Super Busy Time of Year! April Flower and Vegetable Garden Tour and Chores PA Zone 7a

#garden #cottagegarden #backyardhomestead
We have been so busy and have projects started all over the yard. This is a big year in the gardens. By the end of the year we will have more beds installed and the cottage garden will be mostly planted. The cottage garden will be a work in progress for a few years, trying to get the size and color of plants to mesh together really well and fill in. Working edibles into the flower beds as well.
On Garden and Grease we share our experiences with developing our backyard homestead. We hope that we can inspire others to use their properties no matter how small or large to grow their own food, raise chickens and live their best life possible. We also like making these videos so that all of our future family generations can see how we lived our life and see where they came from. In a way, through this platform, we can live forever.
We chose the name Garden and Grease because I love gardening and my husband loves cars, Garden… and Grease.
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like seriously guys look at this foilage
oh my gosh the Russian
sage the daffodil Asiatic Liles J Lily I
mean how beautiful and it’s just green
but so beautiful how well it works
together there happy accidents yes
please hey guys welcome back to Garden
and gree today we have a ton of garden
chores and the yard getting mode so just
going to bring you
along okay so I started laying the uh
Garden Fabric in the walkway so the
stone can go in and so the grass stops
growing around the edges and I’ve been
pulling
weeds as I come across them on both
sides of the garden so weeds weeds weeds
that’s kind of a weed I mean it’s a
golden rod and I do intentionally plant
some Golden Rod so I want to see that’s
the same species of the one that I did
plant least I think that’s what that is
I’m not that great at the weeds I got
little Wisteria trying to pop up
everywhere but um the mums the pansies a
lot of the Tulips the daffodils have
gone over I need to cut them the at
least the stems down and then um leave
the
leaves but all the bushes are getting
their green
oh this is going to be lovely but I have
a lot of work I’m got to still roll a
ton of this fabric
out
and
weeds and weeds I got loopin right there
and some right there but a ton of
weeds so uh that is a big job for me
right now and it’s an overcast day so
not too
bad all right we got a couple D dry days
here so I’m going to do my heading cut
on my uh pear trees and I’m going to go
somewhere in here so let me look and
I’ll make my cut all right I made my
heading cut on this one and then we’ll
wait and see what side growth we get
coming off of here choose what we want
to use and cut the rest of these stems
off and we got to clip The Plum Tree
which I normally would do knee high
but I want to be able to grow other
stuff underneath of it so I want to go a
little bit higher knee height would be
right here I want to go up a little bit
higher and start his
trunk about here all
these all of
these are going to be limbs so I’m going
to have plenty of choice of where I want
the limbs to to come out so I’m just
going to clip here’s the top I’m going
to clip it right about
here and
O give her a clip clip the
top like
that so all of these are spent daffodil
blooms and I’m just uh following that
main stem down and chopping it off I
can’t really reach over there very
good like this one I don’t want it to
waste its time and energy working on um
the seed
HUD I want it to work on its root so it
sends
up uh really nice flowers next year so I
just cut them off and um I’ll throw my
compost I got to go around doing that to
all the ones that are clearly clearly
like I could with that one
too like this one here uh you know it
doesn’t have any more of it pedals
they’ve come off and it’s um working on
energy just like the hostas do it too
but a lot of these bulbing um plants and
if we cut the stalk off here it won’t
waste its energy on this it’ll spend its
energy developing its root
system so Chop It Off
throw it in the
bucket and off to the next
one all
right those are still
good so this was a a colus an annual
just finished chopping it down I’ll let
that lay um and I let the roots just rot
down in the
soil this is uh Rosa Sharon clearly I
let it go to seed
clearly I let this go to seed
not cool but it because it’ll just make
a whole bunch more of these Ro sh plants
all through
here I had Chopped all of them down I
thought I dug them all out uh this one
grew back and I just let it do its thing
but it’s getting green buds on it
now I’m going to let it go we can pick
all those off we’ll pick all these old
spent
uh buds from last
year those TBS are still doing
good the hostas lily of the
valley and that is like super invasive
in these garden beds I I dug most of it
out and it
just pops back
up we have bbom in there which I had
transplanted it it was really hot that
week in the fall I didn’t think it was
going to make it but obviously it did
and some Claus that I had thought I had
cut down and eradicated but it didn’t
the only thing that sucks is it’s right
near our our outdoor Split
unit and I don’t want anything you know
climbing around in it this is an old
rose
bush um that was cut to the ground and
came back up uh so maybe it’ll have
really nice blooms this year it only had
one or two last year obviously we have a
bunch of the Wild G going
in but I’m really happy about that b
bomb it looks better this year than it
did last year it’s amazing uh
Coline I
believe we have some more daffodils that
need
cut
two or or whatever that was it may have
been some kind of toilets I’m not sure
looks like it was a
tulips but uh look we got more of the
uh and I use paper in some areas to
really get down the um weeds down didn’t
really work all that great did it uh
some more that lily of the valley in
there amongst
everything oh agach yes oh it looks good
nice I believe that to be um a mum a
perennial mum I believe it to be I think
it is I’m going to cut all these little
stems here uh that are
spent but something exciting as the
Russian sage here and here now when I
planted that I didn’t realize that there
was a bunch of penalized daffodils right
behind it so super cool and I’m going to
prune that out and leave
those going to do that two-handed it be
easier oh more lily of the valley
everywhere so I really like how this
foilage is turning out these are like
daffodils I’ve already cut back the
blooms we’ve got J Liles and Asiatic
lies it’s very neat seeing all the
different Greenery in one area it was
kind of an accident I put the asiatics
in there and those day Liles not
realizing that I was going to have a
bunch of daffodils in here so how very
cool pretty
tops I’m really excited for this this is
my rose Rap City
Salvia last year was its first year and
I didn’t expect Bloom the first year but
the bunny rabbits ate it to the ground
this spring I protected it with a cage
recently took it
off and look at it it wants to be
amazing this year so excited to see it
in
[Music]
bloom okay guys from there back that way
I have not got the weeds yet or up here
but everything from
here my beautiful creeping
Rosemary all the way
through over and in there
I have taken all the weeds out I got to
get all the leaves out but I have weeded
as much as I’m willing to weed right
now but I’ve really helped to expose
some of our beautiful plants I was
pulling leaves out of this Rosemary and
the area smells so good right now oh my
God and that Rose wraps City oh my gosh
it’s going to be
great this is going to be beautiful this
year guys it’s like the second year in
on planting some of these and it’s the
year they’re going to start blooming oh
it’s going to be
great and now I need to get this Rose
and to control it is a Don Juan climbing
rose and I need to get it trained to
start climbing and I should have done it
before it had all these sleeves on it uh
hopefully the canes are pliable enough
we’ll
see and we have some claas that was here
when we moved in I keep cutting it back
and it keeps coming
back um I haven’t yet have to see it
Bloom so
maybe it’ll climb this trellis with the
rose and kind of fill it in a little bit
more we will see this may be quite
risky so what I’ve decided to do is let
these ones here in the front grow as
they are for now to kind of cover the
ugly cut old stump area of this and I’ve
got four
uh back here now I have tied this one
here and I want them to start kind of
going horizontally coming up and going
like that this one is starting to go the
direction I want it to that one’s going
to come up and go to that
one uh back here we have a really nice
one and I want it to come up and go that
way and one two three and then this one
right here hopefully and I don’t know if
it will or not I’d like to have that one
as my next one that goes this way and
crisscrosses that limb I know they’ll
rub but uh we’ll see how it goes you
know nothing ever really goes to plan so
we’ll see so I’ve only tied one in so
far you know
climbing climbing roses don’t cling and
climb like a lot of climbers there’s
something that we just have to
consistently put them in the direction
we want them so there’s some pretty
tulips and some lambsy are down there
the hostas are coming
up got some plants I caged there we got
more hostas and Lambs here so it’s a
really pretty little corner to the
garage that’s okay so you guys may see
this big kennel in the background and
sometimes see Gertie in it yes we
changed her name from Abby to Gertie and
that is just to train her and to give
her outdoor space when the chickens are
roaming the
yard because she because she wants to
eat
chicken so we’re just trying to get her
used to being around chickens so when
she’s in there and the chickens are out
here just get used to being around them
and hopefully stop licking her drops
when she looks at them look at her in
her cute little dinosaur costume a it’s
a little chilly out this morning we want
to stay warm huh I love you Gertie
she she isn’t too fond of it and I have
transplanted uh my winter Stone and some
my indoor stwn well all of my indoor
Stone Cold crops we have um cabbage some
red cabbage broccoli and some
cauliflowers I only have a dedicated 4×8
raised uh brassa bed so I do have extras
there’s kind of going to go other places
and hope for the best we have a little
bit of bok choy and po Choy in there as
well right behind on my onion game here
I got to get all my onions put it into
my beds I’ve got a lot already in you
can see some down there I already have
my brasca bed has
onions I’ve really got to get on it get
all these in the
ground so I got all those roots there
and all I do is make a
trench I separate these I literally pull
them out in
clumps and then separate them and lay
them down and then push the soil back
onto the
roots like that so putting three here I
put them everywhere and in between
everything and then I just cover the
roots
over push them
down
that do this whole bend that
way look now worms in my raised beds
that makes me happy look at all
that and um I threw some more uh manure
and compost in my tomato bed it was the
last one that needed amended I had all
my jugs sitting up here originally I
moved them a couple times I have them
over there right now I need to get you
know a little bit more level in this bed
I’m probably not going to make it go too
crazy I’ll uh level it out a little bit
more in the fall so I did an experiment
between the two different beds my tomato
bed and my pepper bed with fall leaves
so on the pepper bed we ground the
leaves up with the lawn mower or you
could use a weed whacker and then on
this one we just put full leaves we
didn’t grind them up to see even though
I pretty much had a good idea how it
would turn out in the bed
and the pepper bed it broke down
amazingly both of them provided really
good mulch through the winter this bed
stayed more moist through winter which
worked out pretty good because I had put
some pots
like I had put some pots like um my
lavender and stuff I had healed them
down into the soil right in the pots
down into the soil um through the winter
because I didn’t really have time or I
wasn’t really sure where I was going to
be putting
all the plants I got on Fall sale um so
it worked out really good keeping those
really moist but it did not help to
really develop the soil which I kind of
figured that anyway but I wanted to give
it a go um this fall we will be grinding
all those leaves up and using them as
mulch in the winter and then it builds
really good soil that way so you just
have to learn and I like to test ideas
so U my sage I have one in this bed and
a small smaller
one
there um my dad wants some
so the limbs on this will touch down and
root wherever it
touches so there’s Roots down in
this and I just pulled one
up there’s Roots down in there but I
pulled uh a couple pieces up put them in
a pot with some soil and My Rosemary
didn’t root like that but I did some
cuting pulled the leaves off and stuck
them in soil going to water them in see
what happen so he can have some Rosemary
and some
Sage so this been a compost it’s almost
broke down I just added fresh grass from
our first cutting of the year but a lot
of this um the pine wood chips takes a
really long time from the chicken Co to
break down and it was really cold over
the winter it really didn’t get hot but
it reduced size down to like a third of
what it was this was full and everything
else is broke down except for them Pine
chops and that would be okay if I was
top dressing but I would like to be able
to mix this into soil so I wanted to
break down more we added fresh cut grass
and water to get it working again and
then our other compost bin I just added
some more grass I need to add more and
some more water but it’s still nice and
moist you can still see some wood chips
this is breaking down really
good now I have them in these
bends they were just here when we moved
in so we just kept using them we got
that big one uh a tumbler which we need
to do a little work to we got it on um
the marketplace for 40 bucks um we’re
going to try using that too just to see
the difference before I add grass to
this one you can see that um there’s a
mixture of coffee coffee grinds and
stuff I put a lot of paper in this one
so I need to add more green I got um the
kitchen scraps and things so this is my
one I’m working right now I’m going to
add a bunch of grass to this one get it
good and wet and it’s going to heat up
really fast and then I need to start on
that new tumbler one because I need a
new bin to start
working and I use a pitchfork to turn
all of this every week so once a week I
come out and I add and I turn and it is
really hard and and these skinny bins
that really get down there and do this
it would be a lot easier for get like a
4×4 so we we’ll probably end up working
on one of
those came to visit dad and check out
his garden and it is amazing this is all
he started this end of winter and
started developing the ground with
compost and wood chips built these
raised beds
at some different heights here and he
already has in
strawberries we have some June bearing
ones here some purple
asparagus brussel
sprouts and he’s seated in a whole bunch
of different things all kinds of root
crops uh these ones probably some kind
of turn uper
beat he’s fenced it in
to keep all the bunnies out and he’s got
a gate he’s putting on
there but he’s got cabbages and
onions it’s got those ready for
tomatoes look at this this is beautiful
M it smells like fresh
compost col Robie some Bok
choice another
strawberry an onion bed with alpaca poop
with alpaca
poop and this is going to be
asparagus and the everbearing
strawberries here oh and he’s got the um
cone
flow this is going to be beautiful
pretty parasols there’s another one at
the other end what was that one called
it was a cone flow too but it was a
smaller yeah smaller spread but still
pretty
good
wow these oh these are I transplanted
that these were the uh geraniums wild
geranium that we got at the uh the
native plant cell the native plant cell
right look at them thriving out here
right yeah they were just
a there was some of them cabbage just
you made it gr from seed yeah yours
aren’t looking as good as mine but these
are got to be
now oh yeah yeah you put enough seed in
yeah that still so small I mean you know
oh I know I know like here carrot
carrots I think these are carrots
starting to I think so too some of these
really blunt jumbo ones where the ground
was tougher yeah and they they grow long
with a blunt they could push through
hard ground and then some of these are
sweet early ones I forget what they’re
called but they’re smaller but they’re
sweeter
and they come up earlier the shorter the
smaller ones will harvest earlier yeah
smaller little blunt ones are used for
the fall because they later and they’re
bigger they’re not as flavorful but they
uh for score for the winter you know
they turn up for
you what are what are these in
here H brussel sprouts in the middle um
you got quite a few brussel sprouts yeah
uh in the um on each side of them right
there is the broccoli okay yeah and uh I
got that at uh that 174 uh yeah the
market wow pretty awesome I got this bed
ready I thinking I’m putting here these
are going to be Tomatoes here right yeah
and so I don’t know if I’m going to put
it uh with in between all that other one
up here Peppers she have sticks are
peppers those are peppers okay yeah yeah
the peppers yeah
nice all right guys that is just some of
what is going on and all the stuff
trying to get done um in the gardens and
around the property uh this all these
clips combined over over the course of
maybe 3 days of working out in the yard
and Gardens cuz I honestly have maybe
usually 15 minutes of time in any given
moment to do my garden chores andad and
um at other times it’s like I might have
an hour which is awesome and I can get a
lot of time uh there are a lot of other
areas i’ like to get around to show you
and I’ll do that in other videos I will
point out this garden bed here I had to
put up and it’s already bowing um some
lattice some old pieces of lattice cuz
the chickens keep jumping in here and
scratching out my
onions um and anything else that I’ve
tried to plant in here so far uh
tomorrow is April 21st and it is the our
last frost date but for the next week
the nights are actually dipping down
into the upper 30s which is still too
cold to be putting out a lot of the
summer crops so we’re going to wait a
little while for that uh we have our
cold crops in and some cold flowers in
and um but oh I have another matching
bed on each side of me back here and uh
a lot of our fig trees have either
bloomed or are blooming um not fig our
fruit trees our fig trees are actually
putting on a crop they refer to as Abba
crop so um I’m going to allow them to do
that uh just to taste them and see how
these species these cultiv of fig uh
taste with their Bria and how it affects
the main crop then too so we have a lot
of fruit tree stuff going on and uh
there’s a native plant sale I’m going to
show you what my neighbor got us at the
plant sale cuz we couldn’t make it
today okay this is a hazelnut I’ve been
wanting hazelnuts to put in and she saw
this at the native plant sale uh it
doesn’t have a tag for which culer of
hazelnut is since it was a native uh
plant uh place I would assume that it is
the American hazelnut uh so I would like
to get two other hazelnuts that are um
uh different cultivar so that that they
can uh pollinate each other cross
pollinate and a little
paaw so between her property and ours uh
we’re trying to develop a really good
pawpaw stand and uh helping each other
out having different cultivos of the
pawpaw will help them to
pollinate if you see my
toilets that were in the pots are
actually well now they’re all starting
to fade out too but they were standing
up pretty long uh some pretty crazy W
again today I actually have pawpaw uh
seedlings well seeds that have sprouted
in a pot underneath of here and I don’t
want the squirrels digging them up so I
got those going
on uh these are some other plants last
year in the fall sale I had gotten
Mountain mint it needs to get put in the
ground I believe uh baptisia or false
Indigo I’m not really sure on either one
of those um some lavender I actually had
started from seed last year and I have
potted it
up um and then I have some other natives
or that already got planted and I wanted
to show you
guys this is our um Strawberry Patch
this is an Ever bearing Strawberry Patch
I have other things sitting in here
right now but we have FL
flowers my hands smell like that
lavender that’s
wonderful we have beautiful flowers I
put a couple um lettu uses in there they
need some fertilizer they’re looking
pretty yellow right now but I need to
fertilize this bed anyway
so all right guys thank you for watching
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good day guys guys