Awesome video and totally relatable! Thanks for touching on this topic. Also, was hoping to see a Black Friday offer that wouldn't require a minimum $500 purchase and hoping to see an alternative deal offered in between now and the days still ahead. For those of us who already own several Birdies raised beds and are repeat customers who are not needing to add $500 + to our existing garden, the Spend $500 to get $100 Black Friday deal leaves us out.
👁️ AM with you guy, as WE go and learn.... I became aware of JADAM nutrient knowledge and it changed my thoughts on Bad soil. Give it a shot and you too will experience the Creator's magic.. All the very Best...
@@epicgardening Someone once said, "My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view."
This applies to life outside the garden, been my life's direction for past 39 years. I learn by doing, mistakes happen all the time but what was learned from it? My kids found this comment really funny but turned it into a real world, real life teaching opportunity
"Mistakes I Made" videos are HUGE needs for newbie gardeners. It gives us confidence to try again and adjust our methods and crop selection without feeling like we failed because we don't have skill in growing things. TY so much for being vulnerable with us :)
I totally agree with this! I was so discouraged this summer with all the challenges I faced in my 1st time bigger garden area, the drought, insects, etc that I felt like I wasn't sure I wanted to try so hard next year , this video helped me realize it's just part of gardening and I can learn and do better, Thank you!
The only pumpkins that we grew were accidentally planted by our 1 year old! He dropped them in much sunnier spots than we had planted ours in. Next year we will follow his lead!
Had a baby this summer and I didn't want to lose the opportunity to garden but also didn't have the time or energy to pay attention to it so I planted butternut squash and pumpkins which also kept weeds relatively under control. I did absolutely nothing for these plants all summer except for putting the seeds in the ground with some compost and I harvested one pumpkin and six butternut squash in the tiny plot we have.
My mistakes would be: 1. Not watering/layering my compost. I just throw it in, set and forget. 2. Not pruning my plants. 3. Not checking on the garden daily. 4. Growing more than 1 zucchini/squash plant (they just produce way too much). 5.Won't use straw as mulch again- didn't like it and I think it was contaminated with bindweed. 6.Starting cucumbers and tomatoes too early (they got way too big before I could transplant and ended up dying/didn't have space enough light. 7. Not hardening off adequately. 8. This year I plan on growing more of things I actually want to eat, rather than just "because."
This is what I love about you guys, you are just like the rest of us and you don’t mind showing what went wrong. Learn from your mistakes and go on to the next one 😉 best way of learning is from your own and from others 😊
I too try new things in the garden that don't always go according to the plan. I never call them failures for the very reasons you guys mentioned. It's good to know that even with all your success you also have some of these same issues. Learning more from things that are not as productive but increases your understanding of what to do different the next time is why this video kept me engaged. Thanks and continued success.
Exactly. One of the reasons I enjoy their team as well. These kind of videos bring the heman element back to gardening. I know I'm not the only one who kills plants. lol😂
@@presscilliajones5692 I don't believe you can really make a mistake as to when and when not to plant anymore. The weather is just so unpredictable. A greenhouse is probably the only true way to mitigate these changing weather patterns.
The mistake I’m avoiding this year is underestimating the intensity of the sun. For whatever reason this year portions on my Garden that normally don’t get scorched definitely got scorched! 😅😅
I love the emphasis on challenges small-scale gardeners can have with cover crops. I've certainly made both of those mistakes. Given how beneficial they are, I'd love to see more discussion on how to work with them best for a variety of purposes.
When thinning your seedlings you can eat pretty much all of the trimmed nutrient-dense greens as a salad topper, sandwich topper, on top of anything. I did that with all the greens I thinned from my Epic Gardening 6 and 4 cells seed trays.
I loved the content and inclusion of various gardeners as well and it got me to thinking what I won’t grow again, but listening was challenging for me. Thankfully I found the transcript at the bottom of the page because they talk so fast I couldn’t grasp everything at that speed. At first I was wishing that they would have included the words on the video but finding the transcript worked just fine.
Great lessons. Jaques you can harvest seeds shishito not totally wasted unless hybrid variety. Kevin you can always donate any extra seedlings to community gardens and or schools with gardens so yes start way more than needed there's always a place to donate.
This was my second year with raised beds. Last year I was more successful than I expected. This year the animals, hot summer in our area and fear of burning my crops with fertilizer worked against me. Instead of giving up for the season, I regrouped in August and was able to get a couple of green beans and lettuce crops going. Better than nothing and proved that it’s better to try again than just quit.
My biggest mistake this year also had to do with compost. I had planned too far ahead with new raised beds, and was counting on using the municipal compost to fill them. Normally there's a near unlimited amount available. Unfortunately, this year the town had decided to dredge out the pond at the local nature center, and dump all the mud and silt into the compost. This meant they could not put it out, because it contained a lot of undecomposed material and could not be inspected. I quickly ran out of topsoil and compost, and had to curtail a lot of my plans. Fortunately, I did find some workarounds. I got two Chip Drops this year, totaling 30 cubic yards, and planted mushrooms in them to break them down faster. Although the mushrooms did not fruit this year, the woodchips broke down super fast and retained enough moisture to get my plants through the hot dry summer. I also went around and took all the autumn leaves from my neighbors, so I won't be running out of organic material any time soon.
Lots of great info here. 😁👍❤.... 😯 You should have harvested, strung, and hung dried those peppers for use later in cooking. Harvest and donate to the food bank, or a soup kitchen. Post them locally for crop swap, or for free. Never waste food.
This was an off the charts epic/funny/educational video I’m so grateful to see how far you both have come!!! I learn something with every video. Just a little thank you from central Oregon beginner gardener 🌱 🪴🙏🏻🙏🏻
I hear you on the shishitos...I did the same last year, but a few dried peppers hit the soil before or as I took out the plant and they reseeded nicely in the spring!
My Shishido's are still going strong. Now that it has cooled off a little they are producing like mad. I only have 3 plants and no one can eat that many peppers
I like all yall in this. Back at Jaques, I was tired of okra about Nov. 1. I might have had the plants into Dec. But. They served me well. Had some 2 types of peppers do nicely, jalapeño and a larger hybrid. Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Hey, haven't watched your vids in a while but was very pleasantly surprised to see all the different faces that now (?) make up Epic Gardening. It's fun to get several perspectives in one vid. Thanks!
Every failure is an opportunity to learn. I even failed on purpose this year. For ex, I planted plants WAY too late in the fall. I did it just to see what would happen. Some of those experiments are still on-going bc I want to see if some of the crops survive the winter and grow in the spring. Experimenting = inevitably failing. But I learn so much from it.
I also planted way too late this fall, but on accident. 😂 Our fall weather got much cooler than it did the last few years. I’m still tending to everything so I can see what does/doesn’t work for next fall.
I can relate to the oat to choke out weeds story. My friend from Florida who owns a ranch plants "Sun hemp" as a cover crop so I absolutely littered my garden with them, and everywhere seemed like bamboo Shoots 7ft maybe even 8ft tall. It reminded me of the Vietmanese jungle. Thankfully I got one of my sons to chop them all down before the flowered and reseeded. Beautiful plant though
Jacques - Why not just do a hard-prune on your pepper plant and let it come back next year? I have a Fresno chili plant that I have gotten two very productive seasons out of (to the point I was making hot sauce, pickle peppers, pepper jelly and then froze a lot as well).
5:00 The SELF-PROMOTION IS EVERYTHING!!! BEST PROMO I'VE EVER SAT THROUGH ON utube... AND WILLFULLY! I legit rewound it a couple of times. IDK whether that helps anything, but I did it in the name of support, lol. And as always, the INFORMATION/SUGGESTIONS weren't so shabby either!!! Congrats on your well-deserved growth & HappyIndigenous Day!
The advice about growing twice as many seeds as needed... I did that, direct planted bush beans into my garden, and ALL of them came up and grew fantastically. I was picking fresh beans daily for two weeks before I reached a point where I didn't want to be eating beans with every meal, so started preserve freezing them. When I ran out of room in my freezer, I decided to let the remainder go to collect dried beans. According to the seed packets, the varieties I planted were supposed to all reach harvest in a short time then stop. Several months later my bean plants are still flowering and producing new beans! I don't think I'll need to be planting beans again any time soon, and when I do, I won't be planting out anywhere near as many. I don't even feel bad anymore when I accidently step on and crush one of the plants. I've reached the point where I'm tempted to stop watering them so they can die and dry out and be done with sooner. Lesson learned for me in 2022: don't assume the information on the seed packet is correct for my zone and season, as most give information assuming a temperate zone. I'm in a sub-tropical arid zone, I get 355+ days of no frost each year, which means so long as I can give it enough water, many things will just keep growing and growing well past their expected season.
Instead of trying to selectively not water a few plants, you could snip them off close to the ground. That way you can water as usual, and the dead plant will still give shade for other crops. =)
@@ArDeeMee They're not planted with anything else, they're just creating a border around the ground where my dwarf fruit trees are growing in raised beds... and it's been 3 months now since I stopped watering the beans, and yet some are still alive and still flowering and still growing new baby beans, and some new little plants have popped up from beans that must have been dropped onto the ground... they've become like weeds. I've decided next season I'm going to grow peas instead. I''ve had more than enough of eating beans.
Yo I got the opposite starting problem. It’s like, I want to grow 3 Jalapeño plants, and some how my brain convinces itself that I should definitely start like 25 seedlings.
Love the tips especially Chris's! She, like all of you, is clearly a knowledgable and accomplished gardener and it shows. Always happy to hear from her! ~Amy
This is the first time I’ve done a fall garden and I learned the squirrels are fluffy little agents of chaos. I’ll have to make some adjustments for next time! Thanks for sharing what didn’t work for y’all; I’m taking notes.
You totally just made me want to start a flower garden. I know you mostly do vegetables but watching your cids at 3am inspired me to start. I'm in a tropical climate so trying to find flowers that can actually survive the heat and finding seeds of them were hard but after some time, I got a seed tray full of seedlings!
I got some sand clay stone mix stuff for free and i used it to fill my big raised garden bed. I roughly sieved it with a coarse compost sieve to get the big stones out. and slowly filled up the bed with 2 inches of that then branches, leaves and weeds and then sand again, always alternating between them. for the last 3 inches i used all the compost i had. the bed is 40 inches high 80 inches long and 60 inches wide so i needed ruffly 4kubikyards of material to fill it. its the best yielding bed i have
You can also try making a hügelkultur bed, where you fill the base with logs, then branches on top, then finer material like leaves and woodchips, and finally a layer of compost for the last foot or so (you can use less compost but you won't have very high yields for the first 6 months or so).
These past 2.5 years, I have put a lot of energy into build compost from garden and kitchen waste. I am relatively new to the country I am in and although in the EU, I do not trust the soil, hay or composted manure sold here. I had a bad experience with a bag of soil I tried from a garden Centre to germinate some seeds and I am convinced it was aminopyralid toxicity. Luckily, it was as simple as binning the seedlings and starting over. I didn’t put any in my garden (we were still waiting to move into our new home and construction had been delayed due to the pandemic. One of the first things I invested in was some composting bins and as those have filled up, I have built a few more. It is taking time, but so should have some very nice compost to use next spring!
I had such difficulty with cucumber beetles this year and the only thing that worked was individually netting each plant. So after sowing all my watermelons, cucumbers, and zucchini 5 times this season, I've concluded it's way more efficient to spend that extra time to cover them. I even missed out on getting watermelons after all that work!
Cucumber beetles not only destroyed my Eureka F1 cucumbers (resistant to all diseases _except_ bacterial wilt) but also spread to my ash gourd plants and killed half of those. I got some nice large gourds, but didn't get to save a single one over the winter because the infection caused them to rot quickly. Next year I'm planting radishes in between all vulnerable plants, to see if that helps.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 If you've got an infestation like me, the radishes won't do much to be honest. I had them all around zucchini plants and the cucumber beetles just invited their friends, the flea beetles lol
Helpful tips and it's always smart to do a garden review annually. I learn every year. Why not dehydrate and pulverize the shishito peppers? You'd have a great resource for winter cooking. Re cover crops, it's so hard to remove producing annuals before they finish. It seems you need to do this to have enough lead time for cover crops to take hold. Anybody have tips on ways to have the final production along with healthy cover crop starts?
Such a good idea for the shishitos. I have a huge hot pepper tree and get hundreds of very hot peppers every year. We make as much fermented pepper sauce as we can but dehydrating and pulverizing them is a game changer.
Our mistakes are what drive us to the excitement and the anticipation of another growing season so we can hopefully do better. And the planning of a new and different way of gardening is what helps us get through the winter.
We had a truck load of top soil delivered on the east coast. Before we had a chance to distribute it into the flower beds we had a rain storm. We ended up with a large pile of sand.
My mistakes: (1) I planted the little small sunflowers, not the big 5 foot ones, way too close together and in not enough soil. Out of 6 that I planted, only 1 will survive to flower. So like Brianna said, spacing is key. (2) Didnt do research on what veggies were what season. I just got super excited and laid down everything I got my hands on.😂 all my broccoli and brussel sprouts died before they made it out of infancy. So planting correctly within the seasons was the biggest lesson I've learned so far.
When watching your videos, I accidentally hit ‘like’ and never knew when! Really a beautiful and magnificent work. I also sent you a sea of love and appreciation and my permanent connection. Also my full package of support. Thanks for your honesty!
Planting more seedlings than I think I'll need is my new motto. I really don't know why I get so stingy with the seeds. I'm not really experimenting with new plants this winter growing season but I am experimenting with biochar, rabbit poo, and growing more delicate things like cilantro, lettuce and green onions as part of my under story amongst the collards, broccoli, turnips and peas. I love growing in Northern California but our winters are screwy and I can have problems with bolting even in the winter. There have been 80º days in December. So hard to lose the brassicas in winter.
Use compost tea for energizing your raised beds and anything else that needs it. you can also use alfalfa pellets in the tea or sew directly to the plants .As for the corn, plant them 12 inches apart and use green beans between the corn. This year I will try bush beans to shade the soil. Happy Gardening from Nor Calif. zone 9-10
Finishing my garden off this weekend then just need to wait for harvesting. This is great timing for everyone south of the equator haha. Just in seedlings i lost roughly 25% of everything but thanks to one of your earlier videos I did plenty extra. Whether it was germination, one randomly hot day, a rebel slug/snail taking one night to eat like 5 seedlings... Probably the biggest regret I would have had
This was a great sponsor ad :D I didn't really do much at all last year, but I'm hoping to do a lot better this time. Just ran out of energy, but hopefully taking the year to recharge myself, I can do a much better job next goaround
I think the thing with the oats is they were planted way to densely....at least by looks of it. They are used quite a lot in establishing tame fields very successfully. I would estimate 1 plant per square foot would have supplied the necessary shade. Just my thought. The others are not failures - they are learning opportunities!
This video has so many great lessons learned as we catch up on our own Autumn garden. I especially like the tips on not leaving plants past their useful life in the garden, and weighing the projected value of using prime garden space for experiments!
I leave my hot and spicy peppers on the plant when its done and let mother nature dry them out then i harvest them and place them on a paper towel let them finish drying out then place them in an air tight jar to be used later i can then crush them to make different herbs and spices in my meals also i give them away as gifts they look colorful sitting in a jar and you can use them as a pest deterrent for next season adding some flakes to a mix of vegetable oil and dish washing liquid well thats what i do with excess chills and hot peppers bell peppers i just pick them chop them up and freeze therm or dehydrate them for cooking
About vetting your soil: people are finding residue from clopyralid herbicides in compost and related soils. Getting a sample is a good idea, and if you have time try germinating a bean plant. Legumes are especially sensitive and you'll know pretty quick if there's herbicide present.
My biggest mistake this fall was not waiting until the weather had cooled off to plant my carrots. Wanted to get a head start getting them in early but they struggled to come up and then the heat just killed them back. Definitely need to work on my timing.
Best video ever!! It's super encouraging to see that in order to be an awesome gardener it doesn't mean that we have to be perfect. Thank you for sharing.
Never disappointed with your content. I love gardening and watching tips and tricks. Have you ever included gardeners in colder climates? Just move home to MI from TX and ya girl needs help!😂
That is a great thing I learned this past year. I am not going to detonate so much space to experimental crops. I’m going to experiment in small quantities and leave my big spaces to things I know will do well
Love you guys! I started watching for gardening tips years ago but now I look forward to laughing at Kevin and Jacques, their chemistry is great!!!! 😄😂🤣
Jacques thank you. I have trouble walking away when there are still fruits at all. I waited until after our first hard freeze to FINALLY clean up the last of tomatoes here yesterday, which of course means those areas are in no way ready for spring. I'm near Chicago, that's crazy!
As always. Thanks for sharing and thank YOU for all you do. Jacque's acting was superb in the cut to the sponsor video. For a moment, I thought there really was a mistake. 😂
I launched my new garden at my new home 2 years ago. I bought 4 cubic yards and 5 cubic yards of 50/50 mix in consecutive years from two extremely reputable local companies. Both times it was not "compost", first was just a heavy manure mix and the second was basically sand. I spent this fall doing my best to amend and re-balance the soil for next year. Granted I needed a lot of soil to fill a lot of beds so bulk was necessary, but lesson learned. Can't really trust what these companies are putting out without getting your nose right in it, which is my fault for not doing.
As a beginner with a decent amount of space to plant in, I wanted to plant all my potatoes at the same time. Much better to plant less potatoes one day and then plant more one month later. That way you aren't overwhelmed with all the potatoes at once, instead there's a slower amount over a longer time.
I had a mess of squash bugs this year. I think part of the reason for this is that, while I rotate crops throughout my garden, I succumbed to the temptation to leave some squash on the ground where they grew last year to see what would come up. Now I think I need to take a break from squash next year, as I’m sure there are eggs in the soil in multiple places where I grew squash. It’s a harsh lesson. I got enough pumpkins to make pie this year (barely) but next year I’ll just have to buy them. ☹️
My husband and I started a garden this past year. I would tell him we need to do this or that and he would argue we didn't. I gave up the fight and let him struggle we had a meh harvest at best mainly only butternut squash. Now he is telling me we need to do this and that (exactly what I was telling him) so I anticipate a much better harvest next year.
if you plant so much that you don't use it all it could be possible to use that extra crop to produce seed like lettuce and things like that just a thought
Thank you for this! I’ve made a couple of those mistakes and more. Kevin, I could really use a season-to-season 101 gardening video. I feel like I’m still a newbie gardener!
Our Epic Holiday Deal runs until Monday, Nov 28! A free $100 gift card with any order over $500: growepic.co/3EmYyB6
Awesome video and totally relatable! Thanks for touching on this topic.
Also, was hoping to see a Black Friday offer that wouldn't require a minimum $500 purchase and hoping to see an alternative deal offered in between now and the days still ahead.
For those of us who already own several Birdies raised beds and are repeat customers who are not needing to add $500 + to our existing garden, the Spend $500 to get $100 Black Friday deal leaves us out.
👁️ AM with you guy, as WE go and learn....
I became aware of JADAM nutrient knowledge and it changed my thoughts on Bad soil.
Give it a shot and you too will experience the Creator's magic..
All the very Best...
*runs to make Christmas list
I really appreciate this video. Thanks for sharing!
Will you be offering any deals that are more budget friendly 😬😅
Gardeners never make the same mistake again, they always make totally new mistakes! 😀
And there are an UNLIMITED amount of new mistakes hahaha
@@epicgardening Someone once said, "My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view."
This is honestly one of things I love about gardening. I'm always learning something and it brings me great joy.
This applies to life outside the garden, been my life's direction for past 39 years. I learn by doing, mistakes happen all the time but what was learned from it? My kids found this comment really funny but turned it into a real world, real life teaching opportunity
Love the quote you shared! Glad we are all messing up together 😂
"Mistakes I Made" videos are HUGE needs for newbie gardeners. It gives us confidence to try again and adjust our methods and crop selection without feeling like we failed because we don't have skill in growing things. TY so much for being vulnerable with us :)
I totally agree with this! I was so discouraged this summer with all the challenges I faced in my 1st time bigger garden area, the drought, insects, etc that I felt like I wasn't sure I wanted to try so hard next year , this video helped me realize it's just part of gardening and I can learn and do better, Thank you!
The only pumpkins that we grew were accidentally planted by our 1 year old!
He dropped them in much sunnier spots than we had planted ours in. Next year we will follow his lead!
Had a baby this summer and I didn't want to lose the opportunity to garden but also didn't have the time or energy to pay attention to it so I planted butternut squash and pumpkins which also kept weeds relatively under control. I did absolutely nothing for these plants all summer except for putting the seeds in the ground with some compost and I harvested one pumpkin and six butternut squash in the tiny plot we have.
LOL!! Love this story :)
My mistakes would be:
1. Not watering/layering my compost. I just throw it in, set and forget.
2. Not pruning my plants.
3. Not checking on the garden daily.
4. Growing more than 1 zucchini/squash plant (they just produce way too much).
5.Won't use straw as mulch again- didn't like it and I think it was contaminated with bindweed.
6.Starting cucumbers and tomatoes too early (they got way too big before I could transplant and ended up dying/didn't have space enough light.
7. Not hardening off adequately.
8. This year I plan on growing more of things I actually want to eat, rather than just "because."
This is what I love about you guys, you are just like the rest of us and you don’t mind showing what went wrong. Learn from your mistakes and go on to the next one 😉 best way of learning is from your own and from others 😊
Only way to learn!
I too try new things in the garden that don't always go according to the plan. I never call them failures for the very reasons you guys mentioned. It's good to know that even with all your success you also have some of these same issues. Learning more from things that are not as productive but increases your understanding of what to do different the next time is why this video kept me engaged. Thanks and continued success.
Totally - MANY things go wrong each season!
Exactly. One of the reasons I enjoy their team as well. These kind of videos bring the heman element back to gardening. I know I'm not the only one who kills plants. lol😂
@@presscilliajones5692 I don't believe you can really make a mistake as to when and when not to plant anymore. The weather is just so unpredictable. A greenhouse is probably the only true way to mitigate these changing weather patterns.
The mistake I’m avoiding this year is underestimating the intensity of the sun. For whatever reason this year portions on my Garden that normally don’t get scorched definitely got scorched! 😅😅
It DID feel more intense this year here too!
I bought 50% shade cloth for my raised beds and grew vines over the hoop raised beds. Worked pretty good!
@@whatsup848 I believe that. It’s something I need to look into for some portions of the yard.
@@GardeningInCanada I'm in Arizona and I use 40% shade cloth in the summer over everything except the flowers, tomatoes and peppers and squash.
Yesss!!! I got my neighbor's tree cut because it was giving shade to my plants. After I cut it, the sun was wayyyy too much for it
I love the emphasis on challenges small-scale gardeners can have with cover crops. I've certainly made both of those mistakes. Given how beneficial they are, I'd love to see more discussion on how to work with them best for a variety of purposes.
Glad it was helpful!
When thinning your seedlings you can eat pretty much all of the trimmed nutrient-dense greens as a salad topper, sandwich topper, on top of anything. I did that with all the greens I thinned from my Epic Gardening 6 and 4 cells seed trays.
Whaaaaattt!! I didn’t expect to see Blossom & Branch on Epic Gardening. Yay for a Colorado local joining the Epic family!
Surprise surprise!
Yay!! ❤❤🎉 thanks Hayley!!
The inclusion of other gardeners and the editing were both amazing. From a production standpoint, this might be the most epic gardening video ever!
I loved the content and inclusion of various gardeners as well and it got me to thinking what I won’t grow again, but listening was challenging for me. Thankfully I found the transcript at the bottom of the page because they talk so fast I couldn’t grasp everything at that speed. At first I was wishing that they would have included the words on the video but finding the transcript worked just fine.
Very good advice on checking soil before buying. I bought 3 yards of “organic compost”. It was fine black hydrophobic almost dust!
Great lessons. Jaques you can harvest seeds shishito not totally wasted unless hybrid variety. Kevin you can always donate any extra seedlings to community gardens and or schools with gardens so yes start way more than needed there's always a place to donate.
Yup! I give plenty away
This was my second year with raised beds. Last year I was more successful than I expected. This year the animals, hot summer in our area and fear of burning my crops with fertilizer worked against me. Instead of giving up for the season, I regrouped in August and was able to get a couple of green beans and lettuce crops going. Better than nothing and proved that it’s better to try again than just quit.
My biggest mistake this year also had to do with compost. I had planned too far ahead with new raised beds, and was counting on using the municipal compost to fill them. Normally there's a near unlimited amount available. Unfortunately, this year the town had decided to dredge out the pond at the local nature center, and dump all the mud and silt into the compost. This meant they could not put it out, because it contained a lot of undecomposed material and could not be inspected. I quickly ran out of topsoil and compost, and had to curtail a lot of my plans.
Fortunately, I did find some workarounds. I got two Chip Drops this year, totaling 30 cubic yards, and planted mushrooms in them to break them down faster. Although the mushrooms did not fruit this year, the woodchips broke down super fast and retained enough moisture to get my plants through the hot dry summer. I also went around and took all the autumn leaves from my neighbors, so I won't be running out of organic material any time soon.
Alternative perspective: you’re ahead for next year 😝👍
Hey Kevin! Congrats on 2 Million subscribers! Cant wait until next year!
Getting close!
Lots of great info here. 😁👍❤.... 😯 You should have harvested, strung, and hung dried those peppers for use later in cooking. Harvest and donate to the food bank, or a soup kitchen. Post them locally for crop swap, or for free. Never waste food.
This was an off the charts epic/funny/educational video I’m so grateful to see how far you both have come!!! I learn something with every video. Just a little thank you from central Oregon beginner gardener 🌱 🪴🙏🏻🙏🏻
Appreciate you Dustin!
I hear you on the shishitos...I did the same last year, but a few dried peppers hit the soil before or as I took out the plant and they reseeded nicely in the spring!
My Shishido's are still going strong. Now that it has cooled off a little they are producing like mad. I only have 3 plants and no one can eat that many peppers
We now make much of our own for FREE 😊 This is our main topic, so much purchased soil that will not grow food. Nice Video
I love your channel, I am trying a lot of things that you do.
@@debbiegallett1125 Thank You so Much 😊
I like all yall in this. Back at Jaques, I was tired of okra about Nov. 1. I might have had the plants into Dec. But. They served me well. Had some 2 types of peppers do nicely, jalapeño and a larger hybrid. Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Hey, haven't watched your vids in a while but was very pleasantly surprised to see all the different faces that now (?) make up Epic Gardening. It's fun to get several perspectives in one vid. Thanks!
Every failure is an opportunity to learn. I even failed on purpose this year. For ex, I planted plants WAY too late in the fall. I did it just to see what would happen. Some of those experiments are still on-going bc I want to see if some of the crops survive the winter and grow in the spring.
Experimenting = inevitably failing. But I learn so much from it.
Well said!
I also planted way too late this fall, but on accident. 😂
Our fall weather got much cooler than it did the last few years. I’m still tending to everything so I can see what does/doesn’t work for next fall.
I can relate to the oat to choke out weeds story.
My friend from Florida who owns a ranch plants "Sun hemp" as a cover crop
so I absolutely littered my garden with them, and everywhere seemed like bamboo
Shoots 7ft maybe even 8ft tall. It reminded me of the Vietmanese jungle.
Thankfully I got one of my sons to chop them all down before the flowered and reseeded.
Beautiful plant though
Jacques - Why not just do a hard-prune on your pepper plant and let it come back next year? I have a Fresno chili plant that I have gotten two very productive seasons out of (to the point I was making hot sauce, pickle peppers, pepper jelly and then froze a lot as well).
Yeah the pepper plant was a bit of an unlucky example I think. Save the seeds and cut it back, it's a perennial after all
Check out the overwintering video we did! You can def. take that approach
5:00 The SELF-PROMOTION IS EVERYTHING!!!
BEST PROMO I'VE EVER SAT THROUGH ON utube... AND WILLFULLY! I legit rewound it a couple of times. IDK whether that helps anything, but I did it in the name of support, lol.
And as always, the INFORMATION/SUGGESTIONS weren't so shabby either!!!
Congrats on your well-deserved growth & HappyIndigenous Day!
The advice about growing twice as many seeds as needed... I did that, direct planted bush beans into my garden, and ALL of them came up and grew fantastically. I was picking fresh beans daily for two weeks before I reached a point where I didn't want to be eating beans with every meal, so started preserve freezing them. When I ran out of room in my freezer, I decided to let the remainder go to collect dried beans. According to the seed packets, the varieties I planted were supposed to all reach harvest in a short time then stop. Several months later my bean plants are still flowering and producing new beans! I don't think I'll need to be planting beans again any time soon, and when I do, I won't be planting out anywhere near as many. I don't even feel bad anymore when I accidently step on and crush one of the plants. I've reached the point where I'm tempted to stop watering them so they can die and dry out and be done with sooner. Lesson learned for me in 2022: don't assume the information on the seed packet is correct for my zone and season, as most give information assuming a temperate zone. I'm in a sub-tropical arid zone, I get 355+ days of no frost each year, which means so long as I can give it enough water, many things will just keep growing and growing well past their expected season.
Instead of trying to selectively not water a few plants, you could snip them off close to the ground. That way you can water as usual, and the dead plant will still give shade for other crops. =)
@@ArDeeMee They're not planted with anything else, they're just creating a border around the ground where my dwarf fruit trees are growing in raised beds... and it's been 3 months now since I stopped watering the beans, and yet some are still alive and still flowering and still growing new baby beans, and some new little plants have popped up from beans that must have been dropped onto the ground... they've become like weeds. I've decided next season I'm going to grow peas instead. I''ve had more than enough of eating beans.
@@grandmothergoose Oh dear, those are some hardy beans… 😂
Well, new season, new try. Good luck. ;)
Yo I got the opposite starting problem. It’s like, I want to grow 3 Jalapeño plants, and some how my brain convinces itself that I should definitely start like 25 seedlings.
LOL I feel you
Last time I was this early, all my seedlings froze.
Lol
LOL
😂😂😂
Love the tips especially Chris's! She, like all of you, is clearly a knowledgable and accomplished gardener and it shows. Always happy to hear from her! ~Amy
So nice of you
I like to dry any hot chillies, grind and use the powder mixed with water to make a home made spray insect repellent.
This is the first time I’ve done a fall garden and I learned the squirrels are fluffy little agents of chaos. I’ll have to make some adjustments for next time!
Thanks for sharing what didn’t work for y’all; I’m taking notes.
You totally just made me want to start a flower garden. I know you mostly do vegetables but watching your cids at 3am inspired me to start. I'm in a tropical climate so trying to find flowers that can actually survive the heat and finding seeds of them were hard but after some time, I got a seed tray full of seedlings!
More flower content coming!
Flowers feed the bees
I got some sand clay stone mix stuff for free and i used it to fill my big raised garden bed.
I roughly sieved it with a coarse compost sieve to get the big stones out.
and slowly filled up the bed with 2 inches of that then branches, leaves and weeds and then sand again, always alternating between them.
for the last 3 inches i used all the compost i had.
the bed is 40 inches high 80 inches long and 60 inches wide
so i needed ruffly 4kubikyards of material to fill it.
its the best yielding bed i have
You can also try making a hügelkultur bed, where you fill the base with logs, then branches on top, then finer material like leaves and woodchips, and finally a layer of compost for the last foot or so (you can use less compost but you won't have very high yields for the first 6 months or so).
For new gardeners, you will make mistakes. Plants will give low yields or die. Don’t give up, it’s all part of the process.
These past 2.5 years, I have put a lot of energy into build compost from garden and kitchen waste. I am relatively new to the country I am in and although in the EU, I do not trust the soil, hay or composted manure sold here. I had a bad experience with a bag of soil I tried from a garden Centre to germinate some seeds and I am convinced it was aminopyralid toxicity. Luckily, it was as simple as binning the seedlings and starting over. I didn’t put any in my garden (we were still waiting to move into our new home and construction had been delayed due to the pandemic. One of the first things I invested in was some composting bins and as those have filled up, I have built a few more. It is taking time, but so should have some very nice compost to use next spring!
I had such difficulty with cucumber beetles this year and the only thing that worked was individually netting each plant. So after sowing all my watermelons, cucumbers, and zucchini 5 times this season, I've concluded it's way more efficient to spend that extra time to cover them. I even missed out on getting watermelons after all that work!
Cucumber beetles not only destroyed my Eureka F1 cucumbers (resistant to all diseases _except_ bacterial wilt) but also spread to my ash gourd plants and killed half of those. I got some nice large gourds, but didn't get to save a single one over the winter because the infection caused them to rot quickly. Next year I'm planting radishes in between all vulnerable plants, to see if that helps.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 If you've got an infestation like me, the radishes won't do much to be honest. I had them all around zucchini plants and the cucumber beetles just invited their friends, the flea beetles lol
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 I also tried marigolds, neem oil, and the year before, organic insecticidal soap. 🥲
7 dust liquid in a sprayer
@@cbr1thou I've never heard of this, I'll check it out, thanks!
Helpful tips and it's always smart to do a garden review annually. I learn every year. Why not dehydrate and pulverize the shishito peppers? You'd have a great resource for winter cooking. Re cover crops, it's so hard to remove producing annuals before they finish. It seems you need to do this to have enough lead time for cover crops to take hold. Anybody have tips on ways to have the final production along with healthy cover crop starts?
Such a good idea for the shishitos. I have a huge hot pepper tree and get hundreds of very hot peppers every year. We make as much fermented pepper sauce as we can but dehydrating and pulverizing them is a game changer.
Our mistakes are what drive us to the excitement and the anticipation of another growing season so we can hopefully do better. And the planning of a new and different way of gardening is what helps us get through the winter.
Jacques,
Suggestion for the peppers--harvest the remainder & use them as ornaments on a holiday wreath for your front door. 😊
I'm feeling so much of this!!
We had a truck load of top soil delivered on the east coast. Before we had a chance to distribute it into the flower beds we had a rain storm. We ended up with a large pile of sand.
Oh no. WORST feeling.
Maybe a tarp would have helped? That totally sucks. =(
@@umiluv We paid for "top soil" but got "top sand". Live and learn. 😞
My mistakes:
(1) I planted the little small sunflowers, not the big 5 foot ones, way too close together and in not enough soil. Out of 6 that I planted, only 1 will survive to flower. So like Brianna said, spacing is key.
(2) Didnt do research on what veggies were what season. I just got super excited and laid down everything I got my hands on.😂 all my broccoli and brussel sprouts died before they made it out of infancy. So planting correctly within the seasons was the biggest lesson I've learned so far.
That’s why I keep a garden journal. Every growing season is a new adventure!
When watching your videos, I accidentally hit ‘like’ and never knew when! Really a beautiful and magnificent work. I also sent you a sea of love and appreciation and my permanent connection. Also my full package of support. Thanks for your honesty!
Planting more seedlings than I think I'll need is my new motto. I really don't know why I get so stingy with the seeds. I'm not really experimenting with new plants this winter growing season but I am experimenting with biochar, rabbit poo, and growing more delicate things like cilantro, lettuce and green onions as part of my under story amongst the collards, broccoli, turnips and peas. I love growing in Northern California but our winters are screwy and I can have problems with bolting even in the winter. There have been 80º days in December. So hard to lose the brassicas in winter.
Getting into gardening for the first time and I just discovered I love growing plants!
The 3rd property brother gives great gardening advice
Use compost tea for energizing your raised beds and anything else that needs it. you can also use alfalfa pellets in the tea or sew directly to the plants .As for the corn, plant them 12 inches apart and use green beans between the corn. This year I will try bush beans to shade the soil. Happy Gardening from Nor Calif. zone 9-10
Community gardens and churchs often love extra plants!
(5:02) I loved your little scene there xD
(9:46) I love how you emerge out of things at the start of some of your videos xD
Some great advice, Thank you😊👍
Always tastes better when you grow it yourself
Love your videos, your speaking style is such that I retain everything lol, easy to immediately understand, thank you for all of these!
I missed the cover crop timing too. Next season. . .
Finishing my garden off this weekend then just need to wait for harvesting. This is great timing for everyone south of the equator haha. Just in seedlings i lost roughly 25% of everything but thanks to one of your earlier videos I did plenty extra. Whether it was germination, one randomly hot day, a rebel slug/snail taking one night to eat like 5 seedlings... Probably the biggest regret I would have had
Beautiful garden
This was a great sponsor ad :D
I didn't really do much at all last year, but I'm hoping to do a lot better this time. Just ran out of energy, but hopefully taking the year to recharge myself, I can do a much better job next goaround
I think the thing with the oats is they were planted way to densely....at least by looks of it. They are used quite a lot in establishing tame fields very successfully. I would estimate 1 plant per square foot would have supplied the necessary shade. Just my thought. The others are not failures - they are learning opportunities!
This video has so many great lessons learned as we catch up on our own Autumn garden. I especially like the tips on not leaving plants past their useful life in the garden, and weighing the projected value of using prime garden space for experiments!
Thanks guys really good information here..I learn one or two of these the hard way this year.
I leave my hot and spicy peppers on the plant when its done and let mother nature dry them out then i harvest them and place them on a paper towel let them finish drying out then place them in an air tight jar to be used later i can then crush them to make different herbs and spices in my meals also i give them away as gifts they look colorful sitting in a jar and you can use them as a pest deterrent for next season adding some flakes to a mix of vegetable oil and dish washing liquid well thats what i do with excess chills and hot peppers bell peppers i just pick them chop them up and freeze therm or dehydrate them for cooking
Love the constant learning process of cultivating food
Good tips and reminders.
About vetting your soil: people are finding residue from clopyralid herbicides in compost and related soils. Getting a sample is a good idea, and if you have time try germinating a bean plant. Legumes are especially sensitive and you'll know pretty quick if there's herbicide present.
My biggest mistake this fall was not waiting until the weather had cooled off to plant my carrots. Wanted to get a head start getting them in early but they struggled to come up and then the heat just killed them back. Definitely need to work on my timing.
It's one of the hardest parts of gardening!
Best video ever!! It's super encouraging to see that in order to be an awesome gardener it doesn't mean that we have to be perfect. Thank you for sharing.
So , perceiving our mistakes as learning experiences . Thanks for sharing your unexpected results .
Never disappointed with your content. I love gardening and watching tips and tricks. Have you ever included gardeners in colder climates? Just move home to MI from TX and ya girl needs help!😂
Briana is in Zone 5b!
@@epicgardening thank you! I’ll check her out😊
Lots of good advice. Really enjoyed the presentation
Glad to hear it!
I planted a fall garden completely as a test run, and I'm glad I did! Now i know what to plant for real next year 😍
I love this. Thanks for posting this honest assessment . It helps us know that even pros can improve.
This year was my 2 year and I learn so much, so so so so so much. Soil was the big mistake, starting my seeds, sun and water
Thanks for that, I'll make sure to try to apply those tips in my first garden this summer!
Enjoy, it’s great!
I’ve experienced that too, thanks 😊
I have so many lessons learned. I plan to actually write them down this year.
That is a great thing I learned this past year. I am not going to detonate so much space to experimental crops. I’m going to experiment in small quantities and leave my big spaces to things I know will do well
Great points in here!
I made a huge soil mistake 2 season ago. Bought a different brand in bulk and NOTHING grew. Every single thing was stunted.
Agh!
Love you guys! I started watching for gardening tips years ago but now I look forward to laughing at Kevin and Jacques, their chemistry is great!!!! 😄😂🤣
Appreciate you, Liz!
Jacques thank you. I have trouble walking away when there are still fruits at all. I waited until after our first hard freeze to FINALLY clean up the last of tomatoes here yesterday, which of course means those areas are in no way ready for spring. I'm near Chicago, that's crazy!
As always. Thanks for sharing and thank YOU for all you do. Jacque's acting was superb in the cut to the sponsor video. For a moment, I thought there really was a mistake. 😂
He's a natural!
Thank you for all your gardening advice, so appreciate it all the garden wisdom. You guys Rock!!
You can always amend bunk soil but it requires a till more often then not. Tea is always an option.
I suggest Dragonfly Earth Medicine soil amendments.
I just finished digging up my dahlias to store for Winter (I garden in 6b). I don't EVER want to do this again....until next Spring 🥴
😂
I let my peppers to let it dry up and store it in a jar till I need it by grounding it and using it in cooking. Especially Kimchi
I learned so much this season. Hope next year will be better. My biggest mistake was trellising too late and not enough
I launched my new garden at my new home 2 years ago. I bought 4 cubic yards and 5 cubic yards of 50/50 mix in consecutive years from two extremely reputable local companies. Both times it was not "compost", first was just a heavy manure mix and the second was basically sand. I spent this fall doing my best to amend and re-balance the soil for next year. Granted I needed a lot of soil to fill a lot of beds so bulk was necessary, but lesson learned. Can't really trust what these companies are putting out without getting your nose right in it, which is my fault for not doing.
I loved this video! It was so relatable! Thank you all!
As a avid gardener I can say I never made a mistake twice , just a lot of new ones 😂
Great tips. Thank you. 💚💚💚
This is very useful for a first time Gardner like me!
Gorgeous garden! xxx
As a beginner with a decent amount of space to plant in, I wanted to plant all my potatoes at the same time. Much better to plant less potatoes one day and then plant more one month later. That way you aren't overwhelmed with all the potatoes at once, instead there's a slower amount over a longer time.
I had a mess of squash bugs this year. I think part of the reason for this is that, while I rotate crops throughout my garden, I succumbed to the temptation to leave some squash on the ground where they grew last year to see what would come up. Now I think I need to take a break from squash next year, as I’m sure there are eggs in the soil in multiple places where I grew squash. It’s a harsh lesson. I got enough pumpkins to make pie this year (barely) but next year I’ll just have to buy them. ☹️
My husband and I started a garden this past year. I would tell him we need to do this or that and he would argue we didn't. I gave up the fight and let him struggle we had a meh harvest at best mainly only butternut squash. Now he is telling me we need to do this and that (exactly what I was telling him) so I anticipate a much better harvest next year.
if you plant so much that you don't use it all it could be possible to use that extra crop to produce seed like lettuce and things like that just a thought
Thanks! And keep up the incredible work ❤️
Thank you for this! I’ve made a couple of those mistakes and more. Kevin, I could really use a season-to-season 101 gardening video. I feel like I’m still a newbie gardener!