Cabbage hint: don't pull or twist the cabbage head off......cut the head off with a knife or small saw as close to the head as possible........then cut a cross ( X ) in the stem around an inch or so deep...... it will grow four more smaller heads of cabbage for your pleasure LIKE your posts, thank you . bill.
You guys are just awesome! I adore your new garden. I'm almost 70 and am just learning to garden organically. Hubby and I had a square foot garden over thirty years ago. Now, that I'm gardening alone, I have a little plot in the local community garden, and I absolutely love it and wish I hadn't waited so long to start again. I've planted my first small fall crop and I pray to be half as successful as you have been. Keep up the great work and sharing with us. You are truly an inspiration.
Seeing your results I can safely say I am going to become a garden monster! Thank you for posting this update. I watch you built the thing and the results were awesome. Greetings from Bulgaria
You two are so delightful. I still feel the same way after 40 years of gardening. It is always a miracle. Your Hubbard squash should have been 5 times larger. I think you have squash borers killing the vines. Hubbard is a winter squash that you can keep for months.
Loving your videos! I've hardened for 45 years but I can relate to the first gardening thrills. Ideally, pick cucumbers and zucchini smaller! We all know how hard it is to see all the cucumbers hidden by the leaves. Use the ones that got way to big, to make sweet relish. I have good pickle and relish recipes.
Good on ya! This happens to every zucchini grower. First they are hardly to be seen, then they are everywhere and huge. Some tips. Keep the soil covered with organic material at all times. It keeps the moisture in the bed and the weeds and grass away. Grass cuttings are fantastic as an organic fertilizer. As you probably are aware of, you can also use wood chips, hay or just about anything that will compost. We make new beds continuously during the season, just by piling all sorts of organic material in beds that composts itself. In autumn we cover them with hay, leaves or wood chips. If you know someone with horses, see if you can take care of the horse manure. It's the king of compost material. Our beds with a lot of horse manure are by far the best. Next season, make sure you don't grow cabbage or potatoes at the same spot, preferably in a new bed. Congratulations on a fantastic start!
I live in a (quaint) village setting with a half-acre property. This fall I've decided to turn a fair amount of lawn area into fruit production space: blueberries, raspberry's, and strawberrys. Of import here is that I've followed your hugelkultur example. Too early to post any results except to say that I am SORE! (I did it ALL by hand to dig and move mulch by wheel barrow, etc.)
Growing cucumbers and zucchini in close vicinity to one another can cross-pollinate and you end up with tasteless cucumbers. I learned that lesson in my first year of growing.
I've noticed something about zucchini. The first few, you can let them grow really big and they will still be nice and tender. But the closer to fall, the smaller you have to pick them. The plant seems to try harder and harder to make seeds. Also the skin gets tougher. One more observation. I am not totally gluten free, but I like to do a lot of GF baking. I find that if you grind up zucchini, you can use it in place of part of the flour. If you grind it fine enough, you can even use the older ones that have tough skin and partly mature seeds. Itt all gets ground up and baked and tastes fine.
My mom has a outdoor garden and green house in our backyard and its growing like crazy. Its amazing to be able to grow your own food and plants. We also have chickens for eggs. Your videos are amazing. I am trying to convince my family to get a home with acres so we can have more land and more space for gardening.
Loved this video. As a long time gardener it was refreshing watching your first time harvest. Your garden has done great for first year. I can see learning how to can and other ways to preserve your harvest in your future.
love seeing you enthusiasm! next year...you can erect a 2 sided trellis to let your vining squashes on sort of teepee style over your lettuces. Don't know about Canada, but here in Kansas, mine bolts pretty quick. Also...onions are day length sensitive...so if you want storage onions, the sooner you can get them in the ground, the bigger bulbs you will get.There are a few day neutral varieties but you have to research that. once solstice happens, they shut down growth and start drying for harvest. They would be ok under your trellis too.
Hi from Toronto, Ontario. I fell in love with you guys videos as soon as I watched the first one yesterday. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, experience, and expertise. 😄
looks like you are going to be doing some canning. you guys went squash crazy! in your last video you were talking about the drought you had this year, i would suggest renting some earth moving equipment and digging a pond. it will be a few years before it will fill up and come into its own but a large water reservoir like a pond can be a critical part of self sufficiency. Also fish and aquaculture then became an option
I highly recommend a wet long sleeve cotton shirt, and wet gloves when harvesting squash, and a big shade hat for good measure. Not only will you avoid a lot of irritation from prickly leafs and pests, you'll keep cool in the full sun and the heat as well, and you won't get sunburned either. If you've got snake-boots you can grow crops, and all that other protective dress, you can manage crops growing practically on top of each other like in the case of the 3 sisters gardens. (which do on occasions attract medium sized rodents, and snakes.) There's a lot of good reasons human-power farmers & veteran gardeners don't hit the fields underdressed.
I'm an old man and have been gardening all my life. The only thing I would agree with is wear a big shade hat. I'm in Ontario Canada and you have nothing to fear from rodents, snakes or vegetables'.
You guys can roast these tomatoes and add oregano, basil and garlic with salt/pepper. You can then freeze it in a plastic zip lock or tupperware. You can also blend it up as a great tomato soup or marinara sauce. Love your garden! You guys are very lucky to have this property.
Dear Paula and Derrick It is wonderful to see your videos and get inspired. Thank you. I have a tiny farm and forest in Poland and I have to confess I have not been successful in growing things. Though I instinctively always believed in heavy mulching and minimum tilling, I never practiced it. I suppose because I was often told things like nitrogen will leach, fungal diseases will spread and so on. And I did not have the guts like you to experiment, so I ended up with lots of work weeding and horrible harvests. THANK YOU for showing me that my instincts were right and I should have followed it. I will get back to you in spring summer and autumn to tell you how I did with various methods you have shown. IN the mean time, if you ever come to Europe, please contact me and come visit me. I live near Krakow (54 km north of Krakow) Thank you once again and keep showing me more. Oh one thing if you could, how to get good crop of tomatoes. My tomatoes get black spots. AR
My favorite recipe for zucchini and yellow squash is to peal them, cut them into slices, and saute them in a big frying pan with olive oil, onions and garlic. Throw a cover on to speed things up and then remove it for the last few minutes so the onion and garlic can caramelize a bit. I even grab store bought in the winter... it's that good.
You missed the best part of the squash & zucchini - the flowers! I love them breaded and fried, but here are some other ways to prepare them: www.thekitchn.com/five-ways-to-eat-squash-blosso-87564 Do you make pickles with the cucumbers? And, Roma tomatoes make the very best tomato sauce. (Take it from an Italian.) lol
Very cool, it's a great feeling to grow your own veggies and fruits. You two have had a great first harvest 😊 So hot this year nothing survived in the garden except last years sweet potatoes by accident of a few missed ones. They are going strong with all of the rain. You might need to invest in a freezer, or start canning. Great to see how your garden did. Thanks for sharing.
Your garden did great for the first year and all that wood underground hasn't even turned to compost yet.Wait till next year,you will have so much produce you will have to sell it at farmers markets or can it.😊😊
You guys are adorable. I'm so envious and can't wait 'till I can find a house with a little piece of land we can afford and move out of the city. New subscriber here, got interested because you're growing in a similar climate to where I live, gardening in a way I'm curious about. Looking forward to future videos.
So you would recommend Hugelkultur? I just moved to new property and am trying to decide what sort of garden to have next year. Hugelkultur seems like a natural choice since my property is mostly wooded with a lot of fallen, punky logs and a lot of fresher material from land that I have cleared.
Hey guys, reminds me how excited I was 10 years ago when I started vegetable growing. Only just found your channel so don't know if others have suggested checking out an excentric English guy called Charles Dowsing - he also does no dig just with compost, not straw. He has great ideas on how to save time and maximize profit - lots of good videos and articles.
you all are doing good for the first time garden make some zucchini bread it is great i ate those lil tomatoes just like her they are so yummy thanks for sharing.
It's good to keep in mind that vegetables are trying to grow to maturity so that most times plant is trying to get the fruit to bust open and send its seed back into the earth to re-plant and re-propagate. It's always better to pick the fruit while it's young. That way you foil the plants plans, and it starts producing more fruit to try and repeat the cycle. Besides getting more yield per plant, the fruit is much more tender and flavorful. A perfect example is zucchini. If you let it get too big, the plant's production starts to shut down and the fruit is very tough and woody with extremely large seeds. It's just not as tasty as the small stuff!! We've had some that grew close to the size of a baseball bat! The only thing my wife would do with those is shred them for zucchini pancakes (a delicious way to cook it!!,) or to grind it and make zucchini bread, (equally delicious!!) Good job though on all of your first-time efforts and success!
I understand. I grew up in the country, and wanted to live in a city so badly...then I moved to a city, and another, and I realized I was very unhappy. So I moved myself, and the family I started in the city, back to the country. I am much happier. 😊
Great job :) You can put plucked squash/tom/pumpkins in a sunny location and they will continue to ripen (leave stems on). I kept a black beauty squash in my kitchen for 9 months before we ate it...stored on a cool & dry location - loved that. I've had to pull totally green pumpkins before frost hit and they continued to turn orange in my kitchen window & were good to eat. I'm curious how your corn did in the hugel mound? :) thanks for the video
Interesting Tonio! We did have tomatoes that had marks in them but we thought they were from the bunnies. Our fence goes up this year so we will watch to see if those marks continue, they could very well have been from the birds. Thanks for the info.
Get a humongous tarp to cover your camper van. I did this with a huge 5th wheel and my heating bill was simply two 5 gallon propane tanks the entire winter...11 FEET of snow!! Oh yeah, warming is so happening...gag. For your tiny camper van, a good tarp will blow you away.
Cabbage hint: don't pull or twist the cabbage head off......cut the head off with a knife or small saw as close to the head as possible........then cut a cross ( X ) in the stem around an inch or so deep...... it will grow four more smaller heads of cabbage for your pleasure LIKE your posts, thank you . bill.
BILL HARRIS Good to know!
Yup. Very cool. Thnx
BILL, great tip. thank you!
The joy of gardening on your face says it all
you two crack me up but I think your garden is beautiful
OH and to see you both work with so much love and care for nature and each other is heart warming. Keep loving
You guys are just awesome! I adore your new garden. I'm almost 70 and am just learning to garden organically. Hubby and I had a square foot garden over thirty years ago. Now, that I'm gardening alone, I have a little plot in the local community garden, and I absolutely love it and wish I hadn't waited so long to start again. I've planted my first small fall crop and I pray to be half as successful as you have been. Keep up the great work and sharing with us. You are truly an inspiration.
You want to pick your zucchini and squash sooner when they are less then 9 in long. When they get to big they get spongy
You two are so freaking adorable
One of the greatest moments that a person can experience is witnessing the fruition of their growing efforts. :-) You two have made a terrific start!
Seeing your results I can safely say I am going to become a garden monster!
Thank you for posting this update. I watch you built the thing and the results were awesome.
Greetings from Bulgaria
You two are so delightful. I still feel the same way after 40 years of gardening. It is always a miracle. Your Hubbard squash should have been 5 times larger. I think you have squash borers killing the vines. Hubbard is a winter squash that you can keep for months.
Loving your videos! I've hardened for 45 years but I can relate to the first gardening thrills. Ideally, pick cucumbers and zucchini smaller! We all know how hard it is to see all the cucumbers hidden by the leaves. Use the ones that got way to big, to make sweet relish. I have good pickle and relish recipes.
Cute couple. Look like you are enjoying your garden. Good job!!
paula was too cute eating the cherry tomato's I'm guilty of the same my cherry tomato's never made it into the house lmao
Wow - what a GREAT harvest! Very nice!
its silly how happy this makes me haha...can't wait to try this method in my garden this year!
Beautiful harvest!
you guys are cute! I think I can say that now that I am getting to be an old man!
Lol, thanks! :)
I love the joy that you display at your harvest.
Very good work.... you are my inspiration!!
you guys are too adorable to be believed
Love your excitement of learning the art of growing plants,your new to me but enjoy seeing different styles of growing plants.
Very encouraging, good work.
Well done guys ,you have inspired me to get to work
so exciting!
Good on ya! This happens to every zucchini grower. First they are hardly to be seen, then they are everywhere and huge.
Some tips. Keep the soil covered with organic material at all times. It keeps the moisture in the bed and the weeds and grass away. Grass cuttings are fantastic as an organic fertilizer. As you probably are aware of, you can also use wood chips, hay or just about anything that will compost.
We make new beds continuously during the season, just by piling all sorts of organic material in beds that composts itself. In autumn we cover them with hay, leaves or wood chips.
If you know someone with horses, see if you can take care of the horse manure. It's the king of compost material. Our beds with a lot of horse manure are by far the best.
Next season, make sure you don't grow cabbage or potatoes at the same spot, preferably in a new bed.
Congratulations on a fantastic start!
Jens Hultman is horse better then steer? or pig?
I live in a (quaint) village setting with a half-acre property. This fall I've decided to turn a fair amount of lawn area into fruit production space: blueberries, raspberry's, and strawberrys. Of import here is that I've followed your hugelkultur example. Too early to post any results except to say that I am SORE! (I did it ALL by hand to dig and move mulch by wheel barrow, etc.)
I am on a 45 degree slope and I use buckets ! But with enough rotten hey and materials I will level the land!
@Jangle2007 E X C I T I N G ! !!
And NOW ? Aren't you glad you put that garden in ? With all the nonsense going on , you did VERY WELL ! Blessings from here in Sept
2021
Thank you for the great videos. You both look very happy.... "going on an Easter egg hunt."
I'm happy to see your garden working out so nicely, already! :) There's nothing better than eating your fresh salad as you stand over your garden. :)
Growing cucumbers and zucchini in close vicinity to one another can cross-pollinate and you end up with tasteless cucumbers. I learned that lesson in my first year of growing.
Strong work guys!! Enjoying the visuals and the lessons learned
You have a lot of food and medicine growing around there, in case you didn't know.
I've noticed something about zucchini. The first few, you can let them grow really big and they will still be nice and tender. But the closer to fall, the smaller you have to pick them. The plant seems to try harder and harder to make seeds. Also the skin gets tougher. One more observation. I am not totally gluten free, but I like to do a lot of GF baking. I find that if you grind up zucchini, you can use it in place of part of the flour. If you grind it fine enough, you can even use the older ones that have tough skin and partly mature seeds. Itt all gets ground up and baked and tastes fine.
My mom has a outdoor garden and green house in our backyard and its growing like crazy. Its amazing to be able to grow your own food and plants. We also have chickens for eggs. Your videos are amazing. I am trying to convince my family to get a home with acres so we can have more land and more space for gardening.
Loved this video. As a long time gardener it was refreshing watching your first time harvest. Your garden has done great for first year. I can see learning how to can and other ways to preserve your harvest in your future.
Thanks Dorothy! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
We are looking forward to learning different forms of food preservation in the future!
Love how happy yall are
love seeing you enthusiasm! next year...you can erect a 2 sided trellis to let your vining squashes on sort of teepee style over your lettuces. Don't know about Canada, but here in Kansas, mine bolts pretty quick. Also...onions are day length sensitive...so if you want storage onions, the sooner you can get them in the ground, the bigger bulbs you will get.There are a few day neutral varieties but you have to research that. once solstice happens, they shut down growth and start drying for harvest. They would be ok under your trellis too.
it's been a day since I've watched ur videos and I'm already in love with your channel!!
very well done!
You two are incredibly cute
You guys are Excellent ! thank you !
Big help with our mound. Thank you 😻
A family that nurtures nature, is in turn nurtured by nature!
Hi from Toronto, Ontario. I fell in love with you guys videos as soon as I watched the first one yesterday. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, experience, and expertise. 😄
8:00 My shirt has been my harvest container more times than I care to admit. It's basically my primary mode.
Just love you two!
looks like you definitely found the right land, that's a pretty good harvest going on for a first year experimental garden!
They're beautiful! Great job!
You guys did awesome! So cool!!!!
Wow, well done!
looks like you are going to be doing some canning.
you guys went squash crazy!
in your last video you were talking about the drought you had this year, i would suggest renting some earth moving equipment and digging a pond. it will be a few years before it will fill up and come into its own but a large water reservoir like a pond can be a critical part of self sufficiency. Also fish and aquaculture then became an option
that's awesome ,there is nothing better then home grown food
Wow, awesome! That's my dream life :)
Oh i love you guys!
Sure is a buzz when you eat own grown. 👍
that's a great harvest especially when your new in gardening. i struggle for two years. this 3 third year has been good. loved and subbed.
I believe in you and in the method of use. I would even try it.
I highly recommend a wet long sleeve cotton shirt, and wet gloves when harvesting squash, and a big shade hat for good measure. Not only will you avoid a lot of irritation from prickly leafs and pests, you'll keep cool in the full sun and the heat as well, and you won't get sunburned either. If you've got snake-boots you can grow crops, and all that other protective dress, you can manage crops growing practically on top of each other like in the case of the 3 sisters gardens. (which do on occasions attract medium sized rodents, and snakes.) There's a lot of good reasons human-power farmers & veteran gardeners don't hit the fields underdressed.
Thanks for the tips Tixe Right, they are very helpful!! I will be getting snake boots for sure!!!
Paula :)
I'm an old man and have been gardening all my life. The only thing I would agree with is wear a big shade hat. I'm in Ontario Canada and you have nothing to fear from rodents, snakes or vegetables'.
You guys can roast these tomatoes and add oregano, basil and garlic with salt/pepper. You can then freeze it in a plastic zip lock or tupperware. You can also blend it up as a great tomato soup or marinara sauce. Love your garden! You guys are very lucky to have this property.
When's dinner?? ;)
Congratulations on the harvest!
Looks good good job
Dear Paula and Derrick
It is wonderful to see your videos and get inspired. Thank you. I have a tiny farm and forest in Poland and I have to confess I have not been successful in growing things. Though I instinctively always believed in heavy mulching and minimum tilling, I never practiced it. I suppose because I was often told things like nitrogen will leach, fungal diseases will spread and so on. And I did not have the guts like you to experiment, so I ended up with lots of work weeding and horrible harvests. THANK YOU for showing me that my instincts were right and I should have followed it.
I will get back to you in spring summer and autumn to tell you how I did with various methods you have shown.
IN the mean time, if you ever come to Europe, please contact me and come visit me. I live near Krakow (54 km north of Krakow)
Thank you once again and keep showing me more.
Oh one thing if you could, how to get good crop of tomatoes. My tomatoes get black spots.
AR
Loved seeing your garden. I taught The grand babies to eat the cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden, I call them natures candy
My favorite recipe for zucchini and yellow squash is to peal them, cut them into slices, and saute them in a big frying pan with olive oil, onions and garlic. Throw a cover on to speed things up and then remove it for the last few minutes so the onion and garlic can caramelize a bit.
I even grab store bought in the winter... it's that good.
You missed the best part of the squash & zucchini - the flowers! I love them breaded and fried, but here are some other ways to prepare them: www.thekitchn.com/five-ways-to-eat-squash-blosso-87564
Do you make pickles with the cucumbers? And, Roma tomatoes make the very best tomato sauce. (Take it from an Italian.) lol
So many good tips! We're trying ALL of this next year! Thanks! :)
I love your wife's beautiful curly hair!
How fantastic, I am envious that you can garden without a fence here in Tassie I would be feeding the possums !
Very cool, it's a great feeling to grow your own veggies and fruits. You two have had a great first harvest 😊 So hot this year nothing survived in the garden except last years sweet potatoes by accident of a few missed ones. They are going strong with all of the rain. You might need to invest in a freezer, or start canning. Great to see how your garden did. Thanks for sharing.
Holy toledo you have green thumbs! Looking forward to the recipes. =)
Hello from a humble little Florida homestead!!
Hi Jaime, from our humble little Ontario, Canada homestead! :)
way to go!
Fry your green tomatoes in corn meal batter. They taste kinda pickle-y and delicious
Learning curve is GREAT, and just keep expanding as you go, is so so good
For insects you can use a spray on the cabbage leaves with a dilution of Dawn dish soap (2 tablespoons) and cayenne pepper in water.
Your garden did great for the first year and all that wood underground hasn't even turned to compost yet.Wait till next year,you will have so much produce you will have to sell it at farmers markets or can it.😊😊
You guys are adorable. I'm so envious and can't wait 'till I can find a house with a little piece of land we can afford and move out of the city. New subscriber here, got interested because you're growing in a similar climate to where I live, gardening in a way I'm curious about. Looking forward to future videos.
thank you
So you would recommend Hugelkultur? I just moved to new property and am trying to decide what sort of garden to have next year. Hugelkultur seems like a natural choice since my property is mostly wooded with a lot of fallen, punky logs and a lot of fresher material from land that I have cleared.
Loving the videos! How did u two meet?
Hey guys, reminds me how excited I was 10 years ago when I started vegetable growing. Only just found your channel so don't know if others have suggested checking out an excentric English guy called Charles Dowsing - he also does no dig just with compost, not straw. He has great ideas on how to save time and maximize profit - lots of good videos and articles.
Hi Derek And Paula this Garden looks great I can't wait to see what you do next are you going to do canning of any of your harvesting ?
you guys make me smile so thanks
I must ask how much/how often did you water??
thanks for sharing
Amazing harvest when four weeks late in planting. Can you tell me how often you watered your Hugelkultur vegetable garden? Thanks
you all are doing good for the first time garden make some zucchini bread it is great i ate those lil tomatoes just like her they are so yummy thanks for sharing.
9:20 I always cut harvest when possible. Limits the risk of disease with a clean cut
You need to get a dehydrator for all those tomatoes next year!!!
It's good to keep in mind that vegetables are trying to grow to maturity so that most times plant is trying to get the fruit to bust open and send its seed back into the earth to re-plant and re-propagate. It's always better to pick the fruit while it's young. That way you foil the plants plans, and it starts producing more fruit to try and repeat the cycle. Besides getting more yield per plant, the fruit is much more tender and flavorful. A perfect example is zucchini. If you let it get too big, the plant's production starts to shut down and the fruit is very tough and woody with extremely large seeds. It's just not as tasty as the small stuff!! We've had some that grew close to the size of a baseball bat! The only thing my wife would do with those is shred them for zucchini pancakes (a delicious way to cook it!!,) or to grind it and make zucchini bread, (equally delicious!!) Good job though on all of your first-time efforts and success!
Man I hate living in the city.
Then move.
I understand. I grew up in the country, and wanted to live in a city so badly...then I moved to a city, and another, and I realized I was very unhappy. So I moved myself, and the family I started in the city, back to the country. I am much happier. 😊
3:11 love the shirt dude 🙂
Wow those green tomatoes would make perfectly good fried green tomatoes just put them in some yellow cornmeal and fry them very delicious
Love the scissors mr mom lol
Great job :) You can put plucked squash/tom/pumpkins in a sunny location and they will continue to ripen (leave stems on). I kept a black beauty squash in my kitchen for 9 months before we ate it...stored on a cool & dry location - loved that. I've had to pull totally green pumpkins before frost hit and they continued to turn orange in my kitchen window & were good to eat. I'm curious how your corn did in the hugel mound? :) thanks for the video
Hi love your videos,you give me hope that maybe i will beable to grow my garden this year 2017
Oh, getting into the hugulkulture thing eh? Pretty soon you will be doing berms and swales, and all kinds of weird stuff :-)
I'm surprised that the birds don't eat and/or damage your tomatoes. Mocking birds like to pluck big holes in ours just as soon as they turn red!
Interesting Tonio! We did have tomatoes that had marks in them but we thought they were from the bunnies. Our fence goes up this year so we will watch to see if those marks continue, they could very well have been from the birds. Thanks for the info.
Get a humongous tarp to cover your camper van. I did this with a huge 5th wheel and my heating bill was simply two 5 gallon propane tanks the entire winter...11 FEET of snow!! Oh yeah, warming is so happening...gag.
For your tiny camper van, a good tarp will blow you away.
Your harvest was two years ago, but can you recall how often you had to water this very first row?
this is really exciting guys! i wonder what issues you have had with bugs and critters
Nice looking spaghetti squash sir
never tested this but i read somewhere if you use your hand only the same leaf will regrow, try it this year
Haha, and I planted pole beans instead of bush beans because I didn't check the package carefully. I guess it is easier to do than we realize.