Making The Vegetable Garden BEAUTIFUL! | Homestead Market Garden

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00:00 All Weather Gardener
02:31 Making the Vegetable Garden Pretty
05:57 Creating Boundaries
07:31 Creating the Place Where We Want to Be
09:13 Garden Friends
10:20 Planting Sweet Potatoes
12:33 Enjoy What You Have Done!

if you’re going to take on homesteading or gardening you need to ask yourself am I only a fair weather Gardener because this time of year when so much is required of us in the garden to keep things planted and weeded and watered during this vital time of growth you’ve got to decide on the offset if you’re going to be willing to head out whether it’s raining or hailing or so windy this was our pocket of time to get moving on our Market Garden this week if you remember we put this Garden in three years ago and this is where we grow the majority of our vegetables so it’s a very important place for us the problem with me which you may well be aware of is that I just can’t handle when things aren’t pretty and this space was still feeling pretty ratty to me not only because of the weeding that needed to be done but also because of the unfinished projects that I’d had my heart set on for years so the time finally came we got it penciled in the calendar and we had to withstand the wind in order to make it happen to me it felt like the perfect symbolism of what it means to be a gardener it means means that you go out whether you feel like it or not regardless of how full my gardening day is I set aside some time to keep learning Italian and I’d like to thank Babel for not only sponsoring today’s video but helping make that possible you can click the link below the video to get 60% off your subscription what language have you always wanted to learn Babel is the top language learning app in the world for a reason they’ve built products that help connect people with others around the world through the power of language I often use my latte break to catch up on their podcast or just work through a lesson their classes are taught by native speakers which is very helpful and I love not only dreaming of Italy but also actively working towards building a connection thereo Babel makes it possible for me to practice my Italian anywhere anytime and you can get 60% off your Babel subscription by using the link below the video they offer you a 20-day money back guarantee and it’s proven to help you start speaking a language in just 3 weeks [Music] it’s not windy it’s a beautiful morning it’s so beautiful and I’m kind of glad we powered through yesterday powered through the wind to do the bad work in the vegetable garden which never stops which is weeding but I think sometimes we get so busy weeding that we forget to do some of the fun things or the things that make it feel beautiful to us while we’re doing the hard stuff so I was hoping this morning we could go up to the vegetable garden and make it a little prettier are you game for that let’s do it okay [Music] birdie what did you in what you doing huh [Music] you want to talk about this bed oh man this bed what was in here all kinds of things were in here yeah the problem is when Gardens don’t have an edge the weeds in the grass will always creep in well and I think uh whatever was in this bed grew over the edge yeah without us pruning it and that typically you know you you go a season letting stuff kind of grow over and you don’t really address those areas and yeah this is this one’s really prone to the grass creeping in so we knew we needed to redo this bed yep um so we kind of saved it till last saved the worst till last you yeah but I mean you got to make those decisions because we needed to plant and a bunch of other ones but we knew we kind of just needed to spend some time on this one so right so this is going to be a the entire thing is going to be in sweet potatoes and they don’t go until well after the frost we’ve got them now and they’re ready to go so I mean we’ll be able to use all of this space yeah but we’re going to need to run to town to get a bunch more cardboard yeah that we’ll recomp it and we yep we’ll recom it do the full shebang again but but I’m just going to pull out pull out all the stuff in here try to get the roots up as best I can and then we can um then we can prep it for planting yeah so yeah always so much to do it’s always really hard especially in the vegetable garden to focus on anything of aesthetic Beauty because they’re utilitarian they’re meant to be utilitarian they’re meant to serve a purpose and vegetable gardens can be unbelievably beautiful but typically The Gardener spend so much time doing labor just keeping things alive getting them going every year keeping them weeded and watered there’s just not a ton of time to devote to other things yeah well we’re trying to make that happen today so see see what happens we’ll see yep so ideally we’re going to start to create some boundaries so we have just an open field here let me spin you around we’ve got just this open field behind the tractor here that we haven’t done a ton with yet and sometimes it just takes time to kind of get a vision for a space but we’re going to start by creating a little bit more of a barrier between the gardens and the grass so cardboard and putting wood chips down to Snuff that grass out just like we’ve done in this pathway here so this was all originally grass and now it’s something else but we’ve also got this great little picket fencing from Lowe’s just to kind of try to create some visual barriers some visual differentiation between open pasture and garden beds or what will be garden beds after you finish all right well while you do that I think I will start driving some of these this is another way we’re trying to kind of create boundaries for the garden is to use lights to do that not only will that actually help us out here in the early mornings and late nights during the summertime but it’s going to help to just kind of set some boundaries set some lines for the space so we got these great little metal Shepherd’s hooks here that we’re going to drive in to string the lights from which will not only add height to the Garden but it’s going to actually serve practically to hold the lights so let’s do [Music] that while Stuart finishes up the hard work I took on the task of dealing with some of those aesthetic things that were really bothering me in the vegetable garden I just don’t believe that because something’s utilitarian means that it needs to be visually unpleasing so part of that involved finally finishing my fence line with my little readed Heather rolls that I’ve had for years they’ve just been sitting out in the sun and getting all kinds of weathered but they’re still usable and it just sort of helps to create a little bit of a visual barrier to the surrounding Orchards [Music] another piece that I’ve been wanting to encorporate for a long time has been some outdoor lighting there’s something about lighting that instantly creates an atmosphere something that makes it feel joyful and relaxed maybe slightly Whimsical or magical so this has been on my list for so long but it’s never been the priority and you know what it probably probably still isn’t the priority but it was finally time for us to just take some time and say we’re going to make this beautiful we’re going to make this a place that we want to [Music] be come show me what you got guys Juju come here [Music] come over [Music] here ah that or a bowl yeah maybe a bowl [Music] may this is a big project it’s a big garden and there’s a big pasture between the house and here that means I’ve got to be patient because it’s going to take time even the work that you see in this video took us over the course of 3 days to accomplish so while there’s still cardboard and mulching and Pathways to create on the other side of the fence it feels good to have that bit done we’ve got the market Garden weeded we’ve got these sweet little lights in and a little picket fence which sort of starts to make it feel a little bit more cottagey like it’s a part of the rest of our house so it now feels like an organized place that we want to be a place we want to come out to after dinner and spend some time in we obviously still have a lot to do this isn’t ever a sen it and forget it sort of a garden vegetable gardens require every piece of you all the time all through the growing season their demands never ever ever ever stop so even though we’re putting some of our last summer crops in now like our sweet potatoes which are going to fill this bed here um we’re going to be out here every day at dawn from now until the end of the season to weed to harvest to take care of things because your vegetable garden needs you and I would like to thank you need your vegetable garden hi Garden Kitty hi sweetie all right few more things to get in then we can call all [Music] good I know this doesn’t look like much now and this bed needs a lot of mulch to combat the grass but sweet potatoes grow so fast and they spread and in no time this bed is going to be complet completely filled with bright green sweet potato vines and then before the first Frost we’ll pull them up and we will have mounds of beautiful orange sweet potatoes it’s one of my very favorite crops to grow we have a few more things to plant this evening in the garden but I have to tell you this is my favorite time to be outside we’re going to enjoy the sunset we’re going to enjoy our new lights our new fence our weeded Garden at least for the moment and just spend some time after all that labor enjoying what we’ve done I would encourage you fellow gardeners to take a moment today to make your vegetable garden beautiful to make it a place that you want to be a place that you’re inspired by I like to think that little things like this make a big difference to the world around us cheers [Music] hi buddy come here come here come here come on did you get your bone come on come here birdie come on [Music]