7 CRITICAL Summer Garden Actions You Need to Take Today

What's going on growers? It's James Frigioni coming to you live from Jersey today. I'm going to share with you seven critical summer actions you need to take in your garden right now. Let's go! Spring is over, which means a lot of our cool season crops are ready to harvest, like this massive cauliflower. Look at the size of this thing. This is by far the biggest cauliflower I have ever grown. It's unbelievable. Let me harvest it right now. We're going to grab this cauliflower and that'll lead us into our first action we need to take at this time of the year. But look at this thing. It's so heavy. Oh my gosh. This is going to be so much food. Look at the size of that. Look at my hand. This is unbelievable. By far the biggest and heaviest cauliflower I have ever grown. And it's perfect. The shape, the color, harvested just at the right time. So ideally when we harvest our spring crops, we want to make sure we have some summer crops on deck to go in and replace it, like cucumbers. We can start them in seed cells. This way we can get them growing before we even harvest our cauliflower. Then transplant them in right after we grab our spring crop. This way there is no gap of time where we don't have something growing. So as the weather changes, we aren't fighting against it. We're using it to our advantage. If you don't have a summer crop on deck ready, you can still direct sow cucumbers or summer squash. They only take about 60 days to go from seed to harvest. Or you can get something like bush beans planted. They prefer to be direct sown and now is the perfect time to get them in the ground. Just pop nine in per square foot. It's quick and easy to do. In no time they will sprout and boy do they grow fast. Then only about 60 days after planting, you will be harvesting some perfect fresh beans that are delicious right off the plant. Now is when tomato plants really thrive. They're soaking up the sun and growing super quickly. We want to keep that rapid growth going and also support the plants as they fruit. Come in here. Like you see here. We've got some beautiful fruit forming right here. And then there's more down here. And even more as we go up some larger tomatoes right up here. So all the tomatoes are setting fruit. To help support these plants, we want to go by and give them a fertilizer, a top dressing of it, to make sure that they have the level of nutrition to keep growing, to keep setting fruit and to just take things to the next level. You can use either a all-purpose fertilizer like this one here or you could go with a more tomato specific fertilizer. Whatever one you want to use is up to you. Both work great but the important part is that as these plants are starting to switch from just growth into fruiting, we want to make sure that we're giving them the nutrition they need. For me it's easy to fertilize my tomatoes because I have them in this tomato trellis here. I can simply just add my top dressing to each plant, then mix the fertilizer into the top few inches of the soil and go back and water it all in. Tomato plants can develop a number of problems if we allow the soil to dry out too quickly. Uneven watering can lead to issues like blossom end rot where the bottom of our fruit essentially just rots. If we allow the soil to dry out too much and then come back with the heavy watering, that can also cause our tomatoes to split. To help prevent these issues, what I suggest you do right now is get down a thick organic mulch. For my annuals in my raised beds, I prefer to use a mulch that will break down quicker than wood chips. One that I can just put into my beds and if I leave some of it, it's okay. If a little bit gets mixed into the soil, then that's okay. If you mix wood chips into your soil, it's gonna have a soil stomachache. But if you use something like diced leaves or straw, those will break down quick and won't cause any issues if you mix a little into your soil. I will usually use diced leaves that I get in the fall and then I'll just go over them with a lawnmower. Actually, well, they're not diced leaves when I get them, but they're bagged leaves. I'll save them from the fall, dump out the bag, go over it with my lawnmower till they're all diced up and use that as a mulch. But this year I've got some extra straw, some straw that I was using to plant grass at the farm, so I'm going to use the straw this year. But like I said, you can use diced leaves. This kind of mulch, a more annual mulch like this, is really good. Jeff Lawton would say that annuals like a bacteria-dominated soil. So using a straw like this or diced leaves will create a highly bacteria-dominated soil, which is perfect. If you use more of a wood chip mulch, that's going to create more of a fungal-dominated soil. So I'm getting these annuals all mulched too. This will help retain all the moisture, keep the soil cool. And again, if some of this gets mixed into the soil, that's fine. It won't cause any issues. We'll just keep doing this. But I have to say when it comes to my tomatoes, I do like using a wood chip mulch. Over the years, I have found that a wood chip mulch really does work best for me when it comes to tomatoes. It truly keeps the soil very cool while also retaining the moisture for a very long period of time. Not having the sun beating directly on the soil allows the soil to dry out slow and evenly instead of just the surface drying out. After getting my wood chip mulch down around my tomato plants, I make sure to go by and give them a deep watering. That's the kind they like, not just a little sprinkling. I also make sure to water at the base and not get any leaves wet. I know the leaves will get wet when it rains, but as much as possible, we want to keep these leaves dry. That's another reason why growing our tomatoes vertical and pruning them is the most ideal way to grow them. To keep the leaves dry when the rain does come, they can dry out quickly because light and air are the enemy of disease and we want to keep these plants healthy. At this time of year, tomatoes grow so rapidly that you want to come out and prune and tie your tomatoes regularly. Probably like every other day. If you come right here, you'll notice we've got some small suckers. Again, we want to remove them when they're small. That's the best way to do it. So we'll just pop these off just by hand and then I'll take a clip. This is my favorite way to tie tomatoes with these clips. It makes it super simple. Then we'll just take a clip, push it on the back, and then support the tomato just like that. It's so easy to do as long as you come out here regularly. It's a simple task. It's an important one and it makes a big difference. Sometimes the heat in the summer is so brutal and the sun is so powerful that your plants simply can't take it. You'll start to see them get like weak and sad and flopping over and just becoming so stressed out and they just really need some relief. Fortunately, there's a very simple way to reduce the power of the sun and allow the plants to cope better with the heat. And it's a simple 40% shade cloth. So what I'll do is take a 40% shade cloth like this on those super hot days or even when I'm transplanting and drape it over my bed. What this does is it gives those plants that little bit of relief they need and it's not something you have to keep on the whole entire day. You can just keep it on for a few hours, allow the plants to kind of like take a breath and, you know, deal with the heat a little better and not be so stressed out. This will make it so on those hot days the plants are actually growing. They're not just surviving essentially. You'll also notice that underneath the shade cloth I have this insect netting on. This is the simplest and best cheap tool to make sure you don't have any pest issues. I'll take this off to show you. Look at these plants. I haven't sprayed one plant one time as I take this off. Look at the, look at the health of these plants. No bug bites. Beautiful kale. Look at that. I mean it's absolutely perfect. Kale over here. Gorgeous. All these plants are just in peak because no pests. Even right here we have a cabbage. This one actually looks like it snapped over here. But look at that. Beautiful cabbage. Don't have to worry about bugs when we keep this insect netting on. If you haven't been using insect netting though and you have some pests on your plants, don't let them just decimate them. Fight back. Some good options are if you have cabbage worms or even tomato hornworms, Bt is my favorite spray for that. It's organic and safe to use up to the day of harvest. If you have soft-bodied insects like aphids then I suggest using the safer soap. This stuff works fantastic and it's also safe to use. It's a, it's a really nice one. If you have problems with cucumber beetles or with squash vine borers, then I suggest you spray on your plants the Team Grow Plant Armor. This is a preventative so you want to do it before the cucumber beetles come. What you do is you spray these on the, this on the leaves for the cucumbers to keep off the cucumber beetles or on your squash. And then you could spray it on the stem of your squash or your cucumbers to help prevent the squash vine borer. The Team Grow Kale and Clay, the plant armor, it works great. As my plants continue to grow and these squash and cucumbers start to flower, I need them to be pollinated. So I need to remove that insect netting. You can also go by and pollinate your squash by hand with either a q-tip or using the male flower and bringing it over to the female. What we want to do is make sure we're getting good pollination for these plants. Now that they're protected, now that they have no bug bites or anything, they can thrive. They got past that susceptible stage when they're younger and they can start heading into production. But again, we got to remove that insect netting so the bees can come in and go to work. The last critical action that I want to get into doesn't seem like an action at first glance, but it's actually incredibly important and it's something you need to be doing right now. And it has to do with journaling what's going on in your garden. Journal when you first planted your stuff. Journal when you harvest it. Journal the issues you had and make sure you date them. This way, in the future, that can guide you on what's coming, how to prevent it, and what works the best in your location. Even journal the kind of plants that you're growing. Right here is a tomato. You can see it's got a lot of nice growth on it. This is the mushroom basket tomato. It's one of those beefsteaks that does fantastic for me every single year. Fortunately, I keep a journal in my notes on my phone. This way, I can just type in any word and then it brings me to that. I also have these videos to be able to reference too. But a journal is truly one of the most valuable things you could have. Bill Mollison would tell a story about how years ago, in like maybe the 1800s and 1900s early era, everyone would keep a journal of exactly what they did on their farm. So when the next person bought the farm, they could pass that down to them. That would be so incredibly helpful because we could even, when it comes to weather, we could look back at past weather when frosts come. But every location is just a little bit different. So if we keep our own personal records, it has such a higher value to be able to reference in the future. And I know I'm like, you know, maybe talking a lot about it, but if it's something you can take from this video, if anything you got from this video, take away journaling because it will help you so much in the future. That's today's video, Growish. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Make sure if you did enjoy the video, hit the like button. If you watch the video and you don't hit the like button, YouTube assumes that you just didn't like it. So if you do like it, make sure you hit the like button, share this with your friends, and share this with anyone who can find value in it that will encourage them to get out in the garden more, to keep gardening and to lead them to success. Because the more success you have in the garden, even little wins, makes it more encouraging. And that might keep someone growing next year and into the future. That's the goal, to get everyone growing, to be part of Team Grow and grow a better future together. I wanted to send a thank you to one of our new channel members, Mike Seward. Thanks for being a part of Team Grow, Mike. Thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here. The tomatoes, as you saw, are looking gorgeous. The health is incredible. We're grabbing massive cauliflowers. There's cabbage right behind me. Look at this cabbage. Come check this out. I didn't even show you. Look at that. Look how healthy it is. Look, perfect. Zero bug bites. Gorgeous. Ready to be harvested. There's so much dang food in here. When you grow things correctly, when you fertilize them, when you build good soil, when you protect them, not only do you get great harvests, but it just makes gardening so enjoyable, especially when you don't have to go out and spray your plants all the time. I hope you got value out of this video. I had a blast out here, and we'll be back to you with another one real soon. We out!