Starting a Small Vegetable Garden part 3

Hi there garden friends and welcome to my little cottage garden in south of Sweden. It's the last days of June 2021 and I am Sarah growing this garden and this is my second garden. This is not my home garden. This is a garden where I try out things, new things and where I just create things without having to you know achieve something. So I call this my little wife's cottage and this is my little wife's garden and during the year you will follow this vegetable garden that I am growing this year and this is just a very small part of my garden. The idea is simply to grow quite a small vegetable garden so that people can come here and have a look what you can actually do with quite a small space. You have followed this garden in this season from the very beginning and you know then that I have six small garden beds over here and that I created like a stair up through this hill and it's now three beds and this was all empty when we started the season and now when we are in the middle of summer things are not thriving in all parts of the vegetable garden but in some parts. So in this video I would like to show you how it looks like in June and also we are going to do some harvest. The thing is that this week is quite busy kids are free from school of course because it's summer but me and my husband we still work as usual and accept the thing that you know kids are home. I also have a few other projects that I'm managing except my ordinary work so things are just a bit upside down. So this is how the vegetable garden here at Oak Hill looks like right now and you notice that this bed looks kind of empty. This was where we started the season by sowing and harvesting the spinach and this have been a very tricky area for me to grow because this is bare soil and in almost any part of my gardens I use this method mulching. So I prefer to mulch the ground and when I do that I don't have bare soil that will dry out easily. So I have struggled with very hot weeks in June, no rain and this garden is exposed to sunlight and also wind that dries out the soil and it's very very tricky to grow. In June I decided to install an automatic watering system but this could not be done exactly when I wanted to and exactly when I had sown the carrots in last episode. So what happened was that the carrots did not germinate because it was too dry and I was very frustrated and it took me a few weeks to install this properly and to get it going. So now I have a pump over there you see this machine and that is a pump that is connected to a watering control and this control makes sure that the garden is watered 20 minutes every day at seven o'clock in the morning. So now I can finally sow things and count on that it will germinate. So now in the end of June we can finally spot the carrots coming up through the ground and I'm very very happy about this. This will be fall carrots and they are so tiny when they have just germinated so they are sometimes tricky to spot with the eye even but I think you can see some signs of it. In this row I have the, is it spring onion or is it welsh onion? I think it's spring onion but they have been very slow and did not develop properly either because of the dry weather. So I have a batch of this onion coming up at home so I am thinking about giving it another try in another space later on this summer. In next bed same kind of problem with the germination. The parsnip did not germinate as well as I was hoping and on top of that I did have plenty of slugs and to my surprise the slugs even ate the leek. I had saved a lot of small plants with the leek so I could plant some extras so there's no sign of the slug damage but when it comes to the parsnip I mean I direct sow them so I don't have a plant to replace them with. So what I did was that I filled up this area with a yellow chard instead because they have the same kind of height and and that could be something to think of when you want to fill up a row or something else when something didn't germinate that it is good to think about how the vegetables grow so that they don't compete too much with each other. I was left with exactly five parsnips. That's really silly but I do love the parsnips so I kept them instead of you know pulling them out and putting the chard in all this row. Over here in my next bed I simply forgot my plan because I got so excited when I planted a flower bed where I found a Russian variety of a garlic. I have forgotten the name of course but the plants looked kind of healthy then so I decided to just pull them out and plant them in this bed instead and this was the bed where I was supposed to have cucumber. I do have cucumber in the middle now but they were supposed to be in this part and I was supposed to have the artichokes in here and then pepper. Unfortunately I ended up having no plants at all with the artichokes because they were first killed from a larvae that I had in the pots inside and then they grow so so so slow when the spring was cold and very dry later on so they were just too small. I decided to just throw them away so I don't have any artichokes this summer but instead I have a few other nice things. So this bed ended up with pepper, cucumber and the garlic and to be honest with you the garlic don't look that good but I have already harvested a few of the garlic leaves and the scapes of course so it gave me some kind of food and I'm very happy about that. I think this is a perfect looking bed for brassicas and I am very very happy about this. I didn't have very high hope in the beginning of the summer because it was very dry. If you are new to gardening you may think this looks all right but there are a few signs when you have a closer look especially at the cabbage. This is a white cabbage and you may notice that this cabbage it has a very tiny little head on top of a quite tall like stem and this is a sign that the plant have been stressed and I think it's like because it was too dry and then the plant prepared itself to do flower. So I think in just a very short while I will see like a stalk producing buds and then flower. So I think I will remove this plant in a short while. You compare that one to this one. This is a Savoy cabbage and it's very like compact. It has grown very slow also because of the the dry weather and no water but now since I have installed this the plants have plenty of water each morning and it stays in this place because I use a lot of mulch. It keeps the moisture very good. Look at the kale. Wonderful! And this one is the Broccoli. Broccoli is a mix between the black kale and the broccoli. So you eat the leaves and also the sprouts. I do have some slugs in here of course but I keep the net on top and it prevents butterflies and moths from laying their eggs on the leaves and it makes a huge difference. It doesn't look that inspiring though but it's very good for the harvest. And now let's move on to the popular pallet collars. Plenty of people use them in Sweden. It's kind of tricky to grow in pallet collars. I think the results are much better in other areas but in this garden I want to to show also how you can grow things in the pallet collars with a good result. What kind of techniques you can use. In front of this one I have yellow beets. This is a portulac. Is it portulac in English or do I forget the correct name? I have harvested a lot of this already. Whenever I'm here having breakfast I go out here and I pick some leaves and have on my sandwich. I also harvest a lot of basil and it's time for me to make more like a proper harvest to put some in the freezer before it starts to flower. But this is just lovely and it's also time for me to make new sowings for this garden of basil because whenever I have a spot free I can put out a new plant of basil. Like here I planted out fennel but I could not provide them with water enough before I had this watering system installed. So there are only a few of the fennel that survived unfortunately. But it gives me some space here. I will try to fill up with something else. Peas just starting to flower. I think this is Lokförare Bergfells jätteärt. It's a traditional pea, a sweet pea with huge peas. I will show you later on. I think I will have to do something about it. It's a bit whimsy. In this pallet collar grows lettuce, parsley, carrots and dill. The dill are actually finished so we will replace that. A wonderful squash, the zucchini. There is a poor tomato plant in here and some tall beans. And then comes this lovely hill of mine. I can't believe I actually managed to to do this this spring because the spring was kind of busy. But now having a look at this it's just wonderful. It grows amazing and when I made the last episode nothing were planted. So I will just tell you what's in it and then tell you a bit about how I did the last bed on top of the others. This is the first bed and it was created last year, last spring. And here I have tomatoes in the back, physalis and a few melons. And in between I put some sunflowers as well. Most of them will not survive. As you can see we have a few slugs here. So I planted a lot of melons in hope that some will survive. Most of them are already eaten. We'll see how this will do. In next bed I just love this view. I have squash. There are two different varieties. It's Costata romanesco. It's my favorite. It's one that I have been growing for 10 years at home. It's a light green squash with a very special look. It's not flat. You will see later on when we harvest. And then I have another one more flat squash that I grow especially for the flowers. Because this year I am going to learn how to eat the fried squash flowers or zucchini flowers. I don't know if you know that. Maybe this is your first video from my gardens. But I grow a Swedish garden at home where I produce all the vegetables that my family needs in a year. So we are self-sufficient with food. And being self-sufficient with food in this cold climate as Sweden is, you have to be quite creative when it comes to cooking. I think it's a very good idea to every year try to learn something new. To learn to use a new part of a vegetable or a new thing in your cooking etc. So you develop yourself all the time. It's very important for me. And this, you know, using the flower. I have not done that before. Except, you know, I give it a try. But this year I will go for it. In the back here I also have the tomatoes. And these are the pianolo tomatoes. We call them everlasting tomatoes in Sweden. You can actually store them indoors for several months. So it's possible for me to harvest the tomatoes and hang them in the ceiling indoors, in the kitchen for example. And then I can harvest fresh tomatoes from that place all winter long. And look at this place. How it thrives, yeah? I have to tell you something about how I did this second bed. It's grass upside down and then it's a decomposable weed fabric on top of that, silage and then grass clippings. And I have planted my tomatoes and squash directly into this. Simply doing a little hole in the ground and then put my plant in it. And as you can see I have this drip irrigation here. So every morning at seven o'clock it waters. And that is why the plants look so healthy. So now we only have this last bed left. And I think this is maybe the most impressive bed of all of them. And it really shows how one can work with the garden in the most simple way and create like very very interesting results. So when I had finished this second bed I was like I will just do it. I will just give it a try. So I simply put this decomposable, it's like a film, plastic film, bioagri, on top of the grass. You spot the grass looks like this underneath. So I just put that fabric, that plastic film, on the ground. And I dumped like 10 bags of grass clippings on top of that. And I made a little hole in the grass and I planted my tomatoes. I also planted some corn because I had plants left. And in between the tomatoes I put a few pumpkins. We don't eat pumpkin. I only grow them in this variety that has like no shell around the seed so that I can eat the fresh pumpkin seeds, you know. And this is Olga. It's my favorite for growing that kind of pumpkin. Now in summertime it's time to prune the tomatoes. And since I grow a lot of tomatoes in the open, both here and also in my home garden, I think it's very important to prune the tomatoes to make them produce fruit before the summer is ending. And in Sweden we have such a short season, you know. They were planted out in the beginning of June. And in September, in the beginning of September, we may have first frost. So the plants need to really be focused on growing in a way that encourages them to produce fruit. And this plant is very, you know, it has a lot of side shoots. And this will disturb the production of tomatoes. So what I do is simply I remove all the side shoots and I also remove some of the lower leaves. This early in season, I only take a few of them. But later in season, I remove the leaves up to the first tomatoes. So I have already done the two lower rows of tomatoes. And now I am going to fix this upper row together with you. When the sprouts are small, you can simply snip them off. But when the plants are bigger and the sprouts are thicker, it's easier to use a pair of scissors. So what I do is that I simply try to find out what is the main stem of the tomato. So the stem is here. And it's quite easy to see how it continues up, even though there are some sprouts on its way. And then I simply remove all the sprouts on the main stem, even though they are quite big. And here you have to make a difference. So you have to spot which ones are sprouts and where is the tomatoes. I will show you. Here is the main stem, but it looks as if this little guy, this one, is the main stem because it grows straight up. But it's actually fake. And here is a little, I don't know what you call it in English, but this is where the tomato flowers are shown. And this will produce fruit. And do not cut this one. I will simply tie this up so it grows straight up. And the last thing I do is to cut off a few of the lower leaves. And by removing some of the leaves and the sprouts, I will bring in more light to the tomatoes and they will ripen a bit faster. And when we reach August, I will also cut off the top of the tomato plant and all the side shoots continuously. And that is also to make sure that the plant puts its energy on ripening the tomatoes instead of growing like green side shoots and leaves etc. And in that way I can harvest plenty of tomatoes also outside in my climate that is quite cold. I do not get as much harvest as I have in my greenhouses at home for example. But instead I can grow plenty of plants that will give me something to harvest. And I mean, it sounds ridiculous maybe to cut the plants like this, but it is cold in Sweden. It's working okay to grow the tomatoes outside, but you have to be very careful and you cannot pretend that this is a warmer climate. It's not. It's cold and the tomatoes will ripen some of them indoors if you bring them in when they are green. But you would like to have them as big as possible and as close to as possible to to be ripen or mature before that, before you bring them in. And this works quite good for me, so it may work for you too. All right my friends, I have harvested in this little garden for a couple of weeks and it's just amazing. It may look empty in some places, but this will grow up in the coming weeks and provide me with lots and lots of vegetables. So now before I am going away on a trip this week, I will harvest some zucchini and some kale and broccoli and I will just pass it over to Birgitta, my neighbor, and she will eat it and enjoy it while I am away. So thank you for watching today. I hope you enjoy to watch the progress in this little garden and when I see you again in a couple of weeks, I sure hope that carrots are on its way. Well, thank you and see you soon again.