Early Season Garden Tour With Emily Ann

It's been over two weeks since I've been in my garden. We've been to Hawaii and the ACM awards and having a ball but I have missed my garden so much and if you are a gardener you know that a lot can change in two weeks. So let's get out here and take it all in and see where we're at. First thing that I have to comment on is our potato beds. These have never looked better. This is our third year growing potatoes. Last year was our most successful and I think this year we're going to be even more successful. They look incredible and technically we're supposed to be ready to harvest these by June 1st but you want these plants to die back first and if you look over here these are starting to die back. This is what you want it to start looking like but only this bed is dying back. This one over here still is nice and green so I'm not gonna rush this. I'm gonna keep my eye on the weather but here really soon we will be digging up potatoes which is absolutely incredible. In case you're curious it is the last week of May currently and we live in middle Tennessee so we are in zone 7b. Okay first thing that I want to comment on is my onions. Come give them a close-up. These are looking so good. I have never had success with onions. This is my third year trying to grow onions and I'm actually seeing onions. I mean come look over here. Look at that onion. The weeds are taking over. Yes so the weeds have kind of taken over around our onions but it has been really hard to weed around them because we don't want to disturb. See like look right here if I pull this weed up I mean you just expose that whole onion. So that's something that we'll have to learn as we do this how to do it better you know so that we can stay on top of it but I'm so proud of these onions. These should be ready by the end of June and a telltale sign is these big oh tops I guess is what they're called of the onions will fall over all right and that's how you know that the onions are ready to harvest. Wait look how big some of these are. Look at this one. I know. Come look at this. I don't know if you've seen this one. It's crazy. They look so good and my zinnias are popping up. Well we had a good bit of germination right there but then a patch of nothing right here which is interesting but I sowed zinnias all down this row right here to give us some flowers that we could cut and bring into the house. We laid out the into grids this year and I realized I didn't leave space for marigolds, for zinnias, for sunflowers, for herbs. I just kind of went to town with vegetables but I love growing herbs and flowers as well so what we'll probably do is when the onions are done and they're pulled up we will re-sow this bed and I'll plant some more flowers and some more herbs in this bed. Look at this onion. Look how big that one is. I know they're getting huge and don't forget we got to show them you did have some carrots actually pop up. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah we had some success with some carrots right here. Now I didn't go through and thin these out so who knows what we'll actually have. I have only tried to grow carrots in our raised beds and I've never really had great luck so hopefully this video is encouraging to y'all because like the first year we grew potatoes we didn't do well but last year we got a ton of potatoes. This is our third year growing onions and it's our first time actually being successful so you just have to keep trying new things as you go and pretty soon you'll learn it hopefully even if it takes you three years. We have not figured out carrots yet but we actually have more popping up than we thought. Yeah and I think that carrots will probably do better in our raised beds and my plan is once we harvest our potatoes we're going to plant sweet potatoes and then after sweet potatoes we'll plant carrots in our raised beds. The soil is a little bit more controllable in the raised beds and so we should have more success with the carrots in there but so far our onion grid is absolutely perfect and I'm so proud of it. We'll go right across the street here to our green bean grid. I'm so thrilled with this as well. I mean when we left two weeks ago none of this looked like this. These plants grow so fast and they are looking really really good. Now this is our row of bush beans. I'm not seeing any blooms on them yet but I know that they will be putting on blooms here really soon and these are our two rows of our pole beans. Now you can see these are already starting to climb up our cattle panel which makes me so happy. Hopefully these will just continue to grow and thrive and climb all the way up so that we can pick green beans all off of this cattle panel but the plants are looking incredible. I could not ask for anything better. We have one more row right here of our bush beans and they're looking beautiful so we should have an incredible harvest of beans this year. Maybe even more green beans than last year. Which is wild because we had an insane amount of green beans last year. We'll put a clip up on the screen so you can see if you missed that last year. Hopefully we'll have more this year though. I think we will. You sowed these pretty liberally and we weren't home to come through and thin them so we're gonna have a lot of green beans. They'll be good. I did come through here and plant some marigolds. There's a couple patches that I left bare and they are coming up and those are just from seeds that I saved. You can see that we really struggle with weeds but it's just part of it. It's especially part of growing in the ground and I'm sure there's things that we could do better but that's just part of learning every single year. A little bit more and more as you go but I'm really happy to see these marigolds. Wait. Popping up right here. We need a quick break. Lucky. Our three-legged dog friend. Well he's on a mission. Where's he going? I don't know. We don't actually know if his name is Lucky. He's on a mission. But we call him Lucky because he hops around with three legs. Look at him hop. We don't even know whose dog it is but he just runs around here with three legs. Our neighbors all tell us that he runs around because everybody feeds him. He's like the neighborhood dog. But I haven't seen Lucky in a long time. Me neither. I thought Lucky had maybe gotten taken out. Not so lucky. Yeah I thought maybe his luck had run out. Sorry for that interruption. Back to the garden tour. Now for our middle grids. Our corn is looking incredible. I mean we had such incredible germination on this corn. Now we planted it a lot more tightly than we planted corn last year. So I'm really hoping we didn't plant like crowd it out and over crowd it is what I'm trying to say. I don't think we did. I think it looks great. But it looks incredible and when this is full grown it's going to look amazing out here. I'm so excited and we're going to have more corn than we know what to do with if we're Lucky. Okay so this is my first time seeing our melon patch and it is looking a little sad to me. Some of these are popping up right here which that's good. That's all we need on this mound. You don't really need more than two per mound. And this one we've got a lot more so we might have to thin that out. But then over here it doesn't look like we have anything that came up. So we'll probably need to come back through here and sow more seeds. Is it possible, this is a question for me learning. It might be a dumb question. Is it possible to kind of scoop up even the roots of those and move it over to another? I've never done that before. That makes me a little bit nervous. But I mean. Kind of like transplanting it. Yeah we can look that up because I think you can buy melon starts at the. Yeah you can for sure. Okay so yeah maybe we could kind of transplant some of those that already started. See right here we've got two that look really good and healthy. This one doesn't really look that good though and we've had a lot of rain. So I'm not sure. Usually melons are like no-brainers for us. This one has well maybe one right there. Hard to tell with all the weeds. Yeah so this is a little disappointing. But you know melons grow really quick. So we can get out here and sow some seeds and give them another shot. But I don't think we've got enough coming up to transplant them like you said. Because like right here we've got two that look good. This one has one. This one has two. So it's just kind of spotty. But that's just part of it. You win some you lose some. With all these mounds we're still going to have plenty of watermelon cantaloupe. Oh absolutely. But I think I will go back through here. Sow a few more seeds. And sow some more seeds. And just kind of weed as best we can. This will end up becoming a jungle. This bed, this grid, and the corn grid will both be jungles. If everything grows like it has grown in the past we won't be able to walk through these areas until it's pretty much time to harvest. But that's okay. What I think I'm going to love so much about these grids in comparison to what we did in the past. We used to do long rows and it's really hard to keep an organized neat and tidy garden when you've got like vining watermelons just going into your green beans and going into your tomatoes. It was just always a mess and kind of created like a jungle. So we're trying to keep down on the jungle vibe in our garden this year. So we'll definitely need to come out here and sow a couple more seeds. But at least we've got some popping up. It's not a total fail. Look right here. We have a volunteer, I think zinnia, popping up. This must have been where one of our zinnia rows was last year. And now, oh look there's another one right there. I love growing flowers but that's why I decided not to grow sunflowers especially this year because they just drop their seeds and then all of a sudden you've got flowers growing everywhere. Zinnias don't upset me as bad as sunflowers. And there were some sunflowers growing where the corn is so I got to keep my eye out for those because I don't want a sunflower in the middle of my corn field. And now we're already back to the tomato patch. Oh my gosh come here. I was really hoping we'd already have some fruit on the vine and we do. Oh this is so exciting. Now we need to get out here with our tomato clips and we need to start clipping these plants higher up. So we have them clipped kind of at the base and I'm seeing a little bit of disease down here. So we need, oh my gosh yeah that's blight. So blight absolutely was a pain in the butt last year. I spent so many hours out here pruning and trying to fight the blight. It is a fungal disease that comes up from the dirt and see when you're out of town and you're not home to check on this stuff all the time you're not able to maintain it the way that you should. And see we've got all these leaves just laying here on the dirt and we've had a lot of rain. And so what happens the soil gets wet splashes up onto the leaves and that fungus gets onto the plant and it just grows up the plant and it kills the plant and it cuts your harvest in half. So after I get done talking to y'all and doing this garden tour I'm gonna come out here and start pruning like crazy and getting these leaves cut up so that they're off the ground. But all in all it's looking good. We do have our weeds growing in with our marigolds right here that I need to go through and kind of thin out. I sowed some marigolds in here but the weeds are kind of taking over. So I need to go through there and clean that up. But all in all the tomato plants look really really good. We struggled with blight last year but it was doing this to majority of all of our tomato plants and these are the only two I've seen so far that look that bad. And look we've got fruit starting to set on these. So I'm still really really pleased especially with us being gone as much as we have been to come home to this and know that we've still got some stuff to work with. But yeah this is blight right here and it'll just continue to climb up the plant if you don't do anything about it. So I will have to get out here and work on that. I'll probably just rip those out. But all in all I'm very happy. I think that the tomatoes look good. I'm getting a little bit of anxiety about the blight. But it doesn't, it's okay. There's barely any disease. It's just part of it. Now our pepper grid is right over here and we are not having the best of luck with the peppers this year either and I don't know why. Peppers have been something that have been so prolific for us in the past and this year they just haven't been. We planted over a hundred pepper plants and as you can see we've really thinned them out because they're just not growing. We have some that we bought from the co-op. That's what these are down here and those look pretty good. And some of ours are looking good. They're putting on more leaves but they're just very slow to grow. So like this is one looks like an animal actually came and bit the top off of that one actually. But for the most part we're still gonna get a good pepper harvest. There's just not as many as we originally planted. Look at this big pepper. I know that that's a banana pepper. We got that from the co-op. So that one's looking really good. But also I think that you're being a little bit hard on yourself. It's still really early in the season and our peppers have done really good late in the season. That is true. We usually are getting pepper harvests all the way into October because we don't have our first frost really here until the end of October or even sometimes the beginning of November. Yeah I think these plants still look really good. I think they're just young. Those will do okay. Well we'll see. Since so many of these have kind of withered you can see right here one that I will be shocked if that comes back. Yeah. What I am gonna do is come out here and in these spots where we've cleared up some of the peppers I'm gonna come through and plant some of my herbs that I'm to grow. I will say the more that you can plant the better because where the ground is barren that's where like weeds are just really gonna want to pop up. But if you already have plants growing they kind of crowd out the weeds and the weeds don't grow as much. So if I can fill this up with basil and oregano or zinnias and stuff like that not only does it bring in pollinators and help deter pests but it also just maximizes our space out here in the garden. We also wanted to do an experiment this year with tomatoes. Since I started all of those tomatoes in our windowsill in the house we wanted to see how tomatoes that were started from other growers in our area did in comparison to how ours performed that we started from seed. So all of this row is filled with tomatoes that are from our local co-op. All kinds of different varieties from slicers to romas to san marzano marzano. I need to know how to say that. And I will say some of these passed away. I mean right here this was all filled and a bunch of them withered and that's just part of it but look right here. Is that a cherry tomato? What is that? Yeah these are grape tomatoes which they look so good but gosh it's so bushy and just on the ground. I've just got to come in here and prune it. I forgot that I had planted grape tomatoes but those always put on fruit really really early. You can come over here. I mean we've got ones that are ready on there which is amazing. So if you're looking for like a really rewarding early variety to grow any type of grape tomato is great for that. But all in all they're looking really really good. There's a lot of pruning work that needs to be done and just like chore maintenance that needs to be done out here but we'll get that done little by little. Another thing that we want to work on out here is our pathways that intersect between our grids. Originally we tilled all this up and we laid down some pine straw. Is that what this is Chris? No it's just a straw. Just straw. Yeah. But we laid down some of this straw but we did not mulch thick enough. We have learned that if you are really trying to suppress weeds you need like five to six inches of mulch like heavy heavy mulching and it can just get really really expensive. So it looks really good at the beginning of the season but now it's already you know coming in with grass. So we will have to figure out what we want to do there. I don't know if we want to tarp it, if we want to weed eat it and just mulch it heavy again and just kind of maintain it but that's something that definitely needs our attention. But before we close out this video I want to show you the progress in the orchard. I had a vision of two beautiful planters and they are for the most part beautiful but they're not growing as well as I wanted them to and this tree has just been a problem since the day I planted it. It won't stand up straight so I need Mr. Chris Sasser to get out here and put a stick in here or something to help support this so that it grows straight up because I really wanted it to be like a focal and it's looking a little messy. So we need to work on that and hopefully these start doing better. I don't know why they just have not done well. I don't know if it's the soil we planted them in. We planted them in the compost we normally do. Sometimes stuff does good and sometimes it don't but well that's something we need to work on too so we'll work on it. But over here we have got our blueberries. We've got four blueberry bushes and this one is doing the best by far out of all of them. There are so many berries on this plant and it will be so fun to come and pick these once they are nice and ripe. I don't know if any more berries are on the others but it takes a couple years for blueberries to mature. Now three of these were planted at the same time and for whatever reason this one has really taken off and others have not. That's just something that we have learned is that you win some you lose some. Once again it's a good life lesson when you're gardening. You never really know what you're going to get. You try your best and hopefully it works out. Now this is something that has absolutely blown me away. It's our black berry bushes. These are just not even a year old on our property. We just bought these a couple months ago and they have so much fruit on them. Over there I see one that looks like it's like ready which is amazing. I think I'm gonna just pick it and eat it. I probably need to go wash it. I've touched all kinds of compost and this is probably how you get worms. Yummy. So hopefully we'll get a bunch of blackberries this season. We'll see. Our green stalks are a little disheveled. The strawberry season has kind of come and gone. They have put on a bunch of runners and I just have not been home to get these runners into the dirt but you can see especially over here there are runners everywhere off of these plants and they are looking for a place to root. So that's another big chore that needs to happen at some point. I need to come through here and pin all these down and that's what we have these strawberry cups for. We just have not been home to get out here and do the chores. So that's part of having a crazy busy schedule and trying to keep a big garden is there are some things that are just going to get out of control but at least they're growing and we're going to have even more strawberry plants next year from all of the new growth that these first year plants are putting on. But we got a bunch of strawberries off of these green stalks and I absolutely love growing in green stalks so just a good learning lesson and I'll get those rooted down in some dirt and hopefully have more plants out of them. Now we have some apple trees and this is just the first year for these two. There's a little apple down here. This tree has some spots that don't look so great. I don't know if it has any kind of disease or what. We are still learning when it comes to fruit trees. That's something that eventually we want to really invest in but we thought why not get started now. Look here's another apple. This is I think a pink lady tree that looks pretty good but it's just the first year so we're not really expecting a bunch of fruit off of these trees but it is really exciting to see some fruit being set already but that is a little discouraging to see how all of that is dead. So we need to do some research. If y'all have any tips for us, this obviously has good green growth up to here but then it looks like it just flat out dies after that. So if you have any tips, if we need to remove these, please let us know down in the comments and we'll do our own research. These are grape vines and originally we were going to put a trellis out here and we haven't had time to do it and that is on our to-do list. So y'all are going to be holding us accountable because I have shared a lot of to-do's with you but that is just part of it. So everything all in all looks really really good. I'm so thrilled to see that everything is growing so well. The problems that we're facing out in the garden aren't too scary and I think that we're going to be able to nip them in the bud. I'm going to get out here and work on our tomato plants, prune those up, sow some more seeds in the spots where we have some barren soil and get to work on some of the strawberries and all the little chores that we have to get done. But most of all we are so thankful that we have you along on this journey with us. This is going to be our biggest year yet for the Sasser House Backyard Garden and it is just so much fun to have you here for the journey. So thank you for spending time out of your busy schedules with us here at the Sasser House and we will see you guys on the next one. Bye!