Make These 9 Easy Changes and Save Hours in the Garden!
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- čas přidán 5. 07. 2024
- Managing to find enough time to properly care for our garden is something most of us struggle with. Whether it's preparing your beds, starting seedlings, keeping your plants healthy or harvesting on time - it can all add up. In this video, I'll reveal the 9 strategies we use to manage our limited time in the garden to get the most joy... and the biggest harvests from our space!
#gardening #growyourownfood #productivity
0:00 Introduction
0:06 SWAP POTS FOR RAISED BEDS
1:50 GROW ALL-SEASON CROPS
3:03 BUILD UNIFORM PLANTING BEDS
4:42 PLANT COVER CROPS
6:41 DRIPLINE EMITTER IRRIGATION
8:11 PLANT PERENNIAL FLOWERS
10:27 DEEP COMPOST MULCH
12:14 PLANT PERENNIALS LATE
13:12 SKIP PEST-PRONE PLANTS - Jak na to + styl
In SW Oregon the cat's ear (false dandelions) bring in TONS of honeybees all season (early spring thru fall).
Can't wait for the carrot video! Haven't been able to get them to grow well yet!
Oh good, OK, I'm glad I mentioned it. I find carrots to be a very interesting crop - not very similar care needs to other plants.
"Choose those really really difficult plants to buy at the grocery store... unless it's tomatoes" 🤣😂 I whole heartedly agree
You touched on it a bit and maybe can do a deeper dive in a future video, but I'm curious what you're planting for pollinators/ beneficial insects. Bumblebees are my best friend here as well. I was out with a qtip everyday hand pollinating tomatillos until our lavender flowered, then the bumbles showed up in force and my work was done. We have daisies, sedum, swamp milkweed, black eyed susans and stuff growing on the property but so far I've been keeping the butterfly garden separate from the kitchen garden.
Another great video my dude 👍
;) Tomatoes get a different set of rules!
For the first ~2 years in this location, it really felt like pollinators wanted nothing to do with our house. Luckily we have TONS of lizards that keep the pests down, but we just weren't getting a lot of bees. Over the last year though that really seems to have changed.
I know I mentioned this, but in our neighborhood at least, those Mediterranean perennials absolutely monopolize the majority of the bumblebees. It's unbelievable how much they seem to be preferred over other flowers. So first and foremost, we're trying to get those in the ground and mature.
Otherwise, this year we planted a fair assortment of annuals (many poppies, chamomile, cosmos, violas, bachelor brothers, cone flowers, sunflowers, amaranth, black eyed susans and many more). Some of them brought in lots of honeybees - the black eyed susans were LOADED with them - but most didn't seem to get a lot of attention.
Luckily, our main veggie garden appears to have finally become dense enough to warrant bumblebees on its own accord. We had lots everyday simply coming for cucurbit flowers and tomatillo flowers in particular.
I *think* some of it may be that we had flowers *extremely* early because I let some of the cover crops go to seed - earlier than all the perennials that otherwise attract those insects. And from there, we always had new flowering plants all the time. I suspect that unbroken line of flowers from very early in the season really helped.
Anyhow, apologies for the long-winded answer =)
@@NextdoorHomestead No apology necessary for a thorough reply. Black eyed susans are absolute champions in my book. They're beautiful, every manner of pollinator seems to love them, easy to grow from seed, and they're deer and rabbit resistant. They're also our state flower here in Maryland.
I think the only thing you could knock them for is blooming late in the season (at least here). It's kind of unfair to call that a negative though, since it's just what they do.
We had great success with horn faced mason bees this year. They built nests in some of our firewood and in the legs of a table on our porch. They get an early start so they fed mostly on violas and daffodils, and were done nesting before we had any flowers on the veggies. I built a bee box for them that I'm going to try out next year.
Cheers buddy
💯% on the pest related plants! Grew broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and artichoke for the first time last year and it just attracted all of the terrible pests to my garden. I tried keeping them at a distance from my other plants, but without the trouble of netting, it was just too much for me lol All of that time spent with seed starting just to get one lousy broccoli floret the size of my thumb was not worth it for me personally..BUT to each their own, for sure! Luckily, all of those are still reasonably priced at Costco 😅
Yeeeeeep. This sounds real familiar. I just figure we're lucky that we happen to struggle with the more affordable veggies like broccoli and don't have a ton of tomato/pepper pests =)
Looking forward to that carrot video. I'm trying to grow a lot, but not doing really well at it. Of course, its 95 degrees at noontime. I used sawdust mulch this year from a local sawmill. It was very inexpensive, and effective. The caveat is leave it on top of the dirt, don't mix it in.
Ok, awesome! I'm going to focus on the actual planting process which is where I personally think its easiest to go wrong.
Cheers!
Hello, when I listened how gardeners cover with insect net in many places, I would say that the most important cover here in the UK is the transparent tarp which I covered all my garden that is out of my greanhouse. The rain is the biggest pest here 😁. By the way I am excited to see the video about carrots . I tried this year and failed.
Rain as a pest?! Funny how we all have different challenges =)
I'm excited to get the new raised beds full and plant those carrots! I like them of course, but my dog LOVES carrots.
Thanks for the different perspectives. It really helps!
My pleasure! Thanks for watching and sharing that it was helpful 😁
Yep I'm seeing what you mean about the tall beds. 😢 I'm trying another cycle of cucumbers and squash. Fingers crossed 🤞
Good luck! Our cukes and some squash are basically dormant with the heat waves too.
Those tall beds can be so nice otherwise!
I'm learning to save time and work in my garden by replacing annual crops with perennial equivalents... e.g. Babington's leeks instead of annual leeks, and perennial kale instead of annual kale.
I love this! I keep intending to plant more perennial alternatives of that nature. Have you tried tree collards by chance?
@@NextdoorHomestead Afraid not.
:)
Heya. Back again. A bit of gardener burnout for a while. Back at it. I work on an (temporary?) allotment and can't add any permenent structures. A large amount of land but tend to use logs to make raised beds. I get logs free from neighbors. Wish I could use fabric grow bags. I can't use irrigation and we deal with month or two month dry spells. Still experimenting with 5 liter self watering jugs. Not ideal but it saves me from watering everyday.
RON! Terrific to hear from you again =)
Honestly, August is typically my gardener burnout period. The weeds start getting the best of me and our sun just fries the plants into something a little depressing. I get it.
I was thinking yesterday about whether I'd trade our small yard with access to irrigation for a bigger space off the grid and I don't think it's an easy answer. We can't grow as *much* here, but we can grow just about anything. Tradeoffs I suppose.
I hope you had a nice break and get to enjoy growing again!
Great video
Thank you kindly, so glad you enjoyed =)
It's not a nice thing for organic gardener to hear, but for me it's installing above ground weed barrier, around my raised beds. Save me so much time weeding, literally reduced my garden work load by 75%. My mulching wasn't good enough because the amaranth and these spikey weeds grows too strong through them.
I think fabric grow bags is excellent, but the grow mix should be a bit different with 2 part potting mix and 1 part compost. Normally compost or soil is no no for container, but for grow bags they drain very fast so the compost help with moisture retention. I also use a tray to retain water, that might sound counter intuitive, but it still have a lot of aeration for the roots on the sides.
I choose to not install drip irrigation, I enjoy manual watering and giving different type of plants specific amount of water. With automatic watering it might mask some bad soil that doesn't hold water well. Yes it's good and save time for busy people, but it's also important to know how to build good soil that can retain moisture well on its own. I personally don't enjoy gardening style that too is hands off, which is why I stopped doing hydroponic.
Thanks for sharing! Weed barriers seem like a lovely alternative to herbicides to me.
And +1 to the tray-under-the-pot tip. Can work wonderfully if you keep an eye on them!
Thank you for all of the lovely recommendations! Is there a website or brand you recommend ordering the drip line from?
You are very welcome! I have found greenhouse megastore to have the best prices if they have what you need. Otherwise, no preferred brand yet - all the options I've tried have worked well thus far =)
My garden is still small but hand watering is getting old quick! Though I do appreciate the alone time in the morning. I’m definitely going to look into the emitter tubing for when we finally install irrigation. The bees sure love when our 100+ coastal rosemary shrubs are fruiting. We made an awkward, steep sloped portion of our property work for us! Our citrus trees are loaded with fruit because of them. I love the idea of the compost beds.
I meant that the shrubs FLOWER, not fruit.
Hand watering is lovely and 100 gets old when you don't have a choice in the matter ;)
That's awesome that you were able to use the slope - I'm super excited for some of our rosemary to mature a bit and flower more next year!
What citrus are you growing? I need to give our fruit trees some love in a future video!
@@NextdoorHomestead Fruit tree videos would be great! We have bearss limes, eureka lemon, Valencia orange, and honey mandarins. I’ve been wanting to get an almond tree, especially after seeing yours in bloom in one of your videos. That….plus all the things: apple, pluots, nectarines, etc, etc, etc.
P.s. I only hand water the raised beds and containers. Thankfully, the slope has irrigation installed as it would be impossible to water that all by hand!
@@homebodyjen752 If you haven't already, you may want to look into Dave Wilson backyard style orchards. We only have a small, suburban plot but decided to plant 20-25 fruit trees anyways using some of their guidance on density. Too soon to tell if it was a good idea, but it's fun anyhow =)
@@NextdoorHomestead thanks for the resource! I will definitely check it out, as I want to add at least another 10 trees throughout the property. Trying to work with suburban layouts is tough, which is why I appreciate your channel.
Thanks for the great suggestions! You mentioned using a drip line emitter for your garden beds. I currently grow primarily in grow bags. Would emitters work for those?
Drip emitters worked great in our backyard grow bag garden for the past couple of years. No complaints from me on the interaction between the two. Grow bags do tend to dry quickly but that's not the fault of the irrigation =)
Do you have a link for the water system? I water with a watering can and hose & it takes 3-4 hours each time.
I've bought from a few different brands at this point and haven't noticed any difference, but this sort of tubing is what I use: www.dripdepot.com/item/quarter-inch-polyethylene-dripline-emitter-spacing-6-inch-flow-rate-half-gph-roll-length-50-feet-color-black
Of course, that's not the whole system but it what I replaced (most) of our blank 1/4 in. tubing with.
Cheers!