Good morning and welcome to the  first official garden tour of 2021

If you're new to the channel I am growing in zone  6a Ohio and focus primarily on things I can eat  

with some flowers thrown in for the pollinators.  

So let's take a look at what's going on on this  fairly chilly first week of may in the garden.  

Now right up front here I've got the strawberry  bed. This thing is getting kind of out of control  

because I've just let the runners go wherever they  wanted so I'm gonna trim it back after this year's  

harvest but I'm really hoping for a good harvest  this year. We lost a lot of our berries to frost  

last year, I did have to cover this up because we  just had a frost when this was all in full bloom,  

but I'm seeing some small berries form and  I have high hopes-- wish me luck! Now over  

here on the east side of the garden I have a  lot of raised beds and I found that I like to  

do a combination of raised beds and in-ground  and that is because, first of all the raised  

beds allow me to get in and plant really early in  the spring. A lot of times my clay soil is just  

too wet and cold to get in as early as I would  like so these work really well for that and also  

there are a few vegetable crops that prefer really  really well draining soil a really loose soil that  

I find I have better results with in the raised  beds, carrots are a really good example of that.

So what you'll see in the beds today are primarily  a lot of early season cool season crops. So you  

can see a lot of early spring crops in here--  lettuces, endives, pansies, green onions, spinach,  

another bed of spinach

here were some over wintered onions that I'm  testing out this year, those are some green  

onions that have bolted, this lettuce was  some that overwintered really beautifully,

carrots and more spinach, and  some nice endive back here,  

some brassica plants and then back here... this  is one I'm really excited about. This is 'Little  

Ben' gooseberry and this is a dwarf gooseberry and  I've not had a chance to taste this variety yet,  

but we had some blooms on there earlier  and it looks pretty happy and healthy so...  

oh there's some blooms right there! Oh we got  looky there we got some little baby fruit forming!  

So I'm excited about this guy. Back here is a  full bed of carrots, and then my big raised beds  

up front here I've got a few odds and ends  planted but I'm kind of giving them a break  

because I had them planted with  three successive crops last year.  

And then the rest of the garden  are in-ground raised rows or beds

Now you might notice a lot of row  covers out here and that is not  

for frost protection, that is primarily for  insect and critter protection. The number one  

biggest insect pest offender in my garden are  the cabbage worms and these row covers work  

really really well because they keep the adult  cabbage butterflies from laying eggs on my plants,  

which in turn keeps the cabbage worms from  hatching on my plants, which in turn keeps  

the cabbage worms from devouring every single one  of my brassicas! So I'm really appreciative for  

these covers. The other pest that this helps  prevent is a relative newcomer to the garden.  

Ironically just recently a viewer asked me if  I ever have trouble with rabbits in my garden  

to which I somewhat smugly replied that "No, my  wonderful dogs scare all of the rabbits away!"  

Well the rabbits have outsmarted the dogs and  figured out that if they get into the garden  

they have this perfectly safe protected fenced  in place to have their babies and an endless  

buffet of nutritious vegetables. Just last week  I had to relocate an entire nest of baby bunnies  

out of my vegetable bed and came out one morning  to all of my beets and chard completely mowed to  

the ground. So I have found that these covers also  keep the rabbits from making a buffet out of my  

garden. Now one thing I wanted to point out this  is actually a new type of insect netting that I am  

trying for the first time this year and so far I  absolutely love it. So it does an awesome job of  

keeping critters out, but what I love is that you  can see through it. With the lightweight insect  

fabric that I typically used to use you cannot see  through it you have to get down on your hands and  

knees take your fabric prints out peek underneath  and check on your plants which when you've got a  

lot of plants it's kind of a pain in the tuchus,  plus this has a nice weight that's a little  

bit easier to work with especially if you're  trying to put this on when it's at all windy.  

So going forward I am going to be switching out  my stash of insect fabric with this netting.

I've got onions back here, some  collards that made it through the  

winter and they're just too pretty to cut  down at this point. I love these flowers  

and so do the pollinators. This whole  row is celery which I did have to cover  

back up to keep the bunnies from chewing on them,  and this is all garlic that was planted last fall.

Under this netting more endive. I really  overdid it on the endive there's no way  

I'm gonna be able to eat all this. It's a  good thing my chickens like it. Radishes,  

more lettuce and brassicas, some late  planted broccoli that I just put in.  

I've got some spinach back here-- incredibly the  rabbits did not touch the spinach which makes no  

sense to me at all but I will take a small victory  on that. More garlic, got some vetch cover crop  

and that will get mowed down in time to plant some  warm season crops, got some radishes. This little  

radish guy escaped me, looky there. My chard  is rebounding, but like I said this was pretty  

severely nibbled off and they got everything on  that side, so I replanted with Chinese cabbage.  

Lettuce down there, again they did not  bother the lettuce which I don't understand.

Calendula, some 'Tiara' cabbage,  this is a mustard cover crop,  

my kohlrabi is starting to form little bulbs down  here which I'm super excited about because if  

you've seen any of my old videos you know that  I may be the world's biggest fan of kohlrabi  

and more kale that has gone to flower

I've got some cauliflower under there

peas, my sad little remnants of cauliflower here.  This was one that I'm not sure if it was the  

rabbits or who it was but someone came through  here and just nipped all these off. I had an  

entire 20-foot row of cauliflower and  I've only got about four plants left.  

Luckily I've got some at my mom and dad's as  well that did not get eaten. And back here  

I've got fennel. This is bulb fennel and  this you can see the hoops this will get  

netting on it as well because critters love  fennel, I've found that out the hard way.  

So these two rows are primarily planted  in cover crop and these will be mowed down  

in time to plant my things like tomatoes and  peppers and some of my warm season crops.  

I do have some potatoes back here they got a  little fried by the frost, you can see those  

black kind of burnt edges on there, that's from  the frost but they are sprouting up new green  

growth and will be just fine. And then the plan  for this sad looking batch of weeds back here  

is chickens. So we're raising meat birds again  this year and I decided this would be a perfect  

area to fence them in. I'm just going to allow  them to feed and scratch and poop back here  

and then either this fall or the coming spring  I'll get in and convert this into gardens,  

but I figured that'll be a good way to add  fertility to the soil scratch up the weeds  

and a place to keep the chickens nice and safe. So  we'll see how that works. And then up front I've  

got a couple more raised beds you can see it's  just kind of a mix of things going on in here  

a lot of cilantro, this is more cover  crop, underneath here we've got some kale,

baby rhubarb plant

more cover crop, collards, some  artichoke underneath there,  

lettuce and broccoli, these  are my volunteer pansies

more cauliflower and kale

these are some carrots that overwintered  beautifully. I planted these  

at the beginning of last September and kept  a row cover over them all winter and they've  

put on a ton of growth since the spring started.  And not much going on over here- some chard that  

overwintered, more cover crop, more  volunteer pansies and this is some  

wild thyme over here which makes an  excellent low maintenance ground cover

and it smells just beautiful

My potato grow bags-- again a couple  of these got hit with frost but  

they seem to be coming out of it. And then a few  edibles going on outside of the garden. This is an  

asparagus bed I put in last year so I'll start  harvesting some spears next spring. I also put  

some strawberries in here because I wanted to play  around with the con...[rooster crows] because I  

wanted to play around with the concept of using  strawberries as kind of a cover for the asparagus  

so I didn't have so many issues with weeds popping  up in the asparagus bed so we'll see how that goes

Over here I've got more peas

and grass that needs mowed very very badly,  and back here is my no dig potato experiment  

which I've had a couple of little hiccups  with so far but there are potatoes growing.  

So the first issue was that deer figured out  this was out here unprotected and thought I  

had set out a nice little buffet for them so  I did have to put up this makeshift netting  

to keep the deer from nibbling. The other was that  instead of using straw I used hay which tends to  

hold more water and get heavier than straw does so  I've had to go in here a couple times and fluff up  

the hay just to make sure that my potatoes  weren't rotting underneath there. But even  

back there where you can't really see any  green there are little green sprouts coming up  

and I've got all of this growth already so I  might get some potatoes after all. And this area  

will be for tomatoes this year, I've just got  it mulched very heavily to keep weeds and grass  

from sprouting up through there. This is my big  old hügelkultur bed in progress, this is kind of  

taking way longer than it should but this  is just, I work on it when I get the chance  

and hopefully I'll be able to get in  here and plant this up with something  

maybe later this summer or even this fall.  Elderberries are growing strong over here

hoping for a big crop on  these guys this year as well

This area is a new strawberry bed. In addition  to this spot I also garden at my mom and dad's.  

So they have a lot more land there so we typically  put our big space crops in so corn and pumpkins  

and squash and those types of things. I typically  also plant a lot of my tomatoes there as well.  

They're a little bit more open they get a lot  more air movement so I find that growing tomatoes  

there I have less problem with some of the tomato  diseases like blight and spot and all of those fun  

foliar diseases you deal with in high humidity  situations. So there's not a whole lot going on  

over there yet but I'll show you quickly what we  do have out already. Over here we've got raised  

rows prepped, most likely cattle panels for  tomato trellises will go over here and we'll  

plant indeterminate tomatoes. These rows are  primarily brassicas-- things like cauliflower,  

broccoli, cabbage and kale, and then  some lettuce and spinach in the last row.  

And again, here you can see I used that  same netting as I did in my other garden  

and it's working really well here to  keep the bugs and the bunnies away

Some onions with lots of miscellaneous seedlings  under the cover and lots of cover crops going  

on. Some canola and tiller radish and a strip of  onions there too, red clover and walking onions

more onions, canola, tiller radish and yellow  clover... for some reason I thought it was a  

good idea to put onions everywhere this year.  Back here is a big plot that we solarized using a  

silage tarp and this will be where the corn and  pumpkins and winter squash are planted this year,  

blackberries, lots of peas on this cattle panel  with fencing again to keep the bunnies at bay

potatoes

and this is where the pumpkins  in winter squash were last year

this year. I'm converting it into a fruit plot  so I'll be planting things like bush cherries,  

gooseberries, currants, haskaps and  

probably some other things-- I haven't  decided yet and here's some hops I planted  

last year which will be staying and it  will climb up this arbor really nicely

and lastly the garlic bed

And of course the last little bit of gardening  goodness is all the plants that are sitting in  

the greenhouse just waiting on me to plant them.  I'm waiting till about may 15th for tomatoes  

and peppers and things like that but they are  ready. So we've got a few in this greenhouse

and a few in this greenhouse

oh and a bunch of fruit  plants too that need to go out

Thank you for letting me share my  garden with you and be sure to subscribe  

if you'd like to see more updates of the  garden throughout the growing season.  

Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!

you