Growing My Own Groceries! July Garden Tour - Zone 4A Minnesota.

Welcome back for another garden tour. I can't believe it's July already, but I am feeling it. The garden is absolutely popping. There's some super exciting things happening in here that I can't wait to show you because this year has been kind of an experimental year for me. I've been gardening for a long time, but I'm totally switching a lot of big methods as far as how I'm growing food and working my soil. So we'll take a look together at how all of that is panning out. I have also a lot of different new experiments that I've been doing. I love just kind of testing the waters and trying new things. So I can't wait to show you how those are panning out. Lastly, we have a decent amount of harvesting to do today. So we're going to go row by row and I'll show you what's going on, what varieties I'm growing, what I'm noticing as far as pest disease, and how I'm maintaining each vegetable. And then hopefully we'll get a decent harvest as well. And if you're new here, welcome. My name is Katie and I am a Zone 3 slash Zone 4 Minnesota gardener. And we try to live a self-sufficient lifestyle where we grow and produce the vast majority of what we eat. And that can be a challenge with our very short growing season. I'm planting between mid-May and early June. Some of the things I just planted a couple of weeks ago, believe it or not. And we're going to freeze potentially in early, for sure, mid-September. So here we go. We're trying to crank out as much food as we can in a short amount of time. So let's go ahead and start the tour. Before we jump into the specifics of each row, let's just do a quick overview of how this garden is set up for anyone that is new here. It is 52 feet wide and 25 feet long. I have 13 rows and they are about three feet wide, give or take, in a one foot wide walking path, which I wish I had done a little bit wider because you can see over here, things start getting a little lost. It's a little jungly right now. So if I had to do it again, I'd probably do two foot wide walking paths, but you know, we're making it work. Another thing that I always get questions about is my fencing. This is fantastic. This is electric poultry netting. We have a lot of deer around here, rabbits, squirrels, and nobody has ever gotten through as long as this is running. And I actually have a second one going right now over here for our meat chickens because we've had a lot of bear issues this summer. So one of them broke in and ripped the panels off the meat chicken tractor and took seven or eight of them, which was a sad day. So we have the poultry netting going. So, so thankful for this. If you're interested, I'll link this in the description. Highly, highly recommend. One of my absolute amazing experiments is down there, so I'm going to say best for last. So we're going to start on this side, which is my garlic, which is still great. I love my garlic. Obviously we grow a decent amount here because we use it for fresh eating. I like to give a lot away and garlic, of course, is great for herbal remedies too. So this is my tried and true variety. This is called the music garlic. I just started with a small bag of seed garlic and over the years I've just kept multiplying it and now we have an endless supply. And the scapes are already done. We harvested those maybe a couple weeks ago. We still have a little bit left in the fridge. We love them grilled and I have a recipe for it. If you're interested, I'll put it in the video description. And the garlic is getting very close to being ready to be harvested. What I'm looking for is at the bottom, about three sets of leaves have started to brown and shrivel up. You can see one has already started, so I just want to see this one and this one to go. And then that will mean that the bulbs, the papery coverings have dried up and protected the bulbs a little bit more before it's ready to be harvested. So we're getting very close, maybe another week or two, especially if this hot weather continues. And I am actually for the first time ever in my life growing a second variety of garlic, which has been kind of fun to do the side by side. So I'll show you that. It's this one here and it actually looks quite a bit different. You can see it's definitely shorter than the music garlic. It also has much different coloring. It's kind of lighter and more yellowish to it. This is an Asian variety of garlic. I can never remember what it's called, so I'll put the the name here on the screen. But it looks like it's progressing along about the same though. The first leaf has browned. We're still waiting on the next two to go, so that should be really fun. We love cooking Asian cuisine, so I think this will just give it that added pop. And while we're down here in a spot where you can actually see the ground versus the jungle over here, let's go ahead and talk about mulch. So I have a few different things going on here. This is my tried and true, I've been doing this for years and I think I will continue to do it, is wood chips on the walkways. It's really great for suppressing weeds. You can see I've done some weeding, but generally it stays pretty good. You know there's a few guys in here. I also like that it provides just a good visual break between the soil and the walkways. Can't really tell as much here, but over there you can see there's nice contrast with the soil, which I really like. I feel like gardening is a creative outlet for me, so you have to make it look nice. And this is the only spot in my entire garden where you are going to see organic straw, which is new for me. The last few years I have been a heavy mulcher with organic straw around all my plants, and that started to cause some problems. The problem that I was encountering with mulching heavily with organic straw here at this homestead is that I have heavy clay soil, and in Minnesota we get a decent amount of moisture. And it was just a recipe for disaster. The soil was never fully drying in between, and just all that was just wet all the time. Wet, thick clay. And that became a huge problem for the potatoes. I was getting bacterial soft rot, and then that was attracting roly-polies, and just my harvest was not so great last year. Same with the carrots. And those are two very big crops for us here. They help stretch the winter for us, and so this year I tried something totally different. And since this is a total jungle, I can't even show you it. I'm going to go over here to the tomatoes. So you can see there is no organic straw, but I did mulch because I still wanted to cover the soil and provide some nutrients. So I mulched it with compost, and this is kind of chunky compost that came from my organic raw milk farm. And I think it's perfect. It's just providing a good nutrient layer. It's helping to suppress weeds, and it's just providing a little bit of buffer in case there's dry times. And then the other thing that I'm really liking about this compared to organic straw is that this is dark. And even though it doesn't feel like it this week because it's been really hot, we do, you know, experience cold temperatures, especially on the in and out times of the season. And so I'm hoping that this dark compost layer for mulch is going to help keep the soil temp high, which is going to help a lot of my plants thrive. Okay, so back to the potatoes. So I'm growing two different varieties here. Most of this here is the red chieftain potato. That is my tried and true, stores really well, tastes delicious. And then last year I added russet potatoes. They're kind of the front section of this first row here, and it's kind of fun. They actually have white flowers where the red chieftain have purple flowers. I didn't know that potatoes had different colored flowers. And I'm not a flower remover. I've always left the flowers on. I've always generally had good harvests, excluding the bacterial soft rot. So I'm all about not doing more than you absolutely have to. So, so far so good on that. And another thing that I've totally changed on my potatoes is I used to cram these two rows of potatoes into one garden row. And I think that was part of my problem too. They just needed more space. So I got a little crafty to free up an entire row, which I'll show you how I did that as we go through the garden tour. But I think we're doing good. Even splitting it out, it's kind of a nightmare. I don't think I could walk through this walking path if I needed to. But they're looking so lush and healthy. These are about up to close to like mid-thigh. So doing good there. Hopefully, maybe by next month, once they're starting to die back a little bit, we can dig some up and see how they look. So here is a very important crop for us. We depend on this heavily for the winter. And these are my bush beans. I am a bush bean gal instead of pole beans. I just find that they're so easy to grow. They're delicious. And I love that they just produce a lot and then over a short amount of time. So you can just really push it. So about six weeks, these guys will be producing and we're getting really close. You can see we're just starting to think about flowering. So maybe by next week, week and a half, we'll be ready to go on the bush beans. I did tuck in a couple of dill in here. You know me as a greedy gardener trying to squeeze a little bit in anywhere we can. And this is the north side of my garden. So I like to do any tall stuff here. So these guys will keep growing up and hopefully produce some delicious pickles for me because right over here are the cucumbers. So those are cranking away. And as far as spacing goes, these are three rows of bush beans and this should be about it for growth. So they stay pretty darn compact, which is nice. Okay, and then right in front of the beans is a little test group of carrots. This is my control group because I move the vast majority of them up by the cabin, which we'll get to later, into the raised beds where they will hopefully be a little bit happier because in my heavy clay soil, they just were not doing great. Plus the bacterial soft rot. So I hope, I'm hoping they'll be a whole lot happier up by the cabin. And then of course I need a control group to cross compare and really know which one does better. I have a couple volunteers in here. A little dill started and same with a chamomile and that's fine. We'll just let them go and they can be friends in here. Speaking of friends, let's talk about companion planting flowers. I have quite a few in here and this is something that I've really been perfecting and dialing in over the years. Companion planting flowers are absolutely amazing. You're going to see them all throughout my garden. They help bring in pollinators. They also help repel pests and they're just great for just your overall health of your garden, breaking things up and who doesn't like a little pop of color. And a few of these are highly medicinal as well. So it's just win-win-win. Even as a greedy gardener I still think it's worth dedicating some space to companion planting flowers. But this one is probably my favorite as a greedy gardener because it's nice and compact. This is a petite marigold. Absolutely fantastic. Love these and let's go ahead and take a look at the other ones. This is calendula. I just harvested a bunch of this yesterday so maybe let's go look at the other one that I didn't get to. Much more blooms on this one. That one's absolutely popping. But I love calendula because it is highly medicinal. These flowers are full of resins, especially if you pick them midday when the sun is out and they're all full. Your fingers are going to get nice and sticky when you harvest them off. You just like that with your fingernail. Throw them in your dehydrator and then you can infuse them in all sorts of things. I like to put them in my whipped tallow body butter and I also like to put it in sabs. It's just so healing, soothing, it'll help with any rashes, you name it. So love calendula. The only thing I don't like about it is they get quite large so they can kind of take over compared to the nice little petite marigolds here. But it's all good. I still think it's absolutely worth it to have these in the garden. Another companion planting flower I have that is also medicinal is down here. This one is looking a little bit sad. I did harvest quite a bit from it yesterday too so you don't see as many of the flowers. But this is chamomile again. I have another one over there. I love to dry it to make like a bedtime tea. It's very calming. And then this is my failed companion planting flower. You probably can't even see it. So these are zinnias. I heard so many good things so I thought I would try it. I started them from seed and that one's looking a little bit better but overall I am not impressed. I don't think I'll grow that one again. And then my final companion planting flower is down here by the sea of broccoli and brussels sprouts. This one I love because purple is probably my favorite color when it comes to plants. I just feel like it's just such a nice color. It's soothing versus the bright yellows and reds you know. And this is salvia and I just love it. It's shaping up much better than last year. Last year I just kind of let it do its own thing. I didn't do any pruning and it got really tall and just kind of fell all over the place. Where this year I tried to get in to pinching it off and helping it create a better shape. I'm definitely going to keep this one going but it is bigger so the petite marigold still wins the prize but I think as long as you have a bigger space that can handle it I'm loving this one. A little more chamomile in there. All right let's head back over there. All right so back to our original row here. We're going to dig into tomatoes largely but right up front here I have another experiment going. This is just two little pepper plants. I shouldn't even say little. I feel like they're doing quite quite well which is honestly surprising because the last few years I've noticed that my peppers in the ground just weren't doing that well. So I've been moving the vast majority of them up by the cabin in the raised beds. My thought was that the soil temp is a little bit higher in those raised beds and here in Minnesota heat is something that's a little hard to come down by in general. It's been hot this week so I feel a little silly saying that but compared to most of the U.S. soil temp getting it high enough for peppers can be a problem and so far they've done exceptionally well in the raised beds but this year I don't know. Let's take a look again. I've been pretty darn impressed with how the peppers are developing so let me know in the comments when we go look at my other peppers up by the cabin what you think on which group is doing better. Okay so we made it to the sea of tomatoes. I have two rows of them. They're spaced about two feet apart and the vast majority of these are plum regals. That is my absolute favorite variety of tomato to grow and I love them because they're compact which means I can grow them in cages. I'm just a tomato cage gal. I know most people like to do trellising system and everything but this is just what I started doing and it's what I'm comfortable with and it works with this variety of tomato. They just stay small and compact yet they really load it up. You can see that we have lots of tomatoes developing already so I think we're gonna have a good year. I hope I hope. The other thing that I really really like about these plum regals is that they are very blight resistant variety. I had a lot of problems with blight at my last homestead and so that's where I discovered this one and it's just been a game changer for me. So if you struggle with blight definitely give this one a try. The other thing that I like is since it's a determinant I don't have to be as aggressive about pruning either. I just mostly just keep all the lower leaves off to again help with blight because how that happens is that rain comes down and it splashes the soil and the organisms up on the leaves. So try to keep it tidy underneath and you're going to notice a bunch of basil. So this is a new companion planting plant that I have been trying this year with the basil largely because I ran out of space up by the cabin where I usually do my basil because I had to move all my carrots up there so we got creative and I'm really loving it. I think that they are appreciating the little bit of protection from the tomatoes and I've even heard people say that basil when you grow it near tomatoes it helps improve the flavor of the tomato so we will see. So I have 12 of the plum regals for all the canning and processing and all of that for paste tomatoes and then I do have some more fresh eating tomatoes here. You can already see the height difference this one compared to the plum regal and yes I am using cages. These are indeterminate varieties and yes they do get a little bit crazy but you know we're just making it work. I do end up staking these because you can see it's already starting to get wiggly so I'll get a t-post in there and I just try to prune these guys aggressively and we move on with life. So this one is the mountain sunrise. I grew it for the first time last year and it was amazing. These are going to end up like a nice golden yellow color and they are so sweet and delicious. Ryan's not usually a tomato fan but he loves these so it's great for BLTs. I just like to slice them with salt and just eat them like a chip. So so good. So I'm very excited to have this one again this year and then these two on the end are my tried and true. These are the mountain vineyard. They're just a wonderful little, let's see if we can get them down there, little cherry tomato, grape tomato I guess but I really like that they hardly ever split. They're just kind of a solid producer. They freeze dry really really well and very little blight issues and they're kind of easy to prune and maintain. I need to get in there and do more. Again you can see I definitely keep the bottoms all pruned up but I try to get in there and take the suckers off because trying to keep the growth contained in here. And then back here behind the sea of tomatoes are my cucumbers and my peas. I love to grow them up cattle panel fencing that just have zip tied onto some t-posts. There's about a foot in between here so that they hopefully don't smother each other. I can still get my hand in there to harvest. So let's go ahead and take a look at the peas since they're already popping. These guys are looking really really great. These are about as tall as me now so we'll see how tall they get. Peas are actually pretty new to me. I grew them for the first time last year. I just did a couple plants just to test it out and I loved them so we just went for it and did a whole row this time. Most people I see direct seed them in the soil but again we have such a short growing season I'm just kind of like let's go. So I started them indoors and I direct seeded to kind of compare the two and the ones that I transplanted outside. Far outperformed the direct seeding ones so I think I'm forever going to be starting them indoors especially now that I have a better seed starting setup. So yeah these guys are just looking great I'm absolutely loving these. Now on the other side are my cucumbers. I'm doing three plants and this is the H19 pickling cucumber and it looks like things are getting a little wild. I haven't been out here to train them in the last few days and it's amazing how fast things grow. So I need to take these and kind of start weaving it up so that everything stays contained and going up instead of out. A lot of these need more help so I'll have to come back and do that when I have two hands but some of it down below that just comes straight out on the ground I'm just going to prune those off we can do that together. So I can only fit so many vines up here before it gets too congested. It's okay to trim some of these off so I'm just going to follow these back to the main vine and pull that off and that's going to help with keeping the risk of disease down, making sure there's good airflow. We don't want things just trailing on the ground. That's another one there so I won't do all these. I probably need to sit down and really start getting through this jungle but you get the idea. And then in the front of this tomato row there is one more thing that we didn't talk about yet and that's my celery which is looking pretty good. I think I can probably start harvesting some stalks out of here. Yeah they feel great actually. I might do. Let's go ahead and do that together. Let me grab my knife. All right let's go ahead and see how it looks in there. Last year I had some trouble with it looking like hollow on the inside and just being chewy and everything but hopefully I can get it to focus on there but that is looking really good. I'm excited. Let's pull another one off of there. Oh yeah fantastic. Oh I'm so so happy. So I like to freeze dry my celery. I'm going to eat a lot of this fresh too but I chop it up and freeze dry it and then it's great to use in soups and stews and whatever else all winter. So that was a fun surprise. I had no idea that this was ready to be harvested today. Cannot wait. Okay we've made it to I'd like to call it the grand finale but it's not because we're not done with the tour but this is my favorite section. This is my brassicas which is something that as a northern gardener this is where we finally have a leg up from those who have a longer growing season and a lot of this stuff is just ready to harvest. I'm so excited. Check out this cauliflower here. It is looking beautiful and I was nervous and we've got dog hair in here somehow but I was nervous for the brassicas because it's been very warm this week like 90 and humid so I actually have a lot of these tea posts up for shade cloth that I had up here and they held they held on nobody bolted and I think we're gonna have a fantastic harvest today. So let's go ahead and take a look at everything and then we'll harvest a few things. So the cauliflower obviously but it's so interesting that one looks great but this one I don't know. Are we gonna get anything from it? Not sure. Everything is so hit and miss sometimes I feel like but the Romanesco is looking so good. Check that out. I feel like it's the coolest looking vegetable ever and it's so delicious. If you haven't tried it definitely give it a go. I believe these other ones back here Romanesco as well but they're a little bit further behind than that one so oh and it looks like we have a little one over here too. Otherwise we have a large sea of broccoli. Broccoli is kind of right up there with the bush beans where we pack a lot of it away because it's one of the few vegetables that we actually like frozen. It retains its good flavor and texture and very usable so we grow a lot of broccoli. I think I have somewhere around 20 plants. There's a bunch over here and here and what I found is that the cabbage moth presence is not very prevalent here in the spring but in the fall they're really really bad. So I've kind of switched all my production to be in the springtime but I will say this year I noticed a bit more of the cabbage moth damage so I did have to spray a little bit of Bt for my first time ever here at this property. So I don't know if I jinxed myself by saying I never get cabbage moths here in the spring at our last garden tour or what but they're here a little bit but the damage has been minimal. So you'll see a few holes in the leaves as we go through but generally I think we're doing okay. Just one application of that took care of it. If you're interested I can link that in the description too. But I did panic and harvest a couple of the heads that were looking very very ready yesterday when the sun was really starting to go and it was getting hot and I didn't want it to bolt. So some of them are gone but a lot of them are still there and they're just huge. There's my hand and I don't have delicate little lady hands. Pretty massive heads and this is the bell star variety. We'll go over here and see what else we can find and that is my tried and true. I think it does such a great job. We have some more big heads in here another one there and the thing that I really like about these is that they produce lots of great side shoots too. So even though I've harvested the head it's going to continue to produce side shoots all through the fall. So I'm going to leave these in place unless they start to kind of peter out and some of them do. Kale is something that I've really had to dial back. I only have four plants now because you can only eat so much kale and I had to obviously make room for an extra row of potatoes. So we just kind of dialed it back. I was doing six last year. I think I was doing eight the year before that. That was way too much. So four feels good and this is the Arun F1 kale. Oh it is so good. It's tender, delicious, it freezes well. It's also very pest resistant. This did not have any of the cabbage moth damage even though some of the other brassicas did this spring so I never even had to spray it. This is just such a great variety and just look how beautiful it is. They're just kind of like a big flower. So love my kale. Another favorite are the Brussels sprouts. These guys did get hit pretty hard by the cabbage moth. You can see there's definitely some holes in here from a few weeks ago when they were getting devoured but now you can see all the baby leaves are all fine again. So we definitely caught it early. Now it's onwards and upwards and I always like to put them in little cages. They get pretty tall. They'll probably end up you know around here when they're done. And another pruning tip of what I've been doing is just kind of breaking off the bottom leaves as it's growing up and it's one of the chicken's favorite snacks. She's already looking at me hoping I'll throw some out there for her. Let's go ahead and do that. Do you want a snack sweetie pie? Here you go. Yum. Here they come. Delicious. They're a wonderful little cleanup crew. Whatever they don't want just goes in the compost pile. But Brussels sprouts if you've never grown them before they take a long time. We're talking like a hundred days. So I started these seeds maybe in March. I can't remember. I'll put it on the screen and we're not going to be harvesting these until you know the fall. Basically after it's freezing. So you can see we're just starting to develop little Brussels on there. So we have a ways to go before we're ready to harvest those. But this is such a wonderful fall treat when it's ready to go. Okay they are just loving that. Let's give them a couple more leaves here. You guys want a couple more treats? Yum. You're welcome. She's over there all distressed. You can come over here and have a snack too. All right so a bunch more broccoli. That head is definitely ready. We'll pull some of these out together. This one's actually getting a little bit further than I want. You want these little buds to be nice and tight. And you can see they're already starting to spread out a little bit. So I waited probably too long on that one. Where this one is yeah nice and tight and firm. So that one's perfect. Other things in here are my massive cabbages. These guys we're looking at probably about three feet wide here. So I kind of do a staggered planting rather than side by side with the broccoli. Here's my walking path which kind of disappears. But these cabbages are amazing. They get huge. We're talking 20 pound heads. So these I just let them go the entire season. Harvest them in the fall and then they store great just for fresh eating for a couple of months. And I do a lot of sauerkraut. I don't even know how many gallons of sauerkraut I make. But we make a lot. It's so so good. So all I have six of them I believe. I always give a couple to my mom as well. She loves cabbage. So these guys are going to hang out for a while. I do though as they start to grow we're probably getting about ready for that. I start taking some of the bottom leaves off. They start to fade away and no longer serve the plant. Plus it kind of frees up walking path space for me. So like this bottom leaf here I'm going to pull that off. And you can see this one's yellow. That one can go. And then you can see yay I have a little bit more walking space left. And again the chicken's high. We have even more friends. Love that too. So that's kind of a big maintenance thing that I start doing with the brassicas this time of year just to keep me sane a little bit so I can access everything. Plus as long as you're doing the lower ones it's not going to hurt the plant. Like you can see this broccoli has all these really fresh vibrant leaves up top that are getting the sunlight. But that one down there that's not serving the plant anymore. So let's snap it off. And then it also helps prevent disease too. Some of the older leaves can get disease. They're more susceptible. So it's just good to do a little bit of cleanup like that. And same within here. I'm going to go ahead and pull this one off. And looking down let's do this one as well. So that makes that walking path a little bit more doable for me. Let's see what else can come off. Let's do this guy here. And let's do this one here. And this one here. Okay. Much better. The last part of the brassicas is a second kind of cabbage. So I decided to branch out a little bit because with the huge cabbages I would go all summer wanting cabbage and they just weren't ready yet. So I planted a faster growing cabbage. I think this one's called golden acre. This one's ready to go. We'll harvest this one together. I already harvested that one. It's in the fridge. We've been enjoying some delicious coleslaw. So this has been fun for some summer eating. So this has been a great move for us. But I will say that this definitely got the cabbage worms much worse than the passat cabbage. That one was pretty darn resilient. So I found that interesting. Let's do a broccoli next. Bring you with me here. First of all let's see if I can get in here. Break some of these lower leaves off. They're not necessary anymore. More for the chickens. All right. Looks awesome. Let's get this cauliflower out of here. This is Ryan's favorite vegetable so don't want to mess it up. It's looking really good. Hooray! And look at this beautiful harvest. We have the celery, the broccoli, the cauliflower, the cabbage, and of course I have a bunch more broccolis and everything to pick too but it was fun to do these ones together. All right the only thing left in this sea of brassicas are my zucchinis actually. They kind of stick out like a sore thumb. They're not in the same family but it always works out well for me. So I always put these guys here and I shouldn't say these guys because up until this year I've only ever grown one plant. That kind of just met our needs for fresh eating for just Ryan and I. And then I discovered a great way to freeze them from Crystal's book Freeze Fresh. Highly recommend it. If you don't have it yet I'll link it in the description. So now I bumped it up to two and I like to do the stakes because I've been trying to grow them vertically. I also tried that last year for the first time. Also Crystal's idea. She has lots of great tips. Definitely follow her at the Whole Fed Homestead if you haven't already. She's out in Wisconsin and things are doing good. We're looking good so far. Actually this zucchini is ready to go. See if we can pull this one off together and add it to our little basket. Hooray! That looks fantastic. There's a little blemish there but this will be super good. So add this one in here with all the rest of our goodies. So about growing them vertically I should probably talk about that a little bit more. So what I do is these t-posts and then I just take strips of fabric and tie up the plant to support it as it grows. It hasn't really grown too much yet. It's still just naturally going vertical. If you don't do the posts they just start sprawling on the ground and take up a lot of space. And as you probably noticed my walking path space is at premium so if we can go vertical we're doing it. All right here are my onions and shallots. So these guys are looking a little crazy. These are the shallots. I don't know why they don't grow as vertically as onions but these guys are always a rock star crop for me. I've never had them bolt. I've never had them rot. They always last the longest in storage. I love shallots. If you with onions try shallots. This is the conserver f1 variety I believe. And otherwise my tried and true variety which is the vast majority of them here is the Sedona f1 onion. It stores really really well. Nice huge bulbs. So I'm hoping for a good harvest this year. You never know. Onions can be a little bit finicky. And then right here I'm trying a red onion. I haven't grown red onions in years because I failed miserably. It's probably been six or seven years and so I thought I don't know let's try it again. I've already killed probably half of them before they even got into the ground but now that they're in the ground they're looking pretty good. So we'll see if they make it to harvest or not. And as far as spacing goes I do six inches spacing this way and four inch spacing this way. And it works really good for me. I know most people space them out a little bit more but again I'm a greedy gardener. I push the limits and this always works. I always end up with I won't say always they bolted one year but besides that I've always had a really great harvest with long storage time. Okay I had to get the tripod out so you guys can take in my glorious corn. The saying around here is knee high by 4th of July is what you're shooting for. We are at waist high and it is officially 4th of July today. Happy birthday America. Holy cow I don't think I've ever had corn get this big so early and it just looks amazing. I'll tell you my secret. So I have pretty much always struggled with getting my corn to germinate well direct seeding into the ground and last year was the absolute worst. It was just awful especially because we'll talk about this in a minute but I run my winter squash underneath the corn and I just had such a hard time getting my corn to germinate in time that the squash just took over and just oh it was not a good corn year last year. So I went back to the drawing board and I contacted Becky from the seasonal homestead because she's been starting her corn from seed indoors and I was thinking hmm maybe that's something I should do. It seems weird I feel like corn always is direct seeded and I was like I'm gonna try that because I'm at my wits end with trying to get the corn to germinate. I think our soil is just too cold in the spring and I just get antsy to plant but anyway so I started from seed this year and it's doing amazing. Everything I read said you know be really careful, don't disturb the roots, it has really sensitive roots and so I did some special air pruning uh trays that Becky recommended. I can link them in the description if you also wanted to give it a try and I started the seeds two weeks before I transplanted them out. Timing is really important and all of them took they almost all of them look amazing. I'll show you something interesting in a minute but I'm definitely doing that again. So here is everybody looking totally great except for what's interesting. I'm actually going to get out of this fence so you can see it a little bit better but look at the height of the corn as we go here. Look at how short it gets and then it gets tall again. So this has been interesting. I've noticed this in the past but never to this extreme and I think what's happening is so I have all my winter squash planted in the middle. This is a mix of butternut squash, my Cinderella pumpkins, and spaghetti squash. Huge staples for us especially as a gluten-free homestead. It's a big part of our starch intake but I think what's happening is these guys are heavy feeders and it's kind of stealing the nutrients that the corn here wants but that side isn't so bad. It's just barely noticeable. It kind of dips down so I think this year in particular just with my four-year garden rotation I always move them to a different spot on a four-year cycle. So this row I think being close to the grass this is also obviously dense growth and pulling a lot of nutrients and this isn't being fertilized and full of compost like that is. So I think it's just a one-two punch for this row in particular. It's just unfortunate this year. So we'll see. I've been trying to do see look I have a little cabbage moth. They do exist out here I promise but I have been trying to do a foliar spray. I like kelp. I'll link that if you're interested in the description and to be honest I've only done it one time. So I need to get better about it but that is my plan. Uh yeah I should probably set a reminder or something. I will do it after this video but overall I think we are looking pretty darn good back here. I suppose I should talk about like regular fertilizing and if I do it if I don't do it and to be honest no. Pretty much all I do is add my amendments in the spring and then at least this year I'm mulching on top with the compost. This fall I'll work it in once it's a little more broken down but yeah I really don't do much for like the foliar sprays. Obviously I'm not good at applying it even if it's needed but I just spot treat as needed if I remember. So last thing back here our little lady is going to give us the tour. She's actually the main reason why I have this contraption. She is my little buddy that likes to get into everything. So I have a just containers here. I'll flip this up. So last month this was looking absolutely horrible. This is my horseradish. It's really it's the comeback kid. It's looking a whole lot better. I'm hoping that I'll get some good horseradish root in there to make my fire cider and then the other thing in here. I don't know let me flip this up so you can see it. There we go. This is a like a midget cantaloupe like a mini cantaloupe. Typically melons are very hard to grow in our short cool growing season here in northern Minnesota but this one has a short growing season and it said it's good for like compact containers. So we're just starting to think about maybe putting on some melons. I can see some little stuff going on in here. I don't know we'll see. This will be a true experiment. I don't have high hopes but maybe I'll be surprised. I know you're wanting to get in there. You're not going to eat my plants honey. All right so that's it for the back garden. We're going to head up to the cabin to see last few things that I have growing up there. And here she is my friend. So the first thing up front that you're going to notice is my lovely rhubarb which is just doing so well this year even though we've had that very hot streak. Having it in the ground really really helps. When we first moved in I had it against the cabin and it just did not thrive. It wants to be in the ground. I also mulch it pretty heavily to try and keep the roots cool and it's just very very happy which is good because this is so special to me. This plant is like 150 years old. It keeps getting passed down through my family. It actually came over on the boat from Sweden so definitely want to keep this one happy. So next we have a few raised beds. These are from Epic Gardening. I love these raised beds. They're durable, easy to set up. It also keeps the soil temp a little higher which the peppers certainly appreciate I think. We'll have to look at my experiment and compare to the control group back in the in-ground garden. I'm also weeding much less. The soil stays looser so definitely some benefits to doing the raised beds. These this is medium size. This is a large size and these are the small size. I do have five percent off discount code if you're interested. I'll put all the information in the description. So let's start with this one. This bed was largely full of lettuces but with the heat wave coming I aggressively harvested a lot of this out and just packed it away in the fridge and a lot of them already bolted. I had some big heads in here that I pulled out but these are my tried and true. They're very bolt resistant. We've been in the 90s and they are still hanging out. This is my new red fire I think new red leaf fire I don't know I'll put it on the on the screen and this is the green star. So so good highly recommend it. And then this has been probably my biggest garden fail. These are my sweet potatoes. I don't know should they look better than this by now? Probably. I feel like they have a long ways to go. They definitely don't look anything close to my regular potatoes which are doing fantastic. But last year I tried sweet potatoes for the first time. Failed miserably in those grow bags up by the garden. So I thought well let's try the bureau guard variety. Everyone told me that that one would probably do better in our climate and then in the raised bed. But I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. But let's take a check take a look at these peppers. So these are my poblanos. So a slightly different variety than what was back in the back garden. But these guys are looking great. They are loving it up here. I am probably going to need to stake these pretty soon. I have a few cages which I put on peppers over there but I only have so many. So honestly the peppers don't need much. I just put a stick in the ground with a piece of twine and that seems to do it. So pretty happy with the growth on these ones. While we're on the pepper train let's just go ahead and continue that. So this is my red picnic pepper. These are starting to fill out. These are small little really sweet just fresh eating peppers. I just love snacking on these. They're so so good. These two are the aji rico. This is a new variety to me last year. So this is the second year that I've grown it and these kind of saved the day. Last year was a hard pepper year. I didn't have very many peppers but this one just absolutely overperformed over everything else. And they're a hot pepper so I made a lot of hot sauce with them. So seeing a lot of fruit set here I believe one of the pepper plants back at the in-ground garden is also an aji rico. So we can kind of think about that. I would say that these are bigger than the one in the in-ground garden but I think the ones in the in-ground garden are still doing pretty reasonably well. This is a cornedo. This is a carmin and this is a carmin. These are kind of my alternative for bell peppers. I've always struggled to grow bell peppers. I don't know what my problem is but these are very very close. They get quite a bit bigger and they'll turn red and similar taste profile so that's kind of what I've switched to the last few years. I am noticing a little bit of some disease starting on here. I don't know if this is what is that word anthros and anthro something. So I'll have to look into that. I think it happens during wet conditions which it's definitely been wet. It's been raining quite a bit lately so yeah we'll see where that ends up. And then up here we have some cayenne peppers. So those are really putting out quite a bit of fruit. I think the second one in the back garden is also a cayenne. So that kind of gives you an idea of how things are comparing. That's a cayenne as well. Again I think a little bit more fruit, a little bit more growth on these. So raised beds are still proving to be superior overall. This is more of those red picnic peppers. I also have a banana pepper in here. These are looking close. Those are looking delicious. We love to put those on our burgers, salads, all the things. This is another one of those carmen peppers. And then these are my favorite pepper of all time. I wish they did better here in Minnesota. This is the scotch bonnet. These are a Jamaican hot pepper. Makes the best hot sauce you'll ever have. And these are the ones that I planted honestly just a couple of weeks ago. We had a really cold start to June where we were dipping down into the 40s and I knew that these guys would not be happy about that since they like Jamaican temperatures. But looks like we're bouncing back. It'll be a little bit longer till these are ready. We want these to be red but I think we're gonna hopefully have a good hot sauce year. And then while we finish out the pepper train I want to show you these ones over here. This is another control group for me. I wanted to see how they did here and I was a little concerned about a few things. One look we don't have much for sun. It's just kind of this section here. So afternoon sun. It gets a little bit of morning sun since our sun rises in the north around here. It gets a couple of hours there. And then it's up against the house though which is warmer but then we're in the ground. So with all those together I wasn't sure how they do but overall honestly I'm surprised. I think I'm really impressed with how it's going. These are banana peppers. These are another cayenne. I'm gonna need to stake that soon. These are some jalapenos and I think this is another one of those carmen peppers. All right so let's talk carrots because that has been a big change as far as how I've set up my garden. So these are all my carrots. I tried to stuff as many as I could because we tried to grow a year's worth of carrots for the two of us. So I have five rows in here. It's a little tight but not too bad. I would say I have I don't know maybe four four to five inches between each row and we'll see how it goes. But so far everything looks really happy. I kind of figure if each carrot should be spaced one to two inches apart why couldn't each row be four to five inches apart as long as you can get in there and weed and everything. And honestly I don't need to weed because they're kind of shading everything out. So I don't know. I'm happy with it. I think it'll be just fine. So time will tell when we come to harvest but I think they're looking pretty darn happy in there. I also tried to squeeze a little bit more carrots in here. This is just one row and then I have a second row here in front of the scotch bonnets just trying to get as many carrots as I can. Still a few little weeds in here. Another thing that I did up here I'm trying to remember what was even here something springtime like oh radishes were here. So I pulled them out and then I seeded some cilantro. So I'm hoping that that'll be ready just in time for when the tomatoes are ripe so I can make and can some salsa. That's probably the hardest part of gardening is getting the timing right. So just kind of guess and do the best you can. I definitely need to get in here and do some thinning since these guys are up now. I think all the rain really helped get them going so I'll have to come back and do that. All right we're on the home stretch here. So this is my edible landscaping which I love. These are my irises. Not edible but special to me. These are my great grandpas that we moved up from Nebraska. I also have a couple blueberry plants here. I actually dug these up from our old homestead and brought them with me. I have no idea what variety they are but this one's really starting to crank out with the fruit so that'll be fun. And then here is your lesson for why it's important to pot up your seedlings. This is the most pathetic cauliflower I've ever grown in my entire life. And so what I typically do is you know keep on a good schedule start my seedlings in the little seedling pods and then once they develop their first true leaves I move them up to the bigger seed pods and then sometimes I even move them up one more time depending on what I'm growing and then into the ground right away. So I never let them stay in one pot for too long where this cauliflower was just in my extras pile. I had planted the whole garden it just sat there in that smaller pot for weeks and it just wasn't happy about that. But I was I didn't want to throw it out and I had this spot so I thought well I'll just throw it in the ground and see what I think. It has not recovered. So it's just a good reminder to always stay on top of potting up your seedlings as they grow and don't start them too soon to where they get unhappy in their little pots. So following a good schedule really does make or break your gardening season. And if all of that seems really overwhelming I totally get it and so I actually built an entire course teaching people how to plant a garden, how to get the schedule just right, how to prepare your soil, what type of garden is best for you, what you should plant, just all those things. So if you're interested in enrolling I would love to have you. You can enroll for 10% off with my code THRD10. I'll put the link in the description if you want to check it out. Then we're largely over to herbs. I have some chives here which are past their prime. They're typically a spring thing. I also have a ton of thyme. Look at all this it's just like a dense carpet. I've already harvested and freeze dried a ton of it. Over here are all my invasives. So they are in pots and they are quite happy in here. I've been trying to really focus on keeping up with watering if it's not raining and that's made a big difference. Last year I did not and they just kind of suffered in here so we're doing better. This is mint, this is lemon balm, and then these two are oregano. I need to get in here and harvest and freeze dry a bunch more because it is looking ready for some picking. And then these are my kind of shade tolerant herbs. You can see here we have very little sunlight. We just have a little bit of that morning sun that pops in here and then maybe just a little bit of afternoon sun there. So if you have a shady spot you can still do some things. You can see the green onions are doing quite well here. I also also the weeds I need to get in here and do some weeding but the rosemary is doing great. I've already harvested quite a bit of that. I have three different plants. Unfortunately this does not come back from our Minnesota winters so I have to plant that fresh every year. I also have a couple rows of cilantro going so that's been fun. I have one lettuce that has bolted. Let's just rip that one out. We're done with that one. Sorrel, again that one is more of like a spring early spring plant so it's just kind of hanging out for now plus it looks like something's been devouring it. The parsley is doing really well. I have four plants here. I need to get in and harvest and freeze dry more of that. Same with the sage. The sage comes back every year and looking really really good this year. And then the final part up here by the cabin is my berry patch that Ryan helped me put together last year. It's been so fun. I haven't harvested much from it but it's doing okay except for I did move my strawberries over here from the raised bed so I could make room for the carrots and what I'm finding is it is so close to nature I guess. You can hear them in there. The chipmunks and the squirrels have been like diving in here and eating all my ripe strawberries so I need to create some sort of a netting thing. Thankfully they don't bother the raised beds. I think that's risky enough with the cats and the dogs around but this is easy picking so that might also become a problem with the berries. We'll see. Berry bushes are looking pretty good. These are a couple blueberries. We have different josta berries. We have currants and some raspberries. This is aronia berry. Another gooseberry. I did kill this raspberry believe it or not. More gooseberries and black currants. I think this is aronia berry again. The one that I'm most excited about doesn't seem like it's thriving. I just planted it this spring and that's a honey berry. Supposed to be delicious and kind of an early producer for berries which is always great around here and I have a second one over there but I don't know. We'll see if that one makes it or not. I also planted some black elderberries for making elderberry syrup. We're just starting to flower. I looked everywhere on our property for black elderberries and they're just not around. We had them at our last place and we have lots of red elderberries here but those are a little bit more toxic so I ended up having to plant some black elderberries. There's another one here that's looking pretty good. This one's a few years old and so it's starting to get pretty pretty large so we should be able to get some decent berries from this one this year. Well that's it for garden tour. It was so fun to have you along for the ride and to harvest a few things. It feels so good to finally start packing food away and start to eat fresh food again. It's been a long winter with largely canned food, frozen food, you know how it goes. If you have any questions feel free to ask away or let me know where you're from. It's always great to hear from you. Otherwise make sure to like and subscribe if you haven't already and I'll catch you on the next video.