50+ Plants I'm Growing In My Spring Garden 🌱 🌷 🥕

Here in my climate, it's about that time to start thinking about spring. So in today's video, I'm going to go through the whole garden and tell you everything I'm planning to plant in spring 2021. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And I thought what I'd do in today's video is just really go through on a varieties level and talk about, first of all, the types of crops that are going in each bed, but also the varieties of those crops and why I've chosen them to be in the beds that they're in. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button for 50 plus spring crop varieties and let's get into it. So let's start off where we are. This is bed number one. This is the front corner of the front yard of the garden. And the reason why I'm going to do lettuce in this bed is because there's a big jacaranda tree right over that way that does shade this out for a part of the day, especially here in my zone, zone 10b. They're going to like that even in the spring. We can get a little warm. And so I've got a few different varieties here I think you're really going to like. Number one, Lunix lettuce. That's just a classic one from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds that I really, really like the flavor and the appearance of. Then we've got speckles. As you might imagine, the name implies. It's got a green leaf lettuce. And then you have these red little speckles here and there that look absolutely amazing. After that, another favorite, which is probably one of the ones, I think most people grew last year. It's a little gem lettuce. It's sort of a small romaine lettuce that you can cut off at maybe about this high or so. It's a great succession sowing lettuce that I highly recommend. Three more this year. We have Sanguine Ameliore. We have Lola Rosa. And then I've chosen one that's just going to be the workhorse, which is going to be Great Lakes lettuce. It's supposed to do extremely well in my climate. It will tolerate the heat. It won't bolt. And so we'll see how it goes. But that's it for this lettuce bed. Here in bed number two, which is the second bed in this front row, in the front yard here, I'm going to do mostly root crops. I'm going to focus on carrots, beets, and radish. More carrots than most of the rest because I've got some beets plant over there as well. So in the carrot world, I'm going to be doing one of the gnarlier ones I've seen, which I believe is the Manpukiji carrot. It's a massive long carrot from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. And then I've got a Rainbow Blend, which is going to be a mix of a lot of those colored carrots. I've got a Cosmic Purple carrot, which is one of my favorite purple carrots to grow. And then one for you balcony or small space or small depth gardeners would be Tanda de Perigue, which is sort of a ball style carrot, which I think many people don't know about. It's like Parisian style almost or something like that where they just don't get that big. The taproot doesn't really go deep. It more swells into almost like a turnip or a radish type of look. So if you don't have deep containers, I highly recommend that one, Tanda de Perigue. In the second row here, what I'm going to do is beets and I'm focusing mostly on golden beets, specifically the Badger Flame beet. And then I think there's one that's just called Golden Beet. I really like the flavor of them. I like the look of them. It mixes up sort of the visual appeal of the garden. And honestly, I don't like beets as much as I like other things in the garden. And so I figured why not grow something I like. Over here I'm going to be doing radish. I've got some simple varieties planned and then one sort of weird one. The first few, you've got Rudolph, which is just a red radish. You've got Cherry Bell and then you've got Sparkler. That's the third one that's more the standard. And then Ratt's Tail radish is a potted radish, which I'm really excited about. So maybe I'll do a full video on that. But I highly recommend you at the very least Google Ratt's Tail radish and read a little bit about it cause it's kind of interesting. In this third bed, which is the final one in the front row here, I'm going to be doing a couple of different types of peas. The first one I think many of you may know if you've been watching the channel for a while, which is Desiree Dwarf Blauchacher pea. Difficult one to say, easy one to grow. It is a purple potted pea and it is absolutely beautiful. Also grows as the name implies, dwarf. So it's a little bit shorter than average. You can usually just stake it up with a thin piece of bamboo. You don't need a very extensive pea trellis to get it done. Over here though, I'm going to be trying out the butterfly pea, which typically you're not eating that pea per se. You're using the flower to actually color drinks. It'll take it to this beautiful purple color. And then if you add anything acidic like lemon juice, for example, it'll bring it to this almost magenta or hot pink type of color, which is absolutely beautiful. Here in the grow bag garden, I've got a lot going on already, which is amazing. It's good to see a bed or a bag actually full of plants this early in the year. So we have pineapple sage hanging out right here, which is just a really good pollinator plant. If you want hummingbirds, it's a great way to get those in, but also a great sort of cocktail herb. Smells like pineapple, doesn't quite taste like pineapple, but still a nice thing to add in to anything that you're trying to make a little fresher. Over here, I've got two bags of celery. What I noticed is the celery really seems to thrive in this grow bag, provided you keep it nice and watered. So just a couple of varieties there. I think it's tall Utah celery, which is a very classic variety. Over here in this multi-pocket bag, this is what I'll call my herb green bag. And so I've got cilantro here. I have dill in the back, rosemary. We've got a sage, a couple of different types of sage. There's a variegated sage and then also oregano. And then finally at the top, we are topping it off with a little Purple Lady bok choy. Right here, another one of these multi-pocketed bags, which the link is going to be in the description for, but it's just greens. Just leafy greens, a couple of different types. Some of the stuff that I talked about actually in that first bed. Over here I have a bag specifically for lemongrass. Over here we've got some cutting onions, just some green punching onions doing very simply. And then over there I've got a purple cabbage, more Purple Lady bok choy, nasturtium, which I think a lot of people wouldn't think to grow in its own bag or dedicate a container to. I really like it. It bushes up really nicely. You can eat it. You can actually pickle the seeds and turn them into a caper-like sort of product. And then it's just a great crop to have as a trap crop, so to speak, for aphids. Aphids will go all over that. And they won't so much go on some of the other plants. Right there, we've got mint, which of course, you know, needs its own container. Mint really seems to do quite well in grow bags. Very similar to the celery as long as you keep it well watered. And then up front in the big boy grow bag, I've got all sorts of Asian greens. So I have Chinese cabbage hiding in there. I've got the mustard just cascading all over everything. And then I also threw in one more kale plant. In my vertical towers, these green stock gardens of which I now have two of them, I'm actually going to take a little bit of a turn this spring and plant mostly flowers in these. I do have some lemongrass starts coming in right now, but I'm focusing on calendulas, which are very easy to grow flowers. And also borage, which is again, a very simple one. It might get a little unwieldy. Borage can get really, really big. But I want this because I really want a pollinator attractor that's not necessarily in my beds, but is immediately adjacent to the beds. And so I have another one that I need to set up over here. And if you guys are interested, I'll do a full profile on why I like this particular vertical garden the most. So let me know down in the comments if that's something you're interested in. But again, calendula, we're going to be doing some zinnias. We're going to be doing some borage and probably some other flowers that I'm just going to throw in the mix. In this bed here, we'll call it bed four, I suppose, we're going to be growing our alternative greens, which would be your greens that really do well in spring. So spinach, I'm going to specifically be growing Carmel spinach and a couple Asian varieties from Kitazawa Seed Company. One of them is called Summerfest, which of course would mean that you could grow it into the summer. It'll be a little bit more tolerant cause it's not a true spinach. And then also Okame spinach will be one that's on my list. The rest of this area will be probably a little bit of arugula, just a standard rocket arugula, but also some kale varieties that hold up really well in my particular climate. And I think will do well pretty much anywhere. With kale, it seems like if you have a colder climate, it'll do well in general. And then if you get a variety that does well in the warmth, it also will do well in the cold. So the two ones I'm focusing on that are specific to that condition would be Black Magic kale and Ethiopian kale. Black Magic kale is probably the one I'm focusing on the most because it, the flavor doesn't degrade in the heat and you can actually grow it straight through the summer, as my friend Bridgette over at San Diego Seed Company, where I got the seeds, has let me know. So I've tasted it. It's great. Ethiopian kale I think is also going to be a popular one for many gardeners this year. And then the final one is Red Ursa kale, which I grow for the look and the flavor. That one's out of Baker Creek heirloom seeds. It just looks absolutely amazing. In my round tall bed here, which is almost directly in the middle of the front yard garden, I want to focus on brassicas. And specifically, I was going to do just like a broccoli or a cauliflower here, which would actually be fine. And it would be fun to do maybe a Romanesco style. But I got my hands on a giant cabbage seed from my friend Kevin, also Kevin, in the UK. He's Giant Veg. He has a bunch of world records for growing giant vegetables. He actually got me some seeds of giant cabbage, giant zucchini, giant cucumbers, and a giant tomato. As in the tomato just has a ton of tomatoes per truss. But in this particular bed, because it's round, what I want to do is really focus on that giant cabbage. Cause the, I mean, these cabbages get absolutely massive. We're talking 80, 90 pounds or so. And so you need those fan leaves that come out this way to actually be supported by an edge. So it's going to go straight in the middle. I'm going to baby it and care for it like my life depends on it. I don't know if I'll get a world record on this particular year of cabbage. I got to probably flex my muscles a little bit, but a giant cabbage is going to go in this bed. And our final bed I'll talk about in this video, in the front yard, I'm going to be doing more flowers. So we're doing cosmos in here. Candy stripe cosmos is probably going to be the one I'm most excited about, but also some sunflowers. And there's some dwarf ones that I think will work really well. Dwarf sungold, I believe is the one that I might push up towards the front here. And something you can think about when you're planting these flowers is the terminal height of them. How high do they actually get? And if you want, you can almost do like a stadium seeding style array of different flowers. So for example, even just within sunflowers, you could do a dwarf sungold. You could do a velvet queen and then you could do one of those giant style sunflowers in the back. And that plays well with the sun cause the sun's going to be coming in like this throughout the day. And so these will always get sun. They won't be shaded out. Just kind of an interesting thing to do. But I did want to have a beautiful colorful patch in this front yard, which the sunflowers and the cosmos will take care of. Here in the back garden, we've got some potatoes going in. So the potatoes actually are already in and they're doing quite well. You can see some of them are coming up already. There's a couple rows down there that I actually put in the ground without them starting to chit or without the eyes starting to sprout, which means they're going to be a little bit slower to take, but they still will. We've had some good rains here. They're doing okay. And I will have a full video out on how to grow potatoes in this manner, which I think is probably going to be one of my newest favorites for laziness. I'm a pretty lazy gardener. This is a great way to do it on a budget. In the first three rows here we have red Pontiac, which is just a classic red potato. This one right here is Russian banana, which is a very thin and small, almost looking like a fingerling style potato. They're coming up. I'm really excited to see. I'm expecting because they're smaller, I probably should get a lot more per plant. But I guess we'll have to see on that. And then French fingerling is coming up, a very classic and prized one amongst chefs. The next three, I've got Chieftain right there, which is again coming up. And then the two that are struggling are red Pontiac. Again, it's going to come up. It's just waiting. And then Terra Rose over there also going to come up. The cardboard bed that I'm sitting on is probably the most boring looking, but also will become the most exciting here in the backyard because it's going to be a 10 by 10 garlic bed. I'm really excited about this because I have had my struggles growing garlic here down in San Diego, zone 10b, even a softneck garlic I can sometimes struggle with. And last year specifically I had a whole video on planting out garlic. A lot of you have asked for the followup to that video. And the truth is I really struggled with my garlic that year to the point where I didn't really have much to share for that second video. So I'm changing a lot in how I'm growing it this year. Most specifically I'm in a new spot and I won't have to deal with a skunk that dug the bulbs up three different times. I'm talking three separate times it was dug up. It's just, it's not a good recipe for success for such a long season crop. It's going to struggle a lot. So what am I doing in this year? What we're going to do is we're going to level this ground out. I'm going to put down this cardboard, which it already is. It's sort of a light sheet mulch to prevent the weeds. I'm going to build up a sort of no dig bed like I did with my Charles Dowding collaboration, about six inches high or so. And then I'm going to plant into that. Now, the varieties. This is kind of interesting. In California or in the Southern states, what you want to do is typically grow your softneck garlics because they can handle that heat a little bit more and they don't need to go through that vernalization period, that cold period of the winter to really do well. So what am I doing? Well, I'm going to grow some softneck, of course, but I'm also growing a lot of hardneck garlic and I have it in the fridge. I've had it in the fridge for about three months now. I'm trying to fake the winter and really master growing hardneck garlic in a warm climate. So this is a long list. There's 10 different varieties. I want to read them off to you and I'll put some photos up for you. So the first one I'm going to be growing, Oregon Blue. The next one is going to be called German White. Then I'm going to be doing Killarney. Next up is Montana Zemo. Then we have Majestic. Now what I have grown is next, that's Inchelium Red. I've grown that one before. Then Russian Red, Chesnok Red, Blossom and Romanian Red. And so again, trying to push the limits. This could again be a struggle year for garlic because I'm growing something that technically is not recommended here, but we're going to see how it goes. And I will update you, rain or shine, success or failure on this garlic bed here. There are a few more beds here at the Epic Garden that I'm going to plant out. But as you can see, some of them are quite full already with some beautiful, beautiful varieties. We have some Lacinato Kale here, some Golden Beets. These are all coming out relatively soon. And these back two beds is this round one right here and then the massive honking bed over to my left. I'm just going to be planting whatever I want. I'm going to leave some space for not as meticulous of a plant. And I think that's important, especially as a beginner gardener. You know, a lot of people coming into the gardening profession and hobby this year and last year. So I want to say, if you're looking for recommendations on what to grow this year, the first and most primal rule, in my opinion, is to grow something you're really excited about, even if it's a difficult crop, even if you don't know if you'll succeed, because then you're actually going to try, right? If you hear, Oh, grow radishes because radishes are easy, but you don't even like radishes. Well then who cares if you fail at growing the radish? So grow something you're really excited about, whether it's a beautiful tomato variety, a dragon fruit, you know, I'm here for it no matter what you want to do. So leave some room in your garden to play and have some fun. And with that said, stay tuned because I've got a lot more tips coming at you this year. Seed starting, different types of soil mixes, all sorts of stuff that you're going to want to know for this year's garden to maximize your success. And with that said, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.