Good morning. It is a great day today! It's Friday.
I don't have anything on my calendar today except hanging out here in the
garden, with you guys, to get a lot of work done.
So today we're going to plant some melons.
We've got a very special delivery later on in the video that I am so excited
about. I can't actually believe that it is coming. But right now,
let me take you over there and show you where we're planting the melons.
This patch here is our final semi-prepped patch.
You can see we're hydrating it right now with this weird manifold thing.
Many of you watching the blog have seen this GriffTek manifold hacked thing that
we've done. But what I want to do, this is just pure compost right here,
what I want to do is take all this soil here. This is native top soil.
It came when we dug out the rainwater tank. So it's a little clumpy.
It's definitely heavy in clay,
but we know that the organic matter content is good.
I'm going to take about half of this and mix it with half of that.
So we'll do a 50/50 topsoil compost mix. We're just hydrating this first.
You can see, even with cardboard laid down,
we've been picking out Bermuda grass in this section.
So it's just going to be something we have to battle here.
But what I need to do next is shovel this over to here.
Pretty simple process there. Just about five barrels full of topsoil,
which actually came from the front yard when we did the greywater project. So,
good to get that out of the front yard, looking a little bit nicer in the front.
Improving the soil here. Put a couple cupfuls of Bio-tone in,
I would say maybe eight cups worth across this whole bed.
Not a hundred percent necessary,
but I always do like to add it to a starter bed.
And now all we have to do is incorporate it. So Jacques' favorite tool,
the potato fork, is back in action. I'll use the bowrake.
We'll get this done real quick.
The bed is looking really nice. You can see how that was the pure compost color.
And over there is the pure soil color.
And you can see we have this nice sort of coffee brown that we've had a lot of
good results in. That's effectively what's in the corn bed right over there.
And we've had a lot of good results.
We've done a couple of different things there.
But now I'm going to take our weird manifold hydrator,
and we'll put it on here for about an hour.
We'll let it hydrate and we'll be back. But while that's hydrating over there,
just want to come through on these tomatoes really quickly. It's just clip time.
So if we come in and kind of see what we do, you just take the tomato clip.
You guys have probably seen this before honestly, it's nothing shocking,
but it does help.
It's nice to see the tomatoes have made it over the halfway point on most of
these trellises. And I think, slow to start, we had a weird June.
It was pretty gloomy. Even the end of May was pretty gloomy.
This is the first or the second good weather day in June.
And so I'm kind of being a little loose here, like on this one for example,
there's a sucker that I'm just going to let go at this point.
Cause it's a lower and lean style. I'll just let it go. It's no big deal.
But you do want to affix these clips if you're using the vertical tie-up method.
That's it. I think over there, Jacques, if you just take a look at that,
we'll put in another Florida weave row. And we'll be back on the melons.
All right, we're ready to plant. So we have three cantaloupes and three melons,
but two of the cantaloupes are the same. So I have Hale's best.
That's a very classic variety. Over there, we have Hakucho Charantais.
Yeah, I should know it as it has a French name, but...
We don't know the actual pronunciation. Maybe comment down below.
But the melons and then the cantaloupes. Jacques,
why don't you read those ones off? So, this is the, sorry,
this is actually the Beni Kodama. Beni Kodama.
So that's actually the small melon. And then we have, I believe,
the Ali Baba is over here. Ali Baba, which is a big melon. Yup.
Then orange glow, which is an orange one. Yeah. So kind of an interesting mix.
Most people probably wouldn't plant them like this, but this is the bed we have.
So this is what we're going to do.
You would typically plant them four feet apart. We're pretty close to that,
actually. I would say we're maybe three, three and a half feet apart.
And you would typically go six foot between rows.
I would say we're at five foot if you consider this diagonal zig zag spacing.
And so I'm going to put in three, four per mound. We only have two of a couple.
So we're just going to put that in, maybe direct sow another one later.
But that's it. I mean, just pop them in the ground.
You don't have to plant them too far apart.
We've already put Bio-tone in the soil.
We've got some more Bio-tone I'm just gonna put in the planting hole.
And then we're going to water it in with a mixture of water and something called
azos, which will be in the video description. So let's get to it.
All right. Now it's just watering this in and we're on to the next thing today.
It's nice that we already hydrated it because it's just accepting the water
right away. So we don't have to do a whole lot,
basically just snugging up
the transplant in against the soil.
So just this much is probably fine, honestly.
Okay, it's pretty hot out right now so we're hanging out under the awning.
And the door rang and Corona Tools dropped off a bunch
of stuff.
So we kind of put together a test product list and I figured,
here on the Homesteading channel, we would do a fun little unboxing.
And so this actually would've come in handy earlier today with the melons.
So this, sorry, is a pretty heavy, ooh, there we go.
It is a pretty heavy, what is the official name of this? Level head rake. Yeah.
Yeah, level head rake.
And so this would have been nice with those melons and those watermelons,
to kind of just come through and then you could use the back to flatten.
So you mix, flatten. Would've been nice. We'll use it next time.
I love these tools! I'm straight up, I'm obsessed.
I'm obsessed with tools in general, but these ones are next level. Okay.
So YOU put this on the list. Oh, yeah. What is this? Looks like they call it,
Burgon and Ball makes it, part of Corona I guess.
So it's called the hip-trug. And the deal is like,
when you're harvesting a bunch of things. It clips. Yeah,
you could put it on your pants instead of like using the old shirt method. Okay.
You can just let this. Might be ... Pretty useful. Yeah. Okay.
So here we've got,
the garden hermit gets some style points for that. So here we go.
All steel nursery ...
this is just sort of a spade with a foot pedal.
Right, just like shorter. Yeah. Which is kind of handy. This is great for like,
I mean, what would you use this for? Straight up just digging a hole. Yeah,
I would use that probably to plant trees. Yeah,
this is a really good sapling planter, maybe bare root planter,
something like that. So this will go into the mix.
We've got this guy here. Oh, boy!
This is a weeder. So we've got, let's let's unwrap it real quick. Yeah,
it's probably sharp. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. It's sharp on this side.
Yeah. So I guess you're going to come through on this one and pfffshtt, right?
I think the deal with that is that you're standing up so you don't have to like
get into an uncomfortable position. So, you'd come in here and just ... Exactly.
So it's sort of a weird scuffle hoe. Weird design of a scuffle hoe.
Not weird "bad", just unique. Yeah. This one's from Burgon and Ball.
This is Burgon and Ball. So Burgon and Ball is a sister company of Corona Tools.
All right. Now here.
Now this would've come in handy. We still have to do trenches for sure,
because we've got to do irrigation on the whole property. But man,
this would've come in handy a while ago, I'll tell you that much.
When we were doing the greywater. When we were doing the rainwater as well.
So this is just a trenching shovel. Also with the fence,
if we were doing a lot of the fence work. I mean,
this is pretty sleek I have to say, with that curve.
Yeah that was like a new one that they had listed. It's curved,
which is supposed to make it a lot easier to actually empty the trench.
Just scoop it out. Oh,
this will actually be quite handy if we're doing like edging.
Like what if we're trying to prevent Bermuda from coming into a bed.
You just trench around the whole thing. Pruning shears, you can't go wrong.
We got a holder. This is actually great to have! So this is a set of files,
because the thing that I like about Corona,
obviously we're brand partners with Corona so we love Corona in general.
But the thing I really like is you can get replacement parts for every single
part of every single tool. And they even sell stuff to maintain it.
So really it's a true "buy it for life".
Like with this pruning shear right here,
if anything breaks I just get the piece that broke. And if it dulls,
I just sharpen it with the stuff that they also sell. So it's really,
really nice. So we got a set of files. Farmers file, another one. Yep,
farmers file here.
PVC pipe cutter for irrigation projects coming in.
Oh, is this it? Okay,
so Jacques snuck a couple of goodies in here.
This is another Burgon and Ball. Actually, I'm really excited about this.
Just for the, almost just for the vibe of it.
Cause it's a hand sickle. So an herbaceous sickle.
So you could come through and like thin out a patch of mint or something like
that. But I've got the wheat over there that I might hand sickle away,
thresh it that way, I think is the terminology. So this is actually pretty cool.
I'm actually really excited about that. This, yeah this is a widger.
This is another Burbon and Ball one. So imagine you have a,
like a pot of soil and you want to plop in a seedling.
You can just make a really quick depression.
It's kind of like another way to do a dibble. Yeah,
it's also nice for propagating if you want to separate out something. True,
true. Like a big ...
If you like surface sowed a bunch into one, you can just grab it out. Okay.
That's great. We've got I believe, some shears,
can't go wrong with those. We've got the PVC hand saw, another irrigation gear.
So it's got the nice tight tines on it.
That will work really well for that. This is for when you break a threaded bit.
This is what I did. So when I did the irrigation video at my old house,
I was doing a sprinkler conversion and I did break like three of them.
I broke them off. And I was like, I don't understand how to get it out.
And then I went to Ace and they're like, oh, here's what you have.
So the easy out. Not too much left here. This is, oh. For Bermuda,
is what I was thinking. Yeah, this is the hand maddock.
Yep. So we've been using a pretty significant maddock.
I think it's called the cutter maddock from Corona.
Jacques actually probably got jacked,
just working out with that thing in the garden.
But this one is really nice for getting in any sort of rhizome- based weed.
Clunk it out, rip out the rhizome chunk, at least slow it down for a little bit.
But you know, this'll be really handy. Okay.
I think these are those little sharpeners. This one.
So the difference obviously with Burgon is it's a European company and they've
got the wooden handle, more of a classic garden tool look. Which, you know,
some people like. Some people want to prefer something a little bit more modern.
I actually like the more modern stuff, but I do like this look as well.
So this is a pick. This is just a handpick. Yep.
So just another sort of digging tool. And then finally,
the most clutch tool that you could almost get.
Cause this ONE tool saves every other tool.
And this is the hand sharpener from Corona.
I've got a couple of these lying around because you're going to forget them
somewhere. So you just grab a few. So, quite the haul from Corona.
We've got more work to do outside. So let's get to it.
This is how I harvest now.
This tomato is getting a little bit too big for its britches.
We give it the sickle. Ohhhhh! Okay, hold on.
We've got to do this one. Okay.
We already know we're growing a giant bean here.
We don't care about these little baby boy beans. Maybe we harvest them.
Maybe we sickle them.
I swear this is my oh, oh, this is just pruning. Just pruning.
Highly recommend it. So Jacques was behind the camera.
Now he's now he's the star of the show. Yeah. And he's got the look.
He's got the trug. He's got the sickle. That's all you need in life.
Let's go. Oh, that's clean!
Put it in the trug. Save that for later. Put.
It in the trug. Put it in the trug. All right, he's taking some cuttings.
Oh yeah. That's a big stem too. Do one, do one raw.
Don't hold it. Let it hit the ground. Like that one on that. Yeah. Yeah.
There you go. Oh.
Oh no. It's okay. Sometimes you lose.
And actually we have so much in here that it's completely fine.
We're going to have to bleep that out. We'll have to bleep that out. Well done.
After our tool extravaganza,
we are getting into the world of flowers in a more serious way.
So these are dahlia tubers that my friend Beth dropped off.
So this one here is labyrinth. I don't really know what many of these look like.
Maybe we'll throw some photos up on the screen.
Maybe we'll just get surprised later on in the season.
But I've got three of them here. So Caribbean fantasy.
And then this one is holly hill glory. Okay.
So this planter used to have ginger in it. It just really was slow to take.
I dug them up. There's tiny little roots after months and months and months.
I'll put them in the front yard grow bag. That's totally fine.
We'll reset this for these dahlia tubers. So I've just got some Flower- tone,
not a hundred percent necessary.
I'm pretty sure this already has a decent amount of nutrition in it.
There's our shoot.
So we'll plant it so that that has an ample chance to come up.
Not bury this one. We'll go in like that.
Sprinkle in and plant it and see if we get some dahlias.
I've never grown them before. I bet many of you guys have in the comments.
So if I did something weird here, you'd let me know.
Cause I'm not the flower daddy, I'm the annual vegetables daddy usually.
So we'll see how this goes.
As you can see we're out here in the front yard in this debris,
this maelstrom of Greenstalk levels. So we've deconstructed it.
Some of the plants in each level have matured and aged out at different points
in time. And so we'll consolidate some of the levels. We'll replant.
Some of the levels have tons of beautiful flowers here. Ba-boom.
So we're going to get as much replanted in the GreenStalk as possible right now.
Cleaned it up.
And it is looking absolutely amazing! Especially when this fills in,
it's just going to look gorgeous. So we left a lot up top.
I really liked the look of the lemongrass.
So I can come through and clump this out, divide it, harvest it whenever I want.
But it really kind of frames this Greenstalk nicely.
I think I'm going to keep it there for now till I need it.
All this is filled in. This is that five tier one. That's their classic one.
And then this over here is the leaf. I really like the leaf,
but you need to put stuff in that can handle those shallower depth levels there.
But, looks great. And on to the next.
We picked up some marigolds because we want to do a little bit of interplanting.
I already actually put basil.
On these ones here you can see a couple of little plants there.
They're starting to really take off.
But these ones on the weave don't have anything.
And Jacques is going to put some zinnias down over there.
Just some classic interplanting options for your tomatoes. All right,
we've done a lot today. It's like 5:30. Sun's still pretty high.
I think you should cap off a good day like this with a harvest.
So Jacques has been telling me to harvest this Bulam squash for awhile.
I will listen. Look at that. That's going in tonight's dinner.
It's kind of just a small little pocket squash almost,
but neither of us have ever grown it. You haven't grown it, right Jacques?
I haven't tried it. I have one started. Yeah, so we'll find out how this tastes.
Maybe I'll do some Epic Homesteading cooking at some point in time. But, yeah.
Thanks for tuning in guys. It was a busy day.
We got a lot done and hopefully more to come.
This Greenstalk is looking really good. So until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.