The secret to lazy spring gardening? What you do NOW!

Hey guys, it's Brie here at Blossom and Branch Farm and it is finally starting to feel like fall. So today we're gonna be doing some fall garden things. I'm just gonna take you around, show you all the things that I do this time of year to prep the garden for a good fall, winter, and spring. Let's go. I am heading to France this week to do our next workshop in Limoges. It also means that I have so much to do before I go because I'm just trying to wrap up some things here, mostly with cover cropping. So we're gonna take a look at our cover crops that I showed planting last time. We're gonna check on the status, see how they're looking. I'm gonna kind of show you what I'm looking for. We're going to cover crop some pots as well because I wanna show you that you can actually cover crop in a raised bed or a container. And I'm also gonna show you one of the things that I find very, very important this time of year, which is deadheading. What I deadhead, what I don't deadhead. I also did want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to send such a thoughtful message in response to my burnout video. So, you know, I've been dealing with a lot of burnout. If you watched that video, you kind of already know that. But my goodness, the support that you guys showed me in that video just really touched my heart and the messages that I've gotten from people. That is just so, so meaningful to me. And I just wanted to say thank you for that. I am still feeling burned out. I have been doing some things to kind of help me feel less burned out. And those things are mostly non-gardening related. Like a lot of, I've been doing some more dance classes. I've been trying some new aerial dance, which has been really fun and new for me. Yeah, so I'm not feeling like, you know, 100% better, but I'm at least feeling like I can tackle things. And of course it helps a lot that it's not so hot. All right, I'm gonna stop right here because I want to show you guys something. You know, I don't usually do a ton of crafting on this channel, but I think it might be fun to do a little bit more as we kind of head into the winter months. So I did want to show you one thing that I'm doing, which is preserving some leaves. And I talk a lot, especially on my Instagram and, you know, my kind of short form social media channels about reducing plastic and how to use things from the garden instead to decorate with. So one of the videos I just posted was about how to preserve fresh leaves. And so I wanted to show you what they look like. So these are fresh leaves from my maple tree that I preserved. And the tree had to come down. It was actually dying because the squirrels had eaten all of the bark. And so I had to cut the tree down. And I didn't want to waste all the foliage because the foliage was very, very pretty. It was kind of starting to change colors. And so what I did was this foliage preserving technique. And I've done it before in the past. Last year I did it with some beech leaves and some oak leaves. But this year I wanted to do it with this maple. So this method is very, very simple. Now what I have in this bin is a mix of water and vegetable glycerin. I'll link this glycerin below. So vegetable glycerin is a humectant. So basically what happens is these leaves, by soaking it in some warm water and glycerin, we're replacing the water in the plant tissue with glycerin which helps preserve these leaves. So we soaked these. These ones have been in this tub of glycerin and warm water. I start with warm water and glycerin and then I just leave it outside. Put a cover on it if you're worried about something falling in. And I've just let it soak for about five days. And now what I have is these beautiful preserved leaves. And they are a little bit pliable. They do hold onto the structure a little bit of the leaf versus if we just dry them or press a leaf, then they get crunchy and a little bit hard. These are much more pliable. So what I do now is I usually rinse these off and I let them dry. And then I'm gonna turn them into a wreath. Now of course it depends on the foliage. Different foliages work better for this than others. I'll put down below in the description kind of which ones you can do this glycerin treatment with. Some of them you wanna fully submerge like this. Others you can just cut the ends and put them into a vase. So if you wanted to preserve for example pine, boughs or cedar or junipers, then those you would wanna cut the ends and put them into the glycerin water to uptake that. And it takes a little bit longer. These leaves that I've submerged, they only take about five days to kind of complete this process. And then yeah, I can turn them into a neat little wreath and I don't have to buy any more plastic from the store. So you guys know how I feel about plastics. Now it's not really gardening per se, but I do love doing a lot of this kind of crafty type of stuff and it does help me cope with the burnout. It also helps me give some other content because obviously gardening is over the winter, gonna slow down. All right, I'm gonna flip you around so you can see the garden. All right, let's take a look at, this is our vegetable garden. So you can see that we've got a few things going on. One is that stuff is kind of starting to flop over. I have some weeds over there that have kind of started to go to seed. I'm gonna go cut those down. I have some peppers. These are actually shishitos that have started to turn red. This is just what happens to shishitos as they get old. I mean, there's still, you can still eat them. They taste a little bit different, a little bit sweeter, but they are still edible. I have quite a few peppers actually I need to harvest. So these I'm gonna let keep going until frost, but I do also have some little blank spots in here. So I could cover crop in here. So I am gonna do that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna just pull back. You guys know how I love my pine needle mulch. This soil could really benefit from some organic matter. We have pretty heavy clay here in Colorado. So you can see, I'll show you exactly what that looks like when I say heavy clay. Here we are. So when people say, oh, you can't, you know, I have to grow in a raised bed because my clay is so heavy. This is a ball of the clay in my soil. And we have our peppers growing in them and they're doing just fine and dandy. Okay, so I know there are cases where yes, the soil is maybe not super plantable or it's very, very rocky and you have to use a raised bed or maybe for back issues or other physical issues. But for the most part, you can still grow in clay and actually things do pretty well. But all that to say, it's not super fun to plant into this clay. I don't really like working in it. And so I am still gonna try to amend it. So I'm gonna clear off most of these pine needles. I'm actually just gonna pop them right into the walkway for now. And then I'm gonna do my cover crop. I'm gonna sow it right along my drip line just because I know I'm not gonna be here to water it. I'm gonna just put my cover crop seed here along the drip line. And then that way I know it's gonna get regular water to help it germinate. So that's the number one thing that I am going to do here this time of year. My priority is always cover crop first because the cover crop is just more time sensitive than a lot of other things at this time of year. I wanna make sure that it gets germinated and gets growing in a timely manner. So I'm gonna grab my cover crop seed. I'm gonna use the oats and peas because again, I know that those are gonna germinate and they're gonna grow even after we get frost. You can go back one video and watch our cover crop video if you're not sure what I'm talking about. But for now, let's just put this down. It does already have inoculant on it. I don't have to do that step. So I'm just gonna real quick pop this in. This is why I like to pre-mix some of this so that it's ready to go when I need it. All right. Woo, this soil is hard. Very hard. I actually have never cover cropped this row. So I might even, because we've definitely slowed down on eating a lot of these shishitos. And this is kind of one of the things that I do too at this time of year is I start to gauge, okay, am I really gonna eat any more of my zucchini or am I over it at this point? And if I know I'm not gonna really be eating any more of it, that's when it's a good time to clear it out of the garden and put in a cover crop. So don't leave things in just for the sake of leaving them in if you're really not using them anymore. Clear them out and put a cover crop in. For example, these peppers down here. Now I will pull off all of these peppers. Of course, I'm not gonna let these go to waste. I will use them, we'll dry them for paprika or whatever we wanna make. And then I'll also pull any weeds out when I'm doing this. So if there are any perennial weeds that I'm worried are gonna come back, like mallow, I'll just go ahead and take those out right now before I cover crop. And like that one that I saw over in the garden that had gone to seed, I'm gonna take that one out too because what I don't want is seeds dropping all over my garden. And it is much easier to just deadhead those weeds and keep the seeds from blowing around the garden than it is to weed them all out next year. So fall is just one of those times where I just, you know, I don't necessarily have the energy anymore to be doing a whole lot. But if I can just at least keep things, especially the weeds, deadheaded, that helps a lot in the following year. I've just learned that that's one of those things I just need to suck it up and do. It just will help a lot. And as the weather gets a little bit cooler, these don't have any more blossoms on them really. So unlikely that I'm gonna be getting a lot more peppers from them. At this point, I'm just gonna go ahead and pull them so that I can pay attention to the soil health here. But that's a decision you have to make. Now that being said, I am not pulling my tomatoes because I will eat those until, I can't eat them anymore, but I love tomatoes. Okay, all right, there we go. Oh, this clay is so hard. I can't even really, I'm gonna make a little furrow. Use the little stick to really get down and in there. This area of the bed, because it is so heavy clay, really would benefit from actually a broadcast cover crop versus a furrow like this, just because the more organic matter we get into clay, the better. But I just don't see it happening. Again, with me not being here to keep it watered, it's just unlikely that it's gonna germinate. And all my burlap that I usually would use to cover it to help it germinate is in the field right now. So I wanna make sure all these seeds get covered. All right, so I've covered those. I'm gonna do the rest of this area. And then I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do. And then I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna cover crop my pots. This method though, doing the furrow method, oh, I really, I seeded that a little too heavy, is that it uses less seed than the broadcast method. So again, if you're trying to stretch your seed a little bit further, doing the furrow like this uses less. So I am making sure I cover up all those peas because the peas need darkness for germination. Okay, so remember when we're talking about cover cropping containers, you don't have to cut things down to do it. So even though with our oats and peas, obviously getting the most growth is good. Oats and peas, remember, as we discussed, will also germinate in colder temperatures. So if you wanna wait to do this until maybe say early October, so do this in another two, three weeks, you could still do that into early mid-October and it would be fine. The only reason I'm actually doing these ones is because number one, we had some trailing petunias in here that have kind of faded and stopped blooming now. And then also my dear sweet Roosevelt came and decided to eat the rest of my sweet potato vines. So there's really nothing in this container that I wanna save. If there was, again, you could leave it until it's done and you could always cover crop around it or pull whatever is done. All right, now this big stick in here is actually from our old, I used to have a grapevine in here that did not survive a winter. So I'm just gonna kinda get rid of kind of the bulk of stuff in here. Again, you can leave the roots down and in there. I'm just gonna kinda loosen. And this is much easier actually to cover crop in than the beds because of course, how nice and light the soil is. So same process. I'm just gonna go ahead and sprinkle some in here. And then we're just gonna keep it watered. It's that simple. So keep it watered. This is nice and easy. I'm just, again, covering the seed because this is all seed that likes to have a little bit of darkness for germination. And actually, I feel we're getting a little bit of rain right now. So perfect timing for our cover crop that we just got in. I'm gonna let this sit. It's gonna grow. And again, it's just gonna cover the soil up nicely for winter. And then in the spring, I can either just leave it on top and plant right into the mulch or I can actually turn that biomass on top down and into the soil. So I'm regrowing my own container soil. And in terms of what I cut down this time of year, I usually stick to things that are gone to seed and potentially create a big mess in my garden. So one example of that is fennel, which reseeds quite heavily and can spread pretty quickly. Now you can also save these fennel seeds and use them just like you do fennel that you buy as a spice to make sausages, et cetera. You can definitely do that. I will with a little bit of this, but I have way more than I could ever use. I'll put some out on a farm stand for my neighbors. Okay, the next thing I'm gonna be dealing with are these chives. So these are actually garlic chives. And for some reason, this is the first year that I've gotten tons of little black aphids all over my garlic chives. So some of this that you're seeing is aphids. Some of it is actually just the seeds here forming. So you can see the seeds of the chives here are starting to form. So if you wanted to, as I'm going through and clearing all this out, of course, anything that I wanna save seed from, I'm gonna save seed from, but I don't really want my garlic chives dropping seeds all over because they've done that before. I've left my chives in and let them blossom and drop seed, and they just turn into a big mess. So I'm gonna cut these down. I just don't need as many chives as I have growing here. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut these down. So anything that you're seeing go to seed that you don't want dropping seed is what you'll want a dead head. You don't have to pull it out, but you might just wanna take off the seed heads. But I'm going to leave my rudbeckia. So I've got some rudbeckia around the perimeter. And that rudbeckia is a really important plant for the birds, especially over the winter. They eat the seeds. So you can see it back there. You can see it back there. It's that yellow one. So I usually plant those around the perimeter, and that's why, because if I put them around the perimeter of the garden versus in the garden, if they do drop seed, it's not that big of a deal, but I can still leave a lot of stuff for the birds over the winter. All right, let's cut down those chives. It's not a personal flaw if you have aphids. Don't let it make you feel bad about yourself. We all get aphids. Aphids feed the ladybugs. They feed a lot of the beneficials like the lacewings. And without those aphids, there wouldn't be any food for those beneficials. So that's how I think about it. All right, there we go. Now we won't get a ton of reseeding of those chives. Speaking of, what I found on the chives. Okay, we'll put them back. There's still plenty of food for you there, buddy. Here you go, okay. All right, I've got my fennel cut down. Now I do leave the cut ends here because these can be great spots for little pollinators to nest over the winter, but I got most of the seed heads cut down. So again, I won't be getting fennel seeds all over my garden. So now I've kind of started to clear out this row. Now this had my potatoes in it here. So I do need to harvest some potatoes. You can see I'm actually using a broad fork. This is a broad fork from Mindful Farmer just to get up and under those. So I'm gonna go ahead and pull most of these out. And then I'm gonna cover crop this row as well because yeah, this one could also really benefit from a cover crop. And usually I don't get all of my potatoes up, especially because I have such heavy clay. A lot of them kind of just get left behind and then I have perpetual potatoes because this year I didn't even plant these ones. They did plant themselves from the ones I left behind. So again, this is a newer bed in here, which is why it's still so heavy clay. The longer I have these beds going and heavily mulched and heavily cover cropped, the better this soil will get. So right now, pretty heavy clay, but I always do end up spearing some potatoes when I do this. Sorry, potatoes. We just eat those ones first. And if there's any that kind of turned green, I usually just peel that part off or cut that part off. I don't throw away the whole potato myself. It's an individual choice. But so yeah, if you have any that kind of have that green, I usually just cut that part off. I eat the rest, but I'm not afraid of no potatoes. Potatoes are one that I do really try to cover crop after just because, I'm trying not to pierce my irrigation lines here. They really, potatoes really do disturb the soil because obviously when we're digging them up, we're turning the soil quite a bit. So I do always try to cover crop after a potato crop for sure. Okay, now I also promised that we were gonna check on the progress of the cover crop. So let's do that real quick before it starts to rain a lot. I remember I planted this about two weeks ago. So this is about two weeks of growth here. And we had our cover crop actually, and we had our fabric over the top of this one. So you can see, you've got some good growth here. We've got our oats growing. We have our peas growing. This is all adding good organic matter to the soil. It's looking good. I'm gonna let the rain go ahead and hit that. I had used some burlap over the top of some of the seeds and I had used some landscape fabric over the top of some of the seeds. And actually, even though I don't prefer to use that landscape fabric as I mentioned in that video, the cover crop seed where there was landscape fabric over the top actually germinated better. I think because it holds in the moisture a little bit better than the burlap. But I still like to use the burlap for direct sowing things like zinnias and cosmos to help keep in the moisture. Ooh, there's a big flash of lightning. I actually prefer the landscape fabric for cover crop germination. It just seemed to do a little bit better. Especially for those peas, which again need that darkness to germinate. We take lightning very seriously here in Colorado. So I'm gonna go in. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. We'll see you guys around here next time at the farm.