Vegetable Garden Tour #2: The Big Reveal!

#gardening #gardeningtips #vegetablegardening
Garden expert Susan Mulvihill reveals this year’s vegetable garden plantings while sharing tips and discussing how inexpensive it is to grow your own food. Susan gardens in Spokane, Wash. where the hardiness zone ranges from 5b to 6a.

During the video, she mentioned a video from earlier this year, where you can see how she and her husband Bill moved the squash arbor. Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkEH9k_R79w (starting at 15:10 into the video). There’s another video showing the plant supports they use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHZRFHFZtqI.

You can order signed copies of Susan’s book, The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook, by sending her an email at Susan@SusansintheGarden.com. Her other book is The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, which is all about insects and how to deal with the damaging ones organically.

Here are her affiliate links to the books on Amazon:
1. Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook: https://amzn.to/3uIMA0A.
2. Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook: https://amzn.to/3Jh6aXS.

Susan has much more than this YouTube channel! Follow her on:
Blog: https://susansinthegarden.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susansinthegarden
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susansinthegarden
Email me: Susan@SusansintheGarden.com

[Music] hi everybody I’m Susan Mill welcome back to our vegetable garden here in Spokane Washington the hardiness zone is 5B to 6A now this is an exciting day because I get to do the big reveal our entire vegetable garden is planted finally and I have to tell you we have had very challenging weather that has gone from cold to hot to cold to hot cold to cold to cold and so the plants are struggling a bit but they’re starting to look better so let’s go through the garden and I’ll show you what we’re growing this is the bed where we’re growing Green Arrow peas you might recall that I start them in rain gutters and then when it’s planting time I slide them out into two trenches in the bed they have been struggling just until recently probably because of our crazy weather but they’ve got pods all over the place there’s lots of flowers so we’re going to have some nice harvests ahead you’ll notice I’ve got some shade cloth over the lettuce bed and that’s because with our recent warmup I want to stretch the Harvest for as long as I possibly can and giving them some extra shade helps let’s take a look at how they’re doing Bower is the variety of lettuce I’m growing this is actually my third year of growing it and I am so sold on it because the heads are so prolific and I’m using the cutand come again method which means harvesting individual leaves rather than a whole head because once you harvest a whole head of lettuce that’s gone now one of the things I want to emphasize throughout this video is how economical it is to grow your own food so in the case of bow lettuce the seeds cost me7 cents each which is a little bit more than I normally would pay but it’s worth it so I’m growing 17 heads of this lettuce for a whopping $119 so yeah it’s very economical to grow your own food next up is my Swiss chard and beet bed you’ll notice it’s under a cover and that’s because Swiss chard beets and spinach which are all in the same plant family are very susceptible to Leaf miners the adult is a fly it lays eggs on the leaves which hatch into little maggots they tunnel through the leaves just ruining them and then they drop down to the soil surface for a while and then emerge as adult flies to start the problem all over again so let’s see how they’re doing I think they’re looking great so this is a rainbow blend of Swiss chard and what I did a few weeks ago is I thinned the seedlings to a spacing of about six or seven in so these would have enough room to grow this of course will be something where I’m harvesting a leaf at a time so this will give me Harvest throughout the whole garden season and then the beets I’ve got two rows of them both golden beets and cylindra beets I did the same thing I SPAC them but in the case of beets just two a 3 in spacing okay let’s talk broccoli the variety is bellstar and the reason they’re under agricultural insect netting is because I’m trying to keep aphids and cabbage worms away and it works beautifully let’s see how the plants are doing this year I’m growing eight plants in this bed last year I grew 11 in the same amount of space and these plants just grow so large I decided to downsize a bit to eight so the plants are doing great they haven’t started forming heads yet but it should be pretty soon and then also if you’ll notice at the bottom there’s a copper ring at the base of each broccoli plant and that’s to keep slugs away because they can cause a lot of damage so the skin and antenna of slugs reacts electrically with the copper so they want nothing to do with the plants which is great this was a DIY project that bill and I did we used a scrap piece of 3in diameter plastic drain pipe cut it into 1 and 1/2 in tall rings and then you can buy paperback copper tape to put around the outer perimeter of the Ring it works great you can see I’m growing corn and some merry golds in the next bed that was not originally in the plant I was intending to grow edamame for the first time ever I planted the seeds and they never came up I gave them a few weeks and that is just so oddd I’m hoping it’s just a fluke but I thought you know we’ve got some extra corn seeds left over from planting the main bed why don’t I just plant another bed of corn you can see this next bed is covered with floating row cover so that’s an alternative to agricultural insect netting and Bill is growing some vegetable crops in here that are susceptible to aphids and cabbage worms you can see these taller plants have bolted to seed they are bow pack pack Choy and it’s a little unusual for them to bolt to seed this early but we did have that big warmup and I think that’s what caused it he’s also growing some turnips and radishes in here and these beautiful little plants are a type of pack Choy that we haven’t grown before called Green Fortune now wait till you see my crazy bed of red Russian kale I started them from seed using the winter sewing method and boy did they grow so do you want to know what a deal those are I calculated that there are about 20 plants in the bed and each plant has cost me 12 cents I bet you you can’t go to the grocery store and buy that much kale for 12 cents okay here is the famous Bean Arbor I’m growing a pole bean called Forex and what they will do is grow up and over this trellis and they are so productive so I learned something interesting the other day bush beans will only give you two or three harvests and that’s it these will produce the entire summer all the way until it frosts so I think that pole beans are a much better deal and I love how I can grow them up and over a pathway in my garden because that means in the summer time when the beans hang down on the inside I get to stand in the shade while I’m harvesting them I should also mention that these little plants are celery this is Utah improved variety and as near as I can tell each seed costs me one penny I’m going to be harvesting celery the entire season when was the last time you bought celery at the store for 1 cent these next two beds have my paste tomatoes and those are the tomatoes that you can use to I’ve got some little chicky buddies here you it’s the type of tomato you can use to make things like tomato sauce salsa and ketchup and that’s because it doesn’t have a ton of moisture in them and the sauce becomes very thick very quickly so the two varieties I’m growing this year are blue Beach that’s the new variety to me and the reason I picked it is because I heard from a friend who’s growing it that it is less susceptible to Blossom and Rod so that’s a plus this other variety is supro and that is a variety that I grew last year and was extremely happy with the other thing I wanted to point out is the way I’m growing the tomatoes so I’ve got a sheet of concrete reinforcing wire here it’s a grid and then it’s tied to two heavyduty metal fence posts and all I do is either weave the plants in and out as they’re growing or I use twine just to keep them next to the support I’ve used this for quite a few years now and it works great this is our squash Arbor and it’s made with cattle panels also known as livestock panels and if you want to see how we put it together which is very simple just check out my early video that was was the start of the growing season and you’ll see how we moved it from another bed because we’re strong Believers in rotating where our crops grow to prevent insect and disease problems I wanted to show you the planting layout so in this row I’ve got Autumn Frost winter squash I’ve grown it for years and it is fabulous and then this row is a new to me variety of caboa squash called sweet Jade so I’m very excited to grow it now if you look at where the seedlings are this is on the north side of the arbor and these are on the north side of the arbor and what we have learned over the years is that the Vining plants tend to want to grow toward the South so if we put each of them on the north side of the arbor they should grow much better up and over the Arbor on the other side of the arbor bed is where Bill is growing some very special tomatoes in containers and I’ll put the names of the varieties on the screen for you we’re growing Yukon gem potatoes and cloth grow bags and the bags are the 15gal size if you’re curious we put the seed potatoes down in the bottom on about 3 in of soil and then covered them and then once they grew some foliage we filled in more soil around them they grew more foliage we filled it in and now we’re almost to the top of the bag and when we are at the top that’s when we can stop putting in the soil but they are doing really well and pretty soon we’ll be having some tubers in there right behind the potatoes is the carrot and parsnip bed and you can see they are doing great I thinned them a couple of weeks ago and they are looking very nice these are the parnet plants and and you might recall when I planted them they were older seeds just maybe 2 years old at the most and so I thickly sewed them and as you can see I just have about a dozen plants but I’m okay with that you’ll notice the toy snake here I’ve got a few of them in there because the quail have been coming in and pecking on some of the leaves I’m hoping they’re stopping doing that but that’s really annoying here’s the garlic bed look how tall it is now which is awesome and it is doing really well but I want to show you something really important if you’re growing hard neck garlic especially for the first time you might see these weird kind of stocks that are coming out of the plants these are called Scapes and what’s happening is the plant really wants to bloom well you don’t want it to take that energy away from the bulb that’s developing down in the soil so what you do is wait wait for these flower stocks to form a complete curly queue and then clip them off right about here and don’t put them in the compost pile because they are absolutely delicious we use them in cooking every summer and oh they are just an extra treat and just because you can never have too many tomatoes especially those wonderful little grape tomatoes that are so much fun to eat and also put in fresh salsa bill is growing a few extra plants we’ve got Valentine salano and pandino you’ll notice this next bed has floating row cover over it it’s not to keep any insects away I’ve just been babying my small melon plants so let me show you what they look like here you go so I’ve got three Tuscan Napoli cantaloupe plants and three Alibaba watermelon plants and a couple of Mer gold throw it in for good measure uh-oh it just started sprinkling let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse so in this bed bill is growing a whole bunch of onions and three extra pepper plants now you know Bill’s growing more than three Peppers right he’s known as the pepper King and inside our little hoop house he’s growing all different varieties of both sweet and hot peppers here’s some on one side and on the other side and they’re all growing great and yes we’re growing even more onions with a few radishes thrown in here and there and we’ve also got some shallots in the bed this is my pumpkin bed I’m growing spooky and Big Macs I have a couple of ground cherries thrown in and a few zenas now if you’re wondering about this chicken wire structure I have young sunflowers in here and because the quail love to munch on them I decided to give them a head start by giving them some protection in this bed I’m growing two cocozelle zucchini plants we’ve been growing that variety for the last few years and it’s wonderful and then these four plants are burpees butter Bush butternut squash so a bush Butternut it doesn’t take up much room in the garden and it’s very productive I can see I need to weed this bed by the way but with these weeds it’s easier to pull them out when they’re a little bit larger so I do have a strategy and then more Zenia plants at the front and more protection for some sunflower seedlings I’m growing fava beans in this bed and the flowers are so interesting because they’re black and white you almost never see black flowers right in this last bed I’m growing corn and a couple of weeks ago ago I shot a video on everything you need to know about growing and harvesting corn so you might want to check it out on my YouTube channel so far the plants are doing okay we have had extremely challenging weather lately as I mentioned high winds lots of cold then a little bit of heat and you know they’re just getting off to a slow start but I think they’re going to do okay I recently shot a video on how to to assemble and plant greenstock vertical Planters and so at the end of the video I promis that I would give you updates every now and then so here’s the first one and the plants are doing great they’re settling in nicely it’s just been two weeks maybe at the most and I’m seeing a lot of new growth on them which is also great these are watered automatically every day just one minute and I can tell that they’re all thriving nicely phew we made it to the end of the Garden Tour and if you hung in there with me to the very end way to go I hope that your Gardens are doing great thanks so much for watching today everybody happy gardening [Music]