hello everyone
welcome to the demonstration garden
I'm really excited to show you how
a lot of the plants are growing
and help you to get a little bit more familiar
with the seeds that you got in your pack
people often ask like how much time
does it take to garden
and it really depends on what kind of experience
you are wanting to get out of it
it varies greatly
but what I really recommend
is making gardening
an everyday thing
spending a little bit of time in the garden every day
and generally what I do a little bit every day
is watering weeding some insect control
pruning and harvesting
so today I am going to take you through
the demonstration garden
and I'm going to do a little bit of each of those things
except watering because I already watered this morning
first I'm going to show you
this is a little patch here
the beneficial insect attractant mix
and one of the things you see here
is some cilantro
there's cilantro in the beneficial insect attractant mix
that mix include some plants that are wonderful
as food both for us humans
and for bees and butterflies and our pollinator friends
here is some Cosmos that are just starting to pop up
these attract parasites
or sorry they attract wasps
that actually eat caterpillars that are eating your food
so you want to bring insects into the garden
beneficial insects
now within this mix
so one of the things you do
a little bit of every day is weeding
but some weeds are wonderful to eat
so this is one of my favorite weeds
weeds right here
there is no such thing is a weed
that's the concept that we've created
they all are plants with their own purpose
and this is purslane
it is a wonderfully nutritious green
I eat a lot of it
and so I'm letting this this free food
grow right in the garden
rather than weeding it
here I have my onions growing
the green onions are coming up
and there are some chives in here
but these chives are getting a little bit shaded out
I'm actually seeing the garlic chives
with the flat leaves
and then the standard chives with the round leaves
so I'm seeing both varieties popping up here
so we've got the beneficial insect attractant mix
we've got the green onions
and we've got some of the chives here
so here we have a few different things growing
we have radishes
and you can see these radishes are actually starting to bolt
which means they're going to produce a seed pod
which I'll show you some seeds
and that means you can
make your own radish seeds for next year
so this is in the bolting stage
you can see how it's shooting up
we've got some carrots growing in here
we've got our mustard greens
this is the Green Wave
and then we've got some of the dill
growing right here in front
so I mentioned another one of the daily things
to be doing is some insect control
and also some pruning
so I'm going to do that at the same time
the issue I have on my mustard
is actually white fly
and so what I've found that really helps with that
is continuous harvesting
so I'm going to go ahead
and take all of the big leaves of the mustard
and what this does
is it provides a harvest of food
and then it prunes the plant back
so it will start putting this energy
into all these smaller leaves
which will turn into big leaves to eat
but at the same time on these
some of them have these white fly larvae
let's just call it white fly
it's eggs or larva, depending on the stage
and so this is still edible
if I left this here a long time it would start to get bad
so I'm actually still going to eat this
and I'm reducing the issue
with the insects at the same time
so what am doing is I am going through here
I am pruning out all the ones
that have the insect issue on them
I am actually going to prune a couple
of these radish leaves at the same time
harvest a few of those off
here is a big mustard here
that I see has some white fly damage
and then I will probably come back through
and harvest this mustard again
in probably about a week
this will be back to about this size if I had to guess
now what I'm also going to do
is I don't want this to seed yet
I do not want this to bolt
When it bolts it starts to get really strong flavor
like the mustardy strength
and it starts to shoot up instead of producing leaves
so also where it is bolting
I am going to go ahead
and take those off
so that it keeps producing leaves
and so I just...
you can see this one
how it was starting to shoot up
so I went ahead and harvested that
to try to give myself more time
but these mustards
I do not know how much longer
they are going to last
but they are getting into their stage of being....
they probably put out the majority of their production
so at this stage
I could probably harvest a little bit of this Dill
but I am going to go ahead
and just let that continue growing here
I have the basil mix
one of the ones that I am the most excited about
and there are four different basils popping up in here
you have your standard Italian basil
this is holy basil which just just an incredibly healing plant
we have a Thai Basil coming up over here
and then we have some lemon Basils coming up over here
let me just make sure
yes very lemony basil
so um I mentioned when plants are bolting
you want to prune the top off
so how that works on basil
is when when you cut the top
what happens is it will branch out
and it will actually send up two new shoots
and so when you harvest
you are not taking
you can actually be producing more food by harvesting
so consistent harvesting is key
so I'm gonna go ahead
and just prune the tops off of a few of these
so there's a honeybee that seems
a little angry with me right now
you can tell when a honeybee is angry
because it does have a different pitch
and this one has got
a bit of the angry pitch going on
now I don't know if you can see right behind me
but we just rescued a swarm of bees
so there are a few thousand bees
pretty busy right now
but that one seems to have moved on
so continuing to harvest the basil a little bit here
you can see the holy basil
so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead
and prune a few of these off
holy basil tends to be able to have seeds
and continue producing
hello bee you are back
I am going to go ahead and harvest
some of those wonderful medicines
so more more harvesting can be done here
but that's what I'm going to show you for now
hello bee
arugula
so I'm gonna go ahead
actually not on this one but on the next one over
I'm gonna cut a few of these arugula back
so you can see the arugula has gone the seed here
I let that get away from me
It is just one that kind of got away from me
so this bolted which means the flavor
is going to be much stronger
personally I love it
but once it gets to this point
it may be a bit too spicy for you
so you want to keep it from bolting
by pruning it back
so I am going to go ahead
and prune some of these back
and try to encourage it
to keep on putting out more greens
I am also going to leave some of these
because these are going to go to seed
I'm going to harvest those seeds
and that way the free seed pack
can keep delivering year after year
without having to get another one
I'll be self-sufficient in arugula no problem
you can actually see some seed pods on here already
you've got your flowers and your seed pods
and this little seed pod here
with the yellow flowers
that's the Asian greens popping up here
so this is one of the Asian green plants
and there's probably four five six times more seeds
coming off this one plant than you got in the pack
so definitely letting some go to seed
is a key to having seeds for next year
I'm going to harvest some more of this mustard
that is getting pretty big
and you can see how I'm working with the pruners
I like to use pruners actually more than my hands
I do recommend a pair of pruners
they go a very long way
so I'm pruning at the same time as I'm harvesting
at the same time as I'm doing a little insect control
taking care of three things at once
oh and of course eating
always nibbling in the garden
and do you have to wash the greens
it depends on what you put on the greens
if you don't cover them with pesticides
then no you do not have to wash the greens
in fact I rarely ever do
and as you can see I'm still here
so there's a nice little bunch
now this leaf for example is pretty old
you totally could eat that
but this is not going into the salad bowl
this is going into the salad bowl
including the arugula flowers
so a couple of the Russian kales
we've got the White Russian kale
the red Russian kale
and the lacinado
what came up here or what I transplanted here
are the white russian kales
these are coming up beautifully
now when you harvest these
what you do is you harvest the bottom ones
so there you go
I harvest the bottom ones
and I'm consistently coming out here and harvesting these
this has a lot of aphids on it
and a lot of people would toss this out
because there are aphids
but aphids are made of kale.
so all you're eating when you eat a bunch of aphids
is a manifestation of sunshine of kale
they're nutritious
I would say they're delicious
but you don't taste them even
you don't even notice that they're there
good soft kale
okay I'm gonna go ahead and harvest a turnip
this is the first turnip of the year
this is the purple top Globe turnip
there you have it
a beautiful little turnip
and a lot of people don't do this
but the turnip greens are delicious and nutritious too
those cook right up
so you don't just get the turnip
you get all of the turnip greens as well
so that's the harvest from today
just doing a little weeding
a little bit of pruning
a little bit of harvesting at the same time
and that's a pretty nice little harvest
now one thing that I do want to show you
is that I've got some carrots right here
I've got some turnips right here
this is planted way too close together
I still got some you know good turnips
but look how much space this one turnip took
you can imagine
you can only fit so many of them in there
which is why it's so important
to watch the videos on spacing
so you give things the desired spacing
that they need to be really productive
so lastly I wanted to show you
a couple of the pots that I just recently planted
where things are in a younger stage
so I have 12 pots here
for the 12 different seeds
that you receive in the pack
and I'm just going to share what they are
they're still in a pretty small stage
I just planted most of these
from seeds a few weeks ago
and then I transplanted some as well
so we've got our Dill
we've got our basil
we've got mustard
flower mix, kale,
these were transplanted we've got
mustard here I believe
let me give this a little nibble
oh this is actually turnips
and then we've got our herb mix here
with our lemon balm and with our chamomile
we've got our radishes
here we have arugula
then we have carrots and
then we've got our chives
oh sorry, our onions and our chives
so now we're here at the Garden in the back
and I'm excited to show you what's going on here
and here I'm actually going to focus on
sharing some of the challenges
the issues that I've been having
over the last couple months in the garden
before diving into that
I want to share one of the joys
and that is the beneficial insect attractant mix
is popping out some flowers
this is the cosmos
and not only do they bring joy
but they also bring in beneficial insects like wasps
that'll eat the caterpillars
that are eating your food
so these have been bringing in a lot of joy to have these
and there's more buds so they'll be continuing to come
in gardening there's always going to be challenges
you know no matter what your garden is
you're going to have challenges
it's just a question of which
I've actually had six main challenges
that I've been working with
first big one cut worms
cut worms have been a big struggle
and the reason is is they don't come in
and just like nibble on one leaf
what they do is they come in
and they go to a plant
and they just cut it right at the bottom
and topple the thing right over
like they'll take a plant
topple it right over
whole plant is dead
so over half of this Garden has been
cut down by cut worms
my solution for that that has really worked
is you take a pot
you cut the bottom and then you put that over the plant
bury it down some
and that creates a guard
and you can also use tin foil as well as a guard
so cutworms have definitely
been one of my biggest challenges
but since I've put these in
which is work but in a small garden manageable
the cutworm problem
has been more or less taken care of
right here my biggest challenge is
this Garden is it doesn't get enough Sun
so this Garden only is getting about
two and a half or three hours of full sun right now
and you generally want a minimum of five hours
and more like up to seven hours of direct sun
so these plants are all growing really slowly
because they're not getting enough sun
with enough Sun
these plants would be way further along
they'd almost be
most of them would be fully mature
and a lot of them would actually be
harvested at this point
the great thing about this Garden
is it's got really really beautiful soil
this soil was built right here on site by Albert
whose beautiful property this is
and so that's been one of the
beautiful things to work with here
is this nutritious rich soil
however I bought soil for the plant for the pots
and that soil turned out to be super carbon heavy
very low on nitrogen
so all of my plants have been stunted
because there hasn't been
the nutrients they've needed
or the nutrients have been locked up in the carbon
so with all of my pots
I've been having to add nitrogen to them
fish Emulsion being the main source
and so that's been a challenge
and it's definitely a challenge that
some of you will come across with your soil
the two other insects or diseases
that I've been dealing with have been white fly
and they've been a big struggle
on the mustard out in the front beds
and the other one is the downy mildew
that's been on the basil
that has been a substantial struggle
I'm just here in Florida for a few months
so I'm really gardening in a place where
I'm in the I'm in a challenging middle Zone
and I'm just here for a short period of time
so I haven't gotten used to everything here
but I'm learning these things as I go
and figuring out how to work with them
and with all of these I'm not using a single pesticide
I definitely was tempted to use pesticides
but I never have used one
and still I have not used one
lastly I mentioned here there's not enough sun
the shade
the other challenge here in Florida
is we're getting into the period
where summer is actually so hot
that the plants are bolting
and so I'm kind of struggling
with some of the annuals in to the sun
into the summer months where it's really hot
so those have been the challenges
that I've been dealing with here in the garden
and I wanted to just share some of those with you
because many of those are challenges
that you're going to be dealing with as well
so every day I do a little bit of watering
a little bit of weeding
a little bit of insect control r
emember your hands are the best pesticide
your hands and your minds
no need for those toxic chemicals
that are going on to our food
and into our body if we're using them
and then of course a little bit of pruning
and a little bit of harvesting
I've got my Harvest for the day
which I'm excited about
really excited about this lemon basil
and a last little thing that I want to share
I have plants that could be considered a failure
these this pot didn't have enough nutrients
it was the soil that I'm struggling with
and I planted some of the Asian greens
from the mustard mix
and as you can see they're tiny little plants
they bolted right away
I could pull these out
or I'm just going to let these go to seed
that way I'll have more of these to plant next year
so all throughout the garden
you can see many things
that are in different stages
there is no exact one way to do anything
it's about getting in tune with the garden
and working with it and all of its different stages
I'm so excited and happy
to have shared this time in the garden with you
and hope that you're becoming more confident
and learning a lot more
to become liberated from
the global industrial food system
and just enjoy the time in your garden
growing your own healthy food