#6 EVERYTHING We Grow In the Garden This Year // Our Journey Towards Self Sufficiency

We're getting a lot of work done these days and things are moving very quickly along so I just wanted to give you a seedling tour and also talk about the seeds and how we're planning the garden this year for self-sufficiency before all the seedlings just disappear outside into the garden. So the garden has kind of become my responsibility. We just try and divide the responsibility on the farm a little bit. Like Karen tends to the chickens a lot more and I help him when he needs help and then I manage the garden and then he helps me when I need help. So we're growing to become as self-sufficient as possible as long as it makes sense. Like we're not gonna grow our own grains and also this is just our second year so obviously we're not gonna be able to become self-sufficient yet and we still have a lot of things to learn about preserving for us to become self-sufficient throughout the entire year. But we did really well last year and we had fresh vegetables for around four or five months. This year my goal has been to prolong the garden season and harvesting season a lot. So I laid out all of our seeds here so let's just go through them. So first we have our salads. These are all of our like salad heads. We have all different types of remains, greens and purple colors. This year I'm gonna have a continuous supply of salad seedlings that I can plant out whenever a bed opens up. Because last year we just planted once and then we ate from those until they bolted and then we didn't sow anymore after that. But I want a lot of salads this year. And then we have all of our leafy greens and we're gonna do the same with those just plant continuously. And then we have our Asian greens like pak choi, tsat soi, Chinese cabbage, there's some fennel and celery in here and those I'm gonna plant except for the fennel and celery I'm gonna plant when it's too hot for the salads like in July. Salads don't like it too hot then they go to seed. Then we have our Swiss chards and these are just way too many for us but I got a bit excited about all the colors. But whatever we don't eat we'll just give it to the chickens so it will get eaten no matter what. And then we have our spinaches and we just grew one type of spinach last year and I wasn't really that into it it was New Zealand spinach. So this year I want to try a lot more varieties. And then we have our beets and radishes. I love making beet juice I really want to have a big harvest of beets this year and I have everything from like deep purples to whites to yellows to polka. And then we have radishes and also just all types of colors pinks and purple and pink and white and red. Radishes grow so fast I'm just gonna continuously grow these throughout the summer. And then we have our beans and peas and I've already grown peas out into the greenhouse and they're already like this tall and it's a cold hardy crop so they're doing really well. And yeah last year we only really grew Canadian sugar snap it was seeds that Karen brought from Canada and they did super well and we harvested a bunch of seeds from them but we're gonna grow even more varieties this year. And then we have our herbs we love using herbs both fresh and dry them we still have dried parsley and basil and oregano from last year. So here we have you know thyme, parsley, sage, basil, mint, tarragon and then we have carrots. I'm really excited about growing carrots this year. We did grow them last year but it didn't go that well because we grew them inside first and we transplanted them out and you shouldn't really do that because then you get really wonky roots. So this year I'm just direct sowing and we have purple with an in the basement. So every type of carrot. Norwegians really like carrots so it's also a good crop for us to sell so I keep that in mind. Then we have other roots I'm not really sure about the names in English we just call it parsley roots and oat roots and black roots and then we have parsnip and I'm gonna do the same with them just direct sow. And then we have the vegetables that yield kind of fruits like tomatoes and chilies. I might have like 200 tomato plants this year I have so many maybe even more but I hope to make enough tomato sauce to last us throughout the year because we eat a lot of tomato sauce. Yeah and then we have chili pepper they're not doing that well but if they don't produce I might just buy a plant from the garden store. I also planted aubergine and they're also not doing great but it hasn't really been that hot yet so if they don't produce that's not a big deal it's just something I wanted to try. Now we have the cucumbers and last year I grew one type and I'm amazed at how well it did when I think about how badly I treated it. It was the last seedling that I planted outside and we were just so tired at that point and we were so behind so I kind of like threw it in the ground with some compost and just left it. And I think one plant produced like eight eight cucumbers and then later I found four more plants in the pumpkin patch because I'd mistaken them to be pumpkins and we got some out of those as well but this year I'm gonna give them a little bit more attention. So I have white cucumber, I have sort of normal cucumber and I have some cucumbers to pickle. Then I also am growing a lofa which we're gonna dry and then it's like a sponge that you can use for dishes or use in the shower. And then we have flowers. Didn't really grow any flowers last year except for sunflowers so this year I'm gonna give that way more energy. We have a bunch of edible flowers and I have this Cosmo, Alyssum, Echinacea, Woodbeckia. I've never really been that into flowers but the pollinators love them and it really makes a beautiful garden so I'm gonna focus more on that this year. And then we have our onions and this is the first year where I'm growing onions and it's gone terrible. I've killed most of them. They're a bit tricky because they like really loose soil and also the roots rot very easily if they're in in water or if you water too much. I tried sowing onions twice already this season so I actually just caved and I got onion bulbs but I also have a bunch of spring onion and something called salad onion and silver onion and also a bunch of leeks. And then garlic we sowed last fall and they're popping up already so hopefully we have a lot of garlic this year. We use a lot of garlic. I mean Koreans have Indian so we cook with a lot of garlic. And then we have our brassicas and I'm growing a lot of kales and cabbages this year. We have green kale, we have red green kale, we have something we call palm kale or black kale. They're so decorative and also the chickens love them so we can't really have enough kale. And the cabbages I use to ferment. I love to make jars of fermented food. So I'm growing a bunch of different cabbages. Purple, pointy cabbage, normal green cabbage, Savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts and also cauliflower and broccoli. I didn't grow cauliflower and broccoli last year so I'm really excited to try that this year. And the cabbages didn't do that well last year because we didn't have nets to protect them from the the cabbage moth. But this year I have that so I think they will turn out pretty good this year. And it's also a great crop for storage. I mean cabbage will last months in the basement. And then we have squashes and last year we grew one type of summer squash and we had like eight plants and they produced so much fruit. We had way too many squashes. We were making squash bread and squash fritters and just anything you can think of because we had so many squashes and we didn't know what to do with them. And this year I'm growing more. But like I said chickens will just eat anything that we don't eat. And then I have a crop that I'm probably the most excited about which is winter squash because last year I developed this insane fascination for winter squash and pumpkins. So now I have seeds for over 40 types of winter squash and I'm growing about 20 types I think. We don't have that much space for pumpkins this year. Next year when we have a market garden I'm gonna set aside at least half an acre to a pumpkin patch. Yeah so we have gourds which are super decorative. They're not edible but they're really really pretty and I can't wait to decorate our house with gourds like this. And then I also have a bunch of huge ones like crown prince, just Atlantic. Those are the huge ones that can get up to several hundred kilos. Jack-o'-lantern which is like the typical Halloween pumpkin. Rondini, red curry. Red curry is great for eating. Black cats, baby boo, New England pie. There's so many pumpkins and I'm so excited. I invite you all to just call me the crazy pumpkin lady. I am totally fine with that. And then we have some seeds that we harvested ourselves. So we have a bunch of radishes and coriander and we also have comfrey and bush bean and Canadian sugar snap and climbing bean, marigold, borage, some pumpkin seeds, grapes. Harvesting our own seeds is definitely something we're gonna focus more on this year and in the upcoming years because it is a big part of being self-sufficient having your own seeds so you don't have to depend on stores having seeds or and you also don't have to spend money on it. So yeah I think that's all we're gonna sow this year and let me now show you the seedlings I have planted. Here I have some rudbeckia, celery, I have carrots growing in milk cartons, purple broccoli, more celery and some tiny strawberries and spinach. These are some meter beans it's called. They get like long red beans, very beautiful but note to self I'm not gonna grow beans inside next year. I'm just gonna grow them directly outside. And then we have some very sad onions and then I have some celery that I bought at the store. It's looking really healthy. I want a lot of celery because I love making celery juice. And then we have some pumpkins that I haven't come up yet and here's my brassica tray. Here we have pak choy and we have cauliflower and we have palm kale, some green kale at the back, some Brussels sprouts here and then we have some more sad, I think just a spring onion, not doing great. And then we have some artichokes that I've grown first time also with those. Then we have some more brassicas, some different cauliflowers and broccolis and then we have a bunch of pumpkins. And then over at the dining table here I have more brassicas, more kale. I'm gonna give away a bunch of kale to friends and family so I'm just growing a bunch. And here we have some onions that are looking way better. It's this is the second round of onions. And here I have some, we call this fusalis in Norwegian, I think it's tomatillo. And here we have asparagus, takes about four years before you actually get a asparagus stalk. So very excited to just get that started so we have asparagus in four years. And more broccoli and here we have some bush beans and then all of this is just pumpkins that I sowed a couple of days ago. And I want to show you the green house one more time because now I put so many more seedlings in there. We have some salads growing, cucumbers and then I have climbing tomatoes. The stuff that I direct sowed in the green house you've seen before but it's really really coming along. And then I have more tomatoes and then I have some, it's called farmer's bean, I'm not really sure what it's called in English. And salads and beets they were here before and the cabbages and this is Swiss chard and salad. And here I put some celery which I'm also just dying to get in the soil, they're getting really pale. And then I have more celery that I just sowed because I killed so many of the ones I sowed in February. And here I have some celery and fennel that I bought at the store, that's why they look so great. And here I have more tomatoes. I sowed a like half of my tomatoes because I put them out in the sun and forgot about them. So they all got really sunburned and looked like they were struggling but now they've all regained their strength again. And then here we have corn. We have one sweet corn and one painted mountain. It's like this multicolored corn. Corn is also something I'm just gonna sow directly next year. Most of the seedlings are doing pretty well now but I've also had several rounds of taking out the dead or the dying seedlings and I've also repotted quite a few of them. I've had moments where I felt like such a failure because it just seemed like all of my seedlings were dying but it's going so much better now. I started a bit too early this year. Even though I held myself back I got really, I get really excited in late winter to grow seedlings. But I'm gonna start even later this year because you're kind of forcing this process to happen when the seeds and the plants know that it's not time yet. They don't really grow until they feel that the temperature and weather is right. I think it's gonna be such an abundant year and we're gonna grow so much more than what you just saw. We're gonna direct sow a lot as well. So yeah, I am so excited!