it's getting cooler here in Southern California as fall sets in and we have a
lot of things going on in the garden so sit back and enjoy this episode on the
California Garden in the month of September we begin with a tour of the
garden we look at some harvests we made this month we have some cool things for
you to do and finally we take a look at some gardening products so let's begin
with the garden tour in our raised beds we have the black Cobra pepper growing
which we harvested this month followed by the tomato jungle as you can see here
producing the final set of tomatoes before the cooler weather sets in
the okras were very productive this month so August and September were the
months where they were very productive and the production is slowing down right
now but we hope to harvest a few more and as you can see here we have our
trellis the easy trellis on which this bean plant is growing this is a pole
bean variety which yielded a lot of beans on the other side we have the
broccoli plants growing and right next to that we have the easy trellis which
we painted green to blend in with the garden this is very similar to the easy
trellis we showed you earlier and right next to that we have the cluster beans
which did not grow very well I wasn't too happy with the way they grew and
next to that we have the eggplants our Listada
de Gandia eggplants which have become extremely tall now and production is
slowing down
and right next to the eggplants we have the cauliflower plants that we just
planted in this bed and that concludes the tour of the
raised beds and now let's look at the harvest we made this month starting with
the black Cobra pepper the black Cobra pepper is a very prolific pepper variety
that produces hot and pungent peppers now if you like extremely hot peppers
this is a great pepper variety to grow in your garden because it just produces
a lot of peppers as you can see here the peppers have now turned red and this is
when they are the hottest and we also harvested a lot of pole
beans these beans have been growing on our trellis on our easy trellis that we
showed you in our previous month's episode and also in a separate video and
the pole bean variety is a very prolific variety this is the Kentucky wonder pole
bean variety and it produces a lot of beans since it grows on this trellis it
has a lot of space to grow and produce a lot of beans
now if you are restricted on space you can always grow bush beans but if space
is not a problem or if you want to grow vertically like on this trellis that
you're seeing here pole beans generally give you a much better harvest than bush
beans
as you can see here we are harvesting a lot of beans from this plant and the
beans grow very quickly so I would highly recommend that once the
production begins you check your plant every day because you want to harvest
your beans when they are tender like what you're seeing here and not wait too
long now from our poll beans the harvested the
beans almost every day and then on some days we would just get a lot of beans
still on the plant so overall I was very happy with the way this bean variety
grew the plant was very healthy no problems with any insects or diseases
on this plant and it's also a very prolific bean variety
we harvested some corn now we were very late in planting our corn we planted
this in July which is quite late but we still were able to get a few cobs from
our glass gem corn as you can see here this is one of my favorite corn
varieties it has a mildly sweet taste and it tastes just excellent when you
roast it now if you plant early you might get
bigger cobs and a larger harvest but because he planted a little late or cobs
were smaller in size compared to the regular-sized cobs
cucumbers it was the end of summer season and cucumbers were still growing
in the trellis that we had and this is the Puneri cucumber variety
it's a very delicious variety that you can eat raw
and we were also growing this Bush cucumber variety
and I'm gonna have a growing guide on this cucumber variety very soon but this
is a very compact cucumber variety and it produces a lot of cucumbers I was
really amazed at how many cucumbers this plant could produce and I didn't have
any problems with any insects or diseases for this cucumber variety it is
just an amazing cucumber variety that you can grow and it does ield a lot of
cucumbers as well and now let's look at our eggplant
harvest we harvested a lot of Listada de Gandia eggplants this month as
you can see here great looking eggplants and this eggplant variety does have a
thicker skin however it's still a great tasting eggplant variety now if I had to
recommend eggplant variety that was better than this it would be the Black
Beauty eggplant which has slightly softer skin so it just makes it easier
to cook the eggplant but if you're grilling the eggplant or you're boiling
it or you're cooking it very well then in that case this eggplant is a great
eggplant variety because it's actually very delicious so it really comes down
to what you like moringa we harvested a lot of Moringa
from our Moringa tree as well these are the moringa pods that we harvested as
you can see the leaves are also very green and nice but it's the pods that are
the most delicious part of the Moringa plant and as you can see here we
harvested these pods and there were plenty more growing on the tree so
almost throughout the month of August and September we saw an increase in the
production of our moringa pods due to the weather
and as you can see here we trimmed our Moringa tree due to which it's now
producing more branches and you can see a lot of moringa pods that are growing
on this tree so we were able to harvest a few moringa
pods both in August and in September and very delicious
moving on to okra now August and September again are the most productive
months for okra and we were growing a lot of okra varieties and you can see
here that we are harvesting this okra we have multiple varieties each with its
own looks texture and taste and one of our YouTube viewers asked us
a question as to how much okra do you need to grow to feed a family of four
now I usually grow my okra in a 16 foot by 16 foot raised bed and I think in
that space growing about I'd say around 20 to 30 okra plants you can keep
harvesting okras every day and then feed a family of four but you do need a lot
of okra plants because the fruit size or the okra size is not that big so you do
need to harvest a lot of okra so not the easiest vegetable to grow in your garden
but because okra is so expensive in the grocery store and also the fact that
fresh okra from your garden is just amazing I highly recommend that you grow
okra in your garden and I grow it almost every year
pineapples we harvested our second pineapple from this plant and you might
have seen our previous video on growing pineapples and this time the second time
we got this pineapple that was quite big and homegrown pineapples are just so
delicious if you haven't grown pineapples in your garden I highly
recommend that you try growing them and now let's look at the taro plant set for
growing we were growing a lot of taro plants in this bed and if you have been
following our monthly gardening series you might have seen the progress on this
plant as well and we harvested our taro roots this month in September and as you
can see here the plant is bearing a lot of these tubers a lot of taro roots
that we could harvest most of the taro is around the plant on the surface it
doesn't grow too deep so I just use a garden fork and then remove the plant
from the soil as you can see here and all the taro would be around the main
plant and once you harvest the taro you can actually replant the main plant
which I did in our case so that you can keep getting a constant supply of taro
for the next season as well
and as you can see here the taro plants are quite healthy they don't have any
problems with pests or diseases very easy to grow in your home garden and for
those of you who haven't tried taro it is a nuttier version of potato and it
tastes amazing here you can see after the harvest we have washed our taro
roots
and they look quite good, decently sized as well and once you dry it it
looks like this now once you have dried your taro roots they can be stored for
quite a long time
and tomatoes were slowing down in their production and you can see here some of
the container tomatoes were still producing tomatoes in September
we are harvesting this early girl tomato variety as you can see here it's quite a
prolific tomato variety the early girl and it does produce late into the season
as well
and as you can see here good looking tomatoes and homegrown tomatoes are
again one of the best you can consume and we had the early girl as well as the
Juliet tomatoes that were producing till September and the production has
definitely slowed down now that the weather is cooling down
we've still kept some of our tomato plants so that we can harvest the final
round of tomatoes before we plan to remove them next month
and now let's look at some things to do in your garden in our greenhouse we have
all our winter vegetables fall vegetables growing so it's a good time
to start seeding your cool season crops like cabbage cauliflower broccoli we
also have some Piper beetle plants growing in our greenhouse
it's also a good time to trim some of your summer vegetables like peppers or
eggplants if you're planning to overwinter them so this is a good time
to start doing that
and we are also planting more seeds onions here onions are again cool season
crop it's a good time to start onions this time we are sowing the seeds for
the smaller bulb variety white onions as you can see here and hopefully they will
be ready for transplanting very soon and now let's look at some gardening
products in your local stores you will see that coco coir is now more available
so although you can use peat moss coco coir is a more sustainable way to grow
your plants in your garden and you can now see more brands and more varieties
of coconut coir being available now I did notice that some of the pepper
plants in the stores also had these wrinkled leaves something that I was
seeing on my pepper plants as well and I think it's caused by diseases so make
sure you're choosing your plants wisely when you are buying new transplants so
there we have it folks that was our episode on the California garden for the
month of September if you like this video do give us a thumbs up if you have
a comment please put them in the comments box below we'll see you again
soon happy gardening