going to pass here say what is that is that a big tomato yes it is but as you can see there the tomato is having some trouble and it may be like a week or two weeks before I can plant them in the garden so I really have to solve this in some way and I think I have to transplant them into 11 centimeter pots I did not wish to have that work too but I might have to do it melons I love melons I have never succeeded with them in the open in my garden ever but I harvest plenty of melons in my polytunnel at home but this is the year I'm going to go all in for watermelon crimson red in this little garden it is said to be an extra early variety I've had great result with it at home in greenhouse but it should be suitable also for growing outside when it comes to the beans I have a trick I usually sow two beans in each hole or in each spot that makes it busher at the place where I'm growing the beans and beans are also extra tasty for like birds when it's newly like germinated and if I sow two beans at one place might be one for the bird and one for Sarah you see I put them now in this tray and I'm actually going to bring them home and put them in my greenhouse because melons and cucumber squash beans they should germinate in a warm place otherwise it's most likely that the seeds will rotten it's the same with corn so I put them in this tray and I fill up some water because today I didn't have time to to water the soil before I make the sowing so I will do this afterwards and it's easier for me to to water from underneath than risk destroying the the sowings the surface of the sowing then watering on top of this so I will bring it home put it in my greenhouse care for it and hopefully in two weeks I will be able to plant it out when the weather is warmer I get so many questions about growing cabbage brassicas the damages from caterpillars etc and of course I have all the kinds of problems with my vegetables that other gardeners have too I have caterpillars I have slugs I have everything but I hope you notice that I get pretty nice vegetables to harvest anyway I never use like poison in my gardens it's just way beyond what I think is okay I sometimes use it's like a liquid consisting of you know very very small bacteria that you spray on plants to kill the the caterpillars and that is okay to use in a in an organic garden I prefer to use a netting netting of course leaves a few things to wish about the aesthetic way of the garden but I think it's it's it's very practical you put this on top after you have planted the brassicas sometimes I keep it all season long sometimes I remove it when the plants are bigger you'll see how we'll choose to do here it's important that the net is close to the ground so no butterflies or the moth can find its way in I might change my mind later in season remove this and go for the the spray instead we'll see but in a way I think it's very it's very good to show people also what it's like to grow vegetables I mean you buy a cabbage in the supermarket and you hardly give a thought on how it's like growing it and cabbages among the vegetables may be the most popular among the pests so it's really tricky to grow them and don't for a second think that you know commercial growers do not use like pest controllers in different ways I mean all kinds of vegetables that you buy from the supermarket are being treated in some way so maybe cabbage brassicas are among the most healthy things you can grow in your home garden and now we will have to as we say in Sweden hold your thumb for the plants in here it's like 11 plants right now and a bed like this can really produce a huge amount of food so we'll see how that goes thank you for watching and I hope we'll see each other in just a few weeks time when it's ready to plant the other beds around here I wish that it will be good weather by then bye-bye