Plant A Garden Right Now! // Homesteading & Organic Gardening

Hi, I'm Anne of All Trades, and today I'm going to give you a few ideas about how you can use whatever you have right now to start your very own garden today. Let's do this. The farm that we bought here in Nashville was at one point a working farm, but it hasn't been that for a very long time. Someone, sometime recently though, did have a little garden plot right here, and this is the perfect, easy, small, manageable place that I can reclaim to plant a few things that I brought from Seattle to Nashville. The thing is, I'm going to make an enormous garden down by the barn, and it's going to be what actually supports this farm, but that requires a ton of infrastructure and thought and planning and machinery that I just simply don't have. But what I do have right now is a shovel and some things I want to put in the ground, so let's do that. It is very early spring, and the fact that the sun is out and that it's hot tempts a whole lot of people to get into their garden way too early in the season. Here in Nashville at least, we still could have freezes for at least another month, so I want to be really careful what kinds of things I put in the ground. So right now, I'm putting in some, what's called bare root plants, basically strawberries, asparagus, and garlic that I brought over from Seattle to put them in the soil here. They may or may not thrive in this different climate, but they were a big part of my beginnings of a gardening journey in Seattle, and it was really important to me that I brought some of that here. I hear a ton of people say that they are not cut out to be gardeners because they always kill their plants. The thing is that if you give plants what they need, which is soil, sun, and water, they're going to do all the rest on their own, especially when it comes to bare root plants. Seeds do require a little bit more time and attention, but most bare root plants literally just need to be put in the ground, so that's what we're going to do. This is some asparagus, and asparagus wants to be planted pretty deep and in a really moist area. So we're planting this at the bottom of a hill, hoping that the water runs off from the hill onto it and waters the plant. We'll also get rid of some of these weeds while we're at it, but honestly, weeds are also not the devil either. One thing that beginner gardeners are often tempted to do is plant their plants too closely. The thing is, if you're not going to be super precious about how you get your garden set up, aka you're just planting them in the dirt, wherever you happen to have dirt available, then you can really afford to give them a little bit of extra space, which will give them a big head start when it comes to succeeding. With this asparagus, we're planting it with the crown, or the top of the plant, pointing up, and that's about the only preciousness that needs to happen for it. Another stumbling block for a lot of people who are interested in getting into gardening is the question of fertilizer, or if your dirt is good enough. I'll tell you right now that if there are green things growing in your dirt, it's probably good enough to give things a shot. Of course, as you continue to learn more and more about gardening, you can adjust your practices accordingly. One of my favorite things to encourage people to do is just try it, and then learn from your mistakes. Now that those plants are in some dirt, the only other thing that they need is some water and sunlight. Sunlight we've got plenty of, and even though it doesn't look like it, we're expecting a I'm just going to leave these as they are and let nature take its course. This little garden patch needs a little work to be reclaimed, but not a whole lot because though it is covered with weeds, the only weeds that we want to actually remove are those that are going to compete with our plants. First things first, this is a really big weed, so we're actually going to get rid of this. We're not actually even going to get rid of it, we're just going to dig up its roots, and once we've got the dirt off of the roots of the weeds so we know that it's going to dry out and die, we're just going to go ahead and leave it right there to decompose. One thing about weeds are they're actually soil's indication about what it actually needs. This was a tap root, a root that went really, really deeply. Those deep roots are an indication that the soil right here needs something that is buried deeper within the depths of the soil than what these little shallow rooted plants have to offer. One thing we can do is then plant a deep rooted plant right there. What kind of plant has deep roots? Asparagus. Because this trellis was already here, I figured the only thing it was missing was some vining plants. I went ahead and ordered some grapes, and we're going to stick those in the ground over here as well. One thing if you're planting your very first garden is to be observant of what's around the space that you're planting in because those types of things are probably really going to thrive there. So if you're planting in a place that used to be grass, what is a lot like grass? Lettuce, arugula, and other leafy vegetables. When I first came up to look at this trellis, I noticed that there's some wild grapes growing very nearby, so I know that grapes are going to thrive right here. I don't want to plant this directly behind the post because I don't want it to get shielded from the sun, but I also don't want to plant it super far away because then it won't be able to grow up the post. So I figure the sun shining right here, this will be pretty good. And here you'll notice that I'm not even breaking up the dirt or trying to get rid of the weeds really at all. I'm literally just going to use my shovel to make space, put the plant down in that space, get the roots all in there, put some of the packaging material that it came with down in with it, break up some of this dirt around it so that it goes everywhere it needs to go for the plant. Careful not to step actually on the plant, but step around the plant, and it's planted! In this space there's a whole bunch of weeds that kind of tend to spread around, so what we could do is plant another plant that likes to spread, like strawberries. I almost called these tomatoes, but eh. These strawberries were my pride and joy in my garden in Washington, and in all honesty I'm not 100% sure if they're going to make the transition here very well, but it was definitely worth a try. Here you go. Also, conveniently, right here are some wild strawberries growing, so that's a pretty clear indicator that these strawberries are going to crush here. Another fun thing about leaving weeds to grow in your garden is that they actually help to retain moisture in the soil, because they've got complex root structures, and because they themselves need water, they're constantly bringing A. moisture to the surface, but they're also keeping the soil from running away from the roots of your plants, so that your plants get all of the moisture that they need. So as long as the weeds and your plants are not competing for sunlight, they can live in harmony just fine. So one thing about this is that this is an enormous auger off of my small hand drill. I don't want to break my arm, so I'm going to basically use my body to protect that from happening. It sure makes things happen in a hurry. Once again, I want to keep all the dirt that comes with this plant with it. I'll go a little bit deeper at first, and then pick it up a little bit, so that the roots face down, fill in all the soil around it, give it a little step, planted! Because this is a garden area that I don't plan to babysit very much, I'm going to put a few natural pesticides here, and one of those is garlic. Putting garlic in the garden is a natural pesticide because, quite frankly, it smells bad. Because some eager beavers, I'm sure, are going to disregard what I said about not planting your garden too early and plant things anyway, here are a few seeds that you can put in the ground right now. You can do early snap peas or snow peas, things that are meant for cold weather. You can do brassica family plants, aka cauliflower, broccoli, arugula, other hardy greens like that. You can do radishes, early carrots, but if you put seeds in the ground too early, you need to do it with the acceptance that they might not make it, and it'll be totally fine to replant them again in a few weeks. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video and for supporting my channel in that way. I hope you found some tips in here that made it a little less scary to put some seeds in the ground and just try a garden this year. I hope you leave this video feeling challenged, inspired, and excited to get outside and to do things with your own hands as well. By the way, there's a link for my Patreon and my merchandise below. There's tons of new merchandise, so make sure you go and check that out right now. Cheers! Because this trellis was he- no, please no. Because this trellis was already here, I decided to- please don't. Ah!