hello friends and welcome to the February 2020 garden tour In today's
episode we begin with the garden tour we then look at all the harvests we made
this month we also have a delicious recipe for you and finally we'll take a
look at some cool gardening products so let's begin with the garden tour this is
the area that we were planning to have our raised beds installed on and as you
can see if you've done all the groundwork of digging up and making sure
that the PVC pipes and the drains are put in place and we're gonna be using
cinder blocks to prepare our beds and as you can see cinder block is a very
versatile very sturdy material and instead of going with wood or any other
material we decided to go with a permanent solution like cinder blocks
which are put in place together using concrete or cement and this is a
very sturdy option a very reliable option that you can use for many years
to come and let's take a closer look at how the raised beds are set up as you
can see we have made sure that the drains are in place there will also be
some PVC pipe connections inside to make sure that each of these beds is
irrigated well and the concrete blocks are quite sturdy and they can withstand
adverse weather for quite a long time so overall I think this is a great solution
to raised beds and as you can see we have three blocks and then a cap on top
of that we were initially thinking of using two blocks which is 12 inches but
adding that third block which makes the total about 18 inches is a much better
solution so that you can add a lot of soil good quality soil and then grow
your vegetables inside these raised beds let me know what you think of these
raised beds do you think using cinder blocks or concrete is a better solution
than using wood let me know what you think in the comments box below
and now let's look at all the harvest we made this month beginning with peppers
this is the bird's eye chili pepper and as you might have seen in my previous
monthly video we were growing these indoors and these produce a lot of
peppers now after harvesting all the peppers as you can see here we will be
trimming this plant and then replanting it in the same pot so that it grows even
more peppers we plan to keep this plant indoors for the rest of the season as we
don't have space to grow it outside anyways and the bird's eye chili pepper
is an extremely hot pepper it's actually much hotter than the cayenne pepper
variety and it produces a decent harvest the peppers are not that large in size
but with the quantity of peppers that you get from this plant that's quite
enough so if you're looking for a hot pepper variety this is a great pepper
variety to grow in your home garden and here you can see the peppers they look
amazing very fresh very delicious and now let's move on to Tomatoes we were
growing cherry tomatoes indoors as well and you can see this plant I just
brought it outdoors just that we could harvest it and trim it and put it back
in the soil or in the container and since we don't have a raised bed setup
yet I will be moving this over to a container but the cherry Tomatoes grew
quite well as you can see the tomatoes look quite nice and we did get a lot of
tomatoes this is the husky cherry red tomato variety and it produced a lot of
tomatoes moving on to Sun berries now this is a very unique vegetable of fruit
you can actually call it a fruit but the Sun berries are very unique tasting and
they're mostly consumed for their medicinal values like they have a lot of
vitamins and minerals that are supposed to be good for you now I'm not really a
big fan of this vegetable or this berry this plant was given to me by one of my
friends and he recommended that I grow this plant and once the berries turned
ripe that they could be consumed raw and they have a very unique taste I can't
really describe it but it doesn't taste like a regular berry it's more
more like sour or a little more bland than any other berry that I've eaten
people don't eat this for its taste but rather the medicinal value that it
provides now it's really difficult to harvest these berries because they're so
soft and they just crush in your hands when you're harvesting them but overall
it was fun to grow this plant as you can see the harvest it gives you a lot of
berries some people even dry these berries and then consume it with yogurt
and moving on to tangerines this is the gold nugget tangerine and this is one
tangerine that we have been growing in our whiskey barrel container for quite
some time and this is a season it produces these tangerines and as you can
see these two entities look very nice and are very sweet and delicious
now these tangerines are not as sweet as the kishu mandarin but this tangerine
variety does produce late into the season so it's like February right now
and we are still harvesting a lot of tangerines so this is a good variety if
you want harvest that last into February or March or the early spring season now
I eventually plan to move this into the ground however right now we don't have
space to do that but once we plan out our garden most
likely this will be moved to the ground and now let's look at some indoor
vegetables that we were growing this is the hydroponic system that I spoke about
in my previous video and we are harvesting a lot of vegetables from our
hydroponic grow system the green joy hydroponic grow system
so what we're harvesting here are amaranth dill cilantro and we were able
to harvest a lot of these from just this one hydroponic row box and once we
complete harvesting it I will then move on to what did we do
with the harvest which is something new that you will see in this month's
episode and I hope you find it interesting but overall I'm very pleased
with this green joy hydroponic growing system I think we were easily able to
grow herbs like cilantro and even larger plants like dill or amaranth very easily
in this system it does require some maintenance though you have to watch the
water once the plants grow but overall I think
I was quite pleased with the way this hydroponic system gave us the harvest
and here you can see the root system the plant that was growing in this
hydroponic kit has very dense roots I literally had to pull these out and you
can see here the roots are quite large and it's actually quite interesting to
see how these roots grow inside the water but here you can see the roots and
once the plant is harvested and you're ready to grow a new plant you can
actually remove this completely and then start new seedlings and then repeat the
process all over again
and now let's move on to the new section in today's monthly episode which is
recipes you saw that we harvested from our green joy hydroponic grow box the
amaranth the dill and we're going to be putting it to good use
what we are doing here is chopping up the amaranth leaves amaranth is
extremely healthy it has a lot of vitamins and minerals and here you can
see the dill leaves dill again is very good for your health I highly recommend
that you start consuming the amaranth and all these other wonderful leafy
greens in your diet and that will not only help you lead a much healthier life
it will also make you resistant to a lot of diseases you build immunity when you
eat healthy leafy greens and we're gonna be chopping up some more amaranth leaves
here as you can see the amaranth leaves if you're using are a mix of the green
ambulant as well as the red amaranth and Amaranth does take some time to cook so I
usually chop them up not too fine but at least to a point where it's easier for
me to cook them and this is the red amaranth as you can see red colored
leaves once again lot of good vitamins and minerals in this amaranth variety as
well and when you mix different colors of vegetables leafy greens that's what
will give you a lot of vitamins and minerals that are essential for leading
a healthy life now what we're going to do is dice a potato I use Yukon Gold
potatoes because I love the flavor of the Yukon Gold potatoes they have a nice
buttery flavor so all you do is dice this potato just one medium potato and
what we'll be making today is a wonderful stir-fried recipe that you can
eat with quinoa or tortillas or almost anything else now to start the cooking
process we take a skillet or pan or anything that you want to use and add a
tablespoon of oil and once the oil heats up in a minute or so just add some cumin
seeds some mustard seeds and optionally you can also add something which is
available in a lot of indian grocery stores it's like puffed lentils
and now once the oil is heated up you just mix it in a little bit and then add
the potatoes now I like the potatoes to be a little brown or a little roasted in
the stir-fry so just go ahead and mix it in with the cumin seeds and the mustard
seeds and just stir fry it very well and the potato pieces take some time to cook
so I usually cook these potatoes for about seven minutes or so and that's
quite enough to cook these potatoes now add some chili powder turmeric
powder and salt and mix it in but once the spices are mixed in very
well you can then add the leafy greens here we are adding the chopped up leafy
greens which is the amaranth and the dill and the dill gives a very nice
subtle flavor to the stir-fry and it really brings out a lot of flavors in
the dish so you just mix it in with the potatoes and once you mix it in the
amaranth and the dill they will still take some time to cook so I usually mix
it in and once it's thoroughly mixed in you can add some salt as well at this
stage well if you want to skip the salt and just enjoy the natural flavors you
can do that too and once this is thoroughly mixed in what I usually do is
just cover this and cook for another seven minutes or so and that's enough
for these vegetables to cook and once that's done you can add some spices in
this case I'm using this spice that you see on the screen you can pretty much
add any spice or if you want more of a bland stir fry you can skip that as well
and after about seven to ten minutes you will have a delicious stir-fried dish
which contains amaranth dill potatoes and you can eat this with either rice or
quinoa or tortilla however you like it so I hope you enjoyed this recipe and if
you have any comments regarding the recipe or would like to know more let me
know and if you'd like to see more recipes in the upcoming videos do let me
know as well and now let's look at some cool gardening products at Costco
they've started selling all garden products you can see the dr. earth pure
gold all-purpose plant food and this is an
amazing product from the ingredients that are listed here and it's at a
decent price it's a liquid all-purpose fertilizer that you can use for all your
organic gardening needs The Miracle Grow organic potting mix is available for
$8.99 which is quite a decent price for this potting mix which is a great
quality potting mix the plants we have a lot of plants tomatoes and peppers and a
lot of other plants that are quite large and the quality of the plants that I saw
was just amazing and 3-pack is available $8.99 so you could choose multiple plants
here you can see the cilantro the cilantro leaves are just absolutely huge
I'm not sure what kind of seeds they used but the quality of the cilantro
looks pretty good the pepper varieties are quite a lot and for $8.99 for a 3
pack it's quite a decent price for the size of the plant these are quite large
plants so you'll have to spend less time taking care of it and they will give you
harvests sooner than smaller plants and as always there's also the Whitney farms
organic planting soil and you can use these for raised beds as well as
containers however it's NOT recommended that you use this for raised beds and for $7.99
it's a good deal as well so there we have it folks that was our episode on
the February 2020 monthly gardening series if you like this video do give us
a thumbs up if you have any questions or comments or suggestions please leave
them in the comments box below we'll see you again soon happy gardening