Perennial Flower & Vegetable Garden Tour – 17 June 2024 – Zone 5b.

The strawberry harvest is all over. Time for picking gooseberries and currants! Do you think I should plant a fig tree?

Hello friends I’m Christopher good morning it’s the 17th of June 2022 welcome back to the Garden it’s going to be a grossly humid week mid and upper 80s super high humidity the only time I can do anything outside is right now when it’s 5:30 in the morning and all this week I’m going to start harvesting the gooseberries and the currents and doing my final Harvest of Raz of rhubarb for the spring and I wanted to show you what they looked like right away before I got going it’s a little different start than we usually do but I would say they’re quite spectacular and you can tell that it’s so humid cuz everything is bogged down but just look at those beautiful canes I love these massive massive leaves I mean the perspective is is hard here but this is a species of rhubarb that is just so huge like look at the thickness of this stock compared to my thumb I call it dinosaur rhubarb but I have no idea what it’s actually called Stand way back for this so the Gooseberry when it is heaven he heavily Laden and ready to pick will fall over this this used to be about as tall as the fence line right and then it just fell over real wide this is 6 and 1/2 ft at its widest and now it’s only maybe 3 3 and 1/2 ft tall on average 3 ft tall uh that’s cuz it’s got all the berries on it so once we get picking uh this will spring back up Wing it’s pretty fun you can see that the black currents are starting to do the same cuz they’re ripening and oh got to be careful of the Thorns but the currents are ready to go everywhere you can see the black ones for the most part are still ripening the red ones are ready to go you can tell they’re ready too because they’re falling over that’s beautiful oh got to get them before those caclin birds do you enjoy my tutor Revival home in English Gardens I do oh came out this morning I saw some bunnies were being bastards and they bit off the climbing ends of some of these beans let’s hope the heat and humidity will just encourage some new growth oddly enough though that side’s just fine peas gained a foot this week I selling snap peas at the farmers market I should have had these in a month earlier gosh darn it oh got to talk about the strawberries in a sec in one week’s time the tomatoes doubled in size we left um we left for a family trip all of last week we were going like the the 10th through the 15th and I tied these Tomatoes up before I left at the top of their stems so you can see that quite truly they have doubled in size tomatoes and the Tomos Tomos are on the outside tomatoes are on the inside it’s going to be a good year for tomatoes I like to make salsa ver make and can salsa verde and that’s really my main goal with these guys lettuce the greens are all good good for the picking like I said OD stting and the blackberries are flowering on all of the Blackberry I don’t know if I’ve talked about this in recent times this Blackberry is on both sides of the fence I’ll I’ll put the camera over the fence to show you it’s because this fence before I rebuilt it was crooked and it curved toward the house like really significantly so there it is now there it is there it’s because the original origin of this plant is like right down there so this is the only example of an edible plant growing outside of the vegetable garden isn’t that kind of funny the acorn squash and the zucchini or excuse me the but spaghetti squash and the various zucchinis are are doing great in fact I think I’m going to transplant one of these out of this spot if I can today got to find the right spot maybe I’ll stick it over there ditto with the zucchini strawberries are done producing for the season now and their Runners are going hardcore I finally decided what I’m going to do with them so let’s stand here and look this season I’ve had some slug problems you can see here this is the second attempt at growing bush beans in this race bed and uh look how pathetic that is they’ll come up in a nice row and then I’ll come out one morning and then just gone so I’m going to give up on that bed I’ll transplant that cucumber that’s there and I’ll transplant the ground cherries they don’t really start going until later this month in July time is ticking so I’m going to uh effectively swap I’m going to cut down the ends of this raise bed or I should say I’m just going to unscrew them and redo them so the sides go all the way through I’ll knock down these two walls fill the dirt in amend it of course and then I’m going to start pulling out the strawberries and putting them in this place the ground cherries right I got I got to save them somehow they might get temporary transplants over here we’ll see if if they survive but this is the time I got to do it and then all the strawberries that are growing out I’m going to plant them in a big area here so that square footage is going to be about 84 Square ft whereas right now they’re growing in like less than that right they’re not so much growing in the in the Box here they’re like growing in between so I I think with some fresh soil that’s properly amended and then making sure I put straw on it in the fall I’ll be able to recreate these here growing conditions and I think the strawberries liked the protection between the boxes here so maybe they’ll like the protection of the shade up here I don’t know that’s that’s my hope at least and I think that there were too many different roots of other things in the beds that might have prevented the strawberries here from being um successful producers either way that’s a pretty decent project ahead of me I picked up an ader on deck chair in the side of the road it’s pretty cool so there’s the garden right now it’s lovely and I’ll just walk you along for the rest of the trip oh I have my first raspberry today JK uh these this is going to be great we’ve had so much moisture and they’ll all all be ripening soon like you can see and I picked off one like this this morning and it’s Heavenly my wife’s favorite my interesting metal experiment now starting to the uh grass is starting to Brown at the tips you just look at the trees and you can see so much fruit I’m thrilled I think this year I’m most excited about this pear tree I know I am I’ve been excited about this peach tree before cuz it was my first and only producer for so long so I’m excited about something else for once isn’t the seeed them acre lovely when it starts to flower I think that’s so interesting lots of other purples there has bloomed the um the autumn clus autumn Joy is all the way to the top In Bloom in bloom the uh I think Bastas no they’re just they’re daisies they’re going to be blooming soon did it with my Lamb’s Ear it’s right on the cusp you see right on the cusp I forget the name of this which I feel so silly but obviously this all bloomed look at look at the bees loving it just loving it the meadow is about the same that’s not true let’s go check it out I don’t know about these long form videos I like them and I don’t like them thanks for watching walking around kind of free form so you can see a lot of the grass seems to have asserted its dominance Right This Grass just germinated when I turn the soil so I consider it a weed it almost feels like all those beautiful flowers from last week and the weeks before have been overrun by the grass so I think I have to do some weeding some animals have been trampling it which is fine right animals got to live somewhere that’s why this is an experiment isn’t this tree lovely this here the city planted that in my Terrace a couple years ago 2016 I think ah yes dog poop I uh my neighbor and I have different yard philosophies she likes to add chemicals and kill and I don’t she’s a wonderful woman just from a different era but the person that’s mowing her lawn has some interesting ideas on property boundaries mine ends here as indicated by the concrete that I paid for and it goes straight back to a very clear fence delineation um but like look at this like my property line is here they weigh the heck over her Landscaping goes to the edge of my property which it probably shouldn’t but I mean I don’t care we’re friends and we’re still friends despite my complaints it’s just this looks particularly ridiculous this year with my metal like look see where that fence changes to the left is hers to the right is mine again we we get to this point in the yard and her mowing guy is like three 4T into my yard property this is all mine this is all mine yeah this is just kind of like my extras there’s a lot of wild stuff growing back here and this it’s not just me saying this you can see down down there here’s the old property line pole marker and this change of fence is because of some dispute that you know she had with this neighbor back in the day right so she had to have her fence they had to have their fence that’s not my fence so you go there and you turn around I mean you can really clearly see how much they’re on my side and I just gripe about that a little bit today because she’s having some yard people come over again she’s complaining that it’s not level so they’re going to till up her yard or something so I gotta make sure I’m here while those yard people come to have a conversation with them like I had of you saying sure like you can go a foot over my property line if you need to to you know make sure that her job is done perfectly but 3 4 ft is a little ridiculous don’t you think this looks more cozy right in the shade with the natural Gardens and all the trees as opposed to nothing whatever let’s keep a looking oh the window boxes look spectacular look at how red they are I love red geraniums always remind me of my grandma the loose trife is beautiful otherwise we’ve talked at length about how this will need to be a shade garden one day soon look at my pots pots look great and the color was a surprise it was different than what was indicated on the tags fortunately they’re all the same and they look lovely but it’s a surprise for us this year I believe this was transplanted by a bird and over in phyllis’s Garden to end oh so full so Lush gosh look at those window boxes just Heavenly with that Morning Light what’s blooming the geraniums are blooming these beautiful white daisies these will be going soon right literally any day this week this is the tall this clus has climbed that’s at my height now 6 and 1/2 ft I wish the others would do the same it’s just taking a long time to establish lavender Bloom nicely the Sedum here is Bloom nicely we’ll get some milk weed soon oh and the Yaro has the seed heads flower heads I should say did any new hostas fill in no the space is nice and full goodness knows I appreciate it a and they’re going to start having flowers there this week too there we have it as always I thank you so much for coming into my garden my Gardens and hearing about uh my landscape philosophy and uh my gardening goals all that good stuff it really is a wonderful time of year um especially if you can get up at the crack of dawn like me oh there goes a rabbit and uh do your gardening before it gets so darn hot that you can’t even breathe ah summertime what’s growing in your garden what projects are you working on let me know in the comments below one more time there’s my beautiful Green Space and her dead yellow space I’ve been Christopher and I’m a crogen Le gardener I love you guys take care bye