- It's early July in the homestead.
Honestly, Jacques has almost never looked better.
- It looks pretty good.
I'm pretty pleased.
- We just ate some pizza.
We're a little full.
We're not as energetic.
And what we wanna do is take you around
and show you all the changes
that have happened in summer of 2023.
Right here, we have asparagus.
Both Jacques and I are growing asparagus
in our respective gardens.
This is the phase of growth
where you just need to let it ride.
And that's why we have this little system for containing it
'cause as you can see,
it gets quite burned out.
And what do we do at the end of the season?
- End of season when it's fully brown,
totally dead,
chop it, reset it, add compost.
And next year,
it's gonna be popping with spears.
- Yeah.
And it's important with asparagus
to give it a year or two
before you significantly harvest
because you want it to establish itself like this.
So next year,
you'll see us pull some honking spears.
This apricot tree,
the royal apricot is one of the only fruit trees
that was actually on the property when I first moved in.
Jacques, you had a bunch last year.
- Really good.
- I have to say like we did some serious pruning on this
to shape this tree to give it the best chance to produce.
And this is the best I've ever seen it.
- Yeah, it's definitely owning its own space.
Really nice crown.
Totally loaded branches.
- Yeah, it's actually so loaded.
You can't really see the apricots
until they start to yellow and ripen up.
- [Jacques] Yeah, There's a nice little bunch right there.
- Yeah, I'd say we're probably
about a week and a half away, Jacques,
before we can actually get some good fruit.
- I have to say I really like your hollyhocks
'cause I have one that's kind of like a champagney color,
but this pink one looks really cool.
- The hollyhock is a plant that,
I believe, it was you who tossed a couple
in here just for fun.
And it comes back every single year.
So it's been really rewarding
to see it just really come up.
And I think in subsequent years,
it just gets better.
- Every year, it gets better for sure.
- Now, Jacques, this is something I've heard
from multiple of you guys,
is that everyone's corn this year is shorter.
- Interesting.
- I've heard that across the country,
not just in our region.
We've also had generally a weirder weather pattern
this whole year across all of the USA.
So I don't know if you're seeing this in your corn.
- It's interesting
'cause mine's over eight feet tall.
- Yeah, different variety,
probably different variety.
But no, I mean we're getting some tasseling on the corn.
There's silks forming on the corn already.
- [Jacques] It looks super healthy, though.
I mean, that's the thing.
It looks healthy.
I'm not gonna stress about it.
The only thing I'll say is maybe I'll just get, on average,
maybe one less ear per stock
because of the size.
- Honestly, though, if it's a better ear,
it's worth it.
- It's probably worth it, yeah.
- Because sometimes those second, third ears-
- Not as good.
Not as good.
Last year, we had our tomatoes right here, Jacques.
- Yep.
- This year, obviously, they're right here
in a much taller system.
It looks fancier,
but I promise you guys it's not.
It's just four by four posts,
three foot deep hole,
no concrete setting whatsoever.
You just kind of ram it in and then screw it together.
And so the problem that I was having last year, Jacques,
it sounds like you kind of had the same,
is I cramped these together
and I did a Florida weave style,
which just by default,
the way that works is it kind
of smushes all the material together.
So I had a lot of plant disease.
And what I wanted to do here was go two feet apart,
go single liter on my indeterminate or vining tomatoes
just to give them as much airflow as possible
and separate them.
And so far, fingers crossed,
no disease whatsoever.
- Yeah, I don't see any powdery mildew
or anything like that,
not even blight.
So honestly, they look fantastic.
- They look really good.
- Really good, man.
- And fingers crossed, we've also done a couple graphs.
We'll show you soon how those have performed.
But so far,
they're actually not as vigorous.
Here at the coop,
as you know,
we have lost a hen.
We lost Gucci this year.
I'll show you how we are honoring her body pretty soon.
But there's a new addition to this chicken area
and that's this little platform
that I'm calling the crow platform.
So what I've been doing is I've been taking a couple
of these little mealworm treats or these grubbly treats.
It's actually black soldier fly,
and it's just sprinkling it right here.
And as you can hear,
they're on the way.
- How many eggs you get? - Three eggs.
It's not bad. - It's not bad.
It's not bad for five hens.
- Yeah.
- Not too bad.
- I'll take it.
- Another thing I'll say,
and I don't know
if you've had this happen, Jacques, is Chetty,
our Silver Laced Wyandottes has learned
to jump to this layer.
- I don't have any fliers,
but there's really nowhere for them to jump to
to get out.
- You know what I've heard is that it might be a sign
that she's low on the pecking order.
She wants to jump to a avoid.
But I actually think she's high
because Rufio tends to fight Chetty
as a retaliatory response.
Chetty is the instigator.
But anyways, the coop has generally been doing well.
The tease is that in just a little bit,
we're gonna get four new little chicks,
all new breeds.
I was gonna say cultivars,
but they're breeds when you talk about hens.
So I'm very excited about that.
Here in the back garden,
we call this the big bed now.
If you remember this used to be eight separate beds.
And Jacques, I don't know why we did it that way.
Now that it's like this,
I kind of just like this.
- I think you like the idea of the grid and the organizing,
but sometimes you gotta just relax.
- Sometimes you just gotta chill.
This is the influence of the garden upon myself.
Now, these sunflowers,
that's sort of the theme of the garden this year.
They're all over the place.
The four you see in this bed,
look at that.
I mean, that's massive.
- Pretty big.
- These are the only four I actually planted.
The rest of them were all self-sewn basically by the birds
that have come in.
There's a special one, though,
that we do wanna show you.
This is sort of the tomato that started all tomatoes.
So this is solanum pimpinellifolium.
- That's a name.
- Weird name.
Weird name.
But dude, the thing that surprises me about this, Jacques,
is the way in which it grows.
- Yeah.
- It does not want to adhere to a trellising system.
You found a couple,
so why don't you grab one?
- So that's the full size right there.
- Look at that thing.
Absolutely tiny and that is the biggest it will get.
Of course, it will just get more red.
So this is what's called a currant tomato.
I wanted to grow it
'cause I was on a seed tour a while ago,
and they used the genetics of this
to cross into other varieties to create new hybrids.
And so I wanted to kind of grow the original.
- I might take a cutting, honestly.
- Yeah, you should root one.
- Why not? - Super healthy
- Now, something that we put in that's very basic,
very simple that you could do at home, no problem,
and it wouldn't cost you too much is
this little cattle panel arch.
So it's a 16-foot cattle panel
and then we just have some tea posts here,
and we just basically zip tied this all together.
And then we're trying to grow some melons
and some squash up it.
Tried to put luffa in,
didn't work out too well.
So this looks a little sparse,
but it is what it is.
Speaking of sparse,
there's a lot of different seeds we've got going
in the greenhouse.
Here in the greenhouse,
it's actually pretty hot now-
- Yes, it is.
- In the summertime.
And some of the seedlings are looking a little underwater,
but that's okay. It allows us to grow some cool stuff.
- Yeah.
The shampoo ginger,
that's one that I'm really looking forward to
with that weird squishy flower.
Looks very satisfying.
- Yeah, there's a couple things we've unlocked so to speak.
I'm growing the shampoo ginger,
I've got coffee,
I have vanilla bean orchid.
And then underneath the table,
also some really interesting aroids and-
- Hell yeah.
- Houseplant.
I mean, check this out.
This is the philodendron ring of fire right here.
- Very cool.
- So a friend of mine actually mailed me all these cuttings.
And thankfully, I haven't disrespected her
by killing any more than I think one out of the eight.
That's pretty good ratio. - That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
- There's a lot going on in the front yard
that we have to show you.
So here at Dragon Alley,
it's a bit of a weird season.
Tell me in the comments if you're experiencing the same.
What I've seen over the years is just shifts and changes.
And this year, Jacques, has been a weird one for me.
- Very weird.
And like right now, I think you have 20 dragon fruit.
This really in a season.
- Yeah. - I think that's weird, right?
- I think that's weird
'cause dragon fruit,
you're typically gonna see that fruit form
somewhere around the October-ish range,
which means about 40 days
before that is when it should be flowering.
And on our Red Jaina here,
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
that's gonna go in the next couple days
and that's just one of them.
Now, you might be wondering,
I've never seen a dragon fruit look like this before.
That's because when it flowers,
what we then do is we cut off the actual petals
and just leave this going
just to make sure
that any pollen will make it all the way down
and pollinate that fruit.
So it's gonna be a very productive dragon fruit year.
But the front yard raised bed garden, Jacques,
I have to say I don't think it's ever looked better.
- Looks fantastic.
- One kind of sad thing jock is
that the roses are actually gone for the season.
- Still looks honestly really cool.
It looks super into it.
- No, it looks great,
but that white bloom was just probably
the most beautiful thing I've ever done in my life.
- And the aroma, not bad.
- You can't beat it. - Not bad.
- Now, the sunflowers, like I said,
the four in the back were the only ones we planted.
Didn't plant this one
'cause who would plant one-
- Right on the edge.
- One inch from the edge of a bed. You'd never do that.
Same with this one here.
And you could see,
just leave them.
- They're huge.
- Look at the texture
that it adds to have this height added to the garden.
It just adds something a little bit different.
- Absolutely.
- This, I took inspiration from you, Jacques,
when I saw your determinate tomato patch
that you sort of caged in with the twine.
- Yep.
- I'm basically copying that.
So I'm basically gonna do that.
This is all saucing tomatoes,
and this is gonna be basically sauce heaven.
- It's gonna look amazing when it's fully loaded.
And you gave a little bit more space than me,
which was a good idea.
I'll say that.
- That's my theme is I want minimal crop loss this year.
Minimal crop loss as I then come off
of the back of my biggest failure, the garlic.
- That one hurt.
- Maybe that's why I'm in that mood.
- Yeah.
- Now, I heard from a stranger
that you actually hate these dahlias.
- I actually absolutely despise them.
- Why? - It's this one in particular.
To me, these look like they're clowns.
That's what they are.
- They remind you of a clown
or you think they're clownish?
- I think they're both, yeah.
I don't like the fact that it's like one color
and then it's just white.
To me, that looks like cut it off.
I don't wanna see it.
That, yeah, that-
- This one's beautiful. - That's beautiful.
- Natural streakiness.
- I like this and I'll tell you why.
It is lush.
It is full.
It kind of matches.
This little red matches
with this rust of the urban bed.
Maybe you tell us in the comments,
is it a clownish dahlia or is it not?
And if you think it's clownish,
that's fine
'cause I have about 50 more
to show you in the backyard at the end of this video,
but we need to talk these leeks.
- Real good. - I've never grown
bigger or better leeks in my life ever.
- Absolutely thick boys.
I've heard that you make some pretty good soup,
not that I would know.
- He wouldn't know
because he is never gotten a slice
of potato daddy's soup
because I keep that thing unlocking key.
But this is what I do.
I come out,
I grab two or three leeks,
I chop it up with potatoes
and some cream and some broth.
This has basically become my fridge for future soup.
It's your soup factory.
It is absolutely delicious.
Jacques, I have to say
I am maybe a bit attracted to these eggplants.
- I mean, they're pretty handsome specimens,
I have to say.
They look almost perfect.
- I've never grown eggplants that look this healthy.
Maybe it's because they're in the front bed
in a raised bed with plenty of sun with better soil
than maybe the first year of in-ground planting.
- Yeah.
- But historically,
you've grown really good eggplants.
- Yeah.
And it's like a matter of respect.
I like to grow the eggplant.
I like to eat it. I like to be part of the eggplant.
And I think I'm trying to get you to respect
and eat the eggplant more.
- You know what he is
and I'll tell you why.
Because if you've noticed,
Jacques and I both have a dirty little treat
that we've been using a lot
and it's the Gozney pizza oven.
And I went over to Jacques' house this past weekend
and the first thing he did,
it reminds me actually of when you grew the mushrooms,
and you came over and knocked on my door
and made me force-fed it to me.
- Yeah.
- He gave me this little slice of eggplant.
He had roasted in the pizza oven.
He said, "Try this, try this. I think you're gonna like it."
Like I don't like eggplant.
It's not like it's my favorite thing,
but I don't hate it. - He doesn't like it.
He doesn't like it.
- I don't hate it, though.
But I had his eggplant,
it was passable.
- He was like, "Eh."
- It was passable.
Yeah, no, it was good.
But he goes, "Oh, just a little salt,
little pepper, little smoke.
Like that's all you need."
- It's the kiss. It's the kiss of the smoke.
- It's that kiss.
It's that kiss.
Anyways, eggplant's looking really good.
But here is what I want to get across to you, guys.
I'm a changed man.
And maybe it was you that changed me, Jacques,
maybe because we have-
- It's getting wild.
- A birdhouse gourd.
Try to find one.
While you find one,
I will show you this.
Yet another thing that I'm just letting break the border.
So in a perfect world,
I'd have all these beds breaking their sort of natural edge
and giving what is a structured bed,
this sense of natural sort of flow to it.
And so that's why I love a thing like this
that's kind of straddling two beds and going over.
And then of course,
what Jacque's hunting down right now,
which should be
the birdhouse gourd. - There's so many in here.
- This is just in a birdie's short round bed.
- [Jacques] Yeah. - But it doesn't look like it
because it's actually spreading
over most of the front yard path.
Yeah, so take a look.
- It's got that standard gourd smell.
- Yeah, that sort of urine smell.
- Yeah.
- It actually does smell like urine.
- But look at this. And I was actually told, Jacques,
that if you can indent the skin with the finger,
it's still good to eat.
The second, you can't indent the skin.
You have to use it as a birdhouse gourd
like a proper gourd.
One of our followers from India actually told me
that commonly that's eaten just as a gourd.
- I'm sure, yeah.
- Which makes total sense.
Now, there's not too much else to call your attention to
besides what's right in front of us right here.
Last year, I had what I'd call the sloppy San Marzano patch
because it just got very disease-ridden,
lots of white flies.
But one of these clearly just seated
into the ground here,
and I'm just gonna let it be.
Why would I not?
- It's already fruiting like crazy.
- This is actually the tomato.
It's the farthest along.
- It's the farthest along right this season.
- So I'm just gonna leave it here and see what happens.
But I wanna show you something.
We showed you a couple videos prior
and that would be a taste of the orchard in the backyard.
- Ooh.
I have to say the pond looks really like a lot better
now that we fold it in with all these different plants.
- Yeah.
- Really liking it.
- Well, we've had some failures,
like underneath my dad's memorial bench,
the isotoma we chose just didn't really work out,
but honestly, most of it has.
So Jacques, if we come across the pond,
which is almost hard to do now
because there's so much grown in,
take a look at the English thyme.
- It looks fantastic.
A lot of patches like this one,
it has fully, pretty much covered that area.
- It is.
And you know what I've noticed is,
you can usually trace it back to the origin point.
- Ah.
- And so what's interesting is none
of it's actually hitting a root.
Like it's not rooting,
but it is matting.
And I think that's good enough for me.
The biggest update, though, is the passionfruit trellis.
I've ripped away the sweet peas.
So what we did is we put sweet peas in
in the interim of this actually filling in
'cause we wanted some nice blooms and some nice smell.
I ripped all that out.
And I was actually really surprised to see, Jacques,
that it filled in in the interim, anyways,
so it's totally fine.
- And it's starting to even go across the water tank,
which will keep the water cooler
and probably more usable, anyway.
- I think so.
And what I've done that you'll see probably
in an upcoming show is I've put another one over there.
- Oh nice.
- It's extended out.
See that?
And also over there.
- Oh yeah.
- And then what I'm gonna do is put another strip
across here so it can come up,
and I'll put some kind of tie at the end of that fence post
and put like cables over
so at least some of it can go over.
- Yeah.
- And then you actually will almost completely hide
the cistern,
especially 'cause I've seen your chicken orchard,
passionfruit trellis-
- It's wild.
- You can't tell there's a fence there whatsoever.
You actually wouldn't even know chickens are behind it.
- I know. That's kinda why I did it,
gives shade for the chickens and hides it.
- Yeah.
- Looks great.
- Yeah.
This is where, I don't know,
to me this is where gardening gets really fun is
now we're getting creative.
We're like trying to architect a bit
in which I didn't have that skillset before.
I don't know about you,
but I certainly did not.
- No. Now, we're making permanent choices, basically.
- So now we're going down this little path
that we've created.
It's a very petite path.
But we're getting to the back orchard
that I was telling you about
and this would be where our flame grapes are.
And I think it's about time to think about trellising
and maybe even pruning some of these off.
- Yeah.
They look really healthy, though,
I gotta say.
- Well, you have more experience than me with grapes.
So what could you tell someone who's getting into it?
- One thing that I learned
on my first year was if you leave too many fruits
on the plant, they're just not gonna taste as good.
- Yeah.
- They'll be smaller and they won't be as sweet.
So try to cut a couple bunches off
and leave like maybe 50-70% instead of all of them.
- Okay, that's fair.
I haven't done that yet. And I also also haven't trellised,
you've trellised yours in a really clever way.
- It's filled up like crazy.
- So the reason that we planted them
in this area is we do have irrigation plumbed here.
As you can see,
we have this sort of simple drip ring thing going on,
but it is right up next to this pretty sturdy fence.
So what I'm thinking about doing, Jacques,
is I'm gonna put anchors in
and I'm gonna run like cable across.
- Mm.
- And I'm gonna do maybe two or three lines of it.
- Perfect. - And just let it come up.
And then basically,
this whole wall will become grapes which is-
- It's gonna look amazing.
- Really, really exciting.
I never really thought I could grow grapes.
I don't know why,
but I just didn't think it was like in my tool set
and now it is. And speaking of in my tool set,
like these bananas,
you guys remember
we transplanted these. - Incredible.
Yeah.
- And it was a bit of a clown show,
trying to transplant them.
But I think we, historically,
I don't know if you've grown them at your place.
- [Jacques] I haven't.
It's a new one. I think the fact that you
and I have grown them at my place and failed...
Frankly, we failed a lot.
- Never got an actual bananas.
I guess, it's a fail.
- We've finally decided to respect what bananas want.
And that really is all gardening is.
Give the plant what it wants.
It does the rest for you.
So how have we done that?
Well, Jacques had the idea
of basically becoming a dumping ground here.
You just dump a bunch of organic matter on top.
And so I've pruned away.
You can see these little furls here,
it's actually weird that they're coming up shock.
- [Jacques] Yeah, 'cause you chopped them, right?
- I chopped them straight off with a saw.
So what I've read is you give one main stalk the chance
to shoot up per season to produce a fruit,
especially when you're getting established,
that you cut off the rest of the pups.
But towards the end of the season when the fruit's forming,
you let one or two pups go
so that becomes the next one.
- That makes sense.
And then what you do is you mound it up,
irrigate it like hell
and put a bunch of fertilizer on it.
So not only have I gotten our compost from the compost bin,
but I've also Jacques taken some AgroThrive
and just some liquid fertilizer.
- Nice.
- And just dumped it all over here.
- Yeah, turns out that went way more water
and way more organic manner
than we've ever tried to give them.
- Yeah. Frankly, than I've ever tried to give any plant.
- Yeah. - It seems like
they can handle-
- For sure.
- Pretty much anything.
And that brings us to the dahlia patch.
Remember last year, Jacques,
this was a corn maze.
- [Jacques] Yeah, part of a corn maze.
- [Kevin] If you can call it that.
But this is the dahlia patch we planted a while back.
I've gotten more comments
on this patch than probably anything I've ever grown
in my life. - It's been a great success.
And here we have non-clown varieties like this one.
This just looks so nice.
It's pretty pleasant.
It's a pleasant flower.
- But I'm not a hater.
You know why? - I'm a hater. I'm a hater.
- Actually, then tell me this.
Do you hate this one?
- [Jacques] Yeah.
- [Kevin] Really? - Yeah.
I think that one's even worse.
- Even worse.
Wow.
Okay. Well, I'll tell you one that I hate
because to me this doesn't really count as a dahlia.
This one right here.
- [Jacques] That one, I like better than either other one.
- [Kevin] This one's just kind of boring.
- [Jacques] It is, but the actual plant looks cool.
- [Kevin] This one, I don't like either.
- Yeah.
See, I'm more okay with this.
- What I'm here for are these big old vessels.
- Oh see.
Right here is the classic.
Everyone loves the cafe au lait.
- But this has been really rewarding.
We put a lot of tubers in the ground.
We have a lot of beauty in the garden.
This branching sunflower that was planted
by the birds is the best sunflower I've ever grown.
- Maybe a gift from the crows.
- It might have been a gift from the crows.
So guys, we've learned a lot this season.
There's actually so much we have planned for you.
Make sure to subscribe,
tell a friend. And I have a little teaser for you,
a little secret.
And I don't even know if I've told you, Jacques.
You've seen how the garden has gone,
how the homestead has grown over the last couple years.
- [Jacques] Yep.
- And a lot of you have wondered, how did you do all this?
Well, I would say watch the YouTube videos.
But you don't have to do that anymore
'cause what if you just want something physical,
something you can touch?
We might have it for you.
Oh, you know what, I know you were working on this.
- Yeah.
- And it's finally ready.
- It's finally ready.
And that would be the "Epic Homesteading" book is complete.
It is done.
Now, when I say it's almost ready,
I mean, I finished it.
I don't mean you can get it yet.
You can get it January 2nd, 2024.
Signed copies.
Only a few are gonna be signed
'cause I physically cannot sign that many copies.
But we have some signed copies on the store.
It gets you the signed copy,
free shipping and a free pack of seeds
from Botanical Interests, our seed company.
It's a way to say thank you
to those of you who've been on this channel,
supporting the growth
and sort of expression of how to live a more holistic life,
just in a normal place.
- And sometimes being a little silly
and having fun in the garden.
- Yeah, just messing around,
having fun with it.
I mean, if you were to take a drone and fly upwards,
you would actually see this as just a normal house.
It's actually quite small.
It's less than a thousand square feet.
And so it's not like I'm doing something
in the rural acreage.
It's a way to be accessible.
So that book is available for you.
Check it out.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
- Ooh.