It's time to plant the fall garden.
Hi, I'm Tim. Welcome to the Shades of Green Show. Today is Sunday,
September 12th, 2021, and today I'm going to plant the fall garden.
I'm going to put some seeds in today for the fall crop. Um, quick a reminder,
if you watched some of the other videos, this is where I had,
this time last year, I planted my garlic in this bed.
And I like to do crop rotation, so this season,
the garlics and the onions are going to go in this bed. And if you're not aware,
you do want to plant your garlic now, um, here in September, early October,
'cause it takes about nine months to mature and that's what I'm going to do
here. Also,
this was over here all through the spring and summer season.
That's what my cucumbers were climbing up on. All I did was disconnect it,
put it over here.
I like to use stainless steel hose clamps to connect my hog
panel to the T post. I think it makes it real simple to move around.
Um, I like that these are stainless steel because they don't rust or corrode.
And uh, that way I don't have to have tons of these laying around.
I can just use one in several places just by moving it around. Anyway, uh,
after I harvested the garlic and the onions late may, early June, uh,
I guess it was mid June, I guess. Uh,
I tried planting a few other things in here. I threw some peppers in the ground.
I tried a summer tomato. Nothing really worked out too well,
except for the zinnias, which were very, very happy. Uh,
but even those have taken a beating, uh, they didn't, oh,
I missed a couple of days of watering and the triple digit heat indexes that we
had in late August rolling into September, weren't too kind to these things.
Even though they do love the sun, that was a lot of heat.
So I'm going to remove these and a little tip about that. Uh,
as I've said before, I like to have a living root in the ground at all times,
but when it's time to pull something out,
I don't want to just rip it up.
What I want to do is cut it at the ground so that the roots of the plant
stay in the soil
and they release all that stored nutrients,
all their stored nutrients that are in their roots that will return to my soil
and help feed my soil. So anytime I pull something out,
I'm just going to cut it at the base, leave the roots in my garden.
So that's what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go through and cut down all t
he stuff that's ready to go. I've got some basil here going to seed,
so those leaves aren't going to be very tasty anymore. Uh, this is some, uh, uh,
alyssum that I had to attract bees as my cucumbers were just getting
started. That's going to go. And once I remove all this,
I'm going to come back and top dress with some compost,
maybe a little bit of low dose, organic fertilizer as well,
and then I'll be putting some seeds in the ground. So let's get to it.
[
music].
Okay. Now that I've got all the plants pulled out of the way, which by the way,
are heading to the compost bin,
so when I get ready to plant my crops next spring,
those plants will be returned to the soil to help feed my soil. Anyway,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my Espoma Garden Tone.
Just a little bit. Uh, because again,
I don't have anything actively growing or producing fruit.
I'm just going to take a hand,
a couple of handfuls of this gently spread it across the soil.
And then I'm going to come in with some cotton burr compost, which I really,
really like. Dump that on top.
Again, spread it out rather thin. There's a carrot. I'll try to save that one.
Hey guy, stay with me.
I want to spread this about an inch or so. Um, and as you can tell,
this wooden raised bed is in its last days. If it makes it through the winter,
I'll be pleased. And then next spring,
I'm going to replace it with something much better.
Probably one of the new Vego Garden,
modular metal raised bed kits that we just started selling here at Shades of
Green.
Just spread that around and I'm going to just come along and just gently
turn. And by doing that,
I'm getting some of that fertilizer and some of that compost to drop down into
the top, you know, four or five inches of soil.
I'm going to do that for the entire bed and all the other beds.
And then we're going to come back and plant some seeds. All right,
all I'm doing is sticking my trowel in the ground and rolling it clockwise,
or counter-clockwise. Twisting.
By sinking that shovel in the ground, I'm just loosening up the soil a bit.
The beauty of raised beds is that you never walk on them.
You never compact the soil. But because I'm trying to mix in -
there's an onion - because I'm trying to mix in this compost and some of this
fertilizer, I just put down, it helps. Again, I'm not going crazy.
I'm not coming in here with a tiller. I'm not flipping it over so that the, um,
what's down five inches below the surface is now upside down and pointing toward
the sun. Just a little gently,
coming in and doing this mixed together. Then I'm going to come in
and even it all out again. Get rid of all these craters and dips.
Smooth it out. Once I've got it smoothed out,
I'm going to put my seeds in the ground and then come back and water everything.
What we're planting here on the trellis, these are snow peas.
These are going to climb somewhere between four and six feet,
which is why we need the trellis.
Have those beautiful little seed pods that tastes great right off the vine.
Nice and crunchy. Um, they're, they're cold tolerant. So they'll, they'll, uh,
they'll produce up until we get really, really cold. Uh,
but they are called snow peas for a reason.
I'm going to plant a few by transplants and then a few by seeds.
My money is really on the seeds.
I'm worried that it's still a bit too hot for these guys because this is Texas.
Even though it's September, it's still 97, 98 degrees. So, but that's,
what's going here. All we're going to do is dig a hole, take this out.
With your transplants, what you want to do is...
The roots will probably be in a square because they've been in these pots to
get, uh, ready to be sent to a nursery.
Just gently pull the roots apart at the bottom so that they're no longer going
in a circle that will send them out into your soil a little quicker.
You can also gently squeeze the root ball and pull it apart like
that and drop it in your hole. That'll make a big,
big difference in how quickly your transplants get established.
As for the seeds, real simple. I'm gonna make a hole.
I'm gonna drop a seed in the hole. I'm going to cover the hole.
That's all there is to it. All right.
So we're halfway there with our fall garden. I've got snow peas,
uh, two transplants. We had, they arrived this week here at Shades of Green.
I just couldn't resist. So I went ahead and put those in,
but down the center here and on either ends of the T posts,
I've got seed planted on a different variety of snow peas. If all goes,
according to plan, these should reach the top of this trellis.
And I should have an abundant crop of snow peas. And then here in the front,
I planted radishes. Now I still like to do the square foot gardening method.
So I just eyeballed it. Figured out what a square foot was.
And then I would put a nine radishes in each square.
So I got one transplant there that's a radish, but the rest of this,
the front of this bed is all radish by seed. Uh, and I'll, uh,
I've already gone over what's in the other beds. So, uh,
that's all there is to it. I still got to plant my garlic.
It hasn't arrived yet.
I special ordered two varieties that I really wanted through the mail.
Garlic is super easy to buy in the mail.
Or you can just go to your favorite grocery store,
find an organic garlic that you like to eat.
Sometimes the nonorganic garlic is treated so that it doesn't start sprouting in
the grocery store. Find a non organic garlic.
You can go ahead and break the clove up and then put the individual little
pieces in the ground, pointy side, up root side down. It's that simple,
but know that it takes about nine months to plant. So there you go. Uh,
we'll be doing updates a little more frequently hopefully in the fall so you can
see how things progress, but, uh, we're on our way. I'm Tim.
Thanks for watching the Shades of Green Show.