in today's episode with a look at saving seeds from the previous season starting
some winter vegetables harvesting fresh fruits and vegetables from your garden
some cool things you can buy and a lot more welcome to the California garden in
the month of November
we will start with the garden tour we will look at the
harvests we made this month we then have some things for you to do in your garden
and finally we will look at some cool gardening products so let's begin with
the garden tour November is a month where there's not much activity
happening in the garden a lot of planting so let's see what we have we
have some onions these are the green onions the small bulbing kinds and right
next to that we have some more onions planted this month and these are the
large bulbing kinds right next to that we have the radishes these are the
watermelon radishes and is the first time I'm trying growing this watermelon
radish variety and I'm really excited to see how the harvest goes and right next
to that we have the hyacinth beans plant I was thinking it might die but
it's still growing strong in the winter season we have some more brassicas which
are cauliflowers and cabbages that are growing right next to that as well as
some watermelon radish and in the next bed we have the Malabar spinach which
has been growing pretty well some more radishes on the side and then we have
the broccoli this is the English broccoli variety the purple variety and
it's grown pretty large right next to the broccoli we have some radish plants
growing as well as some carrots now these radishes are the winter radish the
the long winter radish and it's growing pretty well and right next to the winter
radish we have some kohlrabis this is a mix of both white as well as purple
kohlrabi plants and they seem to be growing well and in the same bed we have
some chili plants that I'm planning to overwinter so we'll see how it goes I've
done it successfully last year and in the next bed right next to the
one we have the kohlrabis we have some more brassicas these are the
cabbages and cauliflowers and they are growing pretty well there is a little
bit of insect damage but I think that should be okay these plants should be
able to survive and along the edge of the bed we have some beets growing this
season the beets have grown very well and I'm hoping to harvest some good
beets as the season progresses now I usually do not grow a lot of beets but I
did reserve some space for them just because the beet greens are delicious
and the beet roots are also very delicious and very healthy and that
concludes the tour of our raised beds we will now move on to the tour of our
container garden in our container garden we have our pineapple plants that are
growing pretty well next to the pineapple plant we have a lot of carrots
that are growing in this whiskey barrel container now I've been trying to grow
carrots in this whiskey barrel container and I usually grew a few this time I
have a lot of carrots that are growing in this whiskey barrel container we also
have a lone cauliflower plant right there that's growing pretty well and
right next to the cauliflower plant we have the winter radish that's grown to
quite a large size now and should be ready for harvest soon next to that is
the Ivy gourd plant and as expected it's becoming yellow and has brown leaves now
so we'll see how it goes and then we have the kohlrabi plants with some
surprising insect damage in just a couple of days and while I was not
watching it looks like the caterpillars as you can see here are chewing away on
the leaves so I just picked them up it's easy to spot them you just pick them up
and then you throw them it's a very easy way to eliminate these pests and do make
sure that you watch the underside of the leaves as well in most brassicas
including kohlrabis the insect damage can be pretty bad pretty quick
so make sure you are watching your plants regularly let's now look at the
fruit trees we have the Dancy tangerine that are ripening and will be ready for
harvest soon followed by the Washington Navel orange this orange tree has grown
pretty large this year and while we got a few oranges last year this year has
been pretty good and we should be able to harvest a lot of oranges this year
followed by our gem avocado tree that's growing pretty well and in the harvest
section we will jump right in to harvesting the gem avocado now we
started harvesting or avocado this month and the avocado will keep growing and
the prime time for harvesting this avocado is somewhere around January or
February but we have so many avocados on our tree that we just started harvesting
them this month and they were pretty good
they have been ripening and it's very delicious so this is our harvest we
harvested a few we didn't go overboard and harvest a lot of avocados because
the quality would increase over time we did harvest our bitter gourds in
November and since the cooler season is coming this was the last month for the
bitter gourd plants and we did remove this plant although it was growing
pretty well it wasn't producing a lot of bitter gourds because it wasn't that hot
so this is an excellent vegetable to grow it has tremendous health benefits
we also harvested our Ivy gourds and November was again the last month I
think we will be harvesting them because the production has slowed down now that
the cooler season has come in let's now look
things to do in your garden save seeds this is something you must do if you're
growing heirloom vegetables you should be saving your seeds here you see this
bitter gourd it actually opens up like this when the bitter gourd is ripe
so I usually leave about two or three bitter gourds on the plant so that they
can ripen and produce these seeds so all you do is just pick out these seeds and
then dry them I usually dry them on a piece of a paper towel and once these
seeds are dry you should be able to save them very easily
you can also direct sow seeds like carrots as well as winter radishes it's
still not late to sow these vegetables in your soil you can also start Swiss
chard and spinach seeds these plants grow very well during the winter season
so you can start them separately and then transplant them when they're ready
here you can see I'm sowing this Swiss chard it's a rainbow Swiss chard variety
and it's an excellent variety to grow as well as some spinach seeds and these
should be ready in about six weeks for transplants November is also a good time
to prepare the soil for your raised beds now I recommend adding a lot of organic
matter a lot of compost and in this case for our raised bed we are adding azomite
which is rock dust and it has a lot of minerals that will remineralize your
soil now if you have soil that dry like the one I have here I'm adding some more
peat moss into this bed to improve the water retention so it really depends on
what kind of soil you have but one thing that I would definitely recommend adding
every few months is compost and some rock dust and that really helps growing
great plants in your garden now I know some of my viewers had asked me whether
rock dust really works or is it just a gimmick now soil types vary and some
people might have excellent native soil whereas some might not have it for
example in this raised bed since we created our own
soil there's not much native soil so rock dust really helps to remineralize
and then provide all these nutrients to your plants let's now look at some
gardening products I was at my local Home Depot and I saw a lot of fruit
trees excellent varieties of fruit trees as you can see here a lot of varieties
that make excellent fruit trees in your home garden and some of the trees that I
already had is well like the Meyer lemon and some other trees but what really
caught my attention was this dwarf avocado tree
now this dwarf avocado tree was created by a local nursery and what was
interesting was that the plant was growing out of the seed now I've
recommended not buying plants that grow out of seeds because it's a hit or miss
however in this case I saw that this plant had some flowers on it and it was
growing very well and this is why I picked up one plant to see how it grows
so there we have it folks that was our episode on the California gardening for
the month of November if you liked our video do give us a thumbs up if you're
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soon happy gardening