Lucie: Hey everyone, and welcome back to my YouTube channel! Before we dive into it,
give this video a thumbs up! And if you're not yet subscribed, be sure
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replying to people. Thank you so much to Fabletics for sponsoring today's video.
This is one of my favorite outfits from last month's collection, and if you stay
tuned until the end, I'll show you some of my favorites from
the July collection that I've been wearing in and around my garden.
Also, I am sitting outside right now, so I apologize if the wind is kind of loud...
So, over the past few months I've been headed back and forth between my parents'
house and Michael's parents' house, and every single time I was at my
parents' house I would find that I was putting
immense pressure on my parents to start a garden. I am definitely one of those
daughters who's a little bit pushy when it comes to
trying to teach my parents ways to improve their health
and just to live the longest lives that they possibly can... so one thing I've been
doing is encouraging them to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables... And what
better way to do that than to have a garden of your own?! I've also heard that
gardening is good for your mental health as well, so it's a win-win!
My parents were open to the idea... but at first they just didn't know where to put
the garden. If we were gonna assemble an in-ground
garden in our backyard, we would have needed to build a fence around it to
keep animals out. My parents already had some plants growing in our backyard, and
an animal had already come by in the middle of the
night and eaten our hosta plant... Plus on top of the issue of not knowing
where to put the garden, none of us had ever had any experience with growing
food of our own... so, after a bit of research, we just decided that the
easiest way to start for newbies like us was to build a container garden. If you
are unfamiliar with this term... I personally didn't know what it meant a
couple of weeks ago... But, as I learned, it's essentially a
garden that's in pots and in grow bags and planter boxes
in lieu of having things planted in the ground. If you've seen my 5 Days of
Indoor Gardening video, you'll know that i have a friend from high school who is
a total plant enthusiast. She used to be on Broadway, but she's now
the girl behind the Bloom & Grow radio podcast and YouTube show,
and she is 100% my go-to when it comes to all things plants.
Maria: Hi, Fink Fam and Lucie... I am Maria, the founder and host of the Bloom & Grow
radio podcast and YouTube channels where I interview experts and learn
alongside you to get us all growing... As you can see in my plant-y
corner of my home. I am so excited that Lucie and her mom
are on their growing journey, because a small herb garden and a tomato
plant is what started my journey going from plant killer to plant lady.
Lucie: As Maria taught me, there are so many perks to starting a container garden.
Maria: So, container gardening can be a lot more palatable for a lot of gardeners...
especially beginners... for a lot of reasons.
Number one, you can start small. Getting a couple of containers together on your
balcony or porch can be so much less overwhelming than thinking about
designing and executing an entire garden plot. I'm growing strawberries,
tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, garlic, every herb you can possibly imagine... and
all of it in only NINE SQUARE FEET. And the second reason is you really
don't have to worry about soil that much. You can just pick a high quality organic
potting medium that you put in your container,
and not have to worry about whatever you've got outdoors. Another reason is
containers are transportable... So, if you're a new gardener, or if you have a
new home and you're not quite sure what that
sweet spot is for your plants... you can actually just move the
containers until you find the final resting place for your plants to bloom and grow.
Lucie: So I wasn't actually here with my parents when they set this garden up,
so I didn't film any in-process shots... but I'm going to share with you exactly
what they did and then I'll take you on a little tour of the garden. So, one day
they were shopping at Stop & Shop, and they discovered that Stop & Shop was
giving out these free seeds! Basically when you made other purchases,
you could take as many seeds as you want. So my parents took an entire bundle
of seeds. Each comes as a little dried tablet of dirt, and then there's a little
sheet of compostable paper with seeds embedded in it. So all you do is you add
a little bit of water to the tablet, and then, like
magic, it expands and just turns into real dirt.
Then you lay the sheet of seeds on top of that, add a little bit more dirt on
top, and you've planted your seed! You just take care of it like normal until
the seeds sprout, at which point you transplant them
into a bigger pot or into more space. So, for the pots my parents just gathered an
assortment of pots from around the house that they've used from previous plants
that they've grown. The one new thing that they got here was
a wooden planter box. You can get these on Amazon or from any
home appliance or gardening store... And I believe that all they used was a mixture
of soil and organic compost. The tomato plants were the only thing
from this garden that didn't start as seeds for my parents. So, my parents
actually bought tomato plants that were already growing
in soil, and all they did was transplant them into these larger pots.
So just to take you on a general tour of this garden from left to right... So
starting at the left side... this is where the tomatoes are. There are a couple
different varieties of tomatoes. So there are jet star tomatoes in the front,
and then cherry tomatoes growing in the back. The tomatoes need some support,
because the actual fruit it bears is pretty heavy... So you can see
that we have either sticks or these round tomato cages to promote straight
growth and to support the plants and their fruit...
Maria: Make sure that tomatoes get a minimum of six, and ideally eight, hours of direct sunlight. Those leaves like to soak up the sun!
Lucie: And then, also on this side of the garden, we're growing green beans!
These grew pretty quickly, so we've already harvested a bunch of them,
and you can see that a lot more are growing and starting to get larger.
Also on the left side, we have a pot of romaine lettuce, and that has grown so
well and we've eaten so much of that already. We have another container of
romaine lettuce that we keep a little closer to the door...
We find that since we harvest this so frequently, we wanted two pots and we
wanted to make one easily accessible to the house. Lettuce
is probably the thing we harvest the most of and the most
often, so we wanted two containers of it, and we figured we'd keep one close to
the house for easy access. Inside of the planter box there is a lot
going on. So there's cucumber in there, there's squash, or yellow zucchini...
and then there are some herbs like basil and parsley. There are also little
sprouts coming up... So we're not 100% sure what everything is, but the leaves
in the planter box are the biggest leaves that we have by far...
and the plants are getting very tall, so we also have supports built in there.
A lot of these plants have these skinny, swirly, viney things poking out, and they
just coil around other stems and climb higher and higher...
so we are really excited to see how big this plant gets.
Maria: They're actually called "tendrils", and they can be found in the squash / melon family, the pea family, and several other species.
For next year, I would definitely suggest that you put that cucumber in its own pot. Cucumbers, like tomatoes and squash,
are pretty epic growers. They grow really enormous leaves and they need a lot of room to grow.
Lucie: On the bottom right of this garden, there are a couple of
other pots. One has a plant in it that we've just
completely lost the tag for... so we have no idea what's growing in
there... We're just gonna have to wait to see what pops up on the leaves...
And then the other pot has a lot of stuff going on. So there's celery,
there's radishes, herbs, cilantro, and a bunch of other greens that we can't
quite identify... So, you might be sitting here wondering "well,
what about the animals?" because I mentioned that we would have needed to
build a fence around an in-ground garden... So why is our porch safe? And the answer
to that is... Missy. If you've watched my previous
video, you'll know that there's a wild cat that we named Missy that showed up
at my parents' house recently, and my parents have essentially taken
her in as a pet except she's never come into our house.
They took her once to the vet to get rabies shots and to have her spayed, and
then they put her back outside and she shows up every day. She sits on
my mom's lap, she loves my family, and she protects our porch. So, because
she basically lives on our porch and protects the house...
no animals have eaten anything from the garden so far. One thing to note is that
this container garden on our porch is a total game of trial-and-error. One day
we'll go outside and we'll see that the tomato leaves are just completely wilted,
so we'll add water, and within a few minutes it's perked right back up.
Sometimes if it's raining and we don't take something out of the rain, we notice
that the plant is not looking too hot... but after we pull it out of the rain it
seems to bounce back. Pretty much everything we're doing is just a test.
We're just experimenting. We're learning as we go, and hopefully every year we do this we'll get better and better.
Maria: Lucie, I am so proud of you, and I love
watching the plant lady in you continue to grow!
I really think you hit it on the head. Gardening can really be an eternal
experiment. No matter how many years of gardening
you do / you have under your belt, there is always something to learn...
and the most important part is that you just get started and TRY.
Lucie: Personally, I have been itching to grow my own food since the end of winter... so
I'm really grateful that my mom decided to take up this hobby and do this with
me. The garden looks amazing, and it's so much fun to take care of and to watch
all the fruits and vegetables grow... And I am just so excited to keep
you updated. Stay tuned, and be sure to follow me on Instagram
@luciebfink. When I get back to my parents' house, I'll be sure to give you
updates on my stories! And now I want to share with you some of
my favorite outfits from the Fabletics July collection that I have been wearing
as I garden! These are my favorite shorts of the moment! I love the light and dark
blue tones, as well as the light and dark pink tones!
They're really comfortable... There's a hidden pocket on the back...
and i've just been super into shorts this summer because... it is HOT.
This is great to pair with either a pink sports bra or a blue one. My favorite is
the royal blue sculptknit sports bra. It's incredibly stretchy...
so easy to get over your head... And the crisscross in the back is really
cute. This is the same sports bra in pink, and this would be the other thing that I
would pair those shorts with. But I also just love wearing this with anything... so
I often pair them with black, white, or gray... These gray
leggings are really cute... This is the back with the crisscross
mesh pocket... This is moisture-wicking fabric, so it's great if you're sweating.
They're just really soft and really simple. These capris are
the same type of fabric. They have the same crisscross pocket in the back, but
these are an electric neon color and I love that they're capris, so they help my
ankles breathe. I've been loving capris lately, just
because if you're really hot in the summer and you don't want your pants to
go all the way down to your feet, these are a great alternative.
And I have a really cute, light, white shirt that I've been pairing this with.
This t-shirt is just so light and so comfortable... You have to feel this fabric
to understand how light and soft it is... but I love the little crisscross
tie in the back. It's just a perfect tee to throw on top of pretty much anything.
Because I've been super hot this summer, these shorts have been
some of my favorites. I love the color combination. There's kind of a light pink
stripe on the rim... and this one also has a zipper in the
back. This is perfect for if I go on a walk and I want to throw my headphones
or my cell phone in here. And I usually pair this with a matching sports bra...
which is one of my favorites, because it has that zipper front.
This sports bra is interesting because there's sort of a typical
bra clasp situation happening in the back... but it's also just a standard
sports bra. And I love that it's a combination of
mesh... It almost also has, like, regular lingerie-looking cups... so it's
cute and functional. And my last favorite
outfit of the moment is this safari green set...
These utility leggings are part of the Motion 365 collection.
They have a pocket on the right-hand side and a zipper on the left-hand side...
and my favorite part about these leggings are the zippers on the ankles.
I also love how these zippers are a little chunkier than some of the others.
But this one still has that hidden, small zipper on the back...
And the matching sports bra... It's one of my favorites. It's the type that has that
mesh pocket on the back of the sports bra, which is the perfect size to throw a
phone in. I'm popping a link in my description
box that can get you any two bottoms for $24,
right now, just by becoming a Fabletics VIP! They have new styles available every
month, they're size inclusive... so there's
something for everyone... and the clothing is so cute,
so comfortable, and incredibly functional! Thank you for coming back to my channel.
I hope you enjoyed this tour of my mom's garden.
Comment below if you are also a person who grows their own food!
Let me know if you have any tips for me, or if there's anything that I just
need to know... Or, even if you don't grow your own food, comment below
and let me know what you would like to grow! Thank you for watching! Don't forget
to give this video a thumbs up, and i'll see you next time!