- When I first started gardening,
I would put in so much effort,
hours and hours and hours in the garden,
only to get sort of a pitiful harvest.
And if that sounds relatable to you,
well, this video is for you.
We're gonna talk about five epic tips,
bringing in a special guest to maximize your harvest.
Kicking it off here with tip number one,
I have peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes.
They're actually all in the same family of crops,
solanaceous crops.
This tip really works well for eggplant and peppers,
no matter what climate you're in,
and it is a shocking one.
It's almost like a cheat code for gardening
and we've done it for many, many years now,
and it would be overwintering these crops.
So let's take this eggplant.
I've pulled many an eggplant off of this.
It's time to demonstrate this for you.
You come in with your Felco 2 pruners, the pruner of choice,
and you just decapitate this thing.
You come in and you cut this down two-thirds.
So it's about three feet tall,
I'm cutting two feet of growth off
right near the growing tips.
So I'm gonna come down
and just chop this bad boy right here.
We're gonna cut this, we're going to cut this down here,
but all we're doing here is we're removing foliage
because this plant is basically going to start going dormant
as the temperatures drop.
It does not need the foliage.
Cut it down.
And then what you're doing, if you're in a cold climate,
is you're then going to dig this up,
pot it up, put it in a warm protected area,
water it maybe once a month or so during the winter,
don't really even need to fertilize it,
and then bury it back out in the garden in the spring.
In my particular case, I am going to do that,
but if you are in a warm climate,
you could just leave this in the ground until next year.
That's something that Jacques
here on the team does really effectively.
Like I said, eggplant's the perfect crop to do this with.
Peppers, if you have a favorite pepper you want to come back
year after year after year, this is the way to go.
- G'day, Epic Gardeners.
Another way you can maximize your harvest
is by using liquid fertilizers.
There are plenty of good brands available,
a standard garden fertilizer
or you could use a seaweed tonic as well
and that'll work a treat.
I don't have any salad plants to show you at the moment
because we're out of season
and most of them have gone to seed.
And I like that
'cause that is another way to maximize your harvest.
But liquid fertilizers are particularly good
for fast growing plants like salad crops
because they can absorb it a heck of a lot faster
than, say, a granulized or powdered type fertilizer
that is just placed on top of the surface.
That's all good too, of course,
but that is more of a long-term thing,
whereas if you really want to pump those salad crops up,
well, a liquid fertilizer helps a great deal.
You can also make your own liquid fertilizers,
like compost teas, for example,
and even manure teas and those type of things.
But it's really hard to beat a good liquid fertilizer
for those quick results and can buff up those crops,
like my biceps are buffing up lifting this up here
that's just watering this beautiful kale.
It's one of the salad crops
that actually does go into summer here, which is very nice.
Love the kale.
You know I hail the kale.
And while I'm doing this,
let's go back to the Epic Gardening crew.
- In order to get the biggest, best possible harvest
from your garden, it's really important
that you understand the context of your growing space
and how your garden actually plays with the light.
For example, I have this bed right here in front of me.
This is a bed full of brassicas.
So I have red Russian kale, broccolis, broccoli rabe.
All these plants require less sunlight
than, say, a fruiting plant like a tomato,
which I have right behind me.
So the difference here is that this side of the garden
actually gets shaded around 2:00 p.m.
So if I put a tomato there,
it probably wouldn't actually get any fruit,
whereas right over here, I have until 4:00 p.m. of light,
so that means that these tomatoes
will be able to fruit properly.
So understand your space, study it,
know where the most light is,
and think about exactly how you want to train your plant
and prune it to get what you want.
For example, this tomato is a determinate tomato.
I'm not gonna prune it whatsoever.
That's gonna give me the biggest possible yield of tomatoes
that I could possibly get, whereas right behind me,
I have indeterminate tomatoes
that have been trained to one or two leads.
What that means is I won't get as much of a harvest,
but I'll get it sooner and I'll get it faster.
So think about your goals and study your space
and you'll get the biggest harvest you could possible get.
- Another way that we maximize growth
here in our vegetable garden is through container growing.
Here we have about 50 different shapes and sizes
but you might want to grow
in something that's a little bit more portable
or if you have a smaller area, something like this,
a grow bag, for example.
You can get them small or larger,
like this huge one here
that is almost as big as any of our raised beds.
You can also, of course, garden in smaller containers
and rigid ones, clay pots.
I've even used things like milk bottles
to grow strawberries and chilies in.
Some nurseries sell secondhand pots for $1 each.
What I'm saying is no matter what your budget,
there is somewhere you can put your plants in and grow them,
so expanding your garden can be a really good way
to maximize your harvest.
Even if you do have a large patch like us,
bringing in those extra containers
and utilizing them either to grow extra crops
or as a temporary vessel
before you plant out into your garden
to give those plants a good start are all great ways
to maximize your harvest.
- To really make the most of your garden real estate
and to maximize what you can grow and harvest,
you want to look for areas that are sometimes underused.
So for my slower growing crops,
like the broccoli and cabbage,
I've got this little vacant area,
which is perfect for tucking some shallow rooted,
fast growing leafy greens or even radishes.
So as I wait for these slow-to-mature plants,
I can enjoy all of this fresh veg.
And another thing that I want to look for
when I'm trying to interplant are plants that are tall.
So I've got this really tall kale
and all of this free space underneath.
So the soil is vacant.
I can tuck a bunch of these plants underneath
and I can also put these plants underneath trellised areas.
So if I'm growing beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers vertically,
there's likely a spot
where I can grow a flush of fast growing crops.
Now, you do want to keep in mind when interplanting
is that you don't want to overcrowd
because then you can run into pest and disease issues.
And with those issues,
you're probably not gonna see great yields.
And also because you're planting pretty much an understory,
that there's gonna be decreased sunlight,
so you want to keep that in mind when you interplant.
- A counterintuitive, but beautifying, tip here
is to just plant more flowers.
Why?
Well, look at this bed right here.
This is my Greenstalk garden.
This is one of the two that we have here.
I have zinnias.
I have all sorts of different flowers.
I just saw a pollinator zipping around this garden.
So many of the vegetables
that we grow in our gardens need pollination.
Even if it is a so-called perfect flower,
meaning that it has the male and the female parts,
things like a tomato, a pepper are still going to benefit
from a little pollination,
but certainly things like zucchini, et cetera,
maybe different fruit trees that have an A and a B type.
So more flowers in the garden
not only honestly looks incredible,
but will bring a lot more pollinators to your garden,
which effectively does the work for you,
along with all the other benefits
of having those pollinators in here,
so plant more flowers, guys.
But that's really not all the tips you need to know.
In fact, over on Mark at Self Sufficient Me's channel,
we have five more for you.
So check that out, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.
(mellow hiphop music)