A YouTube Birthday Card (Planting Winter Food)

I want you to fall down monkey boy. Got my mom. Hi mom. Hi. Today's my mom's birthday. And it's been a great day. It's been a beautiful day. She's got some plants I grabbed at the farmer's market. They're kind of dry and crispy. we're gonna go here and grab some seeds. so let me show my cleaned out cottage garden. for the most part it's cleaned out. maya got in here and did a lot of work. it looks pretty good. all right mom's got my plants. i've got some seeds. um this is going to change even more coming soon. but it looks pretty good right now. Hey mom, this is my ladybanks, like the big one I showed you at the zoo that we went underneath. Ezra pointed out to me the ladybanks there so many times. Yeah, he's very impressed by it. The boys are incredibly invested in this. They're the ones who wanted to order it and it's not like I had, you know, they had to twist my arm or anything. Ezra especially was excited about it. Very excited. The Riverbanks Botanical Garden, if you are anywhere near the Midlands of South Carolina I know, or ever visit, has a... Huge ladybanks rose that my kids are wildly impressed by and we go to the zoo at the beginning of April every year. Our friend's daughter's birthday, we go every year for her birthday and it's when the ladybanks is in bloom. So we got our own. She's grown quite a bit this year. I look forward to seeing some blooms next year and really look forward over the coming years for it to get established on that trellis and just be glorious The one at the zoo is like 15 years old, I think, and it looks like a tree. It's amazing. All right, so... The high tunnel is looking good. Got some seeds, radishes, beets. I grabbed these. This is some rainbow chard and these are fennel bulbs. I've never planted started fennel plants this time of year. I usually plant them like in maybe January, early February. I mean they are frost hardy so they should be fine with that. I stopped today and grabbed another flat of started plants. Mostly this is a lot of brussels sprouts was my reason for stopping because so far I don't have just a whole lot of those going and that's something that we like to have a lot of. I've got garden tools around out here. I'll put these down. Let me turn the water on. Um you know pretty much right now if there's there's some weeds and stuff but pretty much if it's planted you can see it so we've got plenty of spaces to fill and i really just want to fill the spaces okay i don't have a real particular feeling of where things need to be so this is a dahlia that has popped back up so we're just going to give it some birth yes yes that's a weed there there's quite a bit of that out here um good job It's like you've done that before. Um... Right here, there's a couple of little cabbages. That's a cabbage. This is one. Yeah, those are weeds. Those are actually onions. But we're going to go ahead and take them out. These are volunteers that have. They're trying to come back, but I don't want them right here. Look, see? Oh, yeah. They're going to seed. I mean, technically you can eat that, but. So this whole bed is kale yeah I grabbed another pack of kale to fill this up because I wanted to just fill the whole thing up. I had some little other dino kales that were on the puny side and they didn't pull through so. I've seen people put them in the ground and not free the roots and the plants do not do well because the roots are bad. All right planting tips. Yes, when the roots are very bound, never just stick it in the ground. Gently, we get to pull these little roots, trying not to break them. And this is very bound, but we just want to gently loosen. I will say you're much more gentle than I am with this. Well, we're going to get them loose without just breaking them up. The easy way is just to separate, but then some of them will break. Try to loosen. There we go. Getting them loose without just breaking them. Because that is the life source of your plant and it needs to be free. Ha ha ha ha ha! True. I just want them to thrive. That means get the root loose. Look at my buddy bear. Looking out. This back side of the high tunnel is full of this nut grass or sedge. Um, it's the worst. Once you have it, you have it. Until the end of time, but I just keep weeding, keep pulling and And... trying to get all the roots out. At some point, if it gets bad enough, we may pull some of the soil back and you know, put this soil in the compost and replace it. But honestly, that's expensive and labor-intensive and so as it is, I just keep weeding. Oh, there's another one Mom was showing, getting the roots all loose. Yes, and where you're free to flow without, you know, Then set it like that. It's going to thrive. Yep. That looks good. Yeah. So I got four trays of Brussels sprouts. I'm thinking that these will probably all fit just like in one of these beds. This is a Dahlia. Honestly, I'm fine with just leaving it because our first frost, well, our first frost is going to kill it and that's going to be like within the next month. Yeah. A little, I had, no, it's fine. I had onions go to seed in here. Um, if you toss it a little A little critter will eat it. I'm getting rid of a plant. You're like, no, it can grow. It can live. I don't know about that. But with that dahlia, if we leave it in there and let it die at the frost, it'll come back in the spring. And so it's fine to just leave it there. You want near the water pipe, I guess. Yeah. I always plant them close to the irrigation. You can now that we have enough, so we only had two lines of the irrigation and it really wasn't enough and the soil would get too dry, but now that it's covering well the soil looks nice. Like I haven't watered in here in a couple days and you can see it's still really nice. Nice and... Yeah I like planting these kind of all together. One, because I know where they are, but they kind of support each other a little bit because the Brussels sprouts, when they get really big or very tall, yeah, that's fun. Getting the planting spaces ready. Mom's going behind me and planting the stuff that I've got to put in. This high tunnel, I don't know, Mom, back here in this bed, I've got a couple little seedlings that I'm pretty sure calendula popping up from the spring. I'm probably going to leave those. Because I brought some calendula seeds. If they reseeded, those will be healthier. Oh, sweet. I'm going to get that little guy. Oh, you're on it. Oh, I broke him. That's his root. But mom came for her birthday. We've had a really nice visit. I figured we'd need to do a little gardening or else, well, that would be a waste, wouldn't it, mom? It would, because you know I love it. Yep. Bear's so handsome. This is a volunteer pepper. It just looks so healthy and spry. I don't even know what it is, but I'm not going to pull it up. I think the frost would probably kill it before it produces anything, but it's not in my way. Oh, I have a hard time getting rid of a plant too. I love the way the high tunnel looks like now, like late afternoon when the sun comes in. All the happy little plants. So back here in the spring, I had a whole bunch of calendula. That's what this is and if I've got two of them coming up, I'll probably have more coming up. I'm thinking I may just like throw some more calendula seeds in this on this side and then on this side I'm going to do beets. I really like growing calendula because I like drying it. If I have any extra just feed it to my chickens because it makes their egg yolks like nice and dark orange and pretty. But I want to grow some beets too so I think these will go well together. I don't need the whole bed of calendula. It's actually pretty warm today but we are kind of moving out of it of it being warm. October is a little on the late side to sow some things. The thing with sowing this time of year, I mean I'm growing all things that can grow during our winter, like beets and radishes and calendula. We're putting in started plants for brassicas, things like that fennel that I got. All of those things will be just fine even after it freezes. Now if we get a hard freeze, I'll drop my high tunnel walls, but I can keep this high tunnel growing food. All winter. No problem. There is one issue of like acclimation. If I were to put all this stuff in and we had a really hard freeze for our first freeze, especially if we had a day like today, it was 87 degrees Fahrenheit today. It was like 25 Celsius. Is that right? 32, no, it was like 29 Celsius, so that's pretty warm if it were to drop down and be like below, well below freezing tomorrow, and that can happen. Unfortunately, those are the only times my fall garden has really like not made it is when we had very extreme. Uh, first frosts, but for the most part, I can plant this stuff, not have any issue. And if it slowly cools down and things have, have the opportunity to acclimate, um, all of these things will be completely fine. And a lot of the things that I'm sowing in seed now, let's slow down. They're not going to hit that days to maturity that's on the package because our days are shorter, but I still will likely be harvesting this food in like. Late December, early January. Like the radishes may say they take 25 days. They may take more like 40. Look, Jackie's here. You could. Jackson got here for grandma's birthday dinner. Yeah. I'm so dirty. I love you. I love you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Looking like a whole grown man. I'm so proud of you, you're so lovely. Oh, look. Ben ran down, saw his brother here. It's okay, mine are dirty too actually, these are my new ones. Here's the rest of the boys. Hey, all the boys are here! There's Asher. Hey Ash, what's up brother? Oh Oh look, let's get a picture with grandma. Are you going to stand? Yeah! Get in front, Mom. Oh my god. Oh my god. We're all a little tall. Oh my god. Alright, y'all ready? Oh my god. Step back a bit. Okay. Let's see. Make sure I can see everybody. My glasses are going on my head. No, you look great. Alright, ready? Let me see. Let me go back here. Hold on one second, let me, I'm getting a few. Y'all are awesome. All right, ready? Say cheese. Cheese. Peace. Okay, say happy birthday, Grandma. Happy birthday, Grandma. All right. It just blows out emotions on its own. She's explaining loosening the roots. All right, so my notes for myself later. I just put some Crosby Egyptian beets at the end of this bed. Um, I... I... Put in with the fennel. I did a rainbow Easter egg blend of radishes as well as black Spanish radishes. Thank you. Down here I did the Pacific calendula as well as the Lutz pink stemmed beets. And we got all of the Plants I had planted that was like the big priority was to get the plants in but just I've been trying to throw a few seeds in here and there whenever I can. I've made the mistake in the past of putting including everything. Everything in the high tunnel at once and then it all comes in at once I can't eat it all. What I really want to do is to be able to harvest fresh throughout the winter. I'll see you guys in the house. I'm about to come in and cook So I've been trying to stagger it like starting plants Like putting started plants in at different times. That's why I went in and got a little bit more cabbages today whenever I got the Brussels sprouts and then throwing seeds in a little bit at a time. All right, good work. Ready to go make, well, you're not making birthday dinner. I'm making birthday dinner. What about the seed? I already did. All right, guys, I know this is brief. One, it helps me a lot to make videos when I plant things so I remember what I planted and where. Two, I wanted to make mom a little YouTube birthday card so she can watch it again, which she will. I will. Several times. And three, I wanted you guys to be able to wish my mom a happy birthday. I'm sure she'll check out the comments and see your words. So thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We bless you. Until next time.