- It's been a while since we've been here
on The Homestead channel.
A lot has been going on
in the Epic Gardening side of things.
We have 13 people on the team now
and not a one is out here in the backyard,
helping me with the chores that I'm doing today,
which feels really good.
I can't tell you how good it feels
to be in the sun right now and just letting it hit me.
Today's episode, I'm just gonna get as much done
as I can humanly do until the sun down,
take you through some garden chores here at The Homestead.
Let's go.
The first thing that has happened is of course the coop,
but that's for another time.
We did have to take down this massive Chinese Elm
which you can see some remnants of there.
So my task right now is to break up
the logs from the twigs and the leaves, separate them.
We'll throw some firewood over there.
And all of this will eventually
will go through the chipper shredder.
Okay, task one is done.
We have a little pile of firewood.
We have a big pile of brush
that's gotta go through the chipper shredder.
It was kind of sad to take the Chinese Elm down
but it's not native and it's not productive.
And it was in the way of our chicken coop.
Sneak peek, something coming on the main channel soon.
So we're gonna reuse all of it.
We'll either use it for firewood.
We'll use these logs to line the interior
of the chicken coop for a little style, a little border.
And then the big stuff is gonna get chopped down
and turned into mulch.
So we're on to the next task.
Next up today in the front yard,
you guys haven't seen this in a while,
but the new beds are actually in.
So this is the Urban Round Tall.
This is the Urban Tall nine 9-in-1.
And then over here,
we've got the Urban Short Round right there, Corten Steel.
And then we have the Urban 9-in-1.
But that's not we're talking about today,
we are talking about the beds that need to get changed.
So this broccoli here has flowered,
quite a bit as you can see.
And honestly, the bees are loving it
but it's time to get this out.
We'll get this composted down.
And actually what you'll notice is,
you can see there's been a significant amount of soil drop
and usually when you see that,
especially if you filled it up a couple times,
you know you're probably dealing with
some sort of grub situation
that's eating a lot of this matter and bringing it down.
So we'll see if we get any of those
but right now we gotta get these outta the way.
So today I'm rocking the Felco #2's
which is probably the most classic pruner of all time.
I'm just gonna come in right down here at the base,
give it that nice chop.
And there you go, we got a broccoli down.
So you can either just chop it like that.
But these are pretty, you know
it's pretty thick stem right there, guys.
So what I'm gonna do is actually chop
out a little bit more of it than you normally would
'cause I gotta refill this bed anyways.
So let's go ahead and get that done.
Broccoli's out, snow of shovel's in.
A lot of people ask me,
"Yo Kev, why do you have a snow shovel?
"You live in San Diego."
It's because a snow shovel, weirdly, makes really good work,
really short work of a big old soil pile.
So this stuff is from San Pasqual Valley Soils.
This is their sort of raise bed mix.
We've tested out almost every single one in San Diego.
Hopefully this one is our favorite.
We haven't quite found something we love
which means we might end up making our own soil mix.
You never know what we do here at Epic Gardening.
I gotta fill this up, throw it in that broccoli bed.
Well, it turns out I was right about this bed.
I told you guys when you see that settling happen
usually that means that your worst nightmare is here.
I don't even wanna touch these guys
but I will just for the sake of this video.
Actually, I'm gonna take 'em out.
I really hate these guys.
These are those little grubs.
These are the big old, they're not little,
they're actually huge.
It's hard to see, but I'll toss one in the air,
you can kind of get the heft of it.
You really don't want those in the soil
'cause they're gonna start eating your roots up.
So I'm gonna do a quick filtration for 'em.
And then what I'll do is I'll fill in
the rest of this, top it all the way up.
And if you'll notice right here, this little pipe
we have irrigation fully set up here at The Homestead,
14, 15 different zones including one zone
for all these raised beds.
Which I'll show you how to plum up a sick irrigation system.
But right now I just need to remove
some of these big old root clumps here
that I don't want interfering with my future crop.
So these guys come out, at least for me,
when I'm doing a bed flip like this,
I don't think it's too much of a sacrilege
to do that and just shake that route away.
So I'll do that with the rest of these
and also helps me try to find some of those grubs
that I was just telling you guys about,
tell you they are really gross.
I can't wait till I have chicken so I can to feed 'em
but I've even been told that chickens don't like them.
So sort of a, an nemesis
that has no solution it feels like.
I've heard that milky spore, beneficial nematodes
can help them quite a bit.
Guess we're gonna have to see
if that works for us this season.
So all the major root clumps are out now.
I'm just taking stuff from here,
shoveling it in
and I'm not gonna do a lot of amending here.
There's a decent amount of compost in here.
I'll just make sure to give it
a thorough wet down when I'm done.
(upbeat music)
All right, we're full up.
I'm just gonna give it a little water here.
Don't really have to do much.
I mean, I'm just prepping this for the next reset.
Pretty soon we're gonna be doing a video on the main channel
about the seeds we're excited to grow,
both Jacques and myself as well as Chris,
who's a new addition to the squad, the Epic Gardening crew.
She's up in Vancouver, British Columbia.
So she's gonna give you guys,
who are in a little bit colder climate in 8B
some suggestions that might work for you this spring.
And I'm done, I'm onto the next task.
Next up we have some cauliflower
I'm actually gonna give this one to my mom here.
This one is Snowball, pretty classic variety.
It's actually starting to green just slightly.
You can see right on these edges here,
hard to see in the light, but it is slightly greening out.
So what I want to do is come in with the Felco's,
we'll come in really low.
Give it that chop right at the base.
Ugh, I just saw cabbage moth
come in through, trying to get it.
Take a look at that.
If that is not a pristine cauliflower, my friends,
I don't know what is.
I had to take a quick break
because it's 82 degrees in February
which is not a good feeling.
But what is a good feeling is the grapefruit
that's in the front yard.
This is the tree that was there when I moved in.
I'll show you a little cross section.
I don't know the variety,
but what do know is it's ripe and ready right now.
Take a look at that.
The pith, a little bit thick, but here's the real magic.
Guess what's working, the outdoor sink.
So if I want to, I can wash my hands,
I can rinse off my produce.
Grapefruit for some reason is a little dirty
and then I can take a taste.
Now, it's not really fully set up.
The plumbing down below is just a bucket.
It may end up being some sort of larger basin pretty soon
but that's fine for me right now.
I'll just drain that out.
You really can't turn sink water,
regulations wise, into gray water,
but I going to do an anyways.
I'm just gonna dump it
from the bucket into wherever in the garden.
That makes the most sense.
So let's give this a little taste test here.
With grapefruit, wow,
it's the juiciest thing I've ever eaten.
If you miss the harvest window, it is so acidic and so sour.
But if you let sweeten just slightly,
then you get a flavor that's more like this.
So I'm gonna finish this and I'm back onto my next task.
Well, it's that time of day,
my friends, the crows are here.
The audio might be a little crazy on today's show.
I'll tell you, this is not even close
to as many as you'll usually see show up here.
So here you can see the grapefruit,
that's where we just ate from.
Absolutely delicious, fruiting like crazy, ripening up.
Now, when we take a look at the rest of the orchard
you really wanna make sure
that you're not making any pruning mistakes.
So here we have a Doughnut Peach.
This one it's budding right now.
If I was to prune it right now that'd be disastrous.
Same as this one over here, another peach.
I believe we got a nectarine right here.
This one's growing a little lopsided
but I think I can manage it
'cause this is south facing right this way
so this should want to start to bend backwards
and equalize itself.
And then this growth getting more sun earlier in the day
should want to sprout up a little bit sooner.
So I'm gonna let that be, I'm not gonna prune it too much.
Over here is my apple.
You can see the way we planted it
was to kind of force these buds and these branches
to kind of come over this way towards the south.
So again, pretty calm impact.
Not a lot to do here.
I think I'm just gonna let that be.
Pomegranate kind of weird.
So you think, oh, oh no, I killed my pomegranate.
Well, no you didn't because this is a deciduous
and it's gonna drop in the winter.
And of course, as we get into late winter, early spring
that's coming right back.
Now, when we get over to the citrus
it becomes a different equation.
So let's take a look.
We've got our Yuzu right here.
It's kind of hard to see, but good shape,
good structure, gonna leave it.
Now this guy, this guy's going wild, isn't it?
So these vertical shoots are just really taking off
and I think, shape wise,
I do wanna bring that down a little bit.
So what I can do is I can come in,
just make some pruning cuts,
just like that, bringing it down slightly.
I'm not too concerned
about damaging it for any potential fruiting issues.
I really am more concerned about shape
in this first season or two.
I'm gonna come down and take a lot of these off,
especially ones that have been
absolutely decimated by leaf miners.
Just cut those down.
And you can see an example of what that
ends up looking like afterwards, right here.
So here I've done that already.
You can see this cut that I made a while back.
And look, new growth is coming out perfectly fine.
You're not gonna kill the plant
and it's gonna look really good.
So I'm gonna do a quick pass down here,
do the rest of this citrus and I'll be right back.
So you could see, I took off a decent chunk of growth here.
And I have to say, I am slightly nervous about the choice,
but because I decided to plant this citrus so close together
I just have to make some unique choices.
Like right here, I took off a huge chunk
on this guy right here
which I believe is my Moro Blood Orange.
Probably.
Nope, that is my Cara Cara Naval.
So that one's not really producing too much yet.
There was this huge, random one just coming up off this way.
It was really throwing the whole thing off.
And you can see, some of these out here
where the gray water didn't end up reaching still producing.
Kumquats, not quite ready yet.
This Washington Naval has really been
kind of the laggard here and it won't be anymore
because as you can see, we have irrigation set up.
I will, of course eventually do a full breakdown
on how my irrigation system works.
But I have to say already, I am absolutely pleased.
So zone three, let's run it for,
let's just do 30 seconds
'cause I've already watered it today.
So 030, orchards on zone three, I'll hit okay.
And then we run you over there,
say hello to the Epic Mom, everyone.
She's hanging out.
So take a look.
We plum this up and you got the bubblers coming up,
popping water out right at that root zone.
At least for now, that's gonna be our solution
on every single tree.
I know I have gray water on this
but the way you solve that
is by modulating the flow rate of this.
So if this is getting more water
'cause the gray water's right here and that's not
you put a higher flow rate over there
and a lower flow rate over here.
If you're wondering what was going on here,
well, we rigged up a DIY semi-shade cloth.
This is green shade cloth.
I believe it's 50 or 70% shade.
And we've put it under San Juan Cabbage Chrono Junior.
This is the baby giant cabbage
that I'm going to grow this year for my failures last year.
But what this is is this is just 3/4 inch
electrical conduit using these little connectors
from a company called Maker Pipe.
So we're actually prototyping this.
We're gonna see if we can come up with
some really powerful kits that fit in these round beds,
in the rest of the beds in the garden
or really just in the ground
if you don't even have a raised bed like this.
So there's actually quite a bit more to do
but I do wanna give you a little quick tour
of what's going on here at The Homestead.
I know it's been a while, like I said, on this channel.
So I'm gonna show you what's going on with these cabbage,
the patch over here which is totally unkempt,
but actually not if you take a quick look
and of course the Epic Pond.
When it comes to the back garden
I think I'm probably the most proud
of these cabbage as I've been of any cabbage.
I mean, look at this guy right here.
That is one of the more pristine looking cabbages
even though, yes, we did still get hit by that looper.
We're finally getting a nice tight cabbage head there
which I'm very pleased about.
This leek crop here.
I mean, look at this guy, quite thick.
I'm probably gonna have to start heeling this out
to get that nice white leek base that we're looking for.
And then over there, the garlic is absolutely killing it.
But I know you guys are probably just here
for what's going on over here with the pond
and our bread factory.
So here is our spring wheat crop
that we made a lot of improvements on.
So we actually planted it a little bit more densely.
We actually buried the seed.
And we've been saturating it quite a bit.
So this is looking very, very healthy.
I am so excited this spring to get a nice crop.
And in between we've planted both cover crops,
so you can see cover crop kind of going crazy
in this backyard over here.
But also if you look really closely, we've got potatoes.
I took all my old potatoes
and just planted them right here in the ground.
We'll see how they do.
It's quite hard ground, but potatoes are kind of known
for breaking up that hard ground.
And then of course, my friends, the Epic Pond.
We have done a little bit more pondscaping,
not too much more.
But you can see all the plants are really happy in here.
We've had some algal blooms, not a big deal.
We're even seeing some propagation
on these floating guys right here, as well as a little bit
of duck weed over there has been propagating itself as well.
The koi are in here, but they come out late at night.
So you can't really see 'em right now.
I'll see if I can get a clip for later on next episode.
But man, pond is looking really good.
I gotta weed around this whole area here,
water crest is looking good.
And I'm just excited.
So while I hit a couple more chores here before sunset,
thanks for tuning in.
I know it's been a while.
I'm gonna have more videos coming out, Jacques and I
as well as Chris over on the main channel,
the new addition to Epic Gardening,
maybe even more this season.
We're trying to get people in different growing zones
to show different methods, different ranges of budget,
different techniques, different climates.
So stay tuned, guys.
Good luck in the garden, keep on growing.
And pretty soon there's gonna be chickens in that coop.
(soft music)