Full June Garden Tour 2020!

As I film this video, it's early June and we're transitioning from spring into summer for most of us here in the garden. So I figured what better opportunity than to show you a garden in transition. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. I've never really shown you every element of the Epic Garden and explained my thinking on what I'm growing where, why I'm growing it, how I'm making changes and all of that. And it's going to be a little bit of a messy video. And I want to do that on purpose because I think a lot of people will see things out on the internet, these beautiful photos and say, Oh, I can barely even grow a piece of chard. How could I possibly achieve this? Well, you're about to see exactly what I'm doing to prepare for the coming season, some mistakes I've made, everything. So cultivate that Like button for a truly Epic tour and let's get into the video. We begin our tour in what I call the shady zen oasis, also known as my backyard. And here I have some black bamboo. Now it's gone a little crazy. And to be honest, I don't have a lot of experience growing bamboo. The goal here was to have it kind of come up as a bit of a privacy fence. And it's getting there, but it's not quite there. But the black bamboo just looks absolutely incredible. That contrast of the dark black stems with leaves, absolutely amazing. Now a lot of you will say, well, how is it grown? Bamboo spreads like crazy. You're completely right. That's why we put it over concrete in a raised bed. Next I'm hanging out under the bougainvillea or as my Filipino grandma calls it, the bougainvillea. And it's a beautiful, beautiful plant. It goes like crazy multiple times a year. And then behind us over here, we have an Australian tree fern, which has been doing okay. I would say I'm not probably the best at learning how to care for that. And then I have fern gully over here with some alocasias, which are not a fern, but also some bird's nest ferns down below. The tour wouldn't be complete without mentioning the staghorn fern that more or less has been neglected back here. It's under a dappled shade awning. I've had to cut off a couple of the fronds because they started to rot and dry away. But really the growth has been incredible. I mean, these ones right here started out just about this big and I haven't done a whole lot of fertilization or watering. Now I have a full staghorn care video coming. It's coming soon, promise. But for now this guy's looking pretty good. No garden would be complete without your shed, your shed to store all of your gear. As you can see, I've got some fertilizers here. I have a bunch of pots and trays, et cetera, over here. And then up here is mostly where I install all of my lighting to do different tests for different grow lights, to start seeds indoors, to condition plants that need a little bit of hardening off. So this really is a little bit of a playground, a little product sanctuary, and just a way to start seeds with perfect conditions. We're back to where we began the video and we're at the beginning of the edibles section of the garden, which is really most of what I focus on here at Epic Gardening. It's what I find the most interesting and impactful. So we're standing in front of what's called the Eco Garden System. This is a absolutely massive four foot by six foot standing self-watering raised bed that I've done a full video on that I find to be incredible. I haven't watered this bed in three months, I think. And you can see this kale is popping off. The lettuce has looked never better. And we're actually in the middle of summer, at least summer for me here in San Diego. But you can see I've already started to transition this bed over. This kale is going to be on its last legs if it's not already. Kale is a classic fall, winter, spring crop. It's not going to do well in the heat. Neither will these tender leafy greens. And so you can see I've already swapped over to a couple different types of tomatoes. Spaced about 12 inches apart or so. And what I wanted to do with the tomatoes is test out a new type of mulch. So straw is not a new type of mulch. It's actually quite an old type of mulch. But this particular straw is called garden straw. And it's something that I actually got hit up by that company to test out. And then I said, Oh my gosh, I really like this. And so we're working together right now to develop a straw that we can actually pack and ship in a way that's economical, which is really crazy because straw is one of the best mulches you can ever use. But it's also hard to find actual good straw. It's hard to find straw that's been cleaned and processed. There's no herbicides, pesticides, weed seeds, things like that. And it doesn't blow away in the wind because the way they slice it, it's really fantastic. The way they slice it exposes the interior where the lignans are. And then the proteins, when they're wet, they kind of mat down. And so even in winds, it doesn't really blow away. I'm on a little bit of a rant here, but all that to say that you can see this bed is transitioning, right? So once I take out all of this, this kale, I'm going to swap it out with things like eggplants, peppers, okra, and then summer's off. The next system here, before I open this up, you may have noticed right in front here is the ginger. So the ginger is growing really well. This is from my How to Grow Ginger in Containers video. And I would say when I planted it, there was about this much growth. So we've put on one, two, three, and starting a fourth new leaf going on on this main stem. I'm starting to see some creeping of the rhizome, which is the ginger root as we call it. So I'm excited for that. That's going to keep growing. It's a slow grower. So it's probably going to be a harvest in maybe November or December. So stay tuned for that. Got some new starts here that are going to be going into various areas of the garden. But what you're seeing here is something called a Veggie Pod. It's a product out of Australia that I've really enjoyed. Now the reason that I like it so much, number one, I'm six foot four and it's hard sometimes or annoying at the very least to bend over constantly and work on an in-ground or even a slightly raised bed. I also have a mom who's physically disabled. And so we got her a Veggie Pod and it's been amazing because really that was what made her garden. Without it, she wasn't interested. It would have taken too much of her energy. The thing that's really nice is I can stand up and I can just manually work right here in the garden. No issues at all. Again, a self-watering style thing. So what I use the Veggie Pod for is for my sensitive greens that get messed up by pests. So I'm thinking your brassicas, your kales, your collards, your broccolis, your cauliflowers. This is a really nice insect netting that they simply can't get through. And so I put them all in here. It's a kind of a cut down on the shade and the sunlight. So it works really well. And I can even get leafy greens out of here in the middle of the summer. This section here is my conditioning area. It's where I take a lot of things, either rehabilitate them or maybe I'm hardening some seeds off. So you can see right here, I have some corn. This is a Japanese black sticky corn. And the germination is really spotty because I put it in the shed and lo and behold, a skunk came through and actually picked out the kernels, which is super annoying. But at least I have this many, which should be enough to get at least a few ears with the way that corn pollinates itself. So we'll see on that. But back here, as you can see, it's a little messy, but I've got some really interesting basil that I'm going to be doing a video on pretty soon. This is called a Maisel basil. It's from Proven Winners. And it's interesting because it has downy mildew resistance, which is probably the number one disease that's going to kill your basil if your basil dies from a disease. And number two, it does not stop growing vegetatively after it flowers. And so what I mean by that is if you see a flower coming out on the basil, there will still be new vegetative growth that goes even further than that flower, which is unusual for basil. That makes it a fantastic perpetual pesto popper. So this section is the potting bench area where I'm either starting seeds or doing a lot of transplanting. The thing I really like about this particular unit here is that there's a built in sink that has a drain that I can drain out to a five gallon bucket. So whenever I need to drain it, I can just use this water in the garden. So I'm not wasting it, which I really like. But besides that, behind me, you'll see I've got some sit on top railing planters. I have some standard planters. I have some hanging planters. This is my area to test out different combinations for people who are in balconies. So what I like to do is I like to throw leafy greens in there. I test out different herbs, hanging and draping tomatoes, things like that, just to see, Hey, I used to live in a condo. I used to live in an apartment. I know that, that life, that gardening life. I want to test it and push the limits and see exactly what I can get out of those spaces so I can bring it to you guys for practical tips. We finally made it out to the front yard, which is really where all the action happens. So before we get into the garden garden, we've got the green stock garden. This is a vertical planter that basically works by top down watering. So you'll put some water in the top of this reservoir here and it filters its way down. Now the thing that's usually wrong with designs like this is that the water runs straight through the top one. So all the volume of the water runs through the top and then four fifths runs through the second one, three fifths runs through the third one, so on and so forth. So you can flush out the top layer and then the bottom layer barely gets any water. And the thing that's nice about the green stock that I particularly have enjoyed is that it avoids that by having a down column. And so when you fill the top, it actually evenly distributes water to each of the platforms right away. And so I found it to be really useful. As you can see, I'm growing beans in it yet again. I've had a lot, a lot, a lot of tremendous success with growing bush beans in the green stock. But this would be perfect for things like leafy greens, a mobile cocktail herb garden, a strawberry planter. You can even grow larger things like tomatoes, et cetera, in it. Really fantastic. And I enjoy it a lot. Right here's a quick one. I've just got another triple threat of the amazel basil. You can see what I mean by how it flowers. As soon as it flowers, it's still throwing out vegetative growth right above it, which is absolutely fantastic. I also have a couple American Beauty dragonfruit cuttings from my friend Richard at Grafton Dragonfruit. You can see this one's already starting to go off. This one's really, really slow and honestly may not make it, but sometimes with dragonfruit, you never know. Sometimes they just resurrect. They should be called the Phoenix fruit. But let's go ahead and get into right before the Epic Garden. Right here are some things that I've probably talked about before. Here we have my Meyer lemon, which just yesterday, this skunk came through and I never thought this would happen, but dug up almost 25% of the root ball of that. And so I'm really hoping it doesn't experience some crazy amount of shock based on that. But we'll see. And this one, this is called a victory planter. So this is yet another sub-irrigated planter style, but it's based on a grow bag. So there's a grow bag inserted inside, which connects to a platform at the bottom, which wicks up the water. And then I've used straw mulch. And what I'm growing in this one is a luffa. But again, this one got dug up by the skunk to the whole point that the root ball was completely ripped out. And luffa really hate being transplanted or having their roots disturbed. So I may have just lost this luffa. We'll see. Send some epic prayers my way. So here, right before the garden gate, we have a little smorgasbord. We've got a bunch of different plants growing in almost exclusively grow bags. Now I have this one here, which is not growing in a grow bag. And this one is an overwintered jalapeno pepper. So believe it or not, this pepper was grown last year by a friend of mine and she gifted it to me and I decided to try to preserve it. And so what I did is I cut it back about two thirds. I let it sit over the winter and then I mulched it and threw some fertilizer in as the spring and summer approached. And as you can see, we already have some pretty gnarly jalapenos relatively early in the season. And so if that's something that you're looking to do, certainly give it a try. You just have to bring it indoors for the winter, make sure it doesn't freeze and give it a nice hard prune. Now the rest of what's going on here is basically a compilation of grow bag techniques. You guys already saw this epic cucumber tips growing video, so I'm not going to talk too much about that. But a lot of questions are asked about this trellis. So this is called the Vertex Tomato Cage. It's from Gardener Supply Company. Links to everything that I've ever mentioned in this video will be in the video description. But I also got a bunch of different things going on here. I've got a determinate tomato, another determinate tomato. I'm growing mint in a container over here. And then I'm growing beans in a multi-pocket grow bag over there. Multi-pocket just means instead of one thing where you have a surface on the top, I've got little slits cut in it and I'm growing beans out of all of them. So another way to cram even more food in less space. Another thing I've done in this grow bag array is to set up a little reservoir with waterproof liner that I can water with a five gallon bucket so that everything wicks upwards and I don't have to worry too much about watering. That's one of the biggest problems with grow bags is that they drain out really quickly. They help protect your plants from root circling and getting root bound because of their air pruning benefits, but they do drain quickly. So having something like this can help a lot. We're finally in the actual garden itself with the herb bed. So this is a roughly two by five and a quarter foot bed. Fits really nicely against the slimmer profile of this side of the walkway. And as you can see, I've got an arch here. So I have an arch and it goes all the way up and over to the other bed, which we'll see in a second. But I've thrown, of course, some vining cucumbers in here as we move into summer. That's kind of the obvious choice. Your vining cucumbers, your vining beans, anything that vines is going to go upwards in a trellis, especially if you're growing in a small space. Now behind us, we have our lavender, which is probably due for a little bit of a prune, if I follow the advice from my own lavender care video. Then I've got a dill that's kind of gone a little crazy. We have our African blue basil, which I've talked quite a bit about here on the channel. Underneath it is cilantro. Cilantro is being protected from that heat of the summer that usually causes an early bolt by the bulk of this African blue basil. And then behind the African blue basil, which you can't really see, is lemongrass, which I've been really enjoying as I eat more and more Thai food these days. This bed here is a 30 inch tall bed, makes it really easy to work in. And it's just got a bunch of bush beans. I have a little marigold holding it down up in front. And then I have a variety of basil back here, which I've forgotten the name of, but it's a columnar basil. So it grows upwards and it doesn't bush out too much. So if you're stuck on horizontal space, try a columnar style of basil. But this is just a pretty simple bed, just a little mix of things that will crop out relatively soon. And then I can swap in maybe a bush tomato, a bush cucumber, something like that to ride out the rest of the summer. Those of you who've been following for a while know that the dragon fruit is probably the most prized plant in my possession. So this thing has gone absolutely nuts. You can even see it's climbing up the house over that little port window there and almost onto the awning. So these guys are crazy climbers. People don't know that. Most of the time when you grow dragon fruit, you grow it upwards and then you let it trellis downwards. Kind of how it's falling down this modified little trellis here, which is kind of drooping over my balcony railing. That's a great way to do it. But left to its own devices in its natural environment, you'll see these things climb 40 feet up a tree, which is crazy. But the craziest part about dragon fruit right now is something I didn't think I'd see until later this season. So this stem piece is actually where I harvested a dragon fruit last year, right around here or so where this cut section is. But what's crazy is you can actually see we have another flower bud. This is the only flower bud on the plant coming out in June. Last time it was in October, but look at this. I'm really stoked on this and I think I may be able to get one dragon fruit in the month of July. So this bed I'm really excited about this year because first of all, I love growing corn. I just think it's such an awesome plant. And it tastes absolutely delicious. There's so many different varieties. But I'm doing the Three Sisters method or at least some funky Epic Gardening modification of Three Sisters. If you don't know what Three Sisters is, it's basically planting squash, corn and beans all in one area. And they all have their own beneficial reasons to play nicely. The squash will go over the cover of the ground. It will protect the shallow roots of the corn and the beans. The pole beans will climb up the stalks of the corn and the beans also fix nitrogen. So there's a lot of interplay there. It's a Native American technique that I'm trying to figure out. So I haven't done it before. Hopefully you'll see it here on the channel. So I've got Astronomy Domine corn that's in right here. I have a couple of different varieties of squash and then the beans, I'm letting this corn grow up a little bit so that then when I direct sow the beans, they'll naturally have that pole ready to climb up. Now, you might be wondering why is this undercover? It's the skunk, baby. That skunk has dug these up a couple of different times and I don't have a good method for preventing the skunk as it stands right now. I'm probably going to get a humane trap and call animal control cause it's really out of control. But for now throwing a little summer weight frost cover over it will actually help protect and it doesn't cause too much of a detriment to the growth. In a similar vein here, I've got the straw mulch laid down. It's pushed away from the stems of all of these pepper plants. So I have some of my favorite peppers of all time, which is shishito in here. I've got some bells, I have some Fresno, I have some Anaheim. Then I've peppered in a couple of different herbs as well. Now what I'm going to do as this grows in, and I do some pepper pruning of which you'll see here on the channel, I'm probably also going to start lining the edges. Now I kind of consider the absolute center, this little quadrant in here of my grow beds, the hot zone. That's where, you know, the soil stays nice and moist. Temperatures are nice and buffered. But around this area, I can put some of those more drought tolerant plants that maybe my drip irrigation doesn't hit so well, like, you know, my rosemaries or my lavenders or things like that, that buffer. I can put some flowers around here, which you're going to see in the next bed. So this bed here really illustrates what I was talking about in the last clip. I've got a bachelor button or a cornflower hanging out right on the edge of the bed. I've planted a line of sunflowers here. And notice I planted these on the north side of the bed. Sunflowers grow really, really tall. I don't want to put them on the south side where they're going to shade the rest of this out. Now, as for what's on the rest of this, I have these huge bunches of parsley, which I find to be, first of all, endlessly useful in the kitchen. But what you can do with the parsley is I found they work really well as a bed lining. They have nice little bushiness. They help keep the soil nice and shaded out. And then the rest of here, you can see I still have some kale. I still have some chives and such that I have to swap out for summer. So I'm going to be putting some new seeds in pretty soon. So these two grow bags here are kind of funky, weird experiments that you normally wouldn't put in a grow bag. But I'm testing a lot of stuff out because my next book is actually going to be on grow bag gardening. So I have really densely planted corn. Typically you would plant corn maybe four to six inches apart at the most. And four is really tight. These are maybe three to four inches apart. So we're going to see if these work in a grow bag. But I've got a nice wide grow bag that I've mulched heavily so it stays nice and moist. And I think I have a decent shot, at least of getting a few ears of corn out. So we'll see how that works. This one I've got a squash plant in an even smaller grow bag. So again, it's going to be a little bit of a tricky spot, but I'm always experimenting and really that's what you want to do. You know, some of the best gardeners I know have killed the most plants, have failed at growing the most plants. And you know what, if this one doesn't work out, it's totally fine. So this bed here is kind of a smorgasbord right now. I've got a massive cosmos. So look at this. I mean, this cosmos is one of the most beautiful, prolific ones that I think I've ever grown. And the thing about cosmos that's really nice is if you deadhead these flowers, you're going to get way more. So I've deadheaded quite a few. They all go into this dump bucket here, which eventually makes it into the compost. I've got a flowering Chinese broccoli that has gone absolutely insane. So probably overdue for that one to come out. But check this out. I've got a really beautiful fennel plant that is just thriving right now. See if I can brush some of that away for you. Look at that. I mean, that just looks absolutely amazing and typically wouldn't do that well right now, but it's doing pretty well. Shishitos peppers, again, one of my favorites popping in. We've got a tomato. And then we have another tomato with a very basic cage. Now I'm not a huge fan of this style of cage, but you use what you got. But we've got a nice heirloom, either a mortgage lifter or an orange jazz. I forgot the name of them. Now, as we move on over here, we have my round, tall birdies raised bed that I've put in a ton of onions. Now you can see it's funny. There's actually a little hidden potato right there. So we'll see what I dig up. I used to have some radishes interplanted in between these. You can even see where I've kind of pulled them out right here. That was a great way to get some extra production. But for now these onions are doing absolutely amazing where they are. Now here's my compost pile. And I hesitate to even call it that because as you may know, it's kind of a static pile. It's not being actively run. You can see the temperature meter is showing it to be quite cold, but that's fine because when I come in here, I actually get nice compost out of the middle because it will break down over time. Okay, now we're moving on to the pollinator bed. We have a massive bachelor button here and these follow the same principle. When you just pop these off right here, boom, that's not spending any energy on that anymore. And it can put more energy into these new ones that are about to pop. Now here's a great example of what a columnar basil looks like when you actually grow it up. You can see how it doesn't spread out at all. Look at that. It just grows straight up. Boom. Just like that. Here's an example of a basil that does not do that. That goes absolutely ape. It just goes wild. And so that's my African blue basil. Now up here I've had some battles with a skunk. For some reason the skunk loves digging up this particular area. And so I've got some Achilla. I've got some basil. I've got I believe some Echinacea somewhere in here. But the, it's kind of struggling. So I need to replant that. Now here's one that is absolutely prolific. Great for cocktails, a great herb. This is pineapple sage. And when I say pineapple, I really do mean it. It smells a ton like pineapple, but it's a prolific grower and it's a great plant for the hummingbirds. Look at the flower structure. Now imagine the beak of a bird that likes that. And if you think it's a hummingbird, you are correct. They're able to get in there and really go wild. So this is a fantastic hummingbird plant, pineapple sage. Right here, we have some larger sunflowers that are almost ready to go. I just love sunflowers. Such a cool plant. Okay. We're moving on to the final section, at least for now. And this is my built-in in-ground bed. So I've transplanted some rosemary over here. Eventually that'll become a pretty decent sized hedge. But the rest of this is almost exclusively native pollinator plants. So we've got things like milkweed. I put some strawberries in there, which is not a pollinator plant, but it's still in there. I've got yarrow. I forgot what this one's called, but it is one of the most beautiful ones that I have. So if anyone remembers, let me know. I completely forgot and I didn't label it. So that's totally my bad. But I've seen birds, I've seen bees up in here. It's absolutely amazing. Here's a little lemongrass patch that I've done that I've really, really enjoyed. I mean, these guys are just so easy to grow. It's a grass guys. It's super easy to grow. And then behind this, I believe, I honestly don't know what this one is, some Philodendron-ish type of thing. I have nasturtiums going wild. These are Bloody Mary nasturtiums that are just prolific and really nice little shade cover plant. So the final bed in the front yard doesn't look that great, I'll be honest with you, but it is filling in. I mean, this is a squash planted more or less right in the middle. So eventually that squash will take up a majority of this entire bed. This is a three foot by four foot bed and squash need quite a bit of space to spread out. I've still thrown a couple of different things here in the corners. I've thrown three varieties of tomatoes that I think I can prune very aggressively and just trellis straight up on the backside of this bed. So I think I can manage that space. But again, I'm always cramming stuff in my beds because as you can see, I don't have a lot of space. So I try to do what I can. Sometimes I get a little overaggressive and put stuff in there, but it really just is a showcase on how much you can squeeze into a small amount of space. Well, there it is everyone, the Epic Garden in June. I wanted to open the veil and show you that not all is as it seems in gardens, right? And people say, Oh, I can never do what you do. I can't even do sometimes what I do. So that's just how it is. That's how gardens are. And by zooming in to each of the beds and each of the systems, you see all the imperfections and all the flaws and the mistakes that are being made. So I really wanted to just open this up. I hope you learned something, whether it just be that deadheading a bachelor button can help increase production, or whether it be something more holistic about gardening or even life in general. There's so many lessons to be drawn simply from this 20 by 40 foot patch of land. So until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.