Greenstalk Garden Tour ｜ Growing Food in 10 Square Feet!

Hey there darlings, welcome to Roots and Refuge Farm. Today I'm going to do a different kind of garden tour. I had a comment the other day and someone said, hey why don't you give us a tour of your green stalk garden. I have my little rainbow of green stalks here set up on my patio in the middle of my big garden. And I don't know why it's never occurred to me to give you a tour and show you each plant and what's growing. But I think that's a really good idea. Especially considering the fact that I've been tagged in at least a couple dozen posts on various social media accounts in the last couple weeks. Because green stalk is having their biggest sale of the year, their big Mother's Day sale. That's still going for a handful of days. And I know a lot of you are having your first green stalks on their way to you or you purchased them as a gift for the moms in your life. So yeah, I figured I would show you what I'm doing and give you an idea of what you can do in yours and kind of talk about my experience. I've done a lot of content on green stalks over the years. I think I got my first one, it was at some point in 2018. So it's been quite a while. My mom still has that green stalk. And it's still in excellent shape. I gave them to her when we moved 700 miles across the country just to have one less thing to move. But they hold up for a really long time. It's an American run and American made product. Family owned business out of Knoxville, Tennessee. I have really great things to say about them. Both the people who run the business and the product itself. Lots of people are growing on green stalks because it takes up about two square feet. So you can do this on a patio, you can do it on a back porch. And obviously space is not my issue. But I really like being able to show them to people. And I also really like them for certain things. So a few details about the sale before we jump in to actually what's growing in my green stalks. The Mother's Day sale is their biggest sale of the year. They have lots of different planters marked down. I know I was looking through my email that they sent this morning. And the three tier planter is actually I think like $59 right now. The five tier planters work up to being close to $100. They have a lot of the accessories on sale. And for purchases, I believe it's $75 and above, you can stack my coupon code ROOTS10 to get an additional discount on top of the sale. They let you stack that. So definitely really great prices. I was looking at the three tier this morning because I have a little one in my garden again with some of our family moving on to the farm. Little Harlow is here. And I was thinking, oh, this would be the perfect little garden for a small person. Yeah, I might have to throw a $59 three tier in my cart because that would just be so cute to give a little kid like a green stalk and they can reach the whole thing. So anyway, the link's down below to the sale. It's going until May 11th. So if you want to grab one for the mom in your life or if you are the mom and you want to grab one for yourself, definitely maybe throw a little plant shopping in on top of that. I think that would be a darling gift. I know I would be happy to get it. Just to show you a little bit about what's possible, last year we had one green stalk garden planter up in our herb garden that we had planted. My son, Ben, ended up kind of commandeering it. And it was just a multi-planter of multiple things. I just want to show you one single time that we went out and harvested. It was not the only time, but one single time we went out and harvested from that planter. I think that this is pretty impressive. I just harvested them. Check it out. That's a whole green stalk harvest right there. It's been very hot this week and very stormy and rainy. My plants are looking just a little puny. I'm going to let them go a little longer, but the cucumbers are really starting to struggle with the heat. And if it looks like they're not setting any more flowers, I may pull some of the spent plants out and replant so I can keep getting big harvests from the green stalk. That's pretty good right there. That's a good deal of food. You ready to take it in, make a salad? Maybe. Maybe. You just want to eat them? I mean, that's pretty awesome, don't you think? Anyway, let's take a look at my green stalk gardens. I'll show you what I'm growing in about 10 square feet of my patio. I think these two look the most impressive right now. They've just been planted the longest, so we're going to come back to them. I'll save those for last. Okay, so I actually have one over here that's empty, and I filled that up, and my plan was to catch strawberry runners and transfer them into that and do another strawberry green stalk. I may still do that. However, today I was actually online, and I saw just in one of the Facebook group posts it popped up. There's a whole Facebook group dedicated to green stalk gardening where I have been really inspired. I think I had had green stalks for maybe like three years or so before I joined that Facebook group, and when I did and saw just how much people were doing with them, I was like, wow. Because I had pretty much at that point grown strawberries and greens. That was mostly what I had done. I had experimented with a little bit. I had grown some flowers and stuff, but I love salad greens in them because it keeps them clean. They're easy to pick, and because the watering system where you put the water in the top and it disperses throughout the tower, you don't have a bunch of splash back. But, yeah, it's great to go out and pick a salad. So I've always liked to, especially in the winter, keep a green stalk up by my house that I can run out and grab salad greens, and I love them for strawberries. We'll get to that. But when I saw all these people doing all these cool things, I was like, man, I'm really not pushing the limits here. I got to step up my game. Today, though, I saw a post where somebody was using their green stalk to grow sweet potatoes, so I just searched it up and found several accounts of people using the green stalk where they plant the whole thing with sweet potatoes. And people were saying that they get in the range of about 20 pounds for the whole planter planted in sweet potatoes. And 20 pounds of sweet potatoes, obviously, you may be like, oh, that's just not a whole lot. But that's 20 pounds of food that you didn't have that you're growing in two square feet. I am going to put some sweet potatoes this year in the ground, but I'm not going to give them as much space as I normally do. And I thought that might be really fun. Plus, I think it would look really, really cool because sweet potatoes go wild here. So my plan was strawberries for this guy, but I'm starting to lean towards maybe doing that differently. I don't know. Have you guys grown sweet potatoes in yours? Is that something? Can you all give me your experience of that? My sister-in-law also has a green stalk that I bought her as a gift a little while ago. She ended up moving shortly after. She hadn't set it up. She moved out here and lives in her RV on our property. And she actually just went and picked herself up some soil at the store the other day. And she's going to set hers up. She asked if she could put it up here next to the other ones. And I was like, yeah, sure, of course. So I'll have another. I think hers is blue. I can't remember what color I ended up buying her. It's still in the box, but I'm pretty sure it's the dark blue. So I get the benefit of having another color here. So for these three, I've got the green five-tier original. This is the razzleberry. This is the limited edition color that's back for the Mother's Day sale right now. So pretty, like really, really pretty magenta pink. And then this is the basket weave five-tier original, like baby pink. You can see the basket weave. So these three are kind of like a mixed garden, meaning that I planted an array of things. I have my one over there that's fully dwarf tomatoes. And I've got mine all on the spinners here. Some of them I have on wheels. Some of them I don't. And actually, I need to move these two because I have a nest of birds in the awning of this. It's really inconvenient. And after the babies fledge, we're going to take it down and seal it up where they can't get up in there again next year. But they are pooping on my stuff, and I do not love that. So I'm actually going to have Maya help me move these. I don't trust myself to push these even though they're on wheels over this flagstone because it definitely has some uneven spots, and I would just feel better with his help. But I think I'm just going to move them out of the way, out of this corner where the birds are coming in and out. I have some things in here that haven't come up yet. I've just put bush beans in a lot of these empty spots. There's bush green beans. Last year, I did a green stalk like this where I just did a mix of lots of different plants, and I put it back by my herb garden. And one of the things that I was most impressed with in that was bush beans. Now, I was looking online, and I think the consensus of most people is that you can put up to three beans per pocket, meaning you would have three plants growing. Last year, I did some with one and some with two. I didn't even try three because I just assumed that would make them compete too much. And my observation with one versus two was that the pockets that just had one plant in it produced about as much as the two plants together in the other pocket. And that's just kind of how it is when you're growing plants. Like, if you plant things closer together, they're competing for resources. And when they're competing for resources, they're going to produce either smaller yield, like smaller amount, or smaller fruits. And so this time, I just put one per pocket, and I just planted several pockets. I did see a tip that said—hold on, let me find this girl's YouTube. I remember that it was something Florida, but I want to make sure I tell you guys right. I'll put a link to her channel. When I saw the sweet potato thing, I did a search, and I found a YouTube channel called Homegrown Florida Z9A. And she was doing a video kind of rating the vegetables for her green stuff planter. And there were a couple things that, like, she was talking about how she doesn't do tomatoes in hers anymore. I really like doing dwarf tomatoes in mine. But she talked about the sweet potatoes and was saying she will always do that. So I was like, okay, that's really cool. But one tip she said about green beans that I was like, that is so smart is when your beans, when you start harvesting, I think she said when you start harvesting, put another bean into the pocket. And that way, when you're done harvesting, that next plant is coming up. So you can cut the first plant off, and you have another plant growing behind it. So you don't have to wait until your first plant is petered out in order to plant another one. And that way, you can succession sow your green beans and your green stock all through the season. I thought that was really smart. So I'll link her channel, or I'll link that video, and then you can find her channel and the video. Because it had some really good information in it. She was also talking about inoculation and stuff like that. So y'all can go check that out. So all of these pockets, you can't see anything. Those are obviously just going to be bush beans. Right here, I have a cucumber that I planted in here. I have a cucumber and a watermelon. And some of these do not have tags. The watermelon is called Mini Love. It's an F1 hybrid, and it's a personal sized watermelon. Now, I have personally found that I really like growing dwarf, mini, patio, bush varieties. I think that was an animal sneeze. I don't know what that was. Anything that's labeled like that, that's made specifically for growing in containers, obviously is going to do better in containers. And when you're growing in a green stock, you just need to have container growing mentality. Meaning that you need to water it a lot, you need to feed it a lot, and you need to plant things that are more inclined to grow in smaller spaces. So with the Mini Love watermelon, I'm trying it in a couple of my garden beds on a trellis. I actually think that's the cucumber. Let me look. Cucumbers and watermelons look really similar until they get to a certain point. Oh yeah, that's the watermelon right there. That's, you can see the different shape of the leaf. I have to see them side by side when they're small to know the difference. So yeah, I put the Mini Loves down. I was just thinking, I put the Mini Loves down towards the bottom because I don't know how much they're going to run. And so my thought was, okay, it can run out here. Now that's obviously going to become problematic with turning these. But these aren't up against like a wall or anything. I like having them on a turner if I've got them pushed up against something because then I can turn it daily and make sure they're getting equal exposure and all of that. It's less important when you've got it out in the open like this where it's getting equal sun on both sides. So the Mini Love watermelons are down on the bottom. And then these are the Quick Snack Cucumber. Also a mini variety that is meant for containers. I grew these in the green stock last year. And I ended up taking the plant support that goes around that just clicks on. And I would take the cucumbers out and kind of spin them around it. And I harvested, I just had one of the plants in last year because I was just trying to test it out. And I harvested probably, it was at least 20 cucumbers off of that plant. Of course I stayed on top of watering and feeding. To get cucumber harvest out of a container, you really have to do that. You have to make sure they have ample water and ample food. Planted more plants this year, so I'm kind of curious to see how that goes. I do always keep in mind when I'm planting these what the root system is going to be like. And sometimes I disregard, I mean that whole entire green stock is all dwarf and micro tomato plants. So they're just going to fill the whole tiers up with their roots. But there are certain things, like I have mint over here. We'll get to that, I'm getting ahead of myself. Mint is perennial, and it's perennial in a green stock too, it's perennial in a container. And that, this year I've got some tomatoes in there, I've got some basil in the same tier. But by next year, that mint is going to really invade the rest of that tier. But mint's a bully, it takes over every space that it is, but at least here it is contained. So with the quick snack cucumber, I did not do any tiers where I had more than one in each one. Because they are pretty heavy feeders, and so there's one here, there's one down here. I don't remember how many I put on here, I think it was just the two. Yeah, just two, I just put two or three per planter. So I have several different varieties of tomatoes. All the tomatoes in these are the same varieties that are down in that one. I started them all from seed, so I'll go through the varieties when we get down there. This is some purple basil, he looks like he got a little sunburn when I put him in here. This tomato, I just told you I wasn't going to talk about varieties, but I can't help myself. This is a tumbling tomato called patio choice yellow. So it is meant to hang like this. Now, I could probably use a plant support and give him a little bit. But, you know, it's not complaining, it looks fine, it's setting a lot of fruit. As you can see here, a little cluster of flowers here. So I'm kind of thinking we're just going to let it tumble. Here I have a couple of sunflowers. These are pro-cut sunflowers. So they're actually meant to be grown fairly close together to be cut smaller to be used in flower arrangements. Whenever you put plants closer together, they grow smaller. That is the case for flowers also. So if I were to take this exact variety of sunflowers, pro-cut sunflowers, and if I were to plant them in my raised beds 12-18 inches apart, the heads would get a lot bigger. Now they wouldn't get mammoth size because they aren't bred for that. That's not their genetics. But they would get larger, whereas planting two together here in this greenstalk, they're not going to grow as tall, and the heads will probably be more like this, I would guess. We'll see. We'll figure it out together. But my thought was, with all this being really full, I just thought it would be really pretty to have some sunflowers sticking out. I love putting sunflowers in my garden beds, so why not throw them in my greenstalks too? So the tomatoes, the sunflowers, oh, here's one more thing here. So this is called French Quarter Okra. It is an okra, which you can kind of see it has pretty pink stems. You can tell there. But the okra itself is like hot pink, which I'm about that. You'll notice there's two in this pocket. I will actually trim one of these off. I probably could now. It's just I moved them out here when they were fairly small. I had started them from seed. And a lot of times I'll start a couple of seeds in one container, and I'll even transplant them out that way, especially before they have their first real leaves, so that if one of them dies for some reason, I've got another one right there. So I think one okra per pocket is probably best as far as yield on that plant goes. I don't know. I planted okra in some of the other ones. Maybe I could try doing two to just see. That variety, French Quarter, is a more compact okra. So it said that full size, it's like three to four feet. So I expect it will probably grow on the lower end of that being in a container. This is my first time doing okra in the green stump. My mom's done it before. She's done all kinds of stuff. She grows entirely in containers. So I think she's like less cautious. She's just like, what the heck, just throw something in there. All right, over to my pink. These have a lot of the same things in them. Here I've got the quick snack cucumber. I have two in here, same thing. I moved some of these out without like really hardening them off super well. So I was like, well, we'll put both of them in. I had started them in the same cell and it was kind of survival of the fittest. It looks like they both survived. So I'm probably going to have to cut one of those off. More micro dwarfs, more tumbling tomatoes. Here is the mint. Isn't that pretty? This is pineapple mint is what it's called and it is variegated. I don't know if it's pineapple-y. I would say it's kind of got a little bit of acidic tropical note. I don't know that it's really pineapple, but it's pretty and it's variegated. And I love that. I just didn't want to put it anywhere in my garden. I already have like a whole section of my cottage garden. It's that's huge. And that's completely overrun with mint because some of it got in there and it will take over a space. So I have more mint that could possibly need. And I didn't want to put this in any other bed because I knew it would take it over. I did want to have it. So I figured this would be a good place to grow it. I am prepared for the fact that it is probably going to take over this whole tier of the green stock, you know, in coming years. I did a little bit of regular basil in here. I accidentally ripped this one up whenever I was picking at stuff in here. That's okay. Oh, there's a little jumping spider. Hello, friend. More little tomatoes, more tumbling tomatoes, couple more sunflowers here. I thought I had done another. Oh, there's another French quarter okra. That's just one. I thought I had put in another mini love watermelon, but I guess I didn't. Or I did and something pulled it out. It doesn't look like it. I don't know. There's a little root. Maybe I did put it in here. So I didn't put beans in this one yet. I wanted to leave some spaces and that's kind of today I was looking around trying to decide if there was anything else I want to plant. Again, if you have any suggestions, I would love to try them. I still do have some space. So here you can see my mind change part of the way through planting. So I had thought I'll just do another tomato green stock because that one was starting to look really impressive. And I thought I'll just do another one. So the top two tiers here are entirely tomatoes. And even the third tier is a lot of tomatoes because I had started that. And then it occurred to me, hey, maybe I should mix it up a little bit. So you can literally see the change of mind that happened here. I got lots of little more dwarf tomatoes here. Purple opal basil. This is the quick snack cucumber. These are actually a couple little zinnias. Cut and come again zinnias. I wanted to try those in here. Just very curious how those are going to go. I think it could be really pretty when this is really full to have those sticking out. If we come down here, more dwarf tomatoes. There's another French quarter okra. So this was me just experimenting. I did two side by side. I may have to support these some to keep them upright. I have the supports. I have the ones that stick in and the ones that clip on and kind of go around like a ring. But I'm just going to see what things need. That's why I haven't set anything up because I wanted to see how things grow out. And then here's a couple more sunflowers. I think I did different kinds of sunflowers to have a variety. They're all the Pro Cuts, but they're different colors. And then there's the mini love watermelon. Look at that. That's beautiful. Alright, strawberries. So strawberries in the green stalk were my first love. It was my first actually ever strawberries that I grew successfully were in a green stalk. I had a really hard time with them when I lived in Arkansas because their soil was so rocky there. But now I have a lot in the ground. But I still like to have the strawberry green stalks right here in the pavilion. Because it's just so nice to have snacks handy. So first let's try this. Mmm. That is really good. It's really ripe. So I say red all the way through. This one's just the tiniest bit pale in the middle. But still extremely ripe. More flavorful and ripe than you get at most grocery stores. You would think I would have had my fill of strawberries. Because we've eaten so many over the last three or four weeks. But there's no such thing for me. So the varieties I have in here. I don't even know what they all are. I dug them up out of other places in my garden. So there are two kinds of strawberries you can buy. You can buy June Bearing or Ever Bearing. June Bearing they don't necessarily bear in June. It depends on where you live. But they come on all at once. Whereas Ever Bearing continue to set flowers and set berries. I know a lot of mine are Ozark Beauty. I have some called Buried Treasure that I got. There's another one called Ozark. But I can't remember what it's name is. But I have obviously a huge array of them. For the Green Stalks I prefer to do Ever Bearing. I like having some June Bearing in the ground. Because obviously when they all do come on and flush really hard. I'm kind of like in strawberry mode. And I've put up just tons of pints of strawberry jam. Over the last few weeks I just put the whole year's worth of strawberry jam up. While they're coming like crazy. But the point of the Green Stalks is not really to produce for preserving for me. It's really to have them out here for snacking. Like that doesn't have very many on it right now. But it's probably already put off. I mean at least probably a couple of quarts of strawberries. Which is quite a bit for plants that I just put in there this year. I mean I just pulled those from other places. I had had some in other Green Stalks that I had pulled into here. But we had taken a lot of them apart and put them in the ground last year. To rearrange some things. And yeah. So they just really got. They weren't one year old plants. But they just kind of went through the upheaval of being moved. Now the ones with the pink blossoms. These are the Berry Treasures. There are some varieties that have the pink blossoms. And then some varieties have the white blossoms. And as you can see here. We've got lots of berries coming soon. My kids actually usually strip these. Oh there's a couple. A little backlit berry picking. The photographer in me loves that. I actually get to eat very few of the berries that come off of here. This is a little weird looking one. My kids will come out here looking for me. And just stand here and eat all the fruit. While they're asking me like what's for dinner. You know. Things like that. Mmm. That one was so good. So I also have the strawberry cups here. That these are included in the sale. I want to say they're like $16 for the set of them. Or something like that right now. But what these are for. Is for catching runners. So the way strawberries grow. And I don't have any doing it right now. But they will send out runners. Which is long stems that root wherever. And obviously if these are growing in the ground. They root into wherever they land. But here you just take them. And you pin them down into obviously soil. In these cups right near. And then once they're fully rooted. And they're not easily pulled up. You cut it off. And you have a brand new strawberry plant. That you can go plant somewhere else. I have previously just like shoved solo cups. Into my green stalks to catch them. It's not ideal. They get knocked off. When they get knocked off. The berry gets uprooted. Before it's really rooted in well. So this was a really clever idea. And I was happy to add them to my green stalks. Plus they're really cute. Alright. So here is. I'm pretty. I'm feeling this right now. Look at that. That is majestic. Don't you think? Glorious. So these are all tomatoes. I have not pruned anything here yet. But I am probably going to need to do that soon. So admittedly. I really did not need to plant tomatoes on a green stalk. This was me trying to show you guys. What is available to you. If you are under the impression. That you do not have space to garden. Because I love growing tomatoes. I think I have. I haven't officially counted. But it's in the ballpark of like 120. Large indeterminate tomato plants growing. Elsewhere throughout my garden. Between my high tunnels and the raised bed garden. So I'm going to be swimming in tomatoes this year. I don't really need this. I do it as a display. And also because I just love growing things. Do I need it? No. Do I want it? Yes. I go through this with my children regularly. Is it a need? Or is it a want? Because you should be able to determine the difference. I can determine. This was a want for me. I didn't mean to do it. But I wanted it. And it brings me joy. I do actually think that my earliest tomatoes this year. Are going to be from this. I've got a lot of fruit started. And granted I did plant this before I planted my in ground tomatoes. So they've got a little bit of a head start. Look at this. It's glorious. Alright let's go through the varieties. These are a mix of micro dwarf. And just other container varieties. Several of them are from Wild Boar Farms. Brad Gates has a collection called the container collection. And so I started quite a few of those. This one's called Dynamite Delight. And look you can kind of see the shape of these guys coming on. I love that baby tomatoes are the shape that they're going to be when they're big tomatoes. Look at that. That's cute huh? So I'm pretty sure. It's my first time growing that one. I'm pretty sure it's kind of like a few ounces. I have several that are cherry. Some that are larger. Some that are medium. This is Mini Marzano. This is Cherry Falls. So this is a tumbler. This one's red. And then I have the patio choice which is yellow. It's got a good bit of fruit already forming in here. Here is Emerald Flame. This one is called Golden Hour. Look at that tiny little thing. So cute. Okay. Either you're a person that thinks things like baby tomatoes are cute or you are not. And so you get me or you don't. But I think that they're adorable. That's another Mini Marzano. That's another Golden Hour. A lot of the. It's a repeat of the same. That's patio choice yellow. That's the yellow tumbler. And you can see the tumblers. They fall down but then they grow back up. And I mean it's just how tomatoes do. But if you let them grow across the ground they'll root on their main stem and they'll just send these little. All the suckers just point upwards. This one's called Eye Candy. Now that's a pretty good size. So that's like probably not a microdwarf. I know it's a tangle but you can kind of see that guy sticking up in there. That's another Golden Hour. That's another Eye Candy. I think I've come all the way back around to where I started. Okay. This one's called Limelight Mini. More Golden Hour. I'm pretty sure that's the varieties. No. Yeah. Dynamite Delight. Did I say that one? Maybe that was it. Maybe that's all of the varieties repeated. No. I know I have one called Raspberry Burst. I don't know if it's in this tower or if that one was over in the others. And then a friend of mine gave me one and I think I planted it but I didn't have the tag. It had fallen out. So probably there's a different variety in some of these other ones that I didn't put the right tag in with it. I've done a lot of the ones that are available. This year I've grown the Raspberry Burst out in a garden bed and I really liked it. But I'd heard that people had great success with it in containers so I tried that one. A lot of these are new to me this year. So I'm impressed with how they're doing so far. So one thing is I live in the humid south and we've had an extremely dry spring. So we're not having tons of rain which would have probably already caused a lot of blight by now if we did. Which is why I've been more lax about pruning. You don't want to prune determinate tomatoes the way that you prune indeterminate tomatoes. So bush beans, pole beans. Bush beans come on all at once. Pole beans run and they come on over a period of time. Everbearing strawberries, June bearing strawberries. Everbearing come on over a period of time. June bearing strawberries come on all at once. And it's not like all the same day but the same short window of time. Determinate tomatoes and indeterminate tomatoes. It's a little different because determinate tomatoes don't necessarily all ripen in the same week. They have a little bit of a longer window that they're going to produce. But indeterminate tomatoes, as long as you provide them support and nutrition, they will keep putting on more flowers. You can grow indeterminate tomatoes in containers. I don't. I don't like to. I have so many of them in my beds. They do great in my beds. I'm able to trellis them. They get 8 feet tall. And for me that's like better. I've grown them up into like 5 gallon buckets before. But you have to feed them so much that I just find it a little more difficult. So I really like in any sort of container situation, like the green stalks, to really use that as an opportunity to do those specifically dwarf and micro dwarf determinates. That otherwise I'm not going to plant them. I'm going to put a micro dwarf in my garden bed. They'll probably get lost in the shuffle. So for me this is just a better way to grow them. Tomatoes are very heavy feeders for one. Tomatoes are still like, they're still fussy when it comes to humidity. They still get blight easily. They get disease easily when they don't have good airflow. And obviously the fact that these are all vertical is a benefit. I mean that's creating some airflow. I know y'all can't see this a little bit better over here. So obviously them being vertical helps with the airflow. Because obviously each one is getting a good bit of air. But this, they haven't even started to ripen yet. Like this is going to get even bushier. I mean it looks awesome right now. It's going to get even bigger. And I imagine especially if we get like a good bit of rain, if this drought does break consistently, these could easily get really sick. But I'm going to prune them differently. So on my end determinates, I prune the suckers off. Alright, so let's have a little pruning lesson. I think this guy will be a good example. This is the main stem of the plant, right here. And these are called side stems often. And what happens with a side stem, here's one. It branches down and it blooms. You can see here this has flowers on it. Right here in the armpit of that it has flowers growing on it. There's lots of blooms on here. What suckers do is they grow more branches that grow more suckers. So this grows the stems that grow the leaves that have the blooms. And so when you're pruning an indeterminate, I hope that made any sense at all. But if you're pruning an indeterminate, what you do is you take all the suckers off. And so what you do is you have one main leader that has its little stems all coming off. And these set their flowers and they set their fruit. And you end up with one main tomato plant. Sometimes you'll let it branch. So right here, this is what I mean by branching. So this is essentially a sucker that got big. And now this has two main leaders. And the thing with a determinate tomato is it's only going to grow so tall. And then it's only going to produce so many branches. And it's only going to produce so many flowers. And then that's it. It's not going to just keep growing and growing and growing. Whereas with an indeterminate, it's just going to keep growing and putting off more of these. Therefore putting off more fruit. So you can pull all the suckers off of an indeterminate. You're still going to get a lot of fruit as it keeps growing taller and taller. With these being so bushy though, we probably are going to need to take some branches off for airflow's sake. And typically what I will do for that is like here, I'll go ahead and break off the ones that are really close to the soil. Because those are the branches that are most likely to get sick anyway. I won't pull off every sucker automatically though. By pulling the ones off, see these are already starting to yellow a little bit. I really should do this with snippers. I'm going to stop so that I don't make them sick. Clean cuts are always better rather than ripping. Because if you rip and you pull a bunch of the skin off of the stem, it's just a place for disease to enter in. But just by pulling off the lower branches, that will probably create some airflow. But let a lot of your suckers grow. And you can just decide if you want to take off a few. You can even take off some of the smaller stems. For every stem you take off, you are taking off some fruit. For every sucker you take off, you are taking off multiple more branches that could produce more fruit. So you're going to get more airflow by pulling a sucker. But if you're not trying to take off a bunch of the growth, you can always just take off one of the bottom stems. I don't have the exact formula of how to do this. My tomatoes that I grew in my green stock last year, we had a lot more rain last year. It was still a deficit, but it was a lot more than this year. They did end up getting sick. All my tomatoes end up getting sick by August because it's super humid here and wet. And as soon as they start showing yellowing, I just go ahead and start cutting those branches off. Because when they're starting to yellow and they're starting to get really sick, they're not going to produce that much. And by going ahead and pruning that out, I can slow the spread of that. While also giving the airflow that the plants need. So really, I'm probably just going to keep a pretty close eye on this. Enjoy the lushness while it's here. And intervene with whatever pruning I feel like I need to do whenever it seems necessary. So yeah, those are my green stalks. I think they're awesome. I love also the fact that so many of you are tagging me in your gardens. I mean, I love seeing all of your gardens. But I love the fact that with a product like this, and really I think it's the case with any containers. When a person has just a yard full of containers, I think it is its own kind of beautiful. And I love seeing those gardens too. I think it's impressive. I think that it is a worthy way to grow. And truly, we should not despise small beginnings or just smaller gardens. Granted, I've seen some people that have 20 green stalks and I would not call that a small garden at all. But however you need to grow to fit your life, do it. It is worth growing. Do not pish-posh because you're like, oh, how much can you actually grow? You can grow a lot more than you think. It is totally worth your time and effort. And I hope to get to prove that this year. I hope that here, just in these handful of containers, in this 10 square feet of growing, I can show you just how much is possible. Thank you for hanging out with me today and taking a look at my garden. I am so thankful for your company. I will put a link down below to the sale. I bless you. Until next time.