BIG Spring Planting (Tomatoes and More!) + 2 Week Update

Today we are going to be planting a large portion of the spring garden. So in a recent video I walked around and I talked about my rough plans. We're going to see if I follow them today because I don't remember everything I said but I'm pretty sure I have a good idea of where I want everything to go. So one of the things we're going to be doing first is putting in some potatoes. I have the Corolla variety which is a yellow potato and then I have the Sarpo Mira which is a yellow fleshed potato but it's pink on the outside. This one is very prolific and very delicious so I'm very much looking forward to getting a potato harvest. Now some people wonder if it is too late to start potatoes. Here where I am in San Diego we're probably going to get about two to three months of coastal sort of mugginess, gloom if you will, and the temps are probably not going to go much over 70 degrees. So for me that's perfect potato weather. The tomatoes that we're going to put in today maybe won't like it as much but they're gonna have to deal with it because that's what they're gonna get. So let's get started. I did do the irrigation back here in the raised beds and I'd love to put some potatoes in there so I don't have to think about them. So let's start over there. So here's the bed we're going to be putting in some of the potatoes at least and this is a two by four short small birdies bed. Pretty nice size. I've always wanted to try growing potatoes in a raised bed and I've just never had the space for it. So what I'm going to do here is give them plenty of space because I want to actually get a decent amount of potatoes. I want big potatoes not just a return on my potatoes. I want at least 10 times the potatoes I put in. So I'm going to choose a couple good ones here. I'm not going to be cutting these. I'm going to be leaving them as is. So there's three of my Sarpamiras. Each one of these has chitted by the way which means that they have little sprouts emerging. And the way I'm going to be planting this potato is just burying it deeply so I don't have to bother hilling it later on. Now let's take a look at the Corolla. I got a smaller amount of these because this is a new variety to me. I don't know if I quite like it but it sounds very delicious in the description. I'm going to do three of those over here as well. So what I'm going to do now is come over here, grab my trowel, and I'm going to be spacing them about a foot apart. So in this bed I'm not trying to get too many potatoes. Like I said I want large potatoes not just potatoes in general. Oh boy. Plenty of grubs though. Don't want the raccoons finding these. Recently got hit by raccoons pretty hard on the other side of my raised bed over there. So let's go pretty deep here. This trowel is six inches so I'm actually right at six inches down here. I'm going to go ahead and just drop this potato right in. So the top of the potato is about five inches deep. I'm going to bury it. That's where one potato is. Come in about a foot here. Let's get these potatoes in the ground. So three Sarpamiras and I'm going to go in with three of the Corollas here. You could probably put more potatoes in this bed than I'm doing but I've never tried actually giving them enough space and this year I'm just very curious to see how much of an impact that'll have. So we're going to go with as much space as I could feel comfortable giving them basically. So I have six potatoes in this bed now and the middle row doesn't have anything planted. So once we get into the seedling starts I have in my greenhouse we'll see what I have left that would make sense to add in here because I'm definitely not just going to leave this with potatoes. I don't think I've ever planted a single bed in my life with just one thing and I'm not trying to start today. So we're going to come back to this but first let's find somewhere else to sneak a couple potatoes. Let's go ahead and throw some potatoes into these containers for context this is just a random assortment of leftover soil from previous grows that I did over the winter. Some of the soil is dry some of it was a little hydrated. All I did is I blended together a couple different grow bags and called it a day. With potatoes they don't need that much in terms of nutrients. They're considered a pioneer crop that doesn't mean that they won't benefit from nutrients but they don't necessarily need them. So what I'm going to do here is I scooped out some of old potting mix that's what you see over here and then on this side is fresh compost. This has been unused just ready to go compost. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to blend together the old potting mix with this fresh compost and that's what we're going to use to top these potatoes. As for what's inside these bags well there's nothing but old used potting mix so that's it that's how we're going to start. Now I haven't had good success in the past growing potatoes and grow bags. They always grew but I haven't really felt like I got enough potatoes back for it to be worth the effort. That's why we're trying to raise bed this time but the only thing I'm doing different here compared to previous times is that I'm using one of our lined grow bags. This will help retain a little bit more moisture at least in this upper area and I'll see if that makes any impact on actual yield because like I said I've always got potatoes but I've never got enough to actually feel like it was worth it. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to choose two smaller potatoes. So these are like maybe a little bit smaller than an egg. I'm going to take them and bury them until they're about two inches away from the bottom of the grow bag and then I'm going to fill this bag of soil back up. So for the other one the Corolla, actually I only have two potatoes left so that's perfect whatever they are that's what's going to go in. Same idea here I'm just pushing them into this layer of soil. So here's the potato and the soil is filled up so that it's about I don't know four to six inches filled from the bottom. So what I'm going to do is take my potato here and then I'm going to just make a little cavity drop the potato in until it's about two inches from the floor and then cover it up with soil and that's it. Now I'm not going to bother hilling these potatoes meaning progressively adding soil. What I'm going to do instead is just go ahead and entirely backfill this bag. I'm going to just see if that's possible. I know that I've worked in the past I just don't want to bother coming back here and hilling it all the time. I guess for insurance I'll leave the top two inches unfilled but other than that we are filling these bags from the get-go. The idea is that it'll take a little bit longer for that potato to reach the surface but along the way it'll now have plenty of opportunity to set potatoes. So let's go ahead and backfill. The logic behind this move is that potatoes don't actually need all that soil in order to produce. They have plenty of soil already as it is. What the straw is going to do is a couple things. First of all it's going to lock in a lot of moisture keeping these potatoes happy. Second of all it's not going to get as hot now because it's going to have a thick layer of straw on top and potatoes don't like the heat. And thirdly it's going to make sure the potatoes are still covered from sunlight so they don't turn green but the potato could easily push through this and grow just fine. So this is place the potato about two to four inches from the bottom backfill with soil and then the last two inches I'm adding just straight up mulch. This can be any mulch you have on hand. I happen to have straw so that's what we're going with. So we'll check back on this I guess in like three months and see if this was worth it and then we'll be able to actually compare it to the raised beds and maybe I'll only be growing potatoes and raised beds from now on. So that's it for potatoes today. Let's go ahead and move on to the next plant. So over here I have a selection of flowers that I've been potting on for a while and looks like I have two Queenie lime orange zinnias. Those are some of my favorites. I think two zinnias will actually fill out that bed quite nicely with the potatoes. So I think I'm going to grab that and anything else in here. All these other plants are honestly a little bit too big. They might out-compete those potatoes. So let's go ahead and pop these zinnias in. On the way out here I actually saw this nasturtium start which is quite large and definitely needs to go in the ground. So let's go ahead and add a little spiller here. Not because I don't have enough nasturtiums already but because I actually really like them and not gonna let this one go to waste. So that's going to be a corner one because that's going to spill over the bed cascade down into the garden. Now for the two zinnias we're going to go ahead and space these out evenly on this bed. So I'm going to put one on the far end here add some nice color contrast up against this wall the cinder block wall which is very ugly. So there's one and then the other guy I think I'm going to just go ahead and put it right in the I already have the nasturtium on the end there so having a nice little flower right in the middle I don't actually mind that. Now when it comes to growing zinnias you can actually top them which means that you just simply take the top like this pinch it off and now what's going to happen is that zinnia is going to branch. So I'm going to do that to this side as well here drop them to about the same height. So here's the portion we just removed so you can see the two leaves here what's going to happen now is every time there's two leaves up against the stem that is where new growth comes out. So by doing this instead of having a single stalk come up and then flower we're now going to start with at least two stalks that are going to produce more flowers. That's going to make a bushier lower zinnia with more flowers overall rather than a super tall one that just produces one big flower and then starts producing more later. We're going to start off with at least two flowers at the beginning and they're going to be lowered to the ground and give us a bushier effect. So that is one of the effects of pinching your flowers. Zinnias is one of the few flowers I bother doing that with there are others that benefit but zinnias I always think are really nice when you pinch them at least once at the beginning. Next to that short bed where we put the potatoes is my tall 4x4 bed. I'm trying to figure out what to put in there I don't want to put tomatoes because it's too tall of a bed already and my peppers well they're not quite ready yet they're actually pretty small. Here's an example of what they look like it's a little early to put these guys out but they will be potted up today. So what I'm thinking is I have a couple basil plants that are ready to go I also have these lemon sun patty pan squash these are like the little yellow patty pans the little ufo shaped ones and I have some of this jewel amethyst eggplant this is an eggplant that produces these little baby eggplants I think the plant itself also doesn't get that big so I'm just kind of curious to try what would happen if I put eggplant out this early it's a little bit earlier than usual eggplant is a heat loving crop but I have the space for it I don't have anything else to put there right now as far unless I'm blanking on something so let's go ahead and plant this out and I'll show you how I space these guys out. So here is the four by four tall birdies bed and what we're going to do like I said is put some of this lemon patty pan squash a couple basils I have a purple and a green and three of these jewel amethyst eggplants. So the first thing I want to do is actually think through a little bit how I want to actually lay this out I'm thinking the patty pan squashes are going to go on this side because I want the eggplant to get as much heat as possible which is this side which is facing west where the sun is going to hit it late in the afternoon so I'm thinking we'll go one two three eggplant and then we'll do one two squash and then put a basil basil so let's see what that looks like the first thing I'm going to do is pop them out of these cells do a little laying out and we'll see what that actually visually looks like so one right there one right here third one right there one squash second squash then green basil is going to go up front here my purple basil is going to go right back there and so there we have a rough layout now these eggplants are going to fill in this area entirely the basil if I prune it similar to actually the zinnia I could go ahead and pinch this top right here just like that oh my god that smells so good and then this will now be a bushier basil plant up front here where I'm definitely going to be harvesting a lot of basil I've been looking forward to oh basil for such a long time and then over on this side we'll be getting plenty of squash now important thing is that this is a far bed so traditionally I would never put any summer squash out this far away from the kitchen but it's early in the season they're not going to grow that quickly and honestly I don't plan on leaving these squash in here for too many months they're probably going to get a little bit unruly so I'm going to go ahead pop these all in the ground and then we're going to move on to tomatoes my most critical planting because they are my favorite plant and we have some cleaning up to do including harvesting some giant cabbages so I just went back into the greenhouse and I found a couple more plants I want to put in here because this bed seems a little bit lonely the first one is actually a poppy this is a dark grape poppy and I am transplanting this I did start it from seed I'm saying that because a lot of people tell me that you can't do this even though I'm literally doing it right now in front of you guys here's the poppy plant that I started from seed the key when you're transplanting it is that you don't want to actually mess with the roots at all which is why these epic six cells are so nice because they train the roots to go straight down and not wrap so by putting it gently into the ground just like I did there it should do totally fine and grow into a beautiful poppy now the other thing I noticed is that I have these bunching onions these are basically scallions so I'm going to do is just loosen these out a little bit not all the way I'm not going to separate every single one but I'm going to plant them in little bunches across any blank space these are going to form pretty quickly much before this eggplant will for example so I'm not too worried about that and they should maybe even help with some pest deterrent because onions are very stinky allegedly that helps deter things like aphids although I haven't had a chance to really see if that's true or not but I'm willing to try it so let's go ahead and put these in again I'm not going to be doing anything fancy here I'm just loosely splitting them up a teeny bit not even very well and just putting them in the ground I'm going to pop them anywhere where I have some free space so there you go just like that I'm going to roll them tease a couple apart like so I'm going to plant them in little bunches anywhere where I have a drip emitter actually positioned and if they're not perfectly upright and straight right now as I'm putting them in I'm not worried about that either because once they establish they'll upright themselves and follow the sun so here we go perfect so here's what the final planting looks out bunching onions scattered across one basil two basil and we have the one two three eggplant the two squashes right there and then there's the poppy that I put right dead center in the middle so we'll see how that goes but the poppy is going to add a splash of color and the asterism there is going to continue to grow and spill and also add color and then the onions are going to get harvested out probably at the same time the eggplant starts producing and by then I'll have plenty of basil and plenty of squash coming along as well so let us downshift focus to this area over here where I have my giant cabbages so we could get ready to put some tomatoes in the ground it's now day two I got a little distracted dealing with these cabbages yesterday there's actually one more we have to harvest here before I could actually plant these tomatoes some quick context updates it has been raining on and off all day which is why I had to wait till the end of the day right now to put these tomatoes in but here's the basic lineup of at least what's going out right here so the back row is going to be sun gold sweetie gardener delight and granadero which is a plum the first three were cherry tomatoes those are going to go in the back row cherry tomatoes don't need quite as much sun as something like a slicing tomato so the slicing tomatoes are going to go right up here once these onions get harvested out I'm probably going to put actually a new round of tomatoes slicers right up front there to capture that glorious sun that comes in through this garden so I'm going to get these cherries out of the way first now in terms of the slicers that we're putting up here I have harvest moon that's a new one to me it's an orange tomato then I have the carbon the Cherokee carbon very delicious it's a hybrid version of Cherokee purple lemon boy and big beef plus now the reason why I'm putting these specifically in this bed is that in the past I had root knot nematode and at least lemon boy and big beef plus are nematode resistant I actually believe harvest moon is as well and then Cherokee carbon is a hybrid so we'll see if that gives it any extra benefits so let's now measure out this section and see how we're going to deal with these tomatoes so what I'm going to be using here is the power planter and that's just going to help me make these holes a little bit easier honestly I'm quite surprised with how soft the soil is because I have not dug it or done anything to it since I put these cabbages in so that's a great sign I'm happy to see that it's actually pretty damp as well even though I haven't been running irrigation here so that's just rainwater that's been saved up so we're going to go two foot per tomato so let's go ahead and lay this guy out all right now we've got some pretty big holes here and actually this time I'm not going to go crazy deep now traditionally most people say that you should go as deep as you possibly can with tomatoes but when you plant earlier in the season like I am right now it's still March not even April the soil is warmed up but even down below it's not going to be quite as warm as you'd like it so you do get some benefit from going deep but going crazy crazy deep not so much so I'm probably going to bury another I don't know two inches on each plant just to get that stem buried and give it nice good soil contact which is going to make it sturdier holding up to a heavier load of tomatoes but I'm not going to go crazy about going too deep the other reason why is because I am actually going to be amending the hole now the only thing I'm putting in as an amendment this year is neem cake meals so this is neem cake meal it's similar to neem oil but this is the leftover stuff when you press it it kind of has this interesting aroma of almost like a soy sauce now neem cake meal is closer to a more nitrogen-rich fertilizer than I would traditionally like for tomatoes but the reason why I'm specifically putting some neem fertilizer here is because it's been shown to actually decrease nematodes and I'm going to be talking a lot about nematodes as I already have because nematodes have been the bane of my existence when it comes to growing tomatoes so I'm hoping that by putting this in I'll at deter some of the nematode pressure I'm also going to go ahead and sprinkle some on the surface here we'll probably bury that in with compost later want as much possible protection from nematodes as I could ever possibly get here we're also going to be putting in some companion plants specifically french marigolds french marigolds are the only ones that have been studied to have a large impact on your tomato or on nematodes I should say so let's go ahead and get going the other thing I'm going to be adding here is mycos this is a mycorrhizal inoculate I'm not affiliated anyway I am trying it on paper it should be fantastic it's a type of mycorrhizal fungi well it is a mycorrhizal fungi but the way it works is it develops a symbiotic relationship with your tomatoes produces a vast network of the fungal growth underground that fungal growth taps into your plant's roots and then they exchange nutrients they also exchange water for example so this mycorrhizae if this tomato is providing it some sugars it might bring in some water that it needs in order to grow so it makes plants more resilient this isn't just like some mumbo jumbo science this is something that's been actually pretty well understood for quite a few different plants so the way that it works best is if you go directly on the roots so there we go and then I'm going to put a little bit of soil over that neem cake and mix it in it is an organic fertilizer meaning that it should break down slowly but even so I never feel really good about putting fertilizer right up on the roots drop that in press it in nice and firm forgot to mention the first tomato that went in was the harvest moon tomato that's that orange one this one is carbon the Cherokee purple hybrid the next one's going to be lemon boy it's a yellow hence the name lemon and then the last one is going to be the big piece plus which is nematode resistant all right that's going to be the exact same procedure I follow for the cherry tomatoes back there same spacing I'm going to go four feet from row to row so four feet from here to the next row where the cherries are and then two foot per each tomato that's going to be the exact same all right guys now it is time to go in with the heirloom tomatoes so this is the four by eight short birdies bed and the reason why I'm doing heirlooms in here is because I've never grown tomatoes in the soil it is clean soil should not have any major nematode problem I am still going to apply some of this neem cake fertilizer though just because I'm not taking any chances that's for sure so here's the name of the game here I'm going to come in a foot from the inside of the corner of the bed here so one foot and I'm going to come actually pretty much only a foot from the edge as well so on this one I'm not going to bother with the drill because it is nice raised bed soil I don't really need to work it as hard so I'm going to do the same basic procedure I'm going to get a little scoop here of the neem cake then I'm going to blend it into the soil just with my hand here first tomato is going to be the good old Cherokee purple my absolute favorite tomato I'm very excited to see how it performs in a raised bed we're going to give it that magic dusting of the mycorrhizal and then pop it right into the ground just like that again we're not actually going that deep here because it is that early season in a raised bed it shouldn't actually matter I could go as deep as I really want but these tomatoes aren't that big so the next one here is delicious hunt this is the one that I grew and I got a over two pound tomatoes two pounds and three quarters so pretty big tomato here I wouldn't say that's necessarily I like growing it because it is delicious just like the name implies next one is going to be duster so duster is a variety I've been wanting to try for a long time now I'm apparently very very delicious the last tomato of the day here is going to be Italian heirloom it's been 15 days since I planted all this stuff I went on vacation so I thought maybe it'd be interesting instead of just releasing the video of me planting if I actually did a follow-up after the fact and showed you how all these plants looked what issues I might have run into what issues I didn't run into just the general state of how these plants are 15 days after transplant so let's get started in the big bed right over here where I put those tomatoes all right first bed over here looks fantastic no real complaints whatsoever the tomatoes are growing very very nicely they're branching very nicely they even have this gigantic flower which I'm definitely not removing I don't believe in removing the flowers once the season has begun if it's early season and you're still transplanting sure remove the flowers it's probably a good idea but these tomatoes are growing who am I to say they can't support those tomatoes if they couldn't support the tomatoes they would just drop the flowers on their own so first update here less cabbages but all the tomatoes look fantastic now the real problems are pretty much exclusive to this bed over here where we just put in the random seedlings that I had including the eggplants as soon as I left apparently this bed got dug out multiple times because I came back and this eggplant was buried three leaves underground because it just got kicked around by raccoons and uh yeah so this hasn't grown much this basically was harassed the entire time I lost like all my onions here's a sad little pile of dried up onions I think these are the only ones that made it it looks like there's a couple there the rest is gone the squash plant gone not even worth talking about it was entirely decimated dug up and destroyed the basil is hanging in there it's not looking amazing for sure but still alive as is the eggplant now the other thing I did is I sprinkled the entire surface here with chili flakes and ever since I've done that they haven't dug in the beds so I'm happy to say that so far that seems to be working over here likewise this was dug up the chili flakes by the way was after I came back from vacation so that's why you see it now this was dug around a bit and one potato was literally on the surface of the soil so I buried it again it should be fine but the cool thing here is that we are seeing a lot of growth all the potatoes have emerged they're starting to leaf out and I'm hoping to have a wonderful bumper crop of potatoes out of this bed the flowers basically haven't moved at all which is kind of weird I'm not sure if they're getting enough light especially this one back here might be a little bit buried but yeah potatoes are looking good not too worried about that I'm actually pretty happy to see that they are growing now over here we did these in ground tomatoes this is my most famous bed for getting dug up by raccoons multiple times all of these were fully caged before I left and they actually grew so much I had to remove the cage this last week and just like the tomatoes in ground they're actually just about the same size they look really happy and healthy really wonderful they put out a ton of new growth and likewise this bed got the chili flake treatment here because I definitely want to be eating the last of the lettuces that the raccoons left for me this cauliflower might actually happen now that the raccoons aren't messing with it anymore because they are getting a nose full of chili flakes but yeah this bed another success I'm very happy to see that everything's hanging in quite nicely there so there's one more update and that is the container potatoes so here are the containers and we'll just go ahead and dig through one of them just try to be careful oh okay there it is so here's the soil line let me get a little closer here's the soil this is the straw that we buried it in and here's one of the potato sprouts so it's literally maybe a half inch away from the surface of breaking through to the light so I'm happy to see that basically everything is alive it is growing especially the tomatoes have grown quite a lot that bed got trolled by raccoons but otherwise things are looking good so that's the two week update let me know if you guys want to see this again this wasn't the most dramatic difference but at least I'm able to show you guys some of the problems that might happen along the way like the raccoons that destroyed that bed back there everything else is looking really wonderful and they've put on a ton of growth and I'm very happy to see it so any questions drop them in the comments and I'll see you guys next time