hey we're in the homestead garden series today and i want to share some things that uh with you
guys today that i've been doing and uh how i'm keeping it frugal this growing season stay tuned
so
welcome back to pine meadows hobby farm i'm your host jerry hansen this is the greenhouse it's
nice and warm in here it's like 30 degrees outside really really chilly in the um out in the behind
the greenhouse especially this is what it looks like yeah we got stuff on the ground but in the
greenhouse right now with the solar activity going on warming things up in here in this controlled
environment we got about 60 degrees right now i want to go over a couple of things especially
on recycling upcycling repurposing and just keeping it frugal i got a load of seed today from
the market i paid 25 cents a pack let me show you what i got i had an errand to run
to town this morning so i went stopped by the uh local dollar tree uh you know folks they're
not most items are a dollar but about half the items went up 25 they're 1.25 now that's a 25
inflation rate anyway i picked up 20 worth of seed now these are seed like what i grew last year
successfully i can them pickle them preserve them and all kinds of bananas oh here's one
here's one
i also got some anemone uh bulbs to plant
as well these seeds come for for a dollar this is a variety of radish the uh gourmet blend
and then the container variety uh these are french breakfast radish
now i do like to cook my radish you roast it uh with a little bit of uh olive oil and um some
garlic salt oh oh oh it's good it's wonderful got a variety of grand bell pepper mix two types of
peas i've got the little marvel and the alaska p spinach got that spinach one package of sweet corn
good for your cardiovascular system i got four things of beetroot oh and the beet greens
are really good for you too they had three selection of cucumbers this is the national
pickling cucumber bought several of those picked up a couple of packs of the market more
as well the straight eight these will be growing in the greenhouse these are lettuce
but out in the raised beds they're going to be planting this swiss chard
both in the greenhouse and out in the garden i'll be planting some basil
and i'll be planting a sage garden out front got two variety of carrots these are the red cord
chetany or shanton name wherever you spell it and scarlet nantes got one package of summer squash
couple packages of early golden acre cabbage i do have plenty of seed left over in my seed banks
from years past so seeds still grow we just gotta carefully uh hydrate them and get them to uh root
i also picked up a variety of flowers just a few variety followers not a whole lot sunflowers
which is going to be excellent for drying out and giving it as a treat to the chickens
and of course i got the anatomy uh bulbs which i'll be planting in a planter out front
with the morning glories and of course as a repellent in the garden i picked up some marigolds
those marigolds are deer resistant and also a nice repellent for the garden
here's the planter i was talking about i'm going to be planting
uh the morning glories along the back just a couple of the seed packets and then these
along the front and i'm going to place them at the base of my trellis in the front of my house
that way i could have the uh the anemones growing along the front and the um morning glories growing
up the back right up the trellis i also had a chance i took a nice afternoon and planted
uh the heather and the lavender that i had gotten for the front of my landscaping
i'll be adding i'll be fixing the borders here pretty soon with some cement and getting it all
nice and even leveled out and then filling that in topping all that off with pea gravel instead of
bark dust or mulch because that is combustible and i want to try to keep combustible material away
from the house if at all possible because we do live in a real high density wildfire area so i've
done a lot of fire mitigation around my place and hopefully i was successful so we've been fingers
crossed luckily so far with the metal roofs on the house and the uh barn and the other outbuildings
it's protecting them from that way and also just keeping vegetation away that's another good thing
back to gardening like i said when i went down and picked up on my seeds this morning they didn't
have the seeds out yet i just asked to see if they got a fresh delivery and if they had the box of
seeds back of the vegetable seeds back there yet and they they did they took the time went back and
got the big box and i got first choice of the seed so i got 20 with a seed there's a bargain
uh there are four for a dollar on the vegetable seeds now i guarantee you
these grow i did them last year they all grew i can them i preserved them
i pickled them they work let's set that aside for right now because i'm going to work on that
project a little bit later but i'm going to take my coat off because i'm in the greenhouse
the sun's full blown up it's about 10 11 o'clock in the morning and it's getting hot in here
i don't want to open the windows quite yet if i want to if i want to plant seeds i want
them to germinate well so as far as upcycling and recycling goes i'm taking cottage cheese
containers drilling holes in the bottom for drainage and then i'm just spray painting them
nice little uh pots to plant some of these uh vegetables in to get them
started or even plant some flowers in i've got three styles of paints that i'm using
uh because that's what i have available in my inventory so this is upcycling on
repurposing i went down to dollar tree also and i went and got some of these all these little
things that you press on there and it kind of gives it a little bit different
um feature for the plant here's some other examples of what i did to these pots
yep and if you're going to plastic exposed to the sun it's wise to paint the plastic anyway because
you know what that'll protect the plastic a lot longer from the harmful rays of the sun because
you know what plastic has happens to plastic but it sits out in the sun for a while yeah real
brittle i haven't talked about worms for a while i have my worm bin this is an old bathtub i just put
in here and i built this really nice little stand for it to get it up to a suitable height for me
this has two purposes it serves as a with this a screen that i resourced it fit perfectly over
the bathtub so it gives me a really nice work surface to work with my plants and any debris
falls through and feeds the worms makes some happy worms so getting the worms through the winter
months well they're in the greenhouse so they won't freeze i still feed them but in the winter
months i keep this moist you can take you can opt for a tray of ice cubes and put them on here
about once every four days and it keeps enough moisture in here so the worms don't dry out i just
put a banana in here this morning and that's what the worms do is they take and eat all that stuff
and then they they get the banana down to its micronutrients and that's where your potassium
can come from was your banana peel resources from your kitchen scraps other nutrients that
you add to your garden is that way too this is worm compost it's also called vermiculture
let's see if i can see any worms yep there's a worm right there i don't know if that one's
alive it's not moving maybe it's so cold in here nope there's some worms right there there you go
got worms anyway
now i'll be harvesting some uh worm compost or worm castings which is worm poop
and uh i've got a uh air pump on order right now i'll be adding that to the uh bucket of uh
water my well water uh don't use tap water from the city it's got chemicals in it
and then i'll be putting a little bit of worm um castings in there in a little sachet
and then adding i'll probably add bee honey because i have bee honey here on my farm that i
raise my own bees everybody else's uses molasses you can use molasses if that's
what you have available but it's the sugars and stuff that feed the enzymes the bacterias the uh
the microorganisms that are in the solution that you're going to create an atmosphere for and then
when i create that i'll i'll do an episode just on making a worm tea this is great for plants
because i'll be doing that when i get closer to actually growing and planting my vegetables
now keeping it frugal here on the homestead another thing i did when i was out at a dollar
tree my wife asked me to pick up something like this so i went and dropped these these actually
25 of these and what i'm using them for is let me show you and this is a dui diy homestead hack
that i'm going to throw into this show i have this top a tarnished real tarnished brass
uh shell mortar round from uh oh i got when i was a teenager probably 16 years old
anyway it was really tarnished and what i did is i just set it down into this pitcher
and i just soaked it in ammonia that's it just regular household ammonia soaked it in there
pulled it out you know for a couple hours pulled it out turned it over so i get the whole shell
came it out and it cleaned it up i didn't rub anything on there it just and it really cleaned
up the bottom which i've never been able to get the tarnish off the bottom but that if you look on
the inside that's tarnish oh that's what it really looked like really bad but that's a diy homestead
hack thrown into this episode just ammonia to clean up your gold your silver and your brass
and perhaps some other metals now we have been using this as a vase i was going to turn it into
a lamp i still might turn it into a lamp but my wife likes it better as a vase and that's why she
asked me to pick up these plants just to i don't know how she wants it i just throw them in there
maybe it needs something down in there to make it stick up a little bit
yeah let's stick this down in there uh what do i have
i have this let's shove this down in there
it's just a paper bag
there we go i don't know i'm not a floral designer what do you guys think think that might work
uh my wife will dress it up a little bit more but anyway that's that's a homestead hit tip
trick and also saving money diy uh because there's frugal in our high in our name pine meadows hobby
farm a frugal homestead so i'm gonna go set this in place and surprise my wife saying hey
i got this do you like it fix it if you want to fix it so now there's some money saving tips for
you guys especially getting into the garden seating season go ahead and go down to your
local dollar tree and pick out some seeds i only pla i picked out the varieties that
i know we're going to eat uh we're not doing tomatoes anymore for us personally tomatoes are
an inflammatory and so it's been causing us a lot of problems once we discovered that we just we're
just not doing tomatoes anymore and there's other things we're not doing anymore so i'll be growing
a lot of vegetables in the greenhouse throughout the year and i mean throughout the year we have a
heater we can keep it heated through the winter so we really want to increase our salad crops in here
uh and some other crops that we can keep going especially swiss chard grows well outside year
round uh a lot of a variety of plants grow well outside so check those variety of plants that
grow in your growing region we're in zone eight so we have to pay attention to the instructions
on the back of the season when exactly to plant them and even where to plant them yeah that music
in the background is from my stereo i put in here that i i feed my plants with music yeah
i personally like some pop a little bit of rock i like a little bit of country i like a lot of
classics so i have a variety up there that i like to play anyway uh that's it here on the homestead
garden series stay tuned to more videos you could do that by subscribing then clicking that bell
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media right now just be be kind and yes and be safe we'll see you guys in the next adventure
you