hi i'm matt with stark brothers and this is a tour of my backyard garden
so i thought we'd start off with the the beginning and the end so the end in the sense
this is the compost bin and a lot of the fruits and vegetables that we grow and there's waste
from the kitchen we can walk out and throw it in here and create our own compost and we try to live
as sustainable as reasonable that we can here in the suburbs so we like to reuse stuff and we
compost our scraps this compost bin i built out of the kids old wooden playground so we've repurposed
that which is kind of fun over here we've got some elderberry plants that i planted last year
this one is flowering the pollination partner i don't think it's quite mature enough to flower
just yet but a couple varieties interestingly we have terrible rabbit infestation around here and
they eat everything that's why the chicken wire but this one they ate before i put the wire on
it and i just took the the cuttings that they chopped off and just shoved them in the ground
and a couple kept them water and a couple weeks later i had a couple new elderberry plants
and then this i'm going to be turning into a little food forest corner so this was
when our kids were young this was their playground area
this is was a bare root tree that i planted last year it's a starking hearty
giant asian pear and this was bare root all of this i don't know i'd say from about right
here is all growth this spring same with these so it's really taken off quite well
really happy with how this is turning out and then i've got a pollination partner a bartlett pear
over there and then this area has um a couple of gooseberry plants before i cut the chicken
wire up the rabbits got to this one over here and ate and then also we had a really couple of late
frosts and it nipped the flowers off but i do have a couple a few gooseberries growing there
they'll be red this is a red hen and maki it's just starting to get hints of red
then i always like to try and grow interesting like just different things
they don't look that healthy but these are sesame seed sesame plants here and apparently they should
get to be like three feet tall um they're not doing so well but we'll see what happens
and then over here i've got um this is a montmorency cherry tree that i planted last year
also growing really well this is all new growth um this spring i'm happy with the way that's going
and then like i said eventually this will be a food forest type of area and we'll do some more
permaculture stuff so i've planted just a couple the rabbits are getting them but i got a couple
safe and behind the cage but this is comfrey which is great and permaculture it's um roots apparently
grow super deep i don't know like eight or ten feet down and then it'll suck nutrients from
way down up and then you can mulch with this stuff and compost with it and it'll really feed the
feed the system but i'll put more plants as these mature most of this is just volunteer cilantro
that had went to seed from my garden i just let it but i do have three these are roselle which
is a hibiscus and they don't grow as well here we're in zone 6b they don't grow as well you need
a longer growing season but they'll grow these pink kind of reddish flower i think they call
them calyxes but the flowers and after they open up what's left you can make tea and like i don't
know punch and stuff like that out of it i've never had these before so we'll see how it goes
it's another montmorency cherry in a pot that i haven't decided where to put
some more comfrey this is uh this was left over at the nursery up at the the main office
we had a few plants that somehow lost their labels and we couldn't sell them to
to people if we don't know what they are um but i planted it and so we're
gonna have some blackberries here pretty soon but um yeah mystery blackberry plant
more leftover beds made out of the kids playground but this was supposed to be a blueberry bed
and like i said i like to experiment and just see what happens so i had some blueberry plants
but then i had one raspberry plant that just spread like crazy and i've just let it go
and then these are these ones here alpine strawberries which i grew from seed and they make
relatively small berries but they're super sweet they taste like jolly ranchers they're really good
and then these ones are also strawberries are grew from seed i think they were called
tresca or regina but i think they're still producing
i know i saw a couple most of them have been picked yeah there's still strawberries in there
and then i don't consume tobacco and don't recommend people consume tobacco but i thought
it'd be fun to try and grow tobacco so that's what these plants are here just kind of fun experiment
and then we move over into the vegetable garden
some squash and green beans and some herbs basil and rosemary and stuff
but this all i grew either from seed inside and brought it outside the spring or just planted
it directly in the ground and then back behind us i've got a bunch of different varieties of
onion plants so these are onion plants from stark brothers you buy them they look like almost like
scallions or green onions and a bunch and you plant them and yeah they're growing crazy this
year i crop rotate so every year i put them in a different location and this year they're really
really taking off yeah but the onions are starting to look really good they'll be ready
you harvest them when the tops start to get brown and fall over and usually here in missouri that's
right around i'd say july 10th or so but yeah great crop of those got tomatoes back here i think
probably about six or eight different varieties and then these are just cattle panels which make
great tomato trellises over here i've got some cabbage and uh broccoli see broccoli's getting
ready to be picked i think some cabbage some kale and lettuce that's bolted cilantro that's bolted
a bunch of carrots carrots are starting to come along they're still tiny but
cute little things
need to be thinned out these are all potatoes some of these are
from stark brothers some of them are i've got elsewhere but um
i don't know why but this year my potato bed is like growing like crazy looks really good and then
i guess it's worth pointing out you can see down here i've got drip irrigation um installed on all
these beds with the valves in here in the back and i can run that for maybe an hour every morning and
a lot better than overhead watering where the water gets everywhere this gets it right
where you need it but these i think these are like four or five different varieties of peas
i love these ones with the the purple flowers these are really pretty but yeah i think um
we haven't been doing a good job keeping up with harvesting these things since they're getting huge
once these finish up here in a couple weeks i've got cucumbers and like honeydew type melon
over there so we'll take these out and then they'll grow up over the vine or the trellis
and then over here these are all garlic plants that i planted last october and these ones are all
i don't know how you call it re-seeded like we harvested our garlic last year
and i reserved some of the bulbs and then split them up and replanted them back in
october so this will be self-sustaining for for now on these are leaks that i grew from
seed inside they look like they're doing pretty well and then i do square foot gardening for the
most part so these are all different pepper plants and one per square foot and then over
here we've got a strawberry patch that's kind of overgrown it's it's bounds but that's okay
most these most of this side is june or june bearing strawberries and for the most part it was
really pumping out strawberries last week and the week before we were getting like a good bowl every
two days it's starting to slow down and then over here we've got all kinds of raspberries that are
really just starting to pick up so there's some ripe ones this was um i think this whole section
here was probably about four or five uh bare root straw or raspberry plants that i got from stark
brothers and just planted them and then every year they just kind of propagate themselves and
grow a little bit more and then same deal these are asparagus i bought at stark
brothers a few years back and unfortunately i had some voles little mice looking things get
in overwintered and they dug holes and they ate up all the roots and the asparagus really
didn't do much this spring so we've decided to kind of leave it be and not harvest as much and
let it grow if you come around the corner over here on the end got a bunch of blueberry plants
and so these ones the birds get them before we do usually but there's a couple getting really close
to being ready right the one on the end has a whole bunch um i don't think i have they're
not as thriving but we have these um they're called and yellow raspberries and i think this
is one here but they're not they're not ripe yet but those are my favorite the yellow raspberries
then not content with this much space i love the raspberries i wanted more
so i took some of the uh i don't even call volunteers that would just grow up next to
the main stalks and transplanted those out here so um might take another year i guess these
these ones are starting to bear fruit but another year or two this will get
overgrown like that and we'll have a ton of raspberries and then along the fence down here
are a bunch of blackberries the rabbits ate them to the ground over the winter
so we'll see how they do this year this is a red haven peach tree that i planted last year
it was pretty tiny plant but it should be okay it'll take another year or two and it'll get going
this is a halls hardy almond tree and it looked about like that peach tree
maybe a year and a half two years ago so this has really grown a lot in the
last two seasons but you can see something's eating something's getting a hold of leaves so
i got some neem oil that i'll probably spray on there to see if that helps
and then this here is a liberty apple tree that we've had for probably at least 15 years now
it's gotten to the point where it produces fruit every other year so this is an off year for it
and then i've got i don't know one two three four
other apple trees and there's a um that are relatively new and a hazelnut tree over there
so i guess you could call this my orchard side of the house but um yeah for the most
part that's it i got a grapevine i had two grapevines that were like 10 years old that
were back there that were producing well but they were getting diseased so i pulled them up
put the tomatoes where they're at and then i'm gonna have grapevines grow along the deck