(Jacques and Kevin laughing)
- It's been a while since we've done a classic
chores video here for you guys, and there's a lot to do.
It's summer.
And this is...
- The prune up tune up.
- Let's go.
(raucous music)
Here we are in the front.
As you can see, there are no beans in this bed.
We kind of ripped 'em out.
And you know what?
I'm gonna do the unthinkable.
Oops.
- It's time to go. - Later.
Get out.
So, that's what I like about this system.
The old flip it back method, right?
- Yep.
- And then what's beautiful is you can just
mix in all this debris on top.
No problem.
Mix the straw in.
So I'll do a quick little...
- I actually love mixing straw into my beds.
- Little shuffle.
So if you're using a Birdies bed, what we love to do
is kind of nestle that irrigation right in here.
- [Jacques] On that top layer.
- So I give it usually about one corrugation full of...
Oh, there's that worm.
Oh, it's a small one.
That's actually a good sign.
That means that there's many.
- So we're gonna do the Plant-tone,
which is like a all purpose kind of organic fertilizer.
- That's our go to, yeah, yeah.
- It just works for everything.
So you don't necessarily need to get exact
with like Tomato-tone necessarily,
'cause we don't know what we're gonna put in this bed yet.
So we wanna make sure we're covering all our bases.
All right, I'm gonna just kind of basically
give it a little top dressing here.
You can smell that organic.
- Sometimes you don't want that smell.
The thing that freaks me out is if you're smelling it,
it's getting in your lungs.
- You know, it's, you're getting that deep flavor.
- I don't want that.
I'm scared, I'm actually scared of that.
So hit subscribe because we are dying for you.
- And so I'm going in with,
actually this is probably my favorite amendment now.
Which is worm castings, but more specifically Worm Gold.
I like this one a lot 'cause it has kelp and rock dust.
So it covers all your bases in terms of micronutrients.
- We actually carry the Worm Gold on the store now, guys.
We also have the Urban Worm Castings,
which is sort of a different product.
It's made from the African night crawler worms.
Honestly, I say, be a little more liberal.
I say give it-- - Oh, let's just--
- I say give it that, this is, give me that entree.
Give it that entree.
A little bop, bop, bop, bop.
- So you can't really go overboard at worm castings, really.
It's not like a true fertilizer.
- It'd be difficult to go full overboard.
What I found, and we talked about this before,
is it really does build up the sort of textural qualities.
Especially of this really old and quite frankly
kind of like decrepit mix of soil here.
(dynamic music)
The irrigation kits will make it back
on the store soon, guys.
Just troubleshooting a couple kinks.
- Having irrigation, if you look around,
it's made a world of a difference here in the bed.
- Yeah, whatever system you use, use it.
And especially for those of you
in drought stricken climates right now.
Drip is far and away the most efficient way to water
from a cost and effectiveness perspective.
So long as you can actually get the water
directly to the plants.
So in this situation we'll just transplant right in.
So why don't we head on back
to the backyard and see what we got?
- Let's do it.
- So something to show you
before we get to that seedling area.
There's something we've been trying out.
Jacques' actually really into it.
- Very, very into it.
- Dare I say, you're the daddy of it?
- I, you know. - Dare I say.
- I feel like they already claimed it,
but I'll come in as like a poppy.
- The product is called the FarmDaddy.
We got sent this.
We have not put it up in the store yet.
We're still evaluating it, seeing if it's good enough.
But take a look at this.
So the way that it works
if you look at this little basin right here,
it literally just looks like a tote.
And in a sense, that's what it is.
But it has this sort of platform below
where it passively sub irrigates and wicks upwards.
And you can daisy chain multiple of them together.
So in theory, if you have some kind of tank like this,
it'll stay at perfect level, and you could chain hundreds.
- I think they said literally 100.
- In theory, hundreds.
You probably would never do that, but you could.
And so we threw in some, what, cantaloupe here?
- Yeah, these are the French Charentais,
I think, cantaloupes.
And they look really incredible.
This is just two plants.
- Never watered it because it's watering itself.
The FarmDaddy.
So, I don't know.
Let us know what you think down in the comments.
If you like it,
maybe we'll throw it up on the store for you.
We just harvested our first dragon fruit ever
here at the homestead, which you'll see on Instagram.
But, this is coming.
So this one's gonna open definitely tonight.
Maybe we'll set another time lapse up.
But it's been a productive year.
Now Jacques, let's actually go check out these seedlings.
We tried to come up with a way
to add just a little bit of shade to a seedling table,
especially when they get this mature.
'Cause a lot of these seedlings are in a holding pattern
and we don't quite know where they're going.
So we wanna give a little shade cut.
And as you can see, Jacques over here, he's over here.
He's shaded out about 50%.
You're feeling good, you're looking good.
- I feel good.
- We've got a couple options here.
A lot of squash.
And I'm gonna just make a call.
I don't think we need it.
Unless we wanna plant a proper pumpkin, right.
- A proper pumpkin would be interesting.
We do have the yard--
- New England pie pumpkin though.
- Oh, okay.
- I'm intrigued. - Try to make some pie.
- I would like to make some pie
- And then otherwise, back here I've got some flowers.
I got some yard long beans,
but we need to build a little trellis for it.
- I think let's go with this pumpkin.
- [Jacques] All right, let's do it.
- Here we are.
We have the small sugar pumpkin.
- This is the New England pie pumpkin.
- So I'm excited.
I'm very excited about that one.
- [Jacques] So I'm gonna pick out probably
the two best candidates here.
- [Kevin] What are you thinking, these two right there?
- [Jacques] I like this one 'cause it's just a single plant.
It's nice and tall.
Like a darker green.
- Look what I have.
Little dirty secret in the pocket.
The Felco 321.
Boom, 321 is just that easy.
- Always sneaking in something like that.
- So here we go.
I personally, when it's a transplant of this size,
I personally like to go in between the lines,
and transplant right in between.
Instead of sticking it right up next to one.
'Cause it's gonna get double action.
- (laughing) Double action.
Hey.
- Last little touch is our signature of the year,
sunflowers in random places.
You've got two, I've got one.
Why don't we do like a,
why don't we just do right down the line.
So you've got, I think, Mammoth?
- Skyscraper.
So I'm gonna put that in the middle, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And I could go flanking.
- A little flank move.
- A little come in from the sides.
- Little military action. - Never see it coming.
(jaunty music)
Final step is to mulch it over with the classic.
A couple little notes here.
Obviously we love the garden straw, we use it all the time.
But, I have a couple exciting announcements.
A lot of you asked for an organic version,
a certified organic version at least.
And that is now up on the store,
both in the mini and the three cubic foot options.
So we have minis and three cubic feet.
The three cubic foot's actually
just a better deal per cubic foot if you need bulk.
Both of those, organic and non-organic
are available on the store.
- Very exciting.
- And the shipping is free.
So check it out if you want to.
All right, we're done here.
I think I need to do a quick rip and replace over here.
But after that we'll take you into
some stuff in the backyard.
All right, we have a new routine.
Or at least I do, here at the homestead.
So Jacques, why don't you toss me?
- All right, safety squints. - Safety squints.
(mysterious music)
- [Jacques] Thought you were gonna chop it.
- This is food for the chickens,
which are now laying eggs as you saw in the last episode.
So what I'm gonna do, just give it that quick chop.
Nice.
And while we check for eggs,
which is the newest routine here,
we're gonna give them just a little treat.
In we go.
Oh, and you know what's weird?
They're so much more friendly now.
Have you noticed? - Really?
- Yeah, they let me pick them up now.
They chill, they vibe.
There's a lot of energy going on.
Look, I mean, it's crazy.
'Cause you remember they used to run away from me?
- Yeah.
- [Kevin] Now they don't.
Now they all come to me.
- [Jacques] They had a little pent up frustration there.
- [Kevin] They just had some pops to to pop out.
Couple eggs to pop out.
So what they'll do is they'll tend to just
eat the inside out of squash.
They don't really go for the exterior at all.
- [Jacques] I guess they like the seeds.
- It's kind of a nice way to like pre-compost, you know?
But this is the moment, because I've slowly trained them
to start using the egg box, egg hutch.
So now, this little magical little shelf
that I've been like dreaming of.
- I haven't seen it yet.
- Ready?
Oh.
Look at this.
How crazy is this?
- [Jacques] It's a beautiful sight.
- Two eggs, three eggs.
And they're actually here.
Sometimes I've had to go in
and hunt for them in the bedding.
- Yeah. - You know?
And I fortunately have slowly trained them.
When I got home today, one was over there.
And the rest were in here, which is kind of nice.
And so, these eggs are small, as we talked about.
But I'm getting three or four a day right now.
- [Jacques] That's awesome.
- And only four of six are laying.
- It's exciting. - Yeah.
- Very exciting. - It's a big moment, guys.
It's a big moment.
So this is part of the new routine.
It's doing this, making sure they're okay.
And obviously enjoying the eggs as well.
- Maybe I'll take one.
- I don't know about that.
You do have seven hens of your own
Out here, in the front,
we've talked about the strawberry bed a lot.
It's actually time to do some work on it.
You can see all these different runners
just peeking off the sides.
These just aren't going to make it.
They're not gonna hit anything meaningful.
So they're just sucking...
Whoa, dirty dog!
I thought we harvested everything today.
There's something left in here?
- I didn't think you were gonna see that.
- There's something left in here for me?
- Tried to sneak that in.
- I don't even think there is.
- I think there is, actually. - What a guy.
But we're gonna remove these runners.
And we'll show you
a couple different methods on propagation.
But I think at this point in the summer, Jacques,
it's a good time to be taking these off, regardless.
- There's so many. - There's just so many.
- And clearly, the production is on point, so.
I don't know if we need that much more.
- I don't know if we need 'em all, yeah.
I mean look, tracing them back
is actually like a bit of a game.
'Cause look at the length of,
that's a double runner actually.
- Oh wow.
- Look, there's a perfect example.
- Oh yeah, it's crazy.
- So this effectively is a fully rooted
and ready strawberry plant,
that you don't need to really do much to.
You can just remove this guy here, this runner,
it's kind of like, let it go.
Don't really need this pathetic guy.
You just found another one.
So the lazy way is to just grab
everything off the side here
and just give it a big clip.
And that's fine, you can root all these if you want to.
But I actually just saw another
great example of these rooted runners.
Actually, dude, I found a holy grail, Jacques.
- [Jacques] Like a straight up plant?
- [Kevin] I found a double double, look at this.
A double double.
- That's not bad.
- That's actually pretty impressive.
- It's like a good plant too.
- Yeah.
- See that, right there?
That's easy propagation.
- That's healthy, right there.
- Just throw that in some soil,
you got a stew going. - You got a stew.
Here's the thing about the runners
that I think is actually really valuable.
So we love seascape, right?
For our climate.
Now what happens in two years?
The main seascape strawberries, what happens to them?
- Right, they'll start to get overcrowded,
and they'll start suffering in their performance.
- So my thought is, you take the runner stock
and you reset it yearly off the runner stock.
So you never run into that problem.
- Interesting. - Right?
- Yeah.
- I mean that should work.
- 'Cause last time, we basically didn't do any maintenance
on the old strawberry bed.
And it just got a little old,
started looking a little hectic.
- Yeah, a little hectic.
(chill music)
So we'll go back, we'll pot some of these up.
We'll root some of these up.
And multiply the supply.
So I'm just coming in on the non well established runners.
And I'm just kind of taking off
some of the extra material here.
We don't need the connections
between the main plant and the future runner.
So this is what we're gonna be potting up,
or rooting in a different fashion.
And then the ones over here,
which are the actually rooted runners,
for the most part, they're already established.
So as long as you get 'em in the soil right about there,
so don't bury their crown, you're in a good spot.
But I'm just gonna do a quick scan and make sure
that I've pruned off all of this sort of waste material.
- Let's get these guys in some soil.
We're gonna just kind of put 'em in.
And I think same deal as like a bare root.
You don't wanna bury the crown, right?
- Yeah, I think it's a little bit more forgiving here.
- Since they have roots.
- 'Cause you need to get it below.
Like you need to actually give it some stability.
Right? - Right.
To anchor it.
- But otherwise, yeah,
I wouldn't be burying the crown at all.
And you guys will remember this tool,
but we have a couple new attachments, or implements here.
They sent these out.
It's like a neoprene collar,
or excuse me, a silicone collar.
So these are reusable.
Sometimes, I mean the neoprene is too,
but I think it can degrade a little bit quickly.
Silicone is obviously way more stable.
And so what I'll do, in this case,
is I need to get these roots some access to water, right?
So I need to get this open and I need to slide it through,
weirdly, below the crown, like that.
- [Jacques] Oh, okay.
- Because I just need the bottom to get hit with water.
So I'll just do that.
And what we're doing is we're trying to grow these up
to the point where they're looking like the ones
that Jacques's potting up right now.
'Cause these ones aren't quite there yet.
- So I'm actually also going through
and removing some of the leaves.
- [Kevin] Yeah, the lowest, lowest leaves.
- Yeah, some of it's just 'cause I need space.
And some of it's also the, if you leave a lot of leaves
then the plant has to support those leaves,
so it's harder to root.
And then, so what I'm going to do
is use the bottom tray here, the 4-cell.
And then, just to ensure the success here,
I'm actually gonna throw a humidity dome.
And just corral all these leaves.
And what that's gonna do now, is basically make sure
that the surface never dries out.
It's gonna increase the humidity.
It's gonna increase the rooting.
Just like that thing,
it's spraying water all around to increase humidity.
Same principle. - This is basically, yeah.
This basically does the role of that
because the water and air on the bottom is so strong.
As long as you don't cook that
by putting it in direct sun,
that is a much stronger way to root.
- Yeah, and that happens.
Trust me, I've been there.
You leave the humidity dome on.
- [Kevin] You're done.
- Get it in a little bit of sun.
- You're done.
- Your seeds are never gonna come up.
- Nope.
So we have our little alien pods of strawberries.
A lot more coming here on the homesteading channel,
especially now that we have eggs.
Let us know what you wanna see down in the comments.
Subscribe.
Good luck in the garden.
And keep on growing.
Anything meaningful.
So they're just sucking...
Oh, dirty dog!