Summer Vegetable Backyard Garden Inspiration and Tour

Good morning, I'm Marlene. Welcome back to Vanilla Orchard. This morning I harvested some of my sweet yellow corn. I'm so excited. I will take them to the kitchen later, boil them for lunch with my husband. And right here where my toothbrush bed is and right behind me that is my honey tangelo orange tree right there. It was big. I have a lot of problems, a lot of issues with my vegetables because it was just a lot of shade and they have a hard time to grow because I don't have enough full sun in this area. So I decided to give my tree a heavy pruning and as you can see right behind me I'm very happy. It's all opened up so now this area can get more full sun. But the top of my tree I haven't cut them yet. I will cut them around November or December when it starts to cool down. Just pluck the top part that's it. That's how I control the size of my tree. And this area right here we were just a lot of issue and just like say with the powdery mildew, too much shade. We have tomatillo and tomato but the tomatillo is already finished anyway so we clean it all up and I plant new vegetables. Since I live here in Southern California it's hot so it's not too late to plant certain vegetables. So I plant some zinnia, okra, and some cucumber, even some marigold, even my okra always start to germinate. I'm so excited and today I'm just going to give you a little update to my vegetable what's growing in here. So here is a walkway from my fruit forest to my vegetable garden. It's not that wide but it's long and I try to grow as much as vegetables as I can and what I use the most in my kitchen since my space is limited. Also I live in the corner in the street over here and here is where my patio. I do have some more fruit tree over here. I need privacy and shade and I love to grow fruit tree. And this is one artangelo. I don't remember what artangelo this one is and I haven't got any fruit yet. And I do drink a lot of tea and here is an orange mint and I always pick my herb or my vegetable or my fruit had to be early in the morning. That's when it's fresh oil content on your herb and sugar on your fruit your vegetable and I do them early in the morning. And right here is the orange mint and I love make a tea out this right here with my stevia and what I love about stevia is zero calorie and I would cut my stevia orange mint and if I have any ginger in my kitchen and salmon and some lime lemon or lime I will use that also. And over here some basil green onion marigold and that one right here is a fish mint which is very strong very strong flavor and if you don't get accustomed to it is you probably cannot eat it and we we make that ourselves we eat it with salad or with egg rolls or sometimes we call it the banh chai which is so delicious and that's what we eat with and they just like a mint family you have to grow them in a pot you cannot do in the ground and the rice bed they're very invasive. And on this side over here is also I have two plum tree which is side by side and the bottom I have stevia I'm not sorry blue selvia right over here and so this is where the entrance to the patio which this is where the I have plumeria in the pot because it's easy to care for and they are in the succulent family they grow tolerant. So here's the entrance to the patio I have gates over here because we have our turtle this is stepping right here because we don't want our turtle to fall down you see that so here we go and this is where I go to our patio and I do have a plum tree side by side the entrance to so here is part of my vegetable garden and right here just like I said it's just so much we have too much shade and my vegetables are not doing too well and we've done a heavy pruning on my this is a honey tangelo as you can see I open up I'm doing heavy pruning but the top part as you can see I'm not doing anything yet it's too hot when it's around November or December when it's falls coming up I'm going to cut the top part straight across just flat them up because I like to control the size of my fruit trees so right now this is what's going to look like until November the top part I will some of oregano some thyme this one is a spicy thyme right here I love the English lavender and I love growing English lavender in a vegetable garden because it's beautiful and also they're not too big and I like the way the flower is and attracting pollinator it's beautiful you grow them around your vegetable garden with the herb everything else and over here is dragon tongue bean this is we've been harvested twice already this is our third one but I'm not harvesting them because I'm saving the seed instead so I don't have to buy the seed anymore so all of this right here I'm saving all my bean see that and this is all the stevia and one thing about certain herbs you know like they're doing very well pasture shade and just like one of them is stevia but my rosemary it will struggle because the tree my tangelo cover all of this there's no sun's coming in now they have time now to recuperate and here's some of the we plant new vegetable on our raised bed it's not too late here because I live in Southern California so I put some okra some zinnia some marigold in here this pear see go back over here right over here is more stevia this one is a lemon balm it's good for tea I think I drink this in the evening also I use also like a herb you know I make salad out of it and all my traditional food some banana pepper over here this is volunteer I really don't know where it is yet so this is our volunteer and over here is a winter squash butternut cup see this what happened is this area is just so much powdery mildew and I try to save my my squash so I have to take all the leaves out but I like it looks so pretty I'm going to use this for Halloween and winter Christmas when they turn I don't think they turn color it is green I'm sorry butternut cup is this is color the color so this way I have some poblano here is a plant it was so much shade it's not doing too well I cut some more up here and over here is seed parsley so we're going to pull them out and dry them this is ready I'm saving the seed for next year's this is anaheim chili over here so what we're going to do is this coming fall around November or December I'm going to take this is a 30 gallon pot I'm going to take this out move it away and I'm clearing this area so we're going to build another raised bed over here this this raised bed over here is all two by four so I'm going to put another one over here in this section I'm clear everything only thing I keep is a pear tree and that's it so what I'm going to do over here put another raised bed I'm not sure I probably I have four blueberries and I prefer to put them on the raised bed because of the soil they need acidic soil so I probably do that instead put it over here we'll see what happens but this area we're going to clear up and over here I have some more this got more pepper over here jalapeno it's a lot of jalapeno I'm going to probably going to pickle my jalapeno look at the anaheim chili and this is another winter squash butternut butternut cup and if you look at over here you know I do have issue with powdery mildew so this section right here if you go in and you can see it's a lot of powdery mildew and most of it is a male flower it's not a female and this one is female you can see so I have to get them pollinate the bees in there so be going pollinate for me I have another one right here pollinate already I'm going to get the male flower I'm going to pick it real quick let me show you this is the male flower I'm going to pick this see this is this is the male so I'm going to I don't know too late I didn't pay attention maybe too late I don't know and this one I think they have bees in there so bees already pollinate this one already so I need to fix this area it's a lot of powdery mildew and you have to cut them and clean them up it's going to be all destroyed let me show you you see that that's all powdery mildew and here is corn this is sweet yellow corn and I'm going to pick them today it's ready so this section right here is done all the corn is ready to to be picked and let me show you what it looks like I open up and sort of make sure to show you see this is sweet yellow corn it's ready and it's all fully pollinate you see each silk is representing the kernel and so when the kernel when when the silk get pollinate every single one and that's when you get all this kernel in here and sometimes if you don't have space it can show you up there see this is let me show you over so this is the top part is a male flower and all you have to do is you see the flower up there you just shake them and let them pollinate sometimes it helps like that so this area I'm going to clean this area up and go to some this weekend I'm going to pull all this out clean this area pick the corn today and see what I can do to save my area over here if it's just too many many powdery mildew I've been so busy and sometimes I neglect my garden you know like I'm normally I come like every day to check but if I come out on every two three day you know summertime vegetable grows so fast especially all of this you have to on top of everything because powdery mildew is bad and there's more banana pepper and right here is a Persian cucumber it's finished so I'm going to take all this out to all this Persian cucumber it's done finished need to go and I plant this corn here about I think a month after this this one I don't like to plant them all at one time you know you like I plant them like a month after each other so like that when one ready to pick and the other one you know you can finish your first crop and then you can wait for another month you can have a second crop so I always plant them like a month after each other so right here it's not too late yet for me to plant another crop of corn so I might do that because it's really hot here in Southern California so I'll probably do it the next crop of corn we'll see here is my vegetable garden it's not that wide it's just long and I just try to squeeze as much as I can in my vegetable garden at the same time I want them to look pretty and so I'm going to add more flour into my vegetable garden when next coming spring thank you for watching I will see you my next video