May 2026 Garden Tour - Welcome To The New Garden

Hey guys, welcome back. If you're new here, hi, I'm Brie. I garden in Kansas and today I'm going to do a May garden tour to kick off the gardening season here for 2026. This is something I typically do every single month. I walk you guys through and show you guys the changes and how things are evolving in the garden and what is currently going on. And this is what's currently going on. We are in an all new space and me and my husband have been working really, really hard in the month of April getting this prepared for planting. Typically I have a lot of my plants planted by this first week of May. I am holding off on my tomatoes and peppers a little bit because we are getting one more cold dip. I am zone seven. I know I'm going to get that question. I am still in the same gardening zone. Not a lot will change, but a lot will change. We are now out more in the country. I am definitely going to be dealing with a lot more pest pressure. I'm sure, I don't know. That's going to be something that I'm going to have to navigate this season. Just completely starting from scratch. I keep getting the question if we will be putting a fence around and yes, that is the plan. We have not got to that fence yet because there are so many things going on and getting the whole garden built was a whole event in itself. I am very excited to show you guys the garden and everything we have worked really, really hard on to this point. I almost walked out without a little jacket. I'm glad I brought a little jacket out because it's a bit breezy this morning. All right, let's start up front here because this is where I currently have everything planted and I want to show you what I currently have growing. I have some new stuff I'm really excited about and I also jumped the gun on potatoes. I don't know if you guys can see those or not, but the potatoes look so good. I jumped the gun like two weeks early on potatoes, mostly because I think my order got messed up. So here's a little story here. I ordered seed potatoes. I realized I ordered the wrong ones like a month after I ordered them and then they redid my order and I'm pretty sure they didn't adjust the shipping and I just got my seed potatoes the moment they started to ship out seed potatoes. So I had my seed potatoes. I want to say the first week of February or something, which I've never planted seed potatoes ever until I want to say end of March beginning of April at the earliest. So I planted my seed potatoes, I want to say right around the 15th of March this year and they are already flowering. So we have a super headstart on potatoes. The one thing with this front area here is a lot of all of this will be completely gone by June into July. So we have broccoli, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, poppies, garlic, onions, and all of this will be gone by mid summer. So this whole half of the garden is really going to be used for a lot of succession sowing. When the garlic comes out, I will replace that with corn. When the potatoes come out, I'll probably replace that with okra. I mentioned this in one of my videos, but I have noticed that when you plant carrots along the edge, they do so much better because the edges tend to dry out a little bit faster and the roots tend to stretch. So I have all my carrots along the edge of the beds. The one thing I really like about how I did this bed is I simply just was trying to fit anything I could because I was building the garden as I was trying to plant it out this spring. So I didn't have all the room possible. I planted all of my lettuce in the middle area of the broccoli and the broccoli just started to get to the point where it was starting to overcrowd the lettuce, but the lettuce is to the point where it needs to be harvested. So I'm going to go ahead and get that harvested. The broccoli will continue to live in this bed, but the lettuce looks so good. We're going to be doing so many salads for dinner over the next week or two. I have started to have some cabbage moss, but nothing I haven't been able to manage so far. So all of that's looking really, really good. All right, so here's all of the potatoes. I am growing a variety called Kennebec. This is a variety I've grown in the past. It's a little bit more blight resistant. At least it says it is and in my experience it is. I've had issues with blight and potatoes in the past, but I have three eight by four garden beds here all planted with potatoes and they are looking so good. Like I said, they are already starting to flower. I saw some of these buds opening up last night when I was watering. One of the things I really want to do with the potatoes this year is I want to get really good at making potato chips. I feel like potato chips are one of those things I really love to snack on, but I hate spending the money on it because they are just so expensive for what you get. And I feel like I could probably make a better potato chip, especially for the money. So that is my goal this summer. Ah, and I didn't notice this till just now. I had a feeling. So it looks like my spinach has already gone to seed. We have had just crazy up and down swings all spring long. So again, another reason why I really got to get this lettuce harvested in the next week or so cause we are approaching like mid eighties and I've always noticed that some of my cooler weather crops start to struggle at that point. This is the bell star. This is the broccoli variety. I have grown for years now and it handles those big crazy up and down temperature swings like a champ. Only broccoli I've ever grown to not go to seed on me. Three to five weeks will be when we start harvesting all the broccoli. When the broccoli comes out, I might leave a few of those beds blank to plant more broccoli in the fall. This is a big succession. So area for me and this originally wasn't the plan. I was kind of just building the garden as I needed things done and planted. I will also make the note I obviously have a way bigger in ground space than I've ever had in the past and that just came down to more so trying to navigate cost. Obviously a fence is not the cheapest and it was either build a bunch more garden beds or build a fence. And I do feel like a fence is probably higher on the priority list in these beginning years, especially because we do have a decent amount of deer that I've seen knock on wood though. They've left everything alone so far and I'm hoping they just continue to leave everything alone until I can get the fence up. There is one thing though that I've done that I haven't told you guys that I've wanted to do for years and I am very excited to say I officially have an asparagus bed. I won't be able to harvest this asparagus for probably another like year to two years. I believe since I bought asparagus crown, I can harvest like a really small little bit in year two, mostly in year three. So this is something that I've wanted to do for so long, but I kept holding off. I want to say I wanted to plant this in 2018, 2019 but we always had plans to move. So I just never wanted to establish something a perennial of that nature that would take so long in my previous space because I just felt like, Oh, we're going to move. And then we just never moved. I would have been able to get like multiple harvests of asparagus at this point, but I kept holding off. So that was one of the first things I really wanted to get planted, especially this year. I am wanting to do some fruit trees and stuff, but I think that's all going to wait until the fall. There was a lot more to figure out here. Um, and I didn't want the stress of trying to figure out tree varieties and stuff like that while I was just trying to figure out all this. That is something though, guys, I do have an actual fruit tree. I have one fruit tree on this property. This is a mulberry tree. It is starting to put on some little berries. I'm so excited for mulberry season. So if you have any mulberry recipes, please let me know. But this is the one and only fruit tree on the property and I'm really excited to have it this year. But actually back to the garden, I kind of detoured there showing you guys the mulberry tree, but this is all the garlic, which will be one of the first things that will come out of the garden this year outside of the lettuce and the broccoli. This will be harvested in roughly four to six weeks. I will get this fed probably one more time. It needs to get fed this week and after that I'll probably completely stop because we're going to have scapes appearing, which is the flower stalk of the hardneck garlic. So if you've grown hardneck garlic, you will get this stalk like thing. I almost say it's like a texture of an asparagus. If you bite into it, but it's a very light tasting garlic taste and it is so good, but you harvest them off. So a lot of the energy goes toward bulb development and that will be approaching here in about a week or two. And then I have all my soft neck, which won't do that, but it will clunk out around the same time. So all of this was my own personal seed minus, I want to say some of the Russian red and then this variety here, this is a new one for me. This one's called a Menchie. I want to say I could be wrong on that. I have Chesnok, Menchie, Russian red, German red, no Italian purple. I have Italian purple and then Inchelium red. So very excited about the garlic this year. I want to say 2025 was definitely my best garlic year I've ever had, which might be one of the only things in 2025 that was the best or actually really went well. I have gifted out so much garlic powder for holiday gifts, birthday gifts. I still have my own stash of garlic powder that I'm working my way through. Like I said, a lot of this was my own seed, which is really cool to finally be at that place with garlic. I'm really hoping that with planting a little bit more this year, I can keep establishing my own seed garlic and maybe just grabbing a few different varieties I want to add in through the years. But overall I'm really excited about how the garlic looks this year and we're going to be harvesting it really, really soon. At first, I wasn't sure if any of my poppies were going to pop up, but I do have some poppies over here that are starting to get established. I do have a little sunflower I planted, which I am going to plant out some more sunflowers, but I've ended up buying like the flower trellis netting because the wind out here, I think this will really help a lot of my flowers. So that's the plan for that. I also have some yarrow that I brought over from the old property. I also have my echinacea here. I do need to get those all planted somewhere as well. One of the things I want to do with this little ditch area I have is establish a ton of perennials in this space and I want to make like multiple gardens. You can see over here I have just a little sit down area. It gets really shaded over there. I think a little shade garden. There's so many possibilities on this property for multiple different gardens and that's one thing I'm really excited about. I originally thought a lot of these wood beds I established here in this space would end up becoming like a perennial flower sit down area that I could come drink my coffee and chill. I don't know. We'll see how this space evolves over time. Lastly, in this little space, I have all of my onions which are looking actually really good. I do need to kind of adjust my wind block a little bit, but the wind block I did last year came in clutch for this new property guys. Let me tell you. So the experiment with the onions, it goes from about here and here is I trimmed onion seedlings and then I didn't trim onion seedlings. So I've always trimmed back my onion seedlings while they're inside and years past. And then this year on a whim, I was like, what if I don't trim these? Well, what would be the difference? So I ended up trimming one tray and then I left my other trays alone and I honestly did not notice a single difference. I'm talking the strength of the seedlings were almost identical when it comes to the base of them. I had no issues planting them out. They pretty much look identical at this state as well when it comes to just growing and starting to get established and bulb development. So we're going to see how this continues until we harvest these. Like I said, this, these typically come out that first week of July and we'll see how bulb development is this year. I have my control of trimming them like usual and then I didn't trim them and we'll see. Cause if I really noticed no difference at all, like I have been seeing what I'll probably do is start my onions a whole month behind when I've typically started them. I've always started them that last week of December and now I'll probably, um, start them that last week of January and then I will just not have to deal with seedlings or trimming them or dealing with like unruly onions inside. So I don't know. It's been a really fun experiment that I decided to just do on a whim this year. One of the things I think is really fun about this year is I have two trellis tunnels. So I always had the one trellis tunnel in the previous garden that is 28 feet long back there. And then this one here is 12 feet. And while I did was I had three separate ones last year in three different areas and I just turned it into two tunnels. So now I have two tunnels. This is the tunnel that will have cantaloupe pumpkins and honey nut squash. And then the other tunnel over there will have loofah birdhouse gourd, some cucumbers and also green beans. I have planted these. I planted these out yesterday. So these are already planted. So here in a few months the trellises will definitely be the star of the garden. I am so excited to see how that one turns out because I've never grown birdhouse gourd before. I'm just hoping overall I have a really good loofah year. I really miss having loofah. Last year was my worst loofah year. I think I've had since growing loofah just with the hail storm and everything. So I definitely don't have many loofah at all at this point. And I really want to start making my nest pads again with loofah. I really enjoyed that. I had two nest pads that I made for my chickens and unfortunately they just got really, really dirty past the point of really being able to clean them at that point after like a year and a half, two years I think of using them. So it was just time to buy some nest pads and unfortunately I didn't have any more loofah that I could really just make any more with. So I'm hoping we have a good loofah year. In general, I'm hoping we just have a good year. I really want to have a redemption year after 2025 not everything went bad, but it was just one of those years where multiple things happened out of my control and a lot just wasn't, I just, I couldn't harvest a lot. It was a cool season as well. So everything was behind and then the hail storm taking everything out early. It was just a really hard season. I think it's giving me a lot of momentum going into this season because I had one of the longest breaks I've had between gardening seasons and years and then having a new space, I feel just so much more creative and it's been really fun feeling a little bit freer when it comes to the garden than I have in previous years. Cause the previous years I felt so stuck in my old space cause I was so capped in what I could do. And I feel like here my possibilities are honestly kind of endless. There's so much I can do, which was a little bit overwhelming in the beginning. I'm not going to lie. Uh, but it's, it's been really fun. So yeah, here is the other tunnel. It's looking beautiful. Very excited. There's my strawberry cage right there that I really got to figure out what I'm going to do with. Cause obviously I don't have strawberries this year. I have had this idea though for this little area, which I don't think will come into fruition this year. I think I'll probably make this probably mostly just sunflowers and stuff for the time being. But you might be able to see my string. I have it's definitely not straight at the moment because it's been here for a little bit, but this is where we're going to establish a fence. And this is where the area starts to curve. So I wouldn't have perennials and everything right there, but I'm almost thinking this interior part of this in ground space here will be really cool to create like some type of like box or like berry cage where I can establish like, like I'm talking big walk in area where I can establish six to eight blueberry plants or strawberry plants or things like that. I really want to have an area for berries. That's one thing I need to figure out cause I do think it probably be worth my time to like build like a caged area for berries. Obviously I had to cage berries in my backyard at my old property because berries are a hot commodity when it comes to nature. The in ground space is 30 roughly 30 it's like 28 by 50 this is what the in ground space is. I'm very excited about this. This is way larger than my previous in ground space like by a lot. My previous in ground space was like a 20 by 10 but I took everything from that previous phase and just made it large scale. So it definitely looks like my old space, just bigger. Each row here is three feet, so I have three foot walkways by three foot rows and this is where all of my tomatoes will go. My peppers will go. Um, some of my flowers. I also have celery. I'm growing celery for the first time in years. I've grown pink celery, but I've never grown green celery. So that's another new one I'm doing this year. And then, um, that's what I'm trying to figure out this space kind of cause I think I'm gonna have one extra row and then I need two extra rows. Um, I have kidney and black beans I want to plant and that might be something where once I get this in ground space fully planted out and I see what else I have, I might need to go ahead and create maybe a temporary space in front of those garden beds or maybe build one or two more garden beds for the season. I'm really hoping I'm done building garden. I'd say I'm, my husband, if you're watching, thanks for building all the garden beds. Like I said, we still have a ton of work that will be going on. We still don't have everything established. I still have soil left from the old property guys. I've moved so much soil in the last like seven months that I, I really didn't think moving that much soil was a thing and I'm still moving it. So I probably still have enough for another one or two garden beds. Here's our loofahs. They look good. And that is the start to the new space, the new garden, the new beginnings of it all. I'm really excited to show you guys how this space evolves and grows over time. I feel like this is the true starting point of the garden now that we got to a really good starting point to be able to get things planted. Uh, but like I said, you guys are going to see this space evolve and grow like you've seen the last space and you're probably going to see a lot of different changes between now and June because a lot of the things are still getting planted. We're going to get a fence up in that time span hopefully. Uh, but I'm really excited to take you guys along for this new journey, this new chapter. I don't know if you can feel it or not, but I am just so appreciative of this space and the new beginnings I have been gifted. It's been really unique and cool to just see everything come together. Thank you so much for being here today for the very first garden tour of the new space. I'll see you guys all in the next one. Bye guys.