Homestead Summer Gardens Tour

Six months ago we started building and establishing a brand new homestead gardens and today we're at the point where we're harvesting from them almost daily. In fact today's goal is to harvest an entire meal from our gardens behind me. But we didn't get to that point by focusing on what wasn't working or waiting till the gardens look perfect. No, we started and we established little by little until we got to this point. So on today's video I'm going to take you on a complete summer gardens tour, show you what's working, show you what's growing and show you what we plan to eat tonight. All right so the plan today is we want to harvest a whole meal from our garden which we're definitely going to get more than a whole meal but we also kind of need to check on the status of things. It's been a couple of days since we've been in the garden and we've had a couple of days of massive rain so we want to see just what all that water has done to our gardens. I've just been up and turned our irrigation system off because I know they definitely don't need any more water but let's see how all the plants are coping. Well the first thing I'm noticing is when you don't get in your garden for a couple of days you end up with, especially if you're growing zucchinis, look at that! Now that's definitely chicken food that one there. You know I like them kind of this size so we might pick a couple of these smaller ones but once they get really big like that they start to kind of go a bit bland in flavour but the chickens love them. Okay something else I've just spotted over here which you might think could have been caused by over-watering but I mean these plants just suck up the water so really over-watering is going to be pretty hard for a zucchini but have a look in here at this fruit with its yellow end right here and if I was to give that a little squeeze yeah that's starting to that's starting to get real soft so that's starting to get a little bit of rot on the end of it and there's a few potential culprits. Now if I saw that that was just a tiny little fruit and the whole thing had yellowed I would know that's a pollination problem and one of the issues with your zucchini plant is with these big huge leaves sometimes they block access to the pollinators your bees and that being able to find all these flowers. Look here's a really good example we've got a fruit coming up here this is a female flower on the end of a fruit bees need to get in here and pollinate this fruit if it stayed that size and went yellow I would know that basically that flower hadn't been pollinated that's not what's going on here so because this fruit has started to develop and then started to yellow off I know the issue is going to be a form of calcium deficiency and the reason I know that is because I've also got that going on over on my tomatoes so let's go and have a look at our tomatoes as well. Well I am super stoked with how these tomatoes are growing they are growing brilliantly and we're getting these big huge bunches this variety of tomato here is called a San Marzano and they are definitely starting to get ready for picking like oh that one there oh that is so fresh and juicy a San Marzano is a great sourcing tomato so we're going to take a few of these bunches and make some sauces out of them but over the back here I've got your typical gross lease variety of tomato and I'll show you what's going on with them and why I know I've got a calcium problem in my gardens come around here so if you have a look at these tomatoes here look on the bottoms of them here and you can see this brown patch right here a little bit in there and here let's pick this one is a classic example of blossom end rot now that is a calcium deficiency the fact that it's happening here on my tomatoes and up there on my zucchinis tells me that I've got a problem with a lack of calcium in my gardens and that's not a surprise to me these are brand new gardens and some of the ways that you find out what your mineral and nutrient deficiencies are is by observing what's going on with the plants so we're just going to do a calcium amendment to these garden beds obviously our soil doesn't have a naturally high component of calcium to them so we'll just add that into the gardens and then these guys will recover just fine something else to point out that we're doing with our tomatoes is companion planting now you've probably heard of companion planting and one of the easiest forms of companion planting to remember is if it goes together it grows together so think tomato and basil goes awesome together on a pizza and so they're a great companion plant and so they do actually complement each other in the garden protecting each other feeding each other looking after each other another form of companion for tomatoes is borage so have a look down on the corner here we've got this one just coming up we just started this from seeds now borage is a blue flower and it's going to attract a whole lot of beneficial insects to this area not only for pollinating the flowers here but it's going to attract things like parasitic wasps these tiny little miniature wasps that are going to take care of some of the the insects that we don't want in our gardens so just honestly just jump online and google you know companion plants and there is a whole chart of things you can plant together but an easy one tomatoes and basil all right so speaking of companions we've got beans right here at the bottom of this little teepee trellis that we've made up and they've just started shooting up some of their leaders that need to grab on i'm wondering what i might do is actually just add another i don't need it for structure but just another little bit of wire or string here is going to help that bean find its way up otherwise it's going to kind of sprawl out here all over the ground and the reason that beans are an awesome companion is i've got them right next to corn corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder so it's going to draw a lot of nitrogen out of the ground your beans are going to draw a lot of nitrogen out of the atmosphere and plug it straight back into the ground so they are awesome to plant together i always just keep a roll of this twine in the gardens because um i use it for tying up my tomatoes giving the beans something to grab onto and this kind of jute twine is awesome because when it breaks down it just rots into the garden and it's totally natural all right oh look can you see this one over the back this is doing oh i just pulled it off that is doing exactly what it's supposed to do so it's found a little branch to climb up i mean that one could probably find it too but let's just give it a little helping hand awesome perfect and then if we just help that one kind of find its way that's cool it'll find its way up there so this is a block of corn that we started maybe about a month ago and the thing about all of your veggies in your veggie garden when you're planning out where you want to put them is think about two things think about pests and not putting all of the same species or family of species all together if you can kind of mix and match it quite a lot you're going to add some confusion to those pests when they come in if they can only find one or two plants at a time so we've planted our corn and blocks that really helps for pollination and i've got a block here i've got a block over there block there another block way back there and the second thing is succession so i started this block of corn and then a couple of weeks later i started that one and then a couple of weeks after that i started that one and the advantage of that is when i go to harvest from the first patch of corn which we're going to check out right now then i know two weeks after we've eaten all this corn i'm going to have some ready just over there as well and we can do that throughout the entire season all right how do you know when your corn's ready come down here and i'll show you so a few things that are going to tell you your corn is ready first of all i would encourage you get out while your corn is growing and check out some of the smaller ears and i don't really have any on here but you can give them a squeeze and you can start to feel that cob developing and then as it develops the kernels on that cob it's just going to swell up and you're going to be able to feel the difference so that's the first thing so i already know that's feeling nice and swollen and full of kernels but how do i know that they have all developed fully into maturity well these are the tassels or the silks and these little silks are what the pollen falls from above from these flowers at the top of the plant comes down and fertilizes the silks here and each one of these silks there's one little thread for every single kernel of corn on that cob in there and so that's how that pollination is going to happen so the the silks being brown like that tells me that they have done their job they're ready if they were sort of that kind of vibrant color there this one over here might still have a little ways to go now i can just peel it open and have a little look so really carefully so don't break the cob off the off the plant yet because if it's not ready you want to be able to kind of leave it to go but if i open that up or i've got something nasty that's been getting in look at all that squishy material there i reckon i've had a little caterpillar kind of find its way in there luckily this grows all really tight and bunched together so yeah they might get a little free feed on the end there but we can peel this open and look at that beautiful yellow kernels there on the plant okay ignore the end there we're going to cut that off that won't matter the final test before you break this off so you give these a little squeeze and if the liquid that comes out of them is milky white they are ready to eat if it's clear they've still got a little ways to go and what you could do is just fold that back up again it's going to be perfectly safe in there you know if you needed to you could put a string or a peg on that but it'll be fine to keep developing but i can already tell i mean i knew straight away from those silks being the color they were but this one here is well and truly ready to go and of course look at that look at that the final test oh my gosh that is so sweet i don't even want to cook that and i'm going to be honest i'm going to struggle bringing this corn back to the kitchen it's not going to make it that was so delicious all right we'll save you talking about beneficial insects a little ladybug here this is exactly can you see her yeah oh there she goes so ladybugs are awesome in the garden they are aphid eating machines now you want to make sure it's not the dreaded 28 spotted ladybug and that's pretty easy just get in and count the spots but it's pretty easy to see this one's only got six or eight spots and so she's going to be doing an awesome she i assume she's a ladybug she's going to be doing an awesome job of just munching on all those aphids and i know i've got aphids in these gardens because we have let some of our brassicas go a bit too long and i've done that intentionally so come over here i want to show you what's going on with our brassicas now these broccoli are obviously not going to be any good in fact i've totally lost the mid sections out of them where the heads would form and you would kind of think well why don't you rip those out like look at them they're scotty they're gross and they're obviously attracting a whole lot of pests and if i was to get in under here yeah look look at all those little soft bodied pests munching away and eating on those plants here so i'm kind of counting on some of the beneficial insects coming in and dealing with this problem and you might kind of go well why why not just rip the plant out and then you don't have the problem in the first place we started brassicas a little bit too late and so really they're a cold season plant and so that's kales broccolis cauliflowers kohlrabi a bunch of plants like that we had to go at them anyway because i kind of hoped that some of them would go to seed and i'd be able to collect seed for next year but when i saw this happening i was actually pretty happy about it because we're establishing brand new gardens in this area there are a whole bunch of pests insects aphids things that have probably never really been in this area in great numbers before and what i don't have therefore is the cycle of beneficial insects that are going to come in after those pests and deal with those problems so if i can leave these in the ground late sacrifice the plants i know i'm already not going to get anything out of them anyway what i'm doing is encouraging those populations of beneficial insects to move into the area so come next season when i plant all of these plants out again in their proper time i'm going to have that cycle already initiated and i'm but something i wanted to show you right here on the ends of our garden beds are our pumpkins and our bananas now it's not super typical to grow bananas in a veggie garden you'd probably include that out in your fruit food forest or your orchard area but i'm growing bananas here because we're attempting a style of gardening called syntropics or syntropic agroforestry and one of the tenets of syntropics is that you're growing multi-story species that all provide different benefits to each other and one of the advantages of the banana plant is it's fast growing it's quick to establish it produces a whole heap of mulch material and so once this plant has done its job we're going to do a chop and drop and that's going to mulch and provide a whole lot of extra nutrient to our gardens but in establishing really quickly we call this one a pioneer species and your pioneer species come up really quickly and provide canopy straight away so i'm going to be able to in the middle of summer heat grow some really shade loving plants now i've got carrots under here at the moment but i'm going to be able to grow things like spinaches and lettuces that i normally wouldn't ever attempt in the middle of summer because this banana plant is providing this tiny little microclimate of shade and shelter and structure right here in this end zone of our garden beds the other thing that it's doing is it's got this awesome big tap and it's sucking up a whole bunch of nutrients from the ground so once it's done its job and it's chopped and dropped right here into the gardens all those nutrients are going to be provided straight to the plants growing more surface level here in the understory the other thing we're doing right here on the ends of all our garden beds is where our gardens area meets our i guess lawn grass area i don't want those grasses encroaching i don't want to have to kind of mow and whip a snip and deal with that i mean i could if i had heaps of time but i could also use what a pumpkin's going to do to my advantage and the thing that a pumpkin does is it sprawls and it shades out absolutely everything underneath itself so i've got these big massive umbrellas of leaves right here on the ends of my garden beds that are shading out all of those grasses right below it so they're going to grow with kind of leading those vines up every time i come out here i just make sure they're not creeping in on the gardens i'll just pull those vines out they're going to grow up and down the ends of our gardens area and they're going to keep that grass at bay give me a nice little kind of protection from the outside world there things like my little clan of wallabies that are in the area they're going to come up to something like this and go ah that's too hard to get through and so they probably won't even bother but the other advantage of course is i'm getting pumpkins now i've got a little problem here and that is i sewed these carrots really close together and i just didn't have a whole heap of time to come through and thin them out and so that's where you'd sew a whole drill or a whole line of carrots you'd come out as they were starting to establish and you'd kind of pluck out every second one or two out of every three just to make sure they had lots of space well they've all come up together and the problem with that is they're going to be encroaching on each other's space and so they just don't have the room to kind of swell and develop so we're about midway through where our carrots should be as far as development goes i'm going to see if i can find some bigger ones that we can actually eat and that's going to leave room for the smaller ones to come up so if you have a look in here these are all real close together and i can tell straight away by some of these stalk sizes look at the back here i've got a really thick stalk but i reckon i'm going to pull that up and it's going to be look at that it almost looks like you can start to pull it up it looks like it's going to be a big huge carrot here's my bet it's going to be real short oh that's not too bad that's actually pretty decent i mean i would kind of want it to be a bit longer but i reckon i'm going to find there's a bunch like that where they're looking good on the top they're not too bad to be honest with you and i'm looking for i'm looking at stalks you can probably see the difference down in here that looks really thick and developed so i'm going to give that one a go and see yeah see it's kind of getting to the right thickness on the top and that's one of the ways you can tell if your carrots are ready before you even pull them out you're just looking at that top section there that's poking out of the dirt and that'll give you an indication that it's ready but when i pull it out it's super short because it's just struggling for space in there you've obviously spotted our sunflowers in the background come over here i want to show you why we're growing sunflowers and this kind of like serendipitous little companion planting that we we've come across this would be the number one reason that i love sunflowers so our beehive is only about 100 meters in that direction and these sunflowers just get loaded with bees so obviously these are awesome for pollinators they're definitely like that bright vibrant is just going to attract them right into the middle of the gardens you do have to be careful like sunflowers are a really greedy selfish plant and they again they're one with a big huge taproot and they're going to suck up all those nutrients for themselves so as much as possible i want to chop and drop this material once these flowers have done their job i kind of want those stalks and stems going right back onto my gardens if not just through the compost but here's this little advantage we found of sunflowers quite by accident come down here so right beneath this awesome kind of canopy of big huge umbrella shaped leaves here i've got celery and for me like this is way too late in the year to be growing celery so celery is definitely one of those colder season or shoulder season plants it does much better in the cold but here under the shade of this look at all this shade i'm in the full sun right here and this celery is super well protected and it doesn't seem to be having a hard time with whatever nutrients that it's friend the sunflower right beside it is kind of sucking up out of the ground it is doing awesome and if you have a look in there look at all those delicious celery stalks and so that's just one of those things where you think kind of multi-story multi-structure and a plant that can provide a benefit to another plant like shade even though it's obviously taking nutrients from beside it it's allowing me to grow the celery well late into the season here's how i know kind of plants that do better in colder seasons if i think about what i like to eat at winter time so when i think about like roast dinners and stews and soups start to think about some of the ingredients that go in that celery pumpkin potatoes peas all of those kind of wintery sort of vegetables they're the ones that you grow in winter or in your off seasons they don't typically do well in the summer but this little celery is loving life right here and of course another advantage to your sunflowers this one's nearly done all the all the petals are coming off of it but another advantage is going to be all of these hundreds and hundreds of seeds that we get off it now the disadvantage is the king parrots and the cockatoos know about these as well so there's a few hanging around here that have already had all their heads completely munched off so you know you're going to lose some to the wildlife well we had such a huge response to the property tour video that we made a couple of weeks ago and if you haven't had a chance to watch that one already click on the link up here if you want to check that one out and we had literally hundreds of questions and comments on that video and we've tried to get to each and every single one of them so we're in the process of filming a part two and that'll come out in the next week or two but in the meantime we've launched a patreon page so thank you to those of you who have already got behind what we're doing and joined us over on patreon and patreon's where we plan to keep the conversation going i'll admit it's a little bit hard trying to keep up with all of the comments and questions here on youtube we do our best to try and answer every single one we get but we've launched a discord server which is connected to our patreon page which has all the behind the scenes stuff early access to the video ad free all of that sort of stuff so if that's something you think you might want to get behind if you feel like you're a rustic spirit too then join us over on our patreon page the links down below come and check out these garlic i know these are almost ready for two reasons one because they've developed their scapes so they come up like this to start with this little shape they'll swell up then they split these little outer shells off and what you're left with are these bunches and bunches of little flowers on the top so garlic can propagate itself in two ways one there is a garlic seed but normally you're going to propagate garlic by taking the individual cloves planting an individual clove and then it swells into a whole garlic plant that's how we establish these ones but these are awesome to just kind of pick and sprinkle on a salad they're totally edible flowers and they taste like mini little garlic poppers so you can actually eat those so the other reason that i know this garlic is almost ready is because the dates are super easy to remember you plant it on the shortest day of the year so for us in the southern hemisphere that's in june and you harvest it on the longest day of the year so that's coming up in about a week's time towards the end of december one final check that i can do on my garlic to see if it's ready is to see whether or not those cloves have started to form so when the garlic forms particularly if you've planted it just from a single clove it's going to form a single bulb and then the reason that it wants that nice cold season development initially is that helps it to split into multiple cloves and i can check the top of the garlic plant so coming down here and i can just pull away a little bit of that soil the whole root system is off the bottom of the garlic and it's going straight down so i'm really not disturbing anything by having a look in here and i can just get my finger on the top of the plant there and have a little bit of a feel and i'm feeling for those ridges of those individual cloves and i can definitely feel that has developed quite nicely that's a good size there i'm gonna leave it because i know it's got a good week or so to go but they are pretty much nearly ready to come up all right last thing we want in our dinner tonight is a salad so i've got some beetroot right here now i predominantly grow beetroot for the leaves and the stalks we love them in a salad but obviously you're going to get your actual beetroot too so they are well and truly ready to come up we'll roast those or pickle those but what i really want are these leaves without disturbing the plant and especially these juicy young leaves i can come in here cut a bunch of those to go straight into a salad and that plant's just going to grow a stack more leaves in place of these anyway well that is awesome i've got a whole basket full of food that's going to go into tonight's dinner and look the point is we didn't get here by starting with already established gardens we started completely from scratch including clearing all the area but we just did it little by little we're at the point now where we've almost completely replaced our fresh produce grocery bill but i wouldn't call us totally self-sufficient yet and look 100 self-sufficiency is a pipe dream it's not entirely achievable the point is number one just start you know there's a million reasons not to start growing your own food but it's super easy just head out to the nursery buy one little tomato plant my very first garden was a tomato plant in a pot on a balcony in an apartment and look at where we are today so just start and add to it little by little you don't have to build your entire gardens in one season we're kind of two nearly three seasons into this garden and i'd say we've got a little bit more expansion to go you just go little by little hey thanks for joining us on this video look forward to seeing you again next week don't forget check out our patreon down below and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already