Cleaning up the vegetable garden and planting broccoli and leeks

Hey everyone, it's Melissa here. Today, as you saw, we are working in the vegetable garden. I got all the tomato plants out. I did still leave some of our other summer fruits in there, so I left some basil. I left some peppers in there because they're still producing and I still have about a month and a half for it to actually continue to produce because our weather here is so mild. But I did want to get started on my fall crops, so I did bring in some leeks. I brought in some some broccoli, so we're going to get those planted. Oh, and I also I'm going to be planting some carrot seeds as well, so I wanted to get those things done, get the area cleaned up because this place is causing me a little bit of stress. It's not in its best shape this year. I've kind of neglected, but here's the thing. I notice if you're not fully satisfied with a spot, you're not going to take care of it with pride, and I think that's what's happening with this space this year. I'm not feeling it. I'm not feeling that it's it's working well for me, so I need to start kind of brainstorming a little bit and kind of figure out what I need to do this place to make it a place that brings me joy, a place that I want to be, and right now it's a chore. It's not a place I want to be, so we need to fix that because I love working in the garden and we want to be out here. So my vegetable garden is right off my back door. I'm walking out through here to my left. I have this beautiful arbor that I absolutely love, and this is my entrance into my vegetable garden. Now what I have growing over here is I have blueberries as a blueberry hedge over here. Now this side isn't so great, and the reason why is because I have a puppy who thinks that everything is his toy, so this has been a playground for him. So I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this area yet. I've been debating whether to replace these two and start anew, but I'm worried he's just going to do it again, so that's why I haven't done it. But these blueberries, as you can see on this side, they're absolutely gorgeous. These are called Bountiful Blue blueberries. They get about four feet tall, four feet wide, and it is just the hedges. It's absolutely gorgeous. It is growing in so nicely, but as you see, you walk into the entrance of my vegetable garden and I have some sorrel and some marigolds. I have my peppers over here. Over here, I have peppers. I had a tomato plant over here that I had ripped out, a few strawberries on this side as well. Then over here, I've just got a blank area. Now this is where I think I'm going to put the carrots. I've got it all dug up, really made sure I got the soil nice and loose. And over here, I don't know what I'm going to put over here just yet, but you can see there's the basil. Of course, I have all my strawberries all around it. And this section back here, this is actually my raspberry patch. Now, I put this in in the springtime and I'm not loving it. I'm not loving it over here. I find it's getting intertwined with the jasmine. The jasmine's growing into it, making it difficult to trim. So this is an area that I'm contemplating on whether I should keep it here or just remove it because it's causing me more stress than I really want in my life. So that's what I'm not too sure about, but we're not going to be working on that today. We're just going to be filling in some beds, not all of them, just some of them. So the leeks, I'm thinking about putting them right in this spot. The broccoli, I'm going to put over there. And carrots, I think are going to go right in here. They get up to 10 inches long, which is super exciting. So I did come over here, as you saw, with my pitchfork and I poked a lot of holes in here because carrots need the soil to be soft for it to grow as deep as it does. So that is why I did that. So I made sure I did that. Now, what I'm going to do is, this says it's planting, you know, every three inches in 12 inch rows. So at a depth of about one fourth of an inch. So what I'm going to do is actually, I'm going to just take my finger and just make a straight row right here. And I'm just going to pour the seeds in to my thing, to my rows and just cover it up. And then as it grows, I'm going to just thin it so it is the every three inches like it's asking it to be. Simple as that. All right, as you saw, I got everything planted. It's starting to look so good. So I got the broccoli planted, the leeks planted, the carrot seeds, the celery, not celery, spinach seeds as well. You know, I absolutely love having a vegetable garden. I think it is one of the most, one of my most prized possessions when my kids come outside, my husband comes outside, and we all just pick stuff from the garden. We go and you cook with it and use it and eat it and enjoy it. And I think that's so important for a yard. And it brings me so much joy. So I got to work on this space so that it brings me more joy than it already does. But this is definitely moving me in the right direction. So I hope you go into your yard and I hope that you find what brings you joy in your garden as well. Have a good day. Bye-bye.