Planting A Raised Bed & Potting Up Roses | Herb Garden | Cottage Greenhouse

Well welcome back to Crowley House Flower Farm. This week is kind of fun because we are going to be potting up a raised bed garden that's next to the cottage greenhouse and then I had moved two of my olive trees that were in the front of the little cottage greenhouse, planted those out in the new Mediterranean garden or the dry garden that we have just started, and then I need to fill those two pots. So I bought two David Austin roses, or I bought a whole bunch, but I have two that I'm going to place into those two pots. And so Riley is going to come along with me. She ended up buying a whole bunch of little starts. We're just kind of doing almost like a little protege garden in a raised bed and it's because it is just right off the kitchen from the house and we can jump out there and grab a few things that we need for, you know, soups or fresh herb cooking. And as you know, we love to do some fabulous meals here. My husband is an amazing chef and so just to have something that's a little bit easier to get to. And this garden is kind of a focal point of the cottage greenhouse, so I want it to be very, very, very beautiful. So we're going to restyle the cottage greenhouse now that it looks really pathetic after I took those two trees out and I really haven't had the time or I kind of know what I want in my head. Eventually, you know, it just takes time to find the pieces and kind of put the thought process together. And as you know, with any garden, things change and evolve and, you know, it's always, you know, you think you want one thing and then the next you want something else and, you know, and I think that's what's fun about gardening, right? So here's a look at what Riley and I did today. It was super fun working together as well. It was just a beautiful day here on the farm. I think it was 78 degrees light wind and it was just perfect for gardening and putzing around the garden. So here you go is a look at what we did. So Riley and I are working on a wedding today as well and I thought I would just give you a quick sneak peek because we haven't showed you much in the way of what we're doing in the design studio side or the flower side in the last couple videos. It's more been planting and the gardens, which I love as well, but this is some of the product or cuttings that we've taken off the farm. Some of the product we did buy in, but for the most part, a lot of this came from our farm and we are just styling this beautiful, beautiful blue and white wedding. It's kind of like that pale blue and white and it's more of a spotted through blue and white. So we have about 28 table arrangements we're finishing up. The bridal bouquet, four bridesmaids, a lot of boutonnieres and wristlet corsages and that's it. Anyways, it's turning out absolutely beautiful. So here's a sneak peek at that. Okay, so I'm just going to show you how we reflex some roses. Some people will just take the petals apart one by one by like bending them backwards and like flipping them like that. Um, I personally don't like it that much unless I'm doing a more modern style wedding. So what I do is I make sure I have a rose that's kind of open like this with the face, flip it upside down, take my hands in a prayer motion and I just rub it in between for a while. Check it out. Okay, see how it's already opening up and the middle is still a little tight. So I might just like kind of loosen it up with my fingers, loosen it up a little bit. So it's like that and then do it again. You have like a nice open rose like that. Very pretty. That can go right into your arrangements. As long as danger is near, I can never give you peace. But you mail back my things and I walk home alone. But we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much and maybe this thing was a masterpiece. Things to plant. So I have been having a little bit of an obsession with gardening lately, especially with food gardening. Flowers are my career, but food is my, you know, hobby I guess. So I've been really into adding things to our veg garden and to our herb gardens that are going to be like helpful throughout the year for cooking. And we have this guy here, which is our vego garden. She's looking a little sad right now. So we are going to top her off today with some new things and some fertilizer, just really helping the soil out. But we're using Live Earth, which are our friends. They were generous enough to send us a couple boxes of their soil conditioner. Really excited to throw that in here. But I thought I would show you just a couple of the fun little herbs that I have bought in and collected that are going to go in here. Probably looking a little sad right now. They will perk up, I swear. But the first thing I got are these double chamomiles. And they are a trailing chamomile. And they smell really, really good. They are great for birds and insects and they also are deer repellent. So if you have a problem with deer, this might be a great thing to have. Chamomile is great for teas. I love drying it. I love just keeping it around the house. You can throw it. If you're really into doing like... Thanks, Shy. If you're really into like doing anything with hair masks or face masks or making homemade concoctions, this is a great thing to have on hand. Also, I think it's just really, really pretty. It's an herb that I definitely like using a lot. And I'm really excited to see this one grow. Next thing I got here is this African blue basil. This is a different basil than I have ever used in the past. So I'm really excited to try this out. This is a cilantro. We have a parsley in here, which as you can see, she's kind of sprouted up. So I got one cilantro, which technically they don't do super great in the summer. They are more of a like fall and winter loving plant. But I love cilantro in my food. So this might bolt. I'm hoping it doesn't, but we're going to plant it anyway. We're going to keep it. I'm also going to seed more cilantro this fall so that we'll have it over the winter. And then hopefully it'll do well in the spring and summer. More basil. This one is a spicy bush basil. Fascinating. It's a little spicy. It's not bad. I like the shape of it though. It has tiny little leaves starting to flower a bit. So that means that we probably need to cut on it more. But mom was saying we could potentially pot this one up when winter comes so that the frost. Let's take it on. And I think it will be a nice little potted, potted shrub. This guy's also looking a little. This is a dwarf pennyroyal. It smells amazing. I don't know what pennyroyal is, but oh, it's like, smells like a mint. I think. Also it's a little sad, but it smells great. Has medical uses, I guess. Don't judge her yet, but she's, she's looking a little rough. She's going to look great though, but smells amazing. I got another Italian parsley to replace the one that's bolting or just kind of add to it. Cause I think you can chop down the bolt and it should go back to shrubbing. I could be wrong. This guy, I really want to pot up. This is lemongrass and she's very tiny right now, but eventually she'll be huge. But lemongrass, I love making lots of different like Asian cuisines, especially like one of my favorite like fall and winter meals ever is coconut curry soup. And lemongrass is a great ingredient of that. And I'm just really excited to have one of these, but I think I'm going to pot her up and have her in the greenhouse over winter so she doesn't die. Got to keep warm. I got another garlic chive. We have one in here already, but she's going to have a friend. I have another one of these growing somewhere else on the farm, but I feel like you can't have enough chives, you know? Hi Killian. Do you guys want a cat break? Cat break of the day. Say hi. Hello. I got tarragon. I've never had a tarragon. This is a new addition to the farm. This is French tarragon. Hey, it's kind of like a little licorice-y, but like not. Yeah, like licorice-y, but like not at the same time. Like almost like fennel and licorice, but like way less intense. Pretty good though. I like it. All right. Another basil. This is magic mountain. Nice. It's a really strong flavor, but it's not like basil-y. It's like a different flavor. Fascinating. Those are all the herbs I have, but I also have these two okra that are going to go into the greenhouse because we love okra. So we got these guys, but those are all the herbs that I'm going to be adding to the Vigo garden. If you guys have any herbs suggestions that would be great to just have on hand for cooking, let us know because I'm willing for anything. I'm going to go do deliveries and mom's actually going to plant it for me because she offered to, if I did the delivery, she'd plant the Vigo garden. You know, we're trading off. So I'm just getting Riley loaded up for her delivery. This is for a memorial. We're getting set up at a church. We have about an hour to get it there and it's just a few minutes down the road. I love how this turned out. It's very, very elegant with the deep purples and creamy whites and very romantic. So I'm going to get her out the door. So I'm going to be planting a David Austin rolled doll is the name of it. I think I'm saying that right. It's a shrub rose that does really well in containers and it's got this beautiful peachy kind of, kind of hints into some pink bloom. And it's a very, very large bloom that smells really well, but is great for containers. The history behind this rose is apparently the, the James and the giant peach. This rose is kind of after that or David Austin kind of contributed to that particular literature. And so I think it's really, really cool. I love especially children's books and that movie is just great. So I'm excited to put these in next to my cottage garden. And I believe that kind of peachy color is going to look great and just bring kind of the eye over to this area. Now I have three of these and my idea is to put pop another one up at the circle garden in a container as well. And just using that terracotta over and over is going to look amazing. But first I'm going to start on the little Vigo garden and get that potted up, make it look better. I'm going to add some soil amendment, which is the live earth soil amendment to it. And then I'm going to add in a little bit more compost and some fertilizer. And we're just going to go from there and get Riley's little garden potted up. I think it's going to look great. And I have an idea about this just because I do love terracotta. I think I'm going to take that lemongrass she was talking about and put it in a very large pot. And then I'm also going to take that, that little the pot basil that she has and put it in like just a little bit smaller pot, but kind of style that in the Vigo garden. So I think it's going to look really good when it's all done. I'm just going to get the area cleaned up, cleaned out. Um, it's been super dry. And so this, this bed does not have any irrigation to it yet. There's plans to do that in the future, but for now it's just going to be us watering every day or soaking it really, really well every couple of days, unless it gets over 90 degrees, then we'll kind of do an everyday drench on it. Um, but I think it's going to do really, really well and it's going to look beautiful. And I love that the kitchen is just literally right behind this tree, like a little step away. It's an easy access. We had some edible flowers in it to begin with. And then the winter garden of herbs that is struggling just a little bit cause I've neglected it, but I think I'm just going to get it all kind of prettied up and I'm going to take you with me here at Crowley house. We love working with raised beds. We have several gardens. The whole vegetable garden is in a raised bed order. And part of the reason is, is because we have such heavy clay that we are working to amend. We also have a high water table. So in the winter and early spring, we can have puddling and just a very wet, heavy soil. So putting together raised beds like this is something that helps us be able to garden earlier in the season and also helps us control the soil that we have in each garden. Gardening is so much more rewarding and fun. And when the soil can just be fluffy and light and, and you know, what's going to be in it so that when you're growing vegetables or herbs like we're doing here, uh, you know exactly what is coming into the kitchen because the soil affects the plants that you put in it and also the nutrients. And if it's edible or food, you want to be very, very careful. So I'm just, uh, in the container, I went ahead and put down some compost, just kind of freshened the bed, kind of juiced it up with the, um, kind of mix the soil around. It was kind of compacted in there. So I am going to use some of this live earth. Um, this is just, it kind of looks like dirt, but almost like coal that's been ground up. So I'm going to use some of that or, you know, what it looks like is coffee grounds. So it's really kind of cool. Um, so I'm going to add a little bit of this to the, um, the raised bed along with, and I just put down an all-purpose fertilizer, um, that we use here on the farm. It's just an organic by Epsom and I just had some of that. So I, I dumped some of that in, and then I think I'm going to be ready to plant. I think what I'm going to do just to kind of help with moisture levels is the compost that we have right now is more of like a mulch. It's got a lot of wood chip in it. I'm going to use it all over the plants just afterwards, almost like a dusting and make it look really clean. And that will just keep the moisture in the soil. Uh, we're leaving on vacation this week and, uh, we have people staying here. Um, Emma's going to be here holding down the fort along with a couple other folks. My sister and her son are going to be staying here as well, kind of keeping everything watered. It's really nice to have people come to the farm that can, you can kind of walk away from the farm. So we're going to be heading to the modern homesteaders conference in Idaho this year, and we're going to be helping out with that a little bit. And then we're also going to have a booth there as well. Um, I'll have my book. We're going to have some dried flowers, some lavender and some wreaths, some honey and a few other things, but Riley and Brayden are going to man the booth while Jason and I work. We're just doing a little volunteering for them. And we got a little Airbnb. It's just going to be so nice to get away from the farm before the big season starts. And, um, yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. This is my last big project before I start to pack up. And, um, tomorrow we have the delivery of that wedding, but that's going to take just a few minutes to do. It's just down the road a little ways. And yeah, I'm feeling really, really good about this. So, um, so I'm going to keep planting and see how it looks. I'm excited. They've been using raised beds since the medieval times. They used to make waddles, which is wood, sticks kind of weave together to create these cozy little garden beds. And then it's moved into in the French era, they would have more raised beds, partly for, you know, season extension or like I'm doing better soil and you can control the soil, but also they could get their vegetables and, um, products that they were growing in the raised beds to the markets earlier. And that meant more money in your pocket. Raised beds are also something that was, you know, if you struggle with like back issues or you can't get down on your knees, uh, Riley has a lot of knee issues. So for us to have something raised up off the ground is really nice. And it just makes it a little bit more pleasant to garden with. I do think that raised beds also give a formality to the garden. You can arrange them in such a way that it can create this very, uh, elegant, uh, beautiful setup. And it also creates kind of a clean area. And a lot of times when things are organized and clean and easy to maintain, it's easier to get out into that garden and enjoy it. There is here at Crowley house, this element of ramble through the gardens and chaos, but within that chaos, I do like to have a little bit of structure and it does kind of bring a calm to the garden to have that space, which is the vegetable garden that we're still working on. But in my head, it's going to be that very still whimsical garden, but having that more formality to the space. Let me know in the comments below, whether you do like growing in raised beds or traditional in-ground gardens or both. So I ordered a few sunflower seeds. This is my, our friends over at Haas Stools and over at Cog Hill Farm. And a lot of you know them, but I wanted to support this really fun little package of sunflower seeds and Jason over there and Haas put this cute little package. They have several over there, um, on their website, but I'll link below if you're interested in getting this. Um, but in this package, uh, there is some dwarf sunflowers and I thought that would look really cute in this Vigo garden. I'm probably going to do another type of sunflower, which is a branching sunflower or something. I'm not sure. I'm going to look through and see what I can find. Um, or I might pull something out from here, but it's really cool because there's a, um, just some really fun ones for fall. A lot of the times when we're planting like these beautiful colors, it's generally closer to August 15th. So August 15th is our last day to be able to plant sunflowers ish in order for them to bloom before our first frost date. So, um, this one is the Procut sun or plum, not sun, plum sunflower. There's a chocolate cherry in this package. And then there's the little dwarf ones, which are super, super cute. So I might pop a few of those through. Um, let's see what else we have. Uh, there is a white light sunflower and that one's really pretty. I grew that last year along with the white night, uh, sunflower and one of these, I think it's the white night Procut. It has a little bit of a sweet smell to it. It's really fun. Uh, and then the last one they have is the Procut lemon sunflower in this container, but there's a lot of seeds if you're just planting it around the gardens. And that's what I got this one for is just to plant here around like the circle garden and just kind of fill in for fall. So I'll be planting a lot of these here in a couple weeks, just so that in August, September, we have a nice flush of sunflowers for our fall classes here on the farm. It always looks so pretty and magical with all those sunflowers blooming. They make such a statement. So if you're interested in this little package, I'm going to link below and that's just going to be the, um, sunflower collection by Cog Hill from Haas tools. So this little greenhouse is a work in progress. I know what I want. It's going to take a while to style it fully, but for now I know that I needed to get those two roses in the ground. I can't wait for them to do another flush. They had a small flush. They are very small plants. They were bare root this winter and I just potted them up temporarily and now they're happy in their new home. So hopefully they'll thrive and grow a little bit bigger and do a flush on them again. So this little brick patio, I laid it last year when we put this little greenhouse in and it definitely needs some loving. So I'm just spraying it off today and, um, I need to get in here with a fine tooth comb and clean out all the cracks and get this looking good. This little project is off to a roll and we're going to pick up again with it next week. Um, hopefully I can, um, have a few more items that we're going to be, um, placing around this cute little cottage greenhouse. Well, thank you so much for tagging along with us this week on another video here in the gardens at Crowley House. And until next time, much success in all you do and grow and we'll be seeing you shortly back here very soon. Bye-bye.