Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today we have another exciting episode for
you coming at you from my front yard garden here. As you guys can see, spring is underway,
we're almost hitting summer now, not quite. As you guys can see we got some of my summer
garden planted out and this video, which is hopefully a short format video, is to just
let you guys know that it's never too late to plant a garden or start planting your own
food at home. Even though we're like well into maybe a month
and a half past my last frost date here, I'm still planting things out and just because
I didn't plant it right in the beginning of the season doesn't mean you could be like
oh I missed the whole season man, I can't grow anything. I want you guys to grow no
matter where you live, no matter what time of year it is and even if it's snowing outside
you could plant sprouts and microgreens indoors. That being said, the growing season here runs
from like maybe April to like November, maybe December. So it's like depending on the year
six to seven months long. We're only like a month and a half or so in, so I still have
plenty of time to plant plants and get them producing. Now the tips I want to give you
guys if you do plant late and aren't at the beginning of the season, which I always encourage
you guys to plant in the beginning of the season but there are benefits actually to
planting a little bit later. Number one, you want to start off with plants,
so especially if you're trying to grow tomatoes and you're starting off a month and a half
later you don't want to start by seeds. That's not a good idea because these transplants
have already been started like 60, I don't know, 30 days ago. A couple weeks ago, so
you're going to have a jump on it. Even better yet than getting these small 6 packs, is getting
larger plants like these guys. These are like four inchers. So these four inchers, look
at that, there's already a little baby zucchini on here growing. This is an eight-ball zucchini.
These are the four inchers here, I got zucchini and cucumbers and some pumpkins, some melons.
That gives you a jump on the season, so this saves you time, as much as I would like to
start my own seeds, small percentage of what I'm growing is actually started by seed, a
lot of it is done by plant starts because I don't have the time to plant ahead and start
my seeds early and what not. I always try to support local growers, growing high-quality
plants of course at the best prices. So yeah, those are two tips and another thing
as you guys can see I have like peppers planted out in the bed there, this bed's empty, I'm
kind of drying some onions that I harvested yesterday in the sun. Another reason that's
beneficial to stagger your planting is so that all your crops or your harvest is not
coming in at the same time. Right, because these peppers were planted first, these ones
were like maybe a month later, my peppers are going to ripen up in that bed first, then
in this bed, so I'll have like a continual supply of peppers and they're not going to
be all there at the same time. Now, if it's getting later in the season,
more than halfway done with the season, then I would recommend not necessarily growing
plants of that season. For example, if your growing season's short in Vermont and it's
four months right and you're already at two months in mark, unless you could get like
one gallon nice large tomatoes that are already established and have fruit on there, I wouldn't
necessarily recommend planting those. But what I would recommend at that point is
planting things like leafy greens. Leafy greens, like some of the things I got here, like lettuces
and kales, those are going to do pretty good, even after the frosts. These could survive
frost. So if you get them established before the frost then it frosts, harder frost on
these, lighter frost on these, they'll still survive. Now, if it's snowing, I don't know
maybe the kale'll survive under the snow, but it's not going to grow. But there's always
a way you could grow some stuff, grow some food at home.
One of the other things that I'm planting are the beans. So beans are a fairly fast
crop, and I want to encourage you guys to take a look at tags when you're buying the
crops, or at the seed packets. This one says matures in 50 to 60 days, fruit size bountiful
harvest. So this plant is ready in 50 to 60 days, which is just two months. So I easily
have four to five months to go, so easily in two months I'll be harvesting my beans,
no problem what so ever. So always pay attention because some plants, like one of the pumpkins
I bought today, 120 days to harvest. So if you are planting late pay attention
to those numbers and when the harvest is ready, like some of the earliest tomatoes could be
ready in like 50 days, like early growth tomatoes. Some of the peppers they take a bit longer
than tomatoes. So especially if you're starting late in the season, chose the varieties that
are going to be ready earlier and of course, leafy greens as long as the plants big and
it's got leaves on it, you can harvest them and eat them. So I want to always encourage
you guys to plant leafy greens. They're some of the most beneficial foods in my opinion.
The last thing I like to say is I like to give an analogy all the time. It's like when I
was in junior high school and high school, I go to the junior high school dance. I'd be
that wallflower sitting against the wall like with my back up against the wall and like
looking at all the cute girls, like man I should ask one of those girls to dance. But I
was too chicken to do that and the result of that was me not dancing a dance, not getting
to know girls, not dating when I was younger because I was too shy, right.
The worst thing if I did go up to girl and ask her to dance she would say no so then I
was not dancing anyways so then actually the outcome would have been the same as me not
saying anything. But if she would have said yes then I would have been dancing, could
have got to know her, maybe gone on some dates and stuff like that. But I didn't even do
any of that, right. So I want you guys to have the gumption and
motivation to plant some plants because you could go buy the plants and plant them and
they're not going to talk back to you, they're not going to tell you no, don't plant me.
They're just going to grow and then guess what, you're going to see what happens, like
okay well I've started my garden last year, and once you guys got your garden all set
up, all the infrastructure, the raised beds and the irrigation in, right. Every year is
a lot easier to plant because all you do is you pull the old plants, you put in new plants
and you're done. I know that first time if you've never gardened
before you got to set up the raised beds, get the good soil and all this kind of stuff,
set it up properly. But once you got it set up your work is really minimized. So you
have, be sure to check my past episodes on how to install a raised bed from nothing,
how to select the best soil and how to even install an irrigation system. I'll put links
down below if I remember, to my videos so that you guys can get growing today instead
of tomorrow. So yeah, your plants won't talk back to you
and then after the experience of growing, maybe if you started halfway into the season,
if it worked great, you learned that you could even plant halfway in the season, not that I
necessarily recommend that, but there's benefits to doing that like staggering your plantings.
If it doesn't work well then you're going to know, hey don't plant tomatoes when I
have two months left in the season, unless I get nice large established plants or something
like that. You can just have fun in the garden and give
your plants a chance. Always try to grow your own food and see what happens, because at
worse what's going to happen is it's not going to work and then you're going to get to learn
something and then try again next time and do it a little bit differently so that you
guys could be successful. One of the models I like to teach is good,
better, best and it's always better to grow your own food, even if you start later in
the season than to be buying your food at the grocery store because you know what got
sprayed on it, you know what kind of fertilizers went into it. You know exactly the process
of growing the plants and how it was treated. If you guys liked this short format, hey please
give me a thumbs up, it'll encourage me to do more short videos for you guys. I think I
got to get actually to planting all these plants, I got over maybe about 80 plants
to plant today. I'm going to fill up this bed with cucumbers up the middle, up the
trellis and the peppers along the edges. Then we're going to fill in with some melons
in the front bed and then some of these yellow beans on some of my trellises over there.
Got some basil and other random leafy greens I'll kind plant out in the shade so they don't
get too hot. So yeah, be sure to check my past episodes, I
have over 1100 episodes now teaching you guys all aspects on how to grow your own food at
home. Also be sure to click that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any of my
upcoming episodes I have coming out about every three to four days and final thoughts
are really seriously get planting now, it's only going to do you guys a favor, you and
your family a favor by growing your own food, experiencing how easy it is to grow and if you mess up
you're going to learn something in the process and then you'll be able to do it again better
the next time and be successful. That's, I'm still learning man. Actually
on my peppers I think I planted, they're doing good, I didn't lose any this time.
Sometimes I might and that's alright, right? We could always learn from our mistakes, that I
learn by not going up to those girls in middle school that I should have because maybe I'd
be dating and having a nice solid girlfriend earlier in life.
So in any case, once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll
see you next time and until then, remember keep on growing!
Latest Episode on Growing Your Greens! Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for you, coming out to you from my beautiful backyard
garden, on a beautiful spring day. Summer's almost here, hopeful you guys got your gardens
planted out.