Turning Our Yard Into a Grocery Store (Full tour)

This summer, the homestead has gone through so many changes. We've rotated crops, built new trellising, expanded the gardens, and even added an apiary to welcome our first honeybees. We've been busy cultivating our own food, renovating the A-frame, and preparing for the colder months ahead, which means stocking up on firewood. And somehow, in what feels like the blink of an eye, August is already coming to a close. But along the way, we've planted and grown more than we ever have before, taking another step towards becoming more self-sufficient. So as I look back on the growing season, I wanted to show you how we've been using what we've grown and take you through each section of the gardens to see what everything looks like at this point in the year. So I just collected half of my garlic scapes, and you know that they're ready to go when they start curling like this. And so I still have half, and that's perfect because I wanted to do two different things with them this year. Garlic scape powder and garlic scape salt, which the salt is essentially just the powder with salt added to it, but nice to have the two varieties. And it also lets me use my garlic in a different way. I always think of this as a bonus harvest from the garlic crop, but it lets me use it throughout the seasons because it's preserved, it's ready to go for different meals. The bird song has been really incredible this morning. Before I get too sidetracked, you can also eat it fresh if you don't mind the really pungent flavor, but I really love sauteing, pickling, it adds a really strong burst of flavor to any meal, kind of cooks like asparagus. You do want to do this regardless, just to encourage more bulb growth on your garlic. You could also just pop them in the freezer if you're not sure what to do with them yet. Last year, I made these sourdough cheddar scape biscuits, and yeah, I probably will have to put some aside to do that again too. Just take the flour part off here. If you're going to saute them, this can just get a little bit tough, but I don't really mind having it in if I'm doing it for the powder or salt, but yeah, garlic scapes. Here's that second harvest of scapes, which I gathered just a couple of days after the initial harvest. I combined all of the scapes in the food processor and blended them down to a pretty fine consistency. Then I spread them evenly across two trays that fit my dehydrator, making sure to keep the layer nice and thin. I set the dehydrator to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and it took just under 15 hours for the scapes to become completely dry and brittle with all of the moisture gone. From there, it was time to turn them into a powder. You can do this by hand with a mortar and pestle or even a food processor to make things a little easier. Once I had the consistency I wanted, I filled one jar entirely with scape powder and made a second one with half scape powder and half salt. Both of these should stay flavorful and vibrant for about a year, and the plan is to do a bunch of big end-of-season harvests with all of our herbs so we can fill our pantry with our own homegrown seasonings. It's really great to have them both fresh during the growing season and also have them dried and preserved for the winter. You could also freeze herbs, there are really so many possibilities. So these cloves went in the ground back in November, and it wasn't until mid-August that I finally pulled the entire crop of garlic. The yield came out to just under 100 bulbs total, and right now I have them drying out a bit so I can shake off the excess dirt, clean them up, and then begin the curing and storage process. For storage, you want to keep the bulbs unpeeled in a cool, dark, dry place with good airflow. Ideally, that's somewhere around 55-60 degrees with 45-50% humidity. I usually braid mine and hang it up, and the bulbs will last for many, many months. Also, I always save some of my best bulbs to use as seed garlic for the following season. Those are the plants that have already proven themselves in my particular microclimate and soil, so over time, I'm selecting for garlic that grows really well right here. And after harvesting, I did a ton of weeding, then I roughed up the soil to loosen everything before dividing the plot into two sections. One is now filled with basil, which a local farm was giving away for free, so I figured, why not? It stores really well and we'll definitely use it fresh. And the other is planted with fast-maturing corn, which should be ready in the first week of October. And that should give us some really solid, staggered harvests alongside the other corn that I've already been growing. And in the background, I've continued many of the things that I do yearly. Batches of pesto, salsa, pickles, different sauces, vinegars, as well as just focusing on enjoying what is fresh in the moment, day by day, seeing what we have, and making meals from that. So the past couple days around here, the entire middle of the day, it's been full sun, it's above 80, that means that I can't really do too much work on the gardens, because say I was to water, I would end up burning the leaves, the plants would get stressed out. The other thing is it ends up depleting me, because I'm out there sweating, it's super hot, and by the end of the day, I'm just completely fried. So I end up having this gap, which usually, working on the A-frame, tending to the honeybees, filling orders in the apothecary, the list goes on and on, and suddenly I realize I'm taking care of so many things. There's a ton of responsibilities, and sometimes I end up on the back burner, which is not good, because then I could burn out and not be able to keep showing up for all of these things. This gap in the middle of the day is a great time to start reintegrating different practices for self-care, for nourishing. So I end up getting different habits, I have different tools to help me with this, and one of them has been from Foreo, who is the sponsor of today's video. I've told you guys about them before. Their FAQ202 mask has been a great addition to my routine. So the FAQ202 is Foreo's new generation FDA-cleared LED face mask, and it's got clinically proven results. In studies, it was shown to reduce wrinkles by 32%, acne by 48%, and sebum by 18%, while significantly increasing elasticity in just two weeks. And even though I'm just settling into my summer wellness routine, this specific device is something that I've been consistent with for months now, and have been blown away by how well it works. I've actually been using Foreo products for years now. I told you guys about the UFO3 last time. That still works great, I'm really happy with it. 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My complexion is better, it's even, I'm glowing, it keeps my skin feeling fresh and healthy and supple. So if you'd like to check out the FAQ202 or any of Foreo's other products, right now is the perfect time to shop. They've got some amazing deals going on right now, and all you have to do is click on the link in my description or scan the on-screen QR code and use my code ALLIEM30 for an extra 30% off almost all products. And that code is stackable with sale items too. Once again, thank you to Foreo for sponsoring this video. Right now, we are approaching late August here at the homestead, and that means a couple of things for the gardens. One is that they're super lush, productive, abundant right now. We're getting baskets and baskets of vegetables and herbs coming into the house every single day. And the other thing is that this sort of serves as a checkpoint, taking a tally on what worked well, what were the new tactics I tried this year, did they do what they were supposed to do, was there any new hardships that came up. And though we still have pretty much all of September and probably October, it all depends on how the New England weather plays out. I do start to kind of consider the end of the growing season around now, and what is my plan for harvesting, storing, preserving, making sure that I'm using this garden to its full extent. And though we do not have a root cellar yet, that is the priority for next year, and that will be absolutely transformational. We're still able to do a lot with what we have now. I want to take you through all of the gardens on the property as they stand, talk about the different crops. We have this existing garden in front of me that's been here for a couple of years, that's magnificent. And then the one behind me was brand new this year, and I learned a lot. Starting off strong with the front two beds that are outside of the vegetable garden, these are the beds that I typically refer to as my culinary herbs. The thing is with herbs, they're so versatile, so they overlap culinary, medicinal, tea herbs. For the most part, I come out here a lot when I'm grabbing things that I want to garnish with or spice up a meal with. The thing about these beds is that they start out so sparse, as do most of the beds, but the way that they always fill in blows my mind. They're bushy and bountiful, you can hardly see the soil, and that definitely helps with weed prevention. We've got rosemary on either side, dill that has lasted longer than pretty much any other season I've ever grown it. It was slow bolting, so fortunate to have this fresh this year for the pickles. In the past, I've struggled with that. I've got catnip flowering here. It's really kind of massive, and the cats go crazy for it. I love that I'm able to cultivate it here and know that there's no sprays going on it. I do a big harvest at the end of the season, dry it out, and it easily gets me through a full year with these cats, especially now that we have two. Coming out from here and throughout here, this is lemon verbena. This is by far the biggest that I have ever grown, and it just keeps giving. I love coming out to these beds, rubbing my fingers on the leaves, getting all the different volatile oils and aromatic compounds, and just... Such good smells, and this does not disappoint. It tastes just as good as it smells. So bright, sweet, citrusy. I also have lemon grass. I've got lemon balm, lemon grass, and lemon verbena. Lemon grass, it's slow to grow usually here, but once it gets going, it takes off. And by this time next month, it will be very tall, very sprawling. I love using the upper parts here for teas. I'll dry that out, but the stalks, it's nice and dense, and you freeze them and can toss them in curries or broths and add that nice lemony little boost to your winter meals. It's great. Now, down here, do as I say, not as I do. I have mojito mint in a bed. Typically, you never want mint to be in a bed. Even lemon balm is part of the mint family, and so is catnip. Anyways, this has been very contained. I'm lucky in that regard. I don't know how it got in here. I think the roots got in or I had set a plant down. Anyways, usually they get so strong that they can take over a bed. It hasn't happened yet, and this is really great muddled into different drinks. And then back in this corner here, conquering it is the oregano, which is flowering now. I love having this, not only for things like the sourdough pizzas that we do in the summer, but really great in fall and winter soups and poultry. Now, do you want a little bit of catnip? Is that why you're here? Would you like a little leaf? Other things that I've got in this bed were things like sages and thyme. What does happen every year, and it can happen to different plants, is that as things get really big, they can choke each other out sometimes. So there are some plants that are still alive but are buried in there, and some that may not be doing so well anymore. If I am missing anything, I did a very comprehensive tour at the beginning of the season when I was planting out this garden and talked a lot to the different properties of plants and all sorts of tips and tricks and just more of what I was planting, and that's available if you'd like to check that out as well. I'll go through here too. This is my third year marshmallow plant. It is magical. It's huge. It's come back every single year stronger, and the thing is year three, I talked about this a little bit at the beginning of this season, why I was so excited is because year three is when you can begin harvesting the root medicinally. I'm going to be making traditional, clean, holistic marshmallows, and since this is a very mucilaginous plant, it is so soothing to your throat, to your respiratory system. Fennels over here. Feverfew down in here that looks like chamomile. Lots of anise hyssop that's actively flowering. You guys, I said that the oregano might have been one of my biggest plants, and then I remembered that this pineapple sage, look how big this is. I've never grown pineapple sage before. It really is very tropical. It's so interesting. Hey, do you think it's time that we should go to the next section of the garden? What do you think? So many smells. All right, come on in. Let's check out the vegetable garden. It was really not that long ago that I was standing here, installing this arch, dreaming about it, planting the different cucumbers and beans and cucumelons, wondering how will this turn out, and my expectations have been exceeded. Every day I come out here and I can grab handfuls of these rattlesnake pole beans, which are the beans that I grew last year. I did my seed saving, popped them in everywhere, had almost a 100% success rate with that, which was incredible. We have so many green beans, and not even just green beans, cucumbers. My dream was to have cucumbers every single day. I want one cucumber a day, I said at least, and here's one right here. I've got a couple of variations. I'd say we're averaging right now maybe two or three cucumbers a day. Seriously, you guys, look, here's a good example. Three, just from what I'm seeing this morning, and that's not all the cucumbers that there are. That's just the cucumbers that are ready. This bed to my left and behind me here is where I have been growing corn for the most part. Also, the three sisters that I've talked about many times, that is corn, beans, and squash, and they work together synergistically. Essentially, the corn depletes nitrogen from the soil, so by planting a bean alongside it, the bean replenishes the nitrogen in the soil and then uses the corn as a natural trellis. The zucchini or squash that you use with them would grow along the ground for weed prevention and to help seal moisture in, but this is the year that I decided to try growing my zucchini vertically so that it had better airflow, and it is working. Just wait until you see the size of the one that I'm about to pull out right now. But before we get to that, I did want to talk a little bit about staggered harvests and how you're able to optimize your beds to be growing the most throughout the season. Staggered harvests primarily refer to planting your seeds in intervals. One of my favorite examples is radishes, beets, carrots. So you might plant one row the first week, the second row the next week or two, and so on and so forth so that you're continually being able to harvest that crop. I also kind of view it overall as replacing things in the garden as their time comes so that you are not just hanging on to plants that are past their prime and losing that valuable space. For example, behind me here in the front, there is a row of broccoli that is starting to mature. That was all of my greens in the beginning of the season. I had arugula, a lot of romaine lettuce, mixed greens. And what happens is as the season goes on, the days are longer and hotter. Those lettuces will bolt faster and they will become bitter. They are unenjoyable. Don't eat them once they get bolting. So now I have things like spinach that I have started from seed. They are more heat tolerant. I have a white sage plant back here. I absolutely adore white sage. It's a great natural incense. I love burning it, the energy clearing. I use it in some of my products that I make. And another fun fact is that fresh or dried, you can rub sage into your armpit and it works really well as a deodorant. So here is a closer look at the broccoli. You can see the leaves have been munched on. There's a couple holes in them and the edges too. And that indicates that the cabbage moth is active. What's going to happen is they will lay their eggs on the leaves. And as the babies are emerging, they will start chewing, feasting really on your cabbage, your broccoli, your kale. I did do a tactic called scent confusion this year, which I will speak to at this bed because that's where it took place. Very satisfied with it. And then the other thing has just been diligence, checking almost daily every single leaf, removing eggs, removing the caterpillars. I just saw one right here. If Kyle and I take a weekend trip somewhere or something, a lot can happen in a couple of days when you're gardening. So sometimes they have a little feast while we're gone. Okay, here we go. That's a good one. This bed here has a lot going on, starting with this overgrown broccolini. It's ready to come out. But the thing is, the honeybees have really liked the flow. Oh, that was two hummingbirds. It truly almost just flew right into my face. And there's one sitting on the fence right there. That was crazy. Oh my goodness. I'm just, I'm in shock. So the broccolini has stayed in longer because the bees like it. I've got four variations of kale, two that are purple, two that are a nice, really pale green. And I had what I thought was radicchio growing in the beginning of the season. It was mislabeled and whatever plant it was has come and gone. So now I've replaced it with some more kale, just kind of as an experiment to see if it will take off and grow with the remainder of the time we have. Two cabbages that are forming heads slowly but surely. I think the arch maybe has taken a little bit of sunlight away from them. Something that I have learned is that this would be a good place for plants that don't need quite as much sunlight. I do think that the celery has enjoyed being out of the high heat. It's lasting a lot longer. Instead of harvesting the whole plant, sometimes I'll just take little stalks so it can keep going. And that's been working out really nice this year. Two different types of nasturtium that are fun in salads. This huge one is horseradish that came back from last year. The root is the part that you use. It'll be great in fire ciders and horseradish sauces. Got some onion chives here. And this is actually where I'm getting into some of the herbs that are scattered throughout. I've got two different kinds of basil. I've got parsley, thyme. And what I did, because this was my bed with broccolini, with kale, with cabbage, all things that are very susceptible to the cabbage moth, I did the scent confusion tactic. And boy, did it work because I have barely had to go through this bed. And really, the amount of activity in here is so minimal, especially when I compare it to past years where some of the kale plants we couldn't even eat or enjoy for most of the season. They were that chewed up and damaged. Last year is when I tried out a net system and it worked initially. Once the stuff got in and it got in, then it was in there and it multiplied. They multiplied so quick. So knowing that scent confusion, that is just incorporating lots of different aromatic herbs throughout your kale, your broccoli, your cabbage. It's able to deter the cabbage moth a little bit, just enough so that you can keep things out of a net. It's so manageable. I highly recommend trying it just for keeping track of things. This bed and the one across from it are where the cucumber, the cucamelons, and the beans are planted. This is the soil where they're coming from and then reaching, growing up this arch trellis. Here are my potatoes and they are totally on track. They are supposed to welt, to brown, to die back. That is your indicator that it is time to harvest your potatoes. I've mounded them up a couple of times so that I'm making sure that the tubers are well under the soil. They're not going to be getting in contact with any sunlight, which would make them produce solanine. If you see your potatoes are green, don't eat them. Last year is when I started dealing with some pests. I spoke a lot about this when I documented planting these this year. The clavate tortoise beetle is what eats the tops. I didn't really have a big problem with them this year. This is more of just a cosmetic aesthetic problem anyways. It doesn't really harm the harvest. So it's the worms that you really need to watch out for. And what I did this year was set some traps and you know what? It worked. I took the balls of oats and honey out and broke them open and it did attract the worm. Here's the thing, this bed looks messy and crazy, but I promise it is more organized than it appears and it is controlled. This back two rows, staggered harvests of radishes. This is the second or third round that I've done. The very first round was great. I was able to use a lot fresh. I pickled some and now they're going again. I stuck this squash in the back here. I know it's super late in the season, but I wanted to give it a chance. We'll see. Beets along here that I grew from seed. For some reason, I've struggled every year to grow any sort of sizable beet. And this year I did it. They weren't massive, but I'm proud of them. Some of them were really a decent size and I've been picking at them slowly. Got three different colors. Speaking of colors, the Swiss chard is always so saturated. I grow at least three different kinds and then a row of onion, a row of carrots, and then the cucumber, bean, cucamelons that are crawling up the arch from this side. Behind me here is the pepper bed and it's got a range from different sizes, shapes, colors, mild to spicy, using them fresh as garnishes, frying some pickles, hot sauces, salsas. There's a lot of staples that we grow every year that we rely on, that we enjoy thoroughly, and this is definitely one of them. They do get a little tippy, so we're providing structure and support where they need it. And other than that, the stalks are getting really thick and they seem very content. This is the bed that I call the pizza box. And what that is, is every year I do some crop rotation and I switch things around, but some plants are great companion plants and they help each other out. I love growing tomato and basil together. It feels very fitting. And so whatever bed they're in, I call my pizza box. And it's where we come out to, to grab all the supplies we would need for things like Kyle's sourdough pizza or caprese. And I did a couple different kinds of tomatoes in here this year. The whole back row, minus one, is San Marzano. Those are great for sauces, for storing. I like having the option to choose for different flavor profiles or for different uses. Some are more sweet, some might be more acidic. This chive has been coming back every year, so it just happens to be in here as well. I also quickly want to talk about the trellising that I did this year, because it's different from anything I've ever done. There are two types of tomatoes, indeterminate and determinate. Indeterminate will keep growing, whereas determinate has a set height. It will reach and halt. Most of what I work with is indeterminate tomatoes, so pairing that with the traditional tomato cages, the metal ones, they outgrow them, they topple over them. Honestly, it's a mess. It's hard to harvest from. They can break, like the stems will flop over and break. And so I wanted to do something new. I built a wooden trellising system, and the whole concept is that instead of being bound to a cage format, instead there's this structure that goes over the tomatoes, and then I use a string and it goes under the roots of the plant up to where the trellis, the structure is, and back around and creates a pole sort of for each plant. And that is step one. So it has a vertical support. And then as the plants are growing up, we do what's called a Florida weave, which is forward, backwards, forward, backwards, horizontally. And that's as it keeps growing, you keep adding them in regularly. So if you started going forward on the first one, the next row you'd go backwards. And it locks them in place really well. I think the only reason I had any issue at all was because I love to stay completely natural. And so I worked with hemp string coated in beeswax, and I thought that the coating would keep it durable under the soil. But over time, it wore away, and a lot of the vertical lines had started snapping. Instead, I just put some stakes in that match the rest of the trellis to be that vertical support. And then I'm Florida weaving in between those. And so what I would do differently is look into something that is more durable as a string option without going into anything that can leach into the soil. Because I would love to see this working with just the string, though even with the stakes, this is the cleanest, most user-friendly setup I've ever had for tomatoes. This bed here, it's directly across from the entrance to the garden. So you see it as you're walking in, it's tucked against this wall. And this is where I grew bok choy. And now another little kale that I'm testing out to see if we can get some yield from it at this point in the season. But mostly using it for carrots. These seedlings are just about ready to get thinned. And I have two other beds over there where I am also growing carrots that I've been pulling from already. I've always heard do not grow peas and beans together. They are not chemically compatible. They interfere with each other. They essentially will mess up the taste of one another. And so I have purposefully planted peas alongside my beans. And when they come up, I'm going to see if it's true or not. So this is more of my medicinal herb garden. And right now we are in between a couple of blooms. The bee balm just died back, but it's this beautiful pink firework-like flower. Now there's tons of anise hyssop and the echinacea. The yarrow is sort of fading. Still have calendula and borage. I will say this year is a bit messier than last year because I've been so busy with the house. I've had a little less time to do things like weed this pathway. I think I'll do a vinegar dish soap solution to eradicate that. And then I very much was present and in the moment for every stage of this garden and utilizing it. And so I wasn't able to capture everything. I have extremely high hopes that next year is going to be the best yet by far in a multitude of ways with gardening and also capturing the whole process of it all much more regularly. Because I think at this point next year, the A-frame will be nearly done. Which is pretty wild to say. I would like to eventually do a specific tour and video about medicinal herbs and what I would grow if I was starting out and tips and tricks along the way. But if you are curious for more of the full list of what is in here, I have the video where I was planting out the garden and I talked through that. This is the brand new garden that I added back a couple of months ago. I was standing right here and this was a bare patch of just soil. The soil that we have here can be very dry. When it's dry, it's like sandy and then it can become so compact and clay-like when it's wet. Anytime I expand into a new growing section, I'm doing a lot of work. So what ended up happening here is I experimented with a couple of things doing onion sets versus starts, red onions, candy onions, I think we did some white onions, a row of riba potatoes, and then tulsi, calendula, cosmos, zinnias, peas growing up the back wall, corner of chamomile. The back row is so funny. These are extra corn that I had and I didn't know what to do with them and I almost couldn't bring myself to get rid of them. So I just stuck them in the soil and they are small but they are producing. And then in that very back section is another similar situation to the corn. Every year I grow tomatoes and then in the next growing season where some might have fallen off, some seedlings pop up. And again, I could not get myself to toss them so I put them all along the back corner. They are also producing now and the fun part is that I did not know what kind of tomatoes. It just feels like there's been a lot of buildup and excitement around it here. You're not always going to have a perfect garden. There's always going to be new challenges with each year and this year for me, especially in this experimental section of onions, is that, oh I also do have shallots here, is that they didn't all grow really well. And I think part of it was the soil. I'd like to get more specific with the soil next year. The starts grew way better than the sets. We also went through a period of, gosh I want to say it was at least a week, maybe two weeks, where it was very much flooding in this area. Tons of rain non-stop and it was kind of detrimental to this section here. I noticed immediately after all of that a ton of stuff shriveled up. That's okay, we're still learning. This is still by far the most onions and shallots I will have ever grown and harvested and I'm very grateful. In regards to things not going perfectly as planned, the concept for this year when I added this in is that down this row at the end, this walkway here was going to be a greenhouse and the season has flown by. We're very busy renovating this A-frame and weren't able to get to it. The plan for next year though is that we will be prioritizing a root cellar, be prioritizing a greenhouse. That is really going to help us take a huge leap in our self-reliance, our ability to grow and preserve our own food, to do more seed saving and starting. But yeah, this has been amazing. So here's just another view of how the corn is doing and the basil and the apiary back here. This area here was all Kyle so sometimes I forget everything that's in it but I know he's got cajari melons, cucumbers, blackberries, grapes, cardinal climbers, pumpkins, squash. This one is loaded. Not food but the hostas and the hydrangeas are very happy. This used to be a lot of overgrown weeds and we did a little bit of landscaping and added those in here. Some lilacs across the way, rhododendron, azaleas, periwinkle. Little bits at a time we're tackling this property. Every year it just feels more like us here. I'm already feeling very anticipatory and eager about this time next year because I know there's going to be a significant change.