Epic Garden Harvest of Homegrown Wheat and SO Much MORE!

Hello friend, welcome back. We are heading out into the garden. We have a big harvest to do today. It has been in the mid 80s for the past couple days and it's supposed to dip down and start raining for the foreseeable future which means there's a crop that I want to get out of this garden while I can. So I'm going to go ahead and grab some baskets and we're going to go get that crop. So there's two things that we're going be harvesting. One of them are the black beans which I actually harvested last week so I'll bring you back to last week and I will show you that harvest. And then what we're going to be harvesting right now are the onions. So let me show you the black bean harvest and then we'll be back and we will be harvesting 2024's onions. Here are the black beans and they are ready to harvest. The reason I know they're ready to harvest is the plants are starting to yellow but more than that the pods are starting to yellow and they're super dry and I've actually found a couple that have already split open. Let me show you that. On this side of the bed, well there was one over here yesterday but now I can't find it. What happens if you let them go too long? They will dry out so much that the outside will actually split open to release the seeds because that's what the plant wants to do in nature. It wants to replant itself to grow next year. So you want to try to get it before they start to split open. So that's what we're going to do today. There's lots of them in here. So I've got two baskets, some scissors, some gloves and let's get to harvesting this year's black bean harvest. So I'm just cutting these plants back at the base leaving the roots intact so that they can break down over the winter and add organic material. So I see weeds in here so I'm going to pull these as I go because I don't want these in here for next year. Black beans are one of my favorite things to grow. I have no idea why I have just gravitated toward growing dried black beans so much but I love them and it brings me so much joy. The first time I ever grew black beans I actually bought I think two black bean seed packs from M.I. Gardner and that was back when his seed packs were a dollar each. So I spent two dollars on two seed packs. That was February 2020 and I planted those seed packs out. They grew. They produced black beans. It blew my mind. I learned to pressure can that year so I pressure canned a ton of them. It was a year's worth of black beans for Josh and I and I was able to save some seed back. I planted those seeds out the following year. They grew produced black beans and that was the first time I had ever pressure canned anything. I think I yeah beans were the first thing I pressure canned and it was the first time I had ever saved seed and planted it out and it grew the next year and produced a crop. It produced enough for me to can them up for the following year and I saved seed back so that I could plant them out. I planted them out. They grew but the deer kept eating them. So my third year growing black beans I got zero harvest but thankfully I didn't plant out all my seed and so last year I was able to plant some of the seed that I had saved. I grew them out. I harvested them. We jarred them up together and then we planted the seed that I had saved back that I didn't jar up and that is what this is. I think that these plants and this crop brings me so much joy because it was successful my first year and it just gave me so much confidence in my gardening journey and just being able to save seed and replant has just been so fun and rewarding. So even though I could go to the store and buy black bean seeds for relatively inexpensive I really enjoy putting the work in to grow my own black beans. So this is just the start of the harvest for this year's. So things like this I'm weeding because I don't want them to be a problem next year. Here is what the after of this bed looks like. The tomatoes have a lot more area to breathe and this is our mountain of black bean plants where I need to take the beans off the pods or take the beans off the plants is what I need to do next and that's going to be quite the project. So all I'm going to do is take these plants, remove the bean pods, put them in my basket, put these plants back on this bed, and I'm going to let these beans compost all winter, the plants at least, on this bed. I find it easier to just cut the plants out of the ground to do this part because I don't know that's just what I've always done so that's what I keep doing. So I have found it does help to hold the plant upside down so the beans kind of dangle downwards and then you can just kind of pull and they come off easier that way. Here's a good example of them starting to split open. This is why I want to harvest them now because I don't want the beans splitting open and me losing them into the garden bed. I think I answered my own question of why growing black beans has brought me so much joy over the years when I was kind of explaining my black bean growing journey with you and I think it's because it's one of the few crops that I feel confident in not only planting it and growing it out but taking it and bringing it in and putting it up for my family and enjoying eating it all year long and then not only that but saving the seed and then planting it out the following year and having this crop that kind of perpetuates itself which has been so rewarding. Now one year it was a total disaster and I didn't get a crop out of it but three out of the four years I've grown it it's been successful and thankfully each year when I plant out my seed I always save back quite a bit so that in the event that I have a crop failure I still have some seed that basically is a seed that I've been saving since 2020 which I am just so happy about that fact. It's just it's so fun and when it comes to gardening each different aspect of gardening is a huge skill to learn in and of itself you know there's the skill of you know planting the seed and growing the plant out and even some seeds you know we have to start indoors and that's a whole skill in of itself and then learning to harvest it and put it up in a way that your family enjoys eating it and then learning to save seed like each one of those steps is a huge skill in of itself and black beans are the only crop so far that I feel confident in each one of those steps so it's just so fun to me. I have been able to grow an entire year's worth of black beans for my family for the past three years in one 16 foot by four foot bed which is kind of a small space. So here's a good example of one of the pods that opened and I did lose these couple black beans no big deal but this is what I'm trying to avoid by harvesting them now at this stage. I am getting a little burnt out pulling all these I have done about half of them and I have a full basket I still have all of those but I know that I've got some other harvesting I can do so I think we're going to take a break from that and do some harvesting. So I am finding four zucchini plants to be about the perfect number for me. Four plants gives me enough to enjoy as much fresh as we want. I can put a bunch up and I can still share some so that's been really black beans. I ran out of basket space so I just put all my black beans on the ground here and I'm going to have to clean up the ground anyway so I'm going to go ahead and actually put my black beans into the wheelbarrow. This is a lot of black beans. Black beans are also a fun crop because you don't have to preserve them if you don't want to because they basically preserve themselves. Once you pull them off the plant at this dry state then you can just put them away in a dry dark spot and you can harvest them out of the pods and cook them from dried if you want to. Now I do choose to remove the seeds from the pods and I do choose to pressure can the majority of them just because it's more convenient for me but there is something nice about a crop that doesn't it's not perishable like say a tomato or zucchini that if you don't deal with it within a week or so after harvesting it's going to go bad on you and that's another kind of fun thing about growing dried beans. Now this is one of the first years where I am attempting to grow some other varieties and I haven't harvested those yet but when I do I'm excited to see if I come back to these black bean bush bean varieties. Now this is called a black turtle bush bean variety. This is the same bean that I've been growing again for four years and it's done really really well for me but I have a pole bean variety of black beans and then a kind of pinto bean variety growing it's a pole bean as well and maybe I will grow more of those next year and I'll grow less of this I'm not sure but I am super happy so far with the harvest. I can't wait to take all the seeds out of the pods. All right fantastic harvest today. Now I did pick up this gravel I do need to pick it up a little bit more. One of the downsides of the gravel walkways is I don't like to let a bunch of organic matter break down on it so I do pick it up and I will clean this even more but it is easier to maintain I think long term even though after harvest like this I do kind of have to do some cleanup but what I'm going to do now is take this inside we're going to my mom's house for dinner tonight and I think I'm going to make if you watched when I made the beef wellington I also made a caprese salad with burrata with the homegrown tomatoes I'm going to make that again tonight and bring over there here is the after of the after of the after I'm going to let that compost in place and just give a little bit more organic matter to this bed I need to go inside and get ready and shower for the day but I'm going to show you how I'm going to I'm going to let these lay here for about a week or two with a fan on them we have more black beans and drying beans but this is what we have so far so here's one of two beds that we need to harvest these onions and they are looking at least these this variety right here these are the Patterson they are most definitely ready so you know an onion is ready to harvest when the green falls over and you pull on it or you feel it and it is kind of hollow on the inside so these are all ready you can see there's carrots in here too I do not want the carrots showing I'm not ready to harvest those yet that's not for today so I'm going to kind of put the soil back over them you don't want to expose your carrots and then let them be exposed to the sunshine because they turn green so I'm just grabbing gloves that I have around the garden I have a bad habit of leaving them places but that's okay because I can find them when I need them so I'm just going to go ahead and start harvesting these these are some of the best onions I've ever grown this is a huge softball size onion there's a weed let's get that out of there now they're not all softball size but a good majority of them are so I'm just going to harvest these and start putting them into my basket look at the size of this onion this is just huge I just can't believe how big these onions are so if you've been here for any length of time or over the last few years my onions have always been so small the biggest onions I usually grow are this big and look at the size difference like this would be a large size onion for me normally they're like ping pong ball size so this is fantastic so this weed has gone to seed this weed has not this I'm going to go chuck these over the deer fence because I don't want them going to seed in my bed here not even a little bit do I want that just look at the size of this onion I got two baskets full of Patterson onions these are a storage variety of onions and I still have the rest of that bed to harvest of red onions those are red wing onions and I still have all the carrots to harvest but what I just did in the meantime before I harvest those red onions is I just weeded the bed I think what I'm going to do is wait another week or two I know we will get a stretch with no rain again and I can harvest those red wing ones because they haven't all fallen over yet and you do want them falling over before you harvest them these weeds I'm just going to toss over the side I'm going to let the carrots just kind of hang out here for a little bit without the onions this is my second year doing this where I plant my carrots interspersed in with the onions and it has worked perfectly the only difference I did this year as opposed to what I did last year is last year I planted the carrots in between each row of onions and this year I went every other row of onions I planted the carrots and the variety of carrots I have in there are bolero carrots they were pelleted that I got from johnny seed and I think I can actually harvest this pumpkin I tripped over it by mistake you know a pumpkin is ready to harvest when the first tendril right here dries up which clearly we have that and when you take your fingernail and you push on it well that's kind of I don't think it's getting any more nutrients I think this plant died I think I'm just gonna leave it until I harvest some more pumpkins well I don't know let's see can I get this off I didn't bring scissors out here maybe we will harvest it I know I have a pair of scissors out here so it was funny when Josh and I were processing the onions that had bolted he made some comment about something and I was like no no we have a lot more onions out there he thought that the onions that we processed and turned into caramelized onions and that I freeze-dried and what else did we do with them oh that we pickled he thought those were all the onions I grew this year which was kind of cute but no no no those were just the ones that needed to be dealt with got a pair of scissors I really don't like to break pumpkins off their vine because I have broken this stem before these are scissors that I have left out in the garden all year so they might not work I need to create a little spot there we go I just need to do with my right hand a little spot where I can store tools out in the garden I kind of like when they have the little tendril on them this is our first pumpkin of the year I don't know what kind of variety it is but we've got ourselves a pumpkin so this was not on my plan to harvest the wheat today but because it's going to be raining I think I should so I just grabbed my big 30 quart bowl I don't know what I'm doing here we're in this together and I'm going to start harvesting this wheat okay so what should I do here we had a big storm and all my wheat fell over and it did not stand back up so it's going to be a little tricky because I can't just come in here and mow the whole thing down which is what I wanted to do so that bowl is full I'm going to need to go empty it before I come back out here and get more but I think before I do that I'm going to go harvest the last of the onions that need to be harvested today so these right here are the Walla Walla onions that need to be harvested and there's a decent size so I'm just going to start at one end and work my way that way this variety is Walla Walla which is a sweet onion which I think is technically the same variety as a Vidalia onion just the name depends on like if you buy at the grocery store where they're grown Walla Wallas are grown in Walla Walla, Washington these are definitely smaller than the Patterson you know maybe these are the Patterson onions I'm gonna have to go back and look at my self planting these and see what I did because now I can't remember I say that because in the past my Walla Wallas have always grown bigger than my storage onion varieties and the onions that I just harvested are much bigger and these have a thicker skin on them which makes me think that maybe these are the Patterson ones and those were the Walla Wallas I started these onions with you all back I think it was in February smells like Thanksgiving over here because this is a sage plant that I'm brushing up against I got a couple really large ones mostly over here I wonder why okay this is the last of the onions from this bed that I can see so I'm gonna go bring these where I'm gonna cure them and man this is heavy I got all the onions to the back porch but I need to unlock the door so I can let them in another thing I need to do before the rain is harvest these dragon tongue beans that are dry I just collected four eggs from the chickens I also have a lot of mostly ripe tomatoes Roma tomatoes that need to be harvested I'm letting those ripen inside not in that bed but for some reason in this bed I'm having a big slug problem with my tomatoes which I have never had before not just the ones that are on the ground like this but some of them that are up off the ground slugs are going up and eating the tomatoes so all of these almost ripe ones I'm gonna go ahead and harvest today and then all of these ripe cherry tomatoes on this vine that vine over there and this one over here there's probably a hundred very beautifully ripe tomatoes on this I cannot tell you how much we've been eating cherry tomatoes almost every single meal we have marinated cherry tomatoes basically kind of like a light pickled cherry tomato I make a vinaigrette and I put the cherry tomatoes cut in half in them and I top everything with it but we're at the point where we're getting way more than I can eat and Josh can eat and so these ones I'm going to turn into sun-dried tomatoes I think tomorrow but I need to harvest them before the rain tomorrow or they are going to split which I do not want so I'm going to get those and then I already showed you these plants over here I've got one more plant over there in that corner as well that I need to get but I gotta run inside and lay my onions out flat so they can start to dry and cure and then I will come back out later because I have to be somewhere in about 45 minutes so that gives me just enough time to lay the onions out flat and then go to my appointment and then come back and harvest all these goodies tonight before the rain sets in the onions are laying out by variety out on these cardboard boxes down in my basement I have my black beans out here these are still curing and drying and at some point we will come down and we will manage it I do have a fan on here here's our wheat harvest I want to thank you friend for being here if you want to watch more of my videos I'll pop them here you can go enjoy between now and the next upload hope you're having a great day and can't wait to see you next time bye friend