Late Summer in My Vegetable Garden | Tour

ABUNDANCE! Join Brian as he shows you around the late summer vegetable garden and gets some gardening chores done! He will also be harvesting and sharing some tips for a summer garden.

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Squash, you need to stay in your lane, girl. Slay shiakeiana. And look at Betty, my eggplant. We got a fruit abundance. Oh my gosh. Hey y’all. It is Brian here at Red Leaf. It has been a minute since I have shown you what’s happening in the garden. It is the end of summer here at Red Leaf and there is so much going on. Honestly, at this point in the season, I’ve gotten pretty lazy. There’s just so much happening. It’s getting kind of overwhelming. I’m just letting nature run its course, but it’s getting a little wild now and I definitely need to get in here and give the garden some much needed TLC. So, I wanted to show you around and get some work done. So, let’s get into it. Oh my gosh. The very first thing that is really getting crazy is definitely this squash. If you want to take a look at how crazy this squash is getting right now, this is literally just two plants, y’all. Two plants. It’s a pumpkin and a crook neck squash. As you can see, the arms are sprawling all over the place. And while it looks pretty cool, I definitely need to lock in and refocus the energy here because it’s starting to take over my perennial beds over there. It’s growing into my sweet potatoes and it’s just getting a little out of hand. We need to get her under control. So, let me get up in here and clean up some of these vines because this is getting crazy. Squash, you need to stay in your lane, girl. I don’t even know where one plant starts and one plant begins. We have a lot of fruit growing though. Like we have a really I don’t know if you can like get up in here, but like look, we have a beautiful crook neck squash up in here. Looking very engorged. Very happy to see me, I guess. Look at that. We have a huge pumpkin over here. Oh my gosh, that is a big ass pumpkin. Oh my god. And this is a French pumpkin. It’s called a Muske de Pants. I’m so happy to see more pumpkins growing. This is crazy. And it’s starting to color up a little bit. You can see that nice uh tan color coming in. We’re going to be having lots of pumpkin this winter. Lots of pumpkin soup. Lots of pumpkin pie. It’s just a sea of squash leaves. Where do I even go? It’s like no matter where I step, I’m going to step on something. Sorry, Pooky. Pardon me. Yeah, as you can see. Oh my god. We Oh my gosh, we have so much more. We have so much fruit coming in. It’s definitely been a really good year for squash. Oh Look. Oh, I’m just going to handle this real quick. Look at all this. all these little squash bugs. People always ask me how I deal with squash bugs. I don’t know if you can see them crawling all up on the leaves like that. Usually, if I see a leaf that’s uh infested or overrun, overtaken by them, I literally just cut the whole leaf off. Oh my god, the spawn of Satan. Bye. And then we got another beautiful squash. Oh my gosh. What am I going to do with all the squash? If y’all got any recipes, please let me know cuz I can only cook squash so many ways. So, as you can see, these arms are getting crazy. They’re literally growing all up into my beautiful flower bed. Squash are pretty resilient plants. They’re really tough. You can prune them pretty easily without really hurting the plant or shocking it too much. They can handle a good prune. So, I’m just going to chop this arm. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. That’s a lot of squash. And what’s great is you can compost this. You know, we got our chickens. So, I’m probably going to feed this to the chickens. They’re going to be really happy about it. But for now, bye. I’ll deal with that later. We got another arm over here growing all over my iris taking over my hissup. We’re going to just chop in here. There is a walkway here. You just can’t see it anymore. Oh my gosh. Bye. And we got one more over here. We’ll chop it here. Oh, whoops. That one had a fruit on it. Well, we’re harvesting some squash today. I know you rarely see me wear gloves or things in the garden. I like to feel the earth, but when it comes to squash, they will give you a rash, and you don’t want that. Bye. Oh, man. And yeah, I accidentally harvested the squash. But that’s okay because once you see it start to get colored up like this, you start seeing that beige tan color take over the plant. This will finish ripening indoors or you can sit it in the sun for a little bit and it’ll help ripen quicker. This will definitely still be edible at some point. See, I already feel like I chopped so much and like I hardly made a dent in this plant. Now, I need to get these arms over here. Definitely don’t want this arm growing here. Oh my god. This is one arm split into two. And what’s crazy is the arms can also set out new roots, too. So, if it’s like making contact with the soil, there’s no telling how wild these plants can get because now that they have like rooted into the soil, they’re getting more nutrients. They’re getting more of what they need really in order to thrive. They will quickly overrun my flower bed. It’s like a tangled mess in here. Bye. Lord have mercy. Oh, this one had a pumpkin on it. And I think we have plenty of pumpkin to be dealing with. Girl, you need to stay in your lane. So much squash. This is what happens when you let your garden go for too long. She really uh has a mind of her own, that’s for sure. Oh my god, we have another pumpkin. And I think this one pollinated, but this arm is getting out of control again. Like this arm is starting to grow into the flower bed. So, I think I’m going to cut it and leave that fruit to grow, but I don’t want this arm to continue growing, which is wonderful. And what’s nice is, like I mentioned earlier, growing this arm takes up energy. So, now that pumpkin’s going to have a lot more energy to put into that fruit than into this arm. We’re just refocusing energy at the end of the day. As you can see in the center of the squash patch here, it’s starting to look a little bare, and I don’t like that. So rather than chopping this arm, I’m just going to throw her over there to like fill in the gaps. The leaves will eventually turn upwards towards the light and it’ll fill in pretty nice. Same with this one. Oh my gosh. Wait, I think a bee was sleeping in here. Oh, Pooky. She said, “Get up off me.” I’m going to cut any yellowing or ugly leaves cuz that’s just kind of a breeding ground for other pests. We don’t want that. Toss that off to the side for now. I’m just going to and yeah, it’ll just start filling in that way, which will be nice. We literally have an arm growing this way over here into this bed. I’m probably just going to I don’t mind that it’s like in this bed, but I can I definitely can have it growing into the uh sweet potatoes. My sweet potatoes. Look at this one. Girl, what is you doing? Oh, this one has a little pumpkin on it. Okay, I’m going to cut the arm that doesn’t have a pumpkin on it. Actually, it does have a pumpkin on it, but it’s still small. And I’m just going to redirect this one back towards that hole we were talking about so that area can start filling in again. Go that way. Good luck, babe. Oh my god. You see this really big arm here? It’s another Betty. This is the the sasquatch, the butternut sasquatch squash from Fairy Morris. That’s what’s growing over the arch here. It has somehow put an arm out all the way over here. And there’s a fruit. Oh, and I think it’s pollinated. I can’t really lift it up. We’re going to get another one. Look at her. Oh, she’s just a baby. I’m not 100% sure if she pollinated successfully, so I’m not going to name her yet. I do need to prune, though, cuz this arm keeps go. Oh my god, this arm keeps going. And look, it already wants to set out another fruit. I think I’m going to prune it. I don’t think we need all that. So, this gets all the energy it needs. Yeah, I’m going to prune it like here cuz I like this leaf. I think shading the fruit would be nice. But this this can go. We don’t we don’t need to do all that. And look, there’s another arm coming out here. We don’t need all that either. So, that can go because I don’t want it completely overrunning my sweet potato cuz I want sweet potato. Wow. Slay squash. Slay. Do you know what I want to show you next? Remember last year how that tornado took down one of our massive oak trees on the property and we inoculated some of her logs to grow mushrooms, right? Remember that? Well, if you don’t, if you do, we inoculated a ton of logs and we’ve been waiting so long for a flesh of shiake mushrooms. Look at this. It’s like deep in the depths of my garden. Honestly, I forgot about this little corner of the garden cuz not much has been happening. But look at our logs. Look at all the mushrooms. Oh my gosh, all the shiakeis. There are so many. And look at Shiakeana. She’s got a huge flush of them, too. Oh my goodness. Slay shiakeiana. So, I’m definitely going to get up in here and harvest these cuz the thing about mushrooms is you want to harvest them fast because they can go off pretty quickly or they can just be taken over by bugs and we do not want that. So, let’s harvest some mushrooms. Oh my god. Here’s a good one to start with. And when we harvest them, we want to make sure that we are snipping them off. We don’t want to tug or pull them too hard. Oh my god. mushrooms. And you know they’re still good because the bottom side doesn’t look absolutely tragic and it’s not overrun with bugs. So, we got a baby mushroom. Slay mushrooms. Let’s harvest some more. I don’t even know where this one’s coming out of. Oh, this one’s growing from the top. [Laughter] Oh my god, look at the size of this one down here. Slay mushroom. Nice. No bugs. Oh my god. No. That looks perfect. Wait. Oh my. I don’t know if you can get in there, but like look at where these mushrooms are growing. You got to get like up in there. Do you see that? That’s crazy. We got to get in there and harvest all of those. Period. Nice. Please nothing jump out of me. Please nothing bite me. Yeah, that’s a big one. And it’s literally like perfect condition. Smells like a mushroom. Look at how many mushrooms I have so far. And there are still a ton on these logs. But really quick, I want to show you what happens if you miss the mushrooms. What happens to them when they start going off? The mushroom gets really, really hard and yellow, and I wouldn’t want to eat that. This is what happens. And the thing is, this happens really quick, like within a day or two of the fruing body coming out. Once you start seeing those mushrooms, you want to harvest them as quick as possible. Now, let’s harvest the rest. Oh, so proud of you, Shitakiana. You’re giving us so many beautiful slay mushrooms. Abundance. Oh my gosh, look at all these mushrooms. Slay shiakei temple. Thank you. Oh my god, look at the squashes. Hold up, y’all. Look at Muriel. Oh my god. I think these might be bigger than last season. She’s literally hanging on by a thread over here. Dang, that’s a big girl. She snatched. And look at Betty. Let’s do the Betty reveal. Oh my gosh. Now that Betty is getting like this white coating on her, I think she should be ready to harvest, honestly. But they are butternut a butternut squash variety. So I do want to wait to see if it does deepen and get that like beige tannanish color. We didn’t have that much time last season, but maybe we’ll have time this season. I mean, she has a little over a month to like keep ripening. So hopefully Oh, Betty colors up. But these are huge. For size comparison, look at this butternut squash compared to her. Slay, Betty. Slay, big mama. Something that I have definitely slept on this season, my tomatoes. I mean, we gave them that really nice hard reset a few weeks ago, but I’ve kind of let them go since then. Look at how wild the maiders are. Oh my god, they’ve put out a ton of new arms. We have a whole new flush of fruit coming in. We have so many flowers. I just want to like tickle them all. Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle. But I don’t think I’m going to do this right now cuz one, I’m getting tired and two, this is just overwhelming. But I definitely need to get in here and clean up my tomatoes at some point. Usually what I’m looking for when it comes to pruning and caring for my tomatoes when it gets like this are any extra arms like this here. Like there’s a whole new arm growing out of that arm here from like the base of the stem there. There’s a whole new arm. I would totally chop that off to redirect energy into the fruit that are growing on this. Uh-oh. We are totally seeing signs of horn worms again. Oh my god, we are so seeing signs. Look at this. You see that black little clump on my leaf? That’s not dirt. That’s poop. I don’t know what kind of worm it is cuz a lot of their poop looks alike. It’s either a horn worm or an army worm. So, I need to get in here and find it. But, uh, she’s kind of crazy. Another thing that I’m paying paying attention to are these yellowing leaves. These definitely have to go. Could just be a sign of uh it either getting dry or I don’t know. This looks um this is giving blight. You definitely want to prune any yellowing or spotty leaves like this. But like I said, I’ll get to it at some point. Just uh not right now. Speaking of uh tragic looking leaves, I do want to give you a quick update on my eggplants. Don’t they look awful? Don’t they look tragic? I’m I’m really at my my wit’s end. I really tried absolutely everything I could think of to manage flea beetle and aphids. As you can see, what I am doing is not working. So many browning and yellowing leaves. I tried predatory insects. I tried cowlin clay. I made my own concoction of lime and orange peels. I mixed that with a little bit of neem oil and dish soap and sprayed the leaves with that. We still have flea beetles. I mean, they’re super tiny, which is the frustrating part. If you want to get close up in here, they’re literally on here right now. Just completely shameless. This little black speck. That’s a flea beetle. Bye. They’re so annoying because they’re so small and so elusive. They call them flea beetles because of how quickly they hop around. They’re really hard to manage. I got so many comments and and tips and suggestions saying like, “Oh my god, release ladybugs. released ladybugs for the aphids, sure, but uh they’re not going to eat flea beetles. At the end of the day, flea beetles are my biggest competitor, my biggest uh threat when it comes to eggplants. So, still looking for a way to manage them. I’m not very hopeful that we’ll get fruit this season cuz it is flowering. We are getting a lot of like eggplant flowers, but the fruit just isn’t coming in. Oh, scratch that. Wait, we got a fruit. Oh my god, baby. We got a little baby eggplant. Okay. All right. There is still some hope. There’s still some hope. Oh my god. Wait, I’m so excited. I might get my eggplant parm. I might get my eggplant parm. But we’re just going to have to wait and see how well it comes to fruition. If it really grows to maturity, that fruit. Wow. Now I have all the reason to keep going. I have hope again. So, now that I see all these really tragic looking leaves, I definitely need to come out here at least prune those off. Maybe give it a nice new uh feeding of fertilizer to give it that kind of boost it needs to regrow when it’s lost. We might have that eggplant parm yet. Slay eggplants. You know who has really stolen the show in the garden this season? The gorgeous passion vine. This late in the season, we’re still getting a bunch of flowers. Oh my god. Wait, there’s literally Oh my god, a bumblebee is sleeping under this one. That’s so cute. I love catching the little bumblebees sleeping on the flowers. Another thing that the passion vine is absolutely loaded on are the Gulf fridillary caterpillars. I believe this is like their main diet, the passion vine, and it’s a native species of butterfly and caterpillar here to Tennessee. So, I’m so happy to see all of these caterpillars on here. And as you can see, it is not slowing down the passion vine at all. It’s still putting out a ton of fruit with or without the caterpillars. Oh, they chewed through this one a little bit, but that’s okay. We are still getting so much fruit. Literally, let’s see if we have anything we can harvest. Or honestly, it’s getting to the point now where like the fruit harvests itself. There’s a few ways to know it’s ready. One, the fruit will fall off on its own. Or you can feel the fruit. Oh, wait. Oh my god. There’s literally one right here. Oh my god. And another. Oh my god. And another. This one looks really ripe. You can tell cuz they get nice and wrinkly. They start yellowing up like this. And one of the greatest telling signs that it’s ready. They are so fragrant. They smell so good. This one’s ready to eat. Actually, let me show you what the inside looks like. I am Colombian and Borikua. In Puerto Rico, I think they call them para and in Colombia, they call it marakuya. And it’s so interesting cuz like the tropical passion fruits got this like really bright red color and the the seeds are really like orange yellow. These are honestly very pale in comparison, but if you look inside, look at all that fruit. Look at all those seeds. The seeds are covered in this really juicy jell-ike flesh. And honestly, I like eating them just like this. People make juice out of it. People make some kind of like Jell-O out of it. There’s so many ways to like eat passion fruit, but I like eating it fresh and raw like this. I literally just suck on the seeds and get the juice and the jell-o off the seeds, and it’s like sweet and tangy. It’s delicious. This is like my fifth one today. We have so much of it and we also have a ton of it growing outside of our chicken run here. Let me go show you that. Follow me. We literally have it growing all up our chicken tower. Such a huge passion vine. And you can see up here. Hi ladies. Oh my god. You can see all the fruit that it’s putting out. Look at all the fruit coming over there. We have so much coming. And there’s so many caterpillars up there too. I love it. And I especially love that it’s native. Like to have a native fruing plant like this. especially one that reminds me so much of uh my culture, of my family, of my I didn’t grow up in Colombia, Puerto Rico, but I did eat a lot of marakuya growing up. So, this is a really wonderful thing that we can like share with our family. It brings back so many memories for my mom. So, now we just have to get creative. Like, I love eating it raw like this, but there’s a lot of really unique ways to eat passion fruit. So, if you have any recipe ideas, let me know. But the sun is about to set. I think that’s going to wrap up our little walkthrough and work in the garden today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you learned something. And if you have any comments or questions, please leave them down in the comments below. And I’ll see you next time. Bye. You ready? Let’s lock in. Let’s lock in.