Garlic and Asparagus Plants Plus New Fig Tree!

Hey what's up garden friends? Jeff here's what I've been doing. I've been doing well. I'm great. I got a box. Pretty sure it's plants because you know it says plants right there. There's like three different orders I've been waiting on that I placed quite a while ago that just showed up. One of them I didn't place that long ago. I think it's probably that one. Probably in the title of the video. It's garlic. I think. Now garlic and some other things. Just punched my camera right out of frame. There are a few things that are best to plant in fall. Garlic is what, well I mean a lot of things are better to plant in the fall really. Plants enjoy the warm soil and everything, but garlic, you know, you need to get that planted up at the right time. This is interesting packaging. It's like I'm opening some kind of fancy display thing here. Pull this out. Yep, that's what's in here. Three types of garlic, and then some other fun stuff. All edibles in this box. Look at that packaging. That's different. Just learned something. This came with their Gardener's Supply Company little mini catalog, which I like Gardener's Supply. They're nice. I've ordered from them for many, many, many, many years. But the order's from Gurney's. Gurney's Seed Co., which... It apparently is part of Gardner's supply, I would assume, if they have this in there, right? Well, they're in Indiana, so I don't know. I haven't ordered from Gurney's, at least, gosh, I'm sure I have, but it's been a very, very, very long time. I'm surprised there's this much packaging, because I thought it was mostly garlic. Okay, so it is actual whole bulbs. I wasn't sure about that. I wasn't sure if I was going to be getting little cloves, or here's the bulb, so it's these, and you're going to split them apart, plant each clove. Separately and then all of this. Okay. I think I must have I must have understood something when I ordered This is oh, this is a lot. This is a lot. Okay I want to grow asparagus for a long time and they had the Spartacus which is a common popular type of asparagus So I ordered that and I have three of them and then I have the asparagus best which is I think their own garlic garlic their own asparagus That is supposed to be an abundant variety, one that produces really well. So I'm guessing that there's three of both. So when I ordered them, I ordered packages of three, which is fine. I probably knew that at the time. It's a busy time of year, so we'll just assume that I did know that at the time. Okay, the asparagus. Usually would plant these as crowns. But I was like, well, let's just see what they have here. Am I going to need the blade to get this open? I think I am. I don't see why this wouldn't be something you could plant in the fall. Even though I have always done asparagus in the spring. I don't see why it would matter. Both these varieties are supposed to be very cold-tolerant. Oh, they are, like, really glued in there. Okay. All right. Yep. Just a little asparagus starts. Is that better than buying the crowns? I don't know. I'm going to say it's probably about the same. Well, that's shrink-wrapped. How the heck did they do that? Doesn't that heat hurt the plant? To use a shrink wrap, you have to use heat. Maybe it's the shrink wrap that doesn't need much heat. I don't know. That's impressive and also monumental pain in the ass to get that off. This is gonna take me forever. There's one, I managed to peel the sticker off of there so I could put it on the pot. You know these are gonna look absolutely identical. Feels firm. I don't know, maybe, it should be fine to plant in the fall. Comment down below, let me know. Heck, for all I know, I've been doing it wrong all these years. Maybe you're supposed to plant asparagus in the fall. I just was ordering garlic, and on Gurney's website, they had a section that said, now shipping plants for fall, and the asparagus is there. And I was like, oh, I want to grow asparagus next year. Let's just go ahead and... give that a try right now so this one right here it's a Spartacus that's a really really common type it's supposed to be really high yield because it's all male so there's no energy going into producing seed the berries and whatnot it's just all going to the new growth it's really good in cold winters and places with warm climates so it's really versatile i like that medium thickness on their spears up to nine inches i think was the standard for these and you can harvest on the I'm in the third year, which is also pretty standard asparagus stuff though i'm pretty sure you can do a light harvesting your second year on these so there's that so that wouldn't be next year but the year after should be able to do a light harvesting off of this just get off some of that fresh growth what do my best to try and preserve these tags I'm gonna have to grab some tape or a white paint pen something of the sort so I can write actually what these are on the pots oh look at this I'm noticing this there's two labels this one up here comes off much more easily So I bet that I'll be able to stick that to this one without much of a problem. We'll find out. Okay, I mean, I'll give this to them. I've ordered plants from a lot of places so they'll get the innovation award for packaging, but that just really feels unnecessary to do all that. And I will say, even though this seems like interesting packaging, I won't harp on it too much longer, I promise. But the way this is done, It's not that easy to just stand over a space to detach these, so I've been kind of holding them up against my body, and I might be more covered in dirt than I ever have been when unboxing plants. It's just everywhere. It's all over my legs. You can't see, but I'm covered in dirt. I have also sliced through... Three of these six pots with my blade, trying to get the plastic off. So there's that too. All right, get the label on this one. That's the last one. So this one right here, this is the Asparagus Best. Similar to the Spartacus in that it's mostly male. Spartacus should be all male, but this one produces mostly male growth. So it's still, you know, might produce some seed, but not a lot. It's supposed to produce longer than other asparagus. So you get More yield, because you've got a longer growing season for harvesting. Say it's two to three times more productive. I don't know if that's true. It's supposed to be really good with cold, cold winters, and warm summers, which is something that we need. That's important. And it's supposed to hold on to its flavor really well. Sometimes with the asparagus, they're really productive. Sometimes they sacrifice some flavor. But it's supposed to be really flavorful. I don't know. We will see. good stuff I like growing asparagus partially just because I think it's actually it's really pretty asparagus I think has a really nice texture even if you don't like the way it tastes I say it's worth planting in your garden it's about three to four feet high they have a really nice airy texture to them so even when you're not harvesting like i said i think that they're really really pretty plants okay let's move on to garlic there's a lot of garlic here i have three different varieties here are they all right here what would the odds be that i picked up three of the different ones all at one time probably not good okay well We'll start with this one right here. It's a Cali- Ooh, doesn't want to focus. You guys want to see it? California White. It's a good one. Really just a pretty classic garlic. Supposed to have a really nice, rich flavor. This is an artichoke type, which means that the cloves are just arranged in layers instead of just having them side by side. You have layers to the cloves, which means you have more cloves, too. I think this can have, like, up to 20 cloves in it, usually more about 10. So it's a really nice, rich flavor. I don't know if I mentioned this is a softneck with a long storage life. Supposed to be about nine months or so. That's one of the reasons I wanted this one. And, you know, super cold-hardy, like Zone 3. So do well where I live. And this is the clove. So if you don't know, in the fall, you want to plant these. Go ahead and pull them apart. You plant each clove individually. You want to have really nice, well-drained, but really organically rich soil. In the spring, they come up. You can harvest off those scapes, which is a good idea to do that. And then you'll pull the whole plant, the whole bulb, usually around July, where I live, when you start to see the yellowing on the bottom about a third of the foliage, something like that. I haven't grown garlic in a long time. It's fun to grow. I think it's really fun to grow. It's rewarding. All right. Oh, I have lots of these. Oh, I'm going to have, oh shoot. I'm going to have so much garlic. Okay. Mount Hood. There we go. That doesn't want to focus. There we go. This is a nice variety of garlic. It's a porcelain type, which just means that they're, you know, they're soft and very easy to peel. Not soft, but that white color, very easy to peel. They have a nice looser skin on them. This one has a big large bulb, four to six cloves, maybe five to ten if the bulbs are on a smaller side. One of the reasons I like these is because they're so very easy to peel. I appreciate that. I'm not always patient when I'm working with garlic. They're supposed They're supposed to be pungent and spicy when raw. Let's sing them to music. I don't know if I mentioned that. Really nice, spicy with a little bit of sweetness. Very pungent when it's raw. But when you cook them, it's supposed to just have like a really good classic overall garlic flavor. For a hardneck garlic, has a pretty long storage. That's why I got it. Because I like a hardneck garlic. But they don't always store quite as well. But it's supposed to be, you know, good like six to, I think they said seven months maybe on this one. That's pretty decent. Like cold hearty, you know, needs some vernalization. So it's another good variety for. Where I live here. I live here in the Midwest and we have the cold winters. Okay, this is the last one. I didn't talk about this one, did I? Shoot, I don't remember which one I talked about first. What was it? We did. It was the California White. We talked about that one. So I need the, not that it matters. I mean, these are just bulbs. That looks the same. But you might want to see the name. There we go. Music. And it's not really that different from the Mount Hood. It's called Blue Music is actually the name on this one. There's Music. There's Blue Music. Cold Hardy, another porcelain type. Supposed to be easy to peel. You know, nice big cloves, average 4 to 6, maybe 5 to 6 like the other one. Flavor, classic garlicky situation where it might be spicy when it's raw, but it's supposed to cook and have a good flavor to it when you cook it up and add some heat. Okay, last but certainly not least, this is a cool plant. It's probably actually better if I just move some things around here and see what's going on with this. That's some packaging. You see the name on that one? It's right there. I don't know why there's a typo on the screen. Oh yeah, I do, because this is a lot faster. Fantasia, which is also called the Scots Black. It's a fig. It's a nice fig. This is a good fig. Very flavorful fig. Let me unpack it and then tell you about it so you actually see the plant. Might be nice to actually see what we're talking about and not just be looking at a box, right? It actually looks like that's gonna be basically the same as it was. Oh no, this is much easier. Is it glued in there? Sure is, but... a normal plastic bag which i very much appreciate because i should just be able to just slide this guy right out of there is it in the pot no that this is fine it's just not what i used to see when i order plants there's one big plug right now i feel like i should go pot this up and then talk about it this has moisture to it so that's good that's a good this is that is just it's a big big like cocoa or maybe peat i'm not sure i hope that this separates out of this okay because plugs are not always the best figs are i'm pretty pretty strong rooted so i don't think they'll be a problem i'm gonna go pot this up real quick okay this has been potted up and watered in i don't know about the plug i should be okay i planted a little bit high just in case sometimes plugs don't decompose as we would like them to i think with a tree it should be okay it should burst right through that I don't know. Kind of brilliant. Makes it pretty easy. No transplanting. Anyways, this one, good fig. I'm going to call it by the Scots Black. I think that's a more common name. They called it Fantasia at Gurney's. So I do think the label did say Scots Black on it. I'm pretty sure it did. But that's the Fantasia fig. This one right here is supposed to have really good flavor. I've never grown this one, but I've heard good things about it. It's very productive, so it's got really large, black-skinned fruits that are sweet, and it's a really strong fig flavor, and they're good. You can eat them raw or dry them, which I really like that versatility. Not cold-hardy here, so this is going to say containerized. It's a 7 through 9. I'm 6B. Okay, so figs here in St. Louis, you can grow a lot of them. The Chicago Hardy and Brown Turkey, maybe. Are those the same thing? I can't remember. I'm pretty sure they're different. But you know how we do with common names. But those two figs are usually pretty reliable here. But oftentimes when we have our normal horrible winters, they'll die down on the ground and come back. Not always though. Sometimes you'll be able to keep the wood on them. The longer you can keep them nice and thick, you get really thick growth on them. So, you know, cut them back frequently. The first few years you have them get really thick growth, more likely they'll be able to hold on to that wood during the wintertime. I'm not going to bother. I think figs are great to keep in containers. Pretty easy to keep in containers, actually. It's one of the things that's great about them. In the wintertime, I just let them hang out. They just defoliate, and they don't get water from me very much. I'll give them a splash of water every now and then. I'll be like, I don't know, every three weeks, something like that. They'll get a drink because I'm keeping them someplace that's not really warm either. This will probably go in my cold frame. And the temperatures there will be between the 50s and 70s, something like that. It'll drop into the 30s occasionally there, but not too often. I have great luck with figs in my garage, near the garage door where it's pretty cold over there. They usually do really well. The main thing is that they're protected. They don't really need light once they've defoliated, and they are so freaking vigorous. Figs are fun to grow. Oh, another important thing. This one's supposed to have some pretty good disease resistance, which is important with figs. And, well, it's self-pollinating, so that's great. That's always nice. Not much to look at right now, but you know, in just a couple years, this thing will probably be five, six feet tall. They grow so fast. I placed that order for a guy who ended up getting a whole bunch of asparagus and a fig, but I'm happy about it because I've wanted one of these figs for quite a while. I like it. I have the little Miss Figgy fig from Southern Living Collection, and that's nice, but the figs are really small. I don't know, I'd rather just grow a fig. I think it's fun to grow the nice big potted fig plants. They're fun. Plenty of garlic, oh my gosh, we have so much frickin' garlic next year. That's it, that's the haul, not much else to say. With that, garlic need to get that planted up relatively soon, I don't know when this video will be out, but today is October 10th, I believe. Really, my main goal with garlic has always been just to get it in the ground before the ground freezes, because they just need that vernalization, so. where you live that might be october for me it's usually by like december but i try and get them in the ground mid-october to mid-november somewhere in there and they do fine i haven't grown garlic though in a long time my yard does not get the sun that it used to i'm going to be doing something a little bit different with how i plant it it's going to be we'll see how it goes have to put them in something that i can move around because the sun is always changing like this time of year after i don't know one o'clock in the afternoon it is just dark back here it's not like it's scattered light it's dark because the sun is so low in the sky that the house is up there I'm on a hill. It's a house that's up there. block the sun as opposed to it being filtered through the trees. So, you know, stuff like that. Need to be able to move things around. But, you know, the garlic is ready to harvest come mid-July. And mid-July is about when the sun starts to wane back here. So, should be good. But just in case, I'm going to plant them up in something raised and portable. We'll do all that in a vlog. Probably, I don't know. I mean, I'm just gonna put really nice rich soil into a planter that I can move around and put garlic bulbs in. It's not that exciting. Maybe I'll make it exciting by make it. I mean, something will probably go wrong and you don't usually find that entertaining. All right, I'm gonna go. Hope everybody's doing well. I'm having a great day, great life. Everything's going absolutely beautifully for ya. Comment down below what figs you're growing. Your asparagus choices, experiences with asparagus. That's always helpful. And what'd you like to do with your garlic? Your favorite garlic varieties. And ordering. What'd you think of that packaging? I thought it was neat. I thought it was neat, but it ended up being very messy because it just like sprung dirt everywhere. All right, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye-bye.