First Day of Summer Vegetable Garden Tour

Welcome to summer! I hope your gardens are all growing well.

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hello welcome back to my garden today as I’m filming this it’s June 20th the first day of summer so I thought it would be a good time to turn around and show you guys what’s going on here in my vegetable garden come on in let’s take a look so for those of you who are new to the channel or just stumbled across this channel by accident my vegetable garden is 40 ft across by 80 ft long it’s the first thing I built here in my garden overall I figured this was going to be the Keystone and the reason I start with my vegetable garden was because I needed to fence it in uh I have deer in the area there are there’s herds of anywhere from 4 to8 we’ve seen as many as 12 just Meander down the street now this 4ot fence won’t necessarily keep them out but there’s so much around here for them to eat if they don’t have to jump it they don’t jump it my vegetable garden is made up of two styles of gardening raised bed gardening and an inground garden bed area the reason I have the raised beds is because well this is future investment I’m not a young chicken in 10 years I’ll be 62 6 yeah 62 in 20 years I’ll be 72 20 years can go by like that I can’t believe I’m actually 50 going to be 52 this year it’s just amazing to me because it only seems like yesterday I was 30 and maybe just a few years before that I was riding my bike up and down my street and here we are time flies when you’re having fun so so the raid’s beds are actually a future investment now I do have an inground bed section and that suits its purpose fine for now cuz I can still bend over and I’m still fairly flexible in many aspects and there are things that do much better in ground or on the ground such as uh water uh such as large watermelon pumpkins sunflowers obviously and I have to grow my sunflowers here in the vegetable garden because if I grew them outside the fenced area the deer would eat them so things like that that’s that’s what the inground beds really are suited for long term this is what I’m banking on the metal the raised metal beds that’s also why I have such high B metal beds so I don’t have to bend over like that all right I’ve bored you enough and many of you are repeat viewers to this Channel and again I thank you very very very much uh we’re we’re closing in 1 th000 subscribers thank you so much for that tell your friends families loved ones grumpy old guy across the street about this channel okay and this bed right here this is my wife’s bed right here she likes cherry tomatoes so I have some cherry tomatoes growing in here she asks me to grow a plant called Mullan and apparently you can use the leaves and some sort of cough suppressant thing maybe a tea I’m not 100% sure but she asked me to grow it so I have it growing the back corner here she also likes Mexican sour girkin but I’ve always had problems growing it it is growing or trying to grow right now but we’ll see what happens then we have some I believe this is cinnamon basil cinnamon basil growing here over in this bed here is my new attempt at growing sweet potatoes this year I have 12 plants squished into this bed last year they all grew the problem was is they were very long and stringy so this year I’m going to try to grow bigger better fatter sweet potatoes that’s the goal that’s the hope that’s the dream in this bed longtime viewers May uh remember that I started growing gladiolus in here now I collected a ton of gladiola seeds last year from my gladiolas out in the flower garden and I just sewed them in here and I SE them pretty densely because I didn’t know it would germinate they’re not going to be they’re not going to do anything this year next year they’ll be a little bigger and a little better and theoretically at the end of next year the the corns should be large enough at which point I can then plant them out in my regular Garden or I could sell them or give them away to friends and family I could do something with them at that point because the corns should be big enough over here are peanuts these guys are doing incredible I had a little bit of a screw up when I first initially planted them I was planting some of them still in their shells I didn’t know I don’t know anything about planting peanuts I learned very quickly I fixed some of my mistakes and as you could see they are just thriving they are just going bonkers now I’ve never grown peanuts in a raised bed I didn’t even research to see if anybody could or should or would or have grown peanuts in a raised bed but here they are they’re growing they’re looking good right here in front is a nursery bed and I was supposed to be growing all sorts of seeds well I planted all sorts of seeds and nothing really came up other than the sunflowers in the back here the goal of the premise was that I would grow seeds throughout the summer and then in the fall plant those plants on out into the garden someplace or pop them up and put them into the greenhouse for safekeeping so they can then be planted out next spring either or none of my seeds germinated which is really weird and it might have something to do with the the heat that we’ve had and the dry conditions it’s been super duper dry haven’t had rain in about a month maybe we’ll get rain on Monday don’t know yet it’s a weird weather system that’s going over us hopefully this uh dry spell breaks and we start getting more rain over here turmeric never grown turmeric before it just seemed like one of those fun things to do I was able to get some turmeric root for Fairly cheap I don’t remember what I paid for it maybe $5 for a bunch of roots again I just wanted to see if I could actually grow it what it would do what it would do inside a raised bed and it seems to be growing and thriving and continuing to put up new leaves which is fantastic and then my front bed over here I have my herbs I have some of that left over cinnamon basil still in pots it really needs to go into the ground someplace which I probably will hopefully in the next week or so get it into the ground but I also have oregano in here thyme parsley and Sage let’s look at the beds behind you all right in this bed here I have my green beans these are Blue Lake 47s from Burpee they are starting to produce Sophie and I ate a bunch of them earlier this morning they were absolutely fabulous and I’m sure over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be eating tons of them nine times out of 10 they don’t make it into the house cuz I just eat my fill out here just pluck them off the plant and pop them my mouth great little snack this bed right here will be going bye-bye shortly I want to get this uh taken up very soon I have another raised bed in the garage that still needs to be built so I’ll be building that popping that into its place my goal or my plan for this year is just to fill the bed with Garden waste and garden debris and let it start rotting down uh Twigs branches logs grass clippings etc etc etc we all go into this bed and then next spring I’ll hopefully be using the bed to plant something who knows this bed right here I have onions I have Red Rock onions hybrid yellow candy onions they’re doing well they’re doing very well uh so despite the Heat and the drought-like conditions I’ve been keeping the bed watered and they’re growing wonderfully as you can see behind them I have Merry golds uh I planted them there just to attract pollinators and to look pretty kind of thing uh just see a whole bed of onions me in this bed I have my second batch of green beans uh they’re still very small they’re growing quite well some Critters nibble on the leaves at night but as long as they don’t eat too much of the plant and I can keep these guys watered they will be growing wonderfully behind me are my cucumbers and other assorted plants growing up this trellis on either side is green Apple cucumber now a few years back when I first started growing cucumbers down here in eastn North Carolina I was growing green finger cucumber green finger is almost a seedless cucumber which is very nice what we found with the heat was that the Cucumbers would start to get bitter after a short period of time in the heat especially once we hit July July August just brutal down here with the heat uh average temperatures could be in the mid to high 90s slap the humidity on top of that you’re looking at at 105 to 110 absolutely brutal green green apple cucumber doesn’t care it doesn’t care apparently like many cucumbers it grows like a weed and it puts out these small apples shaped cucumbers which my wife says are like perfect just for grabbing off the vine and eating as a snack especially in the later evening when the garden is in mostly shade or full shade she can bring Sophie out here let Sophie run around do her Sophie things and you can sit there and Munch on a green apple cucumber so these guys are doing wonderful climbing up this trellis but on the outside of each of these beds I have other stuff growing right up front I do have some more of the Bush L beans right here I have a tomato which name eludes me right now I’m not sure which type of tomato this is I believe it is a homestead tomato I think I had a label for it apparently the label’s gone couple more beans merry gold and out of you you can see the again cucumber I every once in a while it starts reaching out trying to grab something and I have to just trim it back just to keep it growing up and not outwards otherwise it would grow out and spill over the bed let me show you what’s on the other side right up front over here I have uh Baker Creek uh seeds free seeds I got from Baker Creek Japanese Wasabi radish I believe they’re they’re growing but they’re weird and I it’s just the heat so I’m going to try them again I only planted a few but I’m going to try them again again in the fall when the temperature gets cooler I can normally grow radish down here right here in front of me I have a beef steak tomato uh this was given to me through my wife uh from somewhat in her work and I hope that it will grow and Thrive here because I have it growing on on this side of the Cucumbers it will not get a lot of heavy afternoon sun late afternoon sun so my hope is is that this guy will be producing probably in July lots of wonderful tomatoes and it won’t get too scorched by the sun because there’ll be a wall of cucumbers here giving it some shade for that late afternoon let me show you the last two beds these are the last two beds in the row in this one I had garlic which I’ve just recently harvested it’s in the greenhouse drying out and hopefully I’ll be keeping some of that for myself and giving a bunch of it away to family and friends but I’m thinking about topping this bed off and filling it with peanuts putting more peanuts in here because it seems to be doing so well in the other bed down there and easy crop doesn’t nothing seems to be eating it right now so I’m thinking maybe instead of letting this bed sit stagnant for the rest of the year plant some peanuts into it if I plant them now I think they take about 120 days so that should be I’d say we’re almost at the end of June here so let’s say July August September October November you guys let me know what you think in the comments Below in front of me here is sugar baby watermelon these are small watermelons they got the size of about a volleyball and right now I have three plants I had four I decided to edit one out and now I’m going to see what happens with these other three I’m going to end up only with two so I’m going to take the two Strongest Ones and they will fill up this whole bed with their Vines and they’ll produce lovely watermelons and then I can give I can we can keep one and then give one away to friends family that kind of thing last year I think out of the out of a bed like this I got four or five maybe six no no it wasn’t six it was four or five it was four or five probably closer to four either way I got some watermelons uh again they’re small size so it works out perfectly for like me and my wife we can eat one and again if any extras we give away to friends families and that kind of jazz let me show you the inground side now for the new subscribers there are people just stumbling across my inground beds are 14 ft Deep by about 38 ft long back row might come free I had cut it back all the way down to the ground basically uh decimating these plants but as you can see they’ve regrown they’re doing well what did I do with all those comfrey leaves I have them sitting in a bucket right now rotting down making comfrey tea if you want to call it that I call it a sludge but nonetheless it’ll be used as a fertilizer and I’m actually going to start using it probably soon for many of my potted plants over here I have Diles I have two different varieties Uh Russian rap City and golden gko the re I used to have these uh da elsewhere in my garden but dees are like cracked deer they can’t help themselves they will gnaw the thing right down to the ground eat every bit and not leave a scrap behind so to try to better protect the plants that I had I brought them here into the vegetable garden behind the fence again if they really wanted to they could jump the fence and get to them but so far so good they’re okay here in the back of the row I’m standing behind I have more peanuts this is an experiment to see if the peanuts in ground do any better or as good as the ones in the raised bed in front of them I have a couple of cotton plants why because it’s fun to grow something different my wife said well why can’t we grow some of our own cotton it’s just fun to have and I said why not in front of them I have various Peppers they’re doing well and then a couple of marold SC track pollinators makes everything look pretty pretty over in this row right here I have a spaghetti squash uh I have this I have this group right here couple zenas and then this group back over here my goal or My Hope or I’m going to try to grow them up trellises this year the next row over I have lemon squash now the lemon squash is doing incredibly well I didn’t think it was going to do so well and I have these tomato cages so the theory is my theory is is that I’m going to try to get the lemon squash to grow up the tomato cage I don’t know how well that’s going to work out for me but like I said I had these tomato cages and if they grow really vigorously maybe I’ll add something onto the top or I’ll do something with bamboo I don’t know yet but I didn’t think that they’d be growing as well as they’re growing in front of this row here I have more gladiolas in a pot as part of an experiment I want to see how they grow and do and Thrive and next to that I have a mandavilla I believe it’s called or mandaville got it at Walmart for five bucks and I had this empty spot here in the flower garden so I thought why not brings a little color a little Whimsy to the Garden itself and it’s something nice to look at right here this Trellis was used last year to try to grow actually I did grow uh moonflower on up on my deck and a deer will eat moonflow so that’s why I was doing up on the deck I had it growing out of pots it was a whole thing it kind of worked successfully didn’t actually give me the effect I wanted and I had this bamboo trellis which is still in pretty good shape here and I’m going to try to grow couple of different types of I have pumpkin and then I have a cornucopia gourd mix it’s those fancy little gourds that you get when you’re at the Garden Center when you’re doing your pump pumpkin shopping that they charge outrageous amounts of money for this funny warted ugly looking gourd thing I said why not try to grow my own so I have Jack B little pumpkins and I have the cornicopia mix and hopefully I can train them to grow up this trellis and hopefully this trellis is going to be strong enough to handle that as long as we don’t get any big crazy winds let me show you the next spot I don’t know if you guys can see it but right up front here I have habiscus again I had that out in the yard the deer were eating the Hibiscus so I want up digging it up what I thought was a dead plant putting it into a it’s doing pretty well I have all throughout the borders of this inground area bagged potatoes the reason they’re bagged and not in the ground or not in a raised bed is because of fire ants so I have to grow them into something that the fire ants won’t necessarily get into Andor bother getting into so the bags seem to be working out pretty well for me in that regard right now I have lot like I said lots of them I’m not going to go over sing every single bag but they’re growing they’re doing well I’ll probably start I’ll probably start harvesting the next couple of weeks honestly because many of these plants are starting to go over which means it’s time to harvest right here in front of me cucumbers I’ve never grown cucumbers in ground before nor in a trell system so this will be the first year that I’m going to try this it’s an experiment for me right here next to me are my Pumpkins this is Howden pumpkin sort of let’s say medium variety pumpkin gets it gets fairly sizable but not massive like Connecticut field pumpkin or some of the other varieties out there uh I have two plants because they will grow and spread if you’ve grown pumpkin you know this and they will invade other spaces so that’s why there’s a lot of empty space around them right now and we’ll see how they uh fa and Thrive throughout the year and behind me here I think you guys can see this on camera here I have some of my sunflowers I have little baby sunflowers at the end that I planted a couple of weeks ago I have bigger ones right over here I have these right here and then next to me I have some of my oldest uh sunflowers that I planted out and they’ll probably go to flower in the next couple of weeks which will be pretty exciting I can’t remember which variety that is Mammoth or Kong all right in the last couple of rows here I have some Zenia growing here again looks pretty fills up the space and they thrive in the Heat next to me here is something I’ve never done before is tomatoes and basil in ground now I’ve always my tomatoes and basil in a raised bed either a low raised bed or a taller raised bed for the Basils but I’ve never done anything in ground this year I’m doing them in ground and I’m getting mixed results the basil seems to be growing and thriving I have four tomato plants here the one closest to you guys it’s doing the worst uh what I believe has happened is that there’s still gof phosphates weed killer in the ground the weed killer comes from farms a farm farmer will grow a field of hay and they’ll use the weed killer to suppress the weeds while that hay then gets fed to cows the glop phosphates again from my understanding do not harm the cows but it passes right through the cows into the cow manure eventually that cow manure is collected for compost and when you go to the store you buy your compost it’s compost with cow manure or cow manure added that kind of thing so this Glo those weed killers those gof phosphates are still in the manure and my understanding again and if you’ve heard differ you think I’m wrong please leave those comments below educate me or anybody else who’s watching this channel they take about 3 years to break down uh so whereas they no longer harm more sensitive plants like tomatoes and so what’ll happen with tomatoes it’ll start looking like it’s dried up uh withering the leaves curl the growth is stunted the growth is actually stunted on all these plants now this plant here is doing I arguably the best out of all of them it’s putting on fruit it’s produced leaves it’s putting on fruit and what I’ve done is I’ve covered the fruit in an organza bag it’s a little mesh bag and I’m hopeful that that will keep the uh sap sucking insects off of it I have stink bugs down here I have leaf leaf legged bugs both of them take their little piscus and they stick them into the skin of the tomato and they start drinking and they’re only affecting a little portion of the Tomato but over time that windes up becoming infected and ones up rotting and I’ve never been able to successfully grow tomatoes down here in eastern North Carolina uh due to the insect pressure said this one is putting on fruit so we will see what happens long term I am playing with these plants how do they grow how tall do they get I’m experimenting I’m having fun as you can see here I have a wall of sunflower cuz I said I was going to grow a lot of sunflower this year and I meant it don’t know what variety this is but it’s doing very well I’ve see I see lots of heads on here that are getting ready to pop open so hopefully these will will be opening up just as soon as the ones behind me in the next couple of weeks and we’ll be getting a really nice show of sunflowers one last spot to show you so as you can see over here I have my bench full of various shrub cuttings and many of them are doing quite well I’ve already planted out quite a few I have quite a few more to be planting out in the near future that’s right I’m going to be planting when it’s 90° out uh but as long as the plants get lots of water they should do well on my bench I have various other cuting other things that I’m really not going to show off cuz it’s there’s nothing really to show off it’s it’s not that exciting but up front here I have a couple of different things going on hostas and some other seedlings these are sort of leftovers these are add-ons these are things that they weren’t part of the original program of spring planting so it’s safe to say that a majority of all my spring planting 99% of it is all done all the stuff that I grew from seed the various flowers and all that that good stuff has all been planted out if you’re new to the channel and you want to catch up on as to some of the stuff I did plant out there’s a variety of videos if you go back uh I’ve planted irises and and sunflowers and all sorts of other stuff and there’ll be future summer tours with the flower guard as well just to show you how certain things are progressing and doing uh so that’ll be coming up some of you guys may have noticed Sophie walking around in the background of these of the video and if you’re still watching this awesome thank you and if if you be so kind just to let me know if you’re still watching this video say Sophie Down Below in the comments Sophie is quite hot she’s really not enjoying the yeah I know you’re not enjoying the heat neither of M thankfully it’s getting a little cloudy now which is good so if you haven’t check if you haven’t subscribed to the Channel please subscribe to the channel click that Bell icon to be notified when I do Post new videos this way you don’t miss anything that’s going on here in the garden whether I’m planting out a new hedge which will be coming up soon or if I’m building a bench for the Garden or just doing another tour somewhere else here in the or planting up something else interesting please check out all the links below and Sophie and I are going to catch you on the next one bye-bye come on Sophie let’s go inside and get some air conditioning [Music] [Applause] [Music]