Handmade Happiness: Finding Meaning in the Art of Making
Handmade Happiness invites you to slow down and reconnect with the traditional skills that nourish the body, mind, and soul. Each episode offers practical tips and heartfelt stories to inspire you to live more intentionally and embrace the art of doing things by hand. Whether you’re a seasoned homesteader or just beginning your journey towards a simpler, more intentional life, Handmade Happiness is your guide to cultivating a deeper connection with your food, your home, and the world around you.
Handmade Happiness: Finding Meaning in the Art of Making
31 What’s Growing in Our Garden Right Now: Spring Homestead Garden Update
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What’s happening in our garden right now?
In this episode of Handmade Happiness, Jessica and Thomas share an early spring garden update from the homestead, including what they planted in early April, what’s going into the ground now, and the projects they’re working on as they expand their biggest garden yet.
From cool weather crops and perennials to warm season vegetables and weed suppression strategies, this is a real-life look at what spring gardening actually looks like during a busy planting season.
In this episode, we talk about:
• Planting peas, brassicas, onions, shallots, garlic, and root crops in early spring
• Perennial crops like asparagus and strawberries returning for the season
• Planting summer squash, winter squash, corn, okra, and watermelons
• Transplanting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants after Mother’s Day
• Expanding and establishing new in-ground garden beds
• Using weed fabric and free mulch from a local tree service to suppress weeds and grass
• Our favorite garden tools
• Gardening as a family and learning as we grow
Whether you’re planting your first garden or expanding your homestead growing space, this episode is full of encouragement, practical gardening conversation, and seasonal inspiration.
Find more gardening, homesteading, quilting, and from-scratch living resources at The Lark Life.
Subscribe for more conversations about intentional living, gardening, handmade skills, and raising capable kids.
#SpringGardening
#GardenUpdate
#HomesteadLife
#GrowYourOwnFood
#VegetableGarden
Foundations in Quilting Course https://thelarklife.com/foundations-in-quilting
Link to Spring Garden Tour Video https://youtu.be/kGkE8Zrhp8Q
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Until next time, may you find joy in the simple things and beauty in the work of your hands.
Welcome to Handmade Happiness, a podcast about simple living, handmade skills, and building a life rooted in what matters most. We talk about everything from homesteading and cooking from scratch to quilting, gardening, and raising capable kids. This is a place to slow down, learn new skills, and be reminded that a meaningful life is often built in the small everyday moments. If you enjoy today's conversation, you can follow or subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. That way, new episodes will just be there when you're ready for them. Now for today's episode. Hi there and welcome to the Handmade Happiness Podcast. I'm Jessica.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Thomas.
SPEAKER_02Welcome in to this week's episode. So I was like curious as I was planning some of this stuff for today. Do you know this is episode number 31?
SPEAKER_00Is it really?
SPEAKER_02It really is. Can you believe that? It's pretty, pretty cool. Um, so today's episode, we are going to be talking about one of my very most favorite things. Uh, we're gonna be talking about all things having to do with the garden.
SPEAKER_01All things garden.
SPEAKER_02All things garden.
SPEAKER_01We just came from the garden. Well, we just came from the shower, which is why I'm not wearing a hat because I don't want to mess up my hair. Which, if you're listening and not watching, that's a joke. I don't have hair. So, but no, yeah. So we we just got out of the garden this evening. It was beautiful outside. It's a beautiful garden. Our six-year-old was appreciating the beautiful purple sunset, and we were shoveling several yards of mulch. We made a pretty good dent in our in our mulch.
SPEAKER_02Free mulch. Yeah, the tree service dropped off to us.
SPEAKER_01Pro tip: if you live in, especially in a rural area, uh your tree shredder companies near you probably have to pay to dump debris. And so if you call them and say, Hey, you can bring me free wood chips, um, odds are they will bring you wood chips for free.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when they're in your area, you're saving them. They'll just call you and be like, hey, saving them the extra drive and the fee that they have to pay to dump it. So they're happy to drop it off.
SPEAKER_01We've had what two basic dump truck loads we've probably had about pushing 20 yards of of mulch dropped off for free. Yeah, they call us, hey, we have a load, and we're like, Yes, please bring it. It's awesome, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_02So um, so it's so exciting to be at this time of year. Like we've been doing a lot of kind of things growing planning and preparing and thinking about it, and now things are actually growing, and it's really exciting.
SPEAKER_01Plants actually coming out of the ground?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, it's a lot of work. We've been doing putting in a lot of extra work in the evenings, but it's a lot of work, it's it makes my heart full. It's been really nice.
SPEAKER_01Our garden is sizable. I mean, in fairness, the amount of work that we're putting in is because we're gardening currently close to 5,000 square feet of garden space, right? So um but we divide it five and a half, six ways, and I think it's done.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So we're gonna kind of break down the episode today and talking about some of the things that we started early, some of the things that we just recently got going, and um we'll talk about you know the kids being a part of it with us and talk about um some of my favorite tools that we have that we are using. So we'll we'll cover kind of all things garden, but I did also put up our very first garden tour video this week. Um, so if people want to see what's actually happening in the garden, what it looks like, uh you can head on over to the YouTube channel, and there is a video that just was posted this week kind of showing you the size of our garden and the state that our plants are in. Um we're in zone six, so we're just now kind of getting into our growing season because we don't have a tunnel, a high tunnel or anything. So we're on the list. Yeah. We have a greenhouse that needs to be put together that will help us do some more extended season stuff. But um, anyway, so we're really just getting into it.
SPEAKER_01So well, and this is our first year on this ground, so a lot of the work that we've gone into. Missouri's very rocky, so there's a lot of picking rocks, there's a lot of just breaking the ground. We have good soil, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We do.
SPEAKER_01Um, but there's it's like sod, right? So we're having to we're not retilling a garden from last year, we're breaking new ground and stuff. So it's a lot of ground prep work that we've done, right? A lot of weed killing and things, but yeah, it's good. So what do you have what do you have planted so far?
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh, the list is grown. So we started, I will say we started in um early April, mid-April, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, just in our raised beds, we put um all of our bare root strawberries that we had come in.
SPEAKER_01Right. Um we ate some of those strawberries this evening and they were delighted.
SPEAKER_02So they are starting to make berries for us, and they are the sweetest, tastiest berries.
SPEAKER_01Um it's amazing how they good how they good taste. It's amazing how good they taste when they actually ripen all the way on the vine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and when you're and when you're eating it literally the same day that you picked it, like it's yeah, you literally picked them and put them in the fridge and we sucked them all down after dinner.
SPEAKER_01It was delicious.
SPEAKER_02Um so we started those right away.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um we also put brassica, so I've got some cabbage and some broccoli, um, some Brussels sprouts. I've got some of those things out. We put some snow peas and um bok choy.
SPEAKER_01Do you have cauliflower?
SPEAKER_02Um no, I didn't do cauliflower. Uh we don't really buy much cauliflower. That's true, we're not big cauliflower people.
SPEAKER_01I feel like we probably would be. We just haven't got there yet.
SPEAKER_02We do use some, but I'm like, let me just get broccoli down first. I had limited space because those things are all in some of our raised bed spaces.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. Well, and I feel like that's one of those veggies like three or four years ago, we weren't really Brussels sprout eaters either.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because we didn't have access, right? And now we like that's a staple, Brussels sprouts and asparagus and stuff. So I feel like cauliflowers will probably in the natural progress of us just expanding our veggie repertoire, we'll end up eating a lot of it.
SPEAKER_02Right. And then in that same bed, let's see, I've got um radishes, which we've already been pulling some of those French breakfast radishes. Um we have some white tokenashi turnips, those are already ready. Those look gorgeous. So we're pulling some of those out.
SPEAKER_01They're not super big, those tokenashis, but they're they're very shapely and pretty, right?
SPEAKER_02If I left them a little longer, they would size up a little bit more, but I like them kind of how they are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, young and fresh and totally.
SPEAKER_02We've got some golden beets growing right beside them that I'm excited to try, but they they're not ready yet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and the carrots are there, but they're not ready yet. And so that's kind of where we started. Then in the in-ground garden in the back, at about the same time, we had our aromatics. Our umions, garlic, no, no, no, shallots. Yeah, we well, we put some onions, garlic, shallots. Um, we put asparagus crowns.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02And um we have some horseradish that was given to us by a friend back there. And then I had last year when we got here, I planted some blueberries kind of late in the year, uh, in the fall back there.
SPEAKER_01And the deer promptly ate them to the ground, but they survived.
SPEAKER_02They came back. Yeah, they came back. And some of them, they didn't get them all, they just got one or two of them. But then I planted the bare root raspberries this spring early when I got them. When I planted the strawberries, I also put the raspberries out, and it made this weird, awkward space in between. I was trying to leave room because when they are full size, they're gonna be able to get away.
SPEAKER_01No, the blueberries need the space, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right now, because they're you know just tiny little plants, yeah, um, it left this awkward gap that I ended up putting a bunch of potatoes in. So, and the potatoes are looking beautiful.
SPEAKER_01The potatoes look spectacular.
SPEAKER_02Super, I mean, obviously we can't see the potatoes, but the plants themselves are super green and leafed out and uh flutter they're starting to flower for the fact that I literally just ran the tiller across that little section. We didn't put any amendments, we didn't do anything. I just popped some potatoes in the dirt, and I covered them with straw and just kind of let it go, and they're they're doing awesome.
SPEAKER_01They might be the best looking row out there right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Aside from the horseradish. The horseradish, thank you, by the way, Eva and Steve. Um, our horseradish looks amazing.
SPEAKER_02And and when she gave it, so our friends, they she had horseradish. She she's given me an abundance of plants that she's been kind of dividing because her garden is doing so well. All these perennial things that come back year after year, they were all going crazy, and so she was trying to thin stuff out, and knowing that we were just getting her. She brought you all kinds of things. So she brought us some horseradish, and when she brought it to me and we put it in the ground, it looked pretty sad.
SPEAKER_01It looked like old romaine lettuce, right? It was like all wilted over and stuff.
SPEAKER_02I was not sure if it was gonna make it. It was it was it looked really sad when we first put it in the ground. Um and it's only been out there for a couple weeks, and it is crazy. Um, so it's doing great back there. Then several weeks later, so that stuff was out there several weeks later, um, when we got to the beginning of May, we squashes and had all of the plastic that we put back out, and in the in-ground garden, we put all kinds of variety of summer squashes and winter squashes, all the pumpkins, the watermelons, okra, corn. We got those things put out in that area. And then just this week, now that we're past Mother's Day, I took the advice of all the locals who told me, right? Your tomatoes and stuff until after Mother's Day. So we got those planted. So now we have two beds full of tomatoes and peppers and eggplants. So everything is now like we're rocking and rolling. We set up an area tonight where I'm gonna go now in the next few days and plant some beans, some green beans, and some purple whole peas, because you love those.
SPEAKER_01I do love I don't know why I like purple whole peas so much better than black-eyed peas, but I do. I think they're a little more mild tasting. They're creamier when they cook, right? They cook more thick and like bean soup as opposed to like I don't know. I I just I like them. They're really good.
SPEAKER_02They are really good.
SPEAKER_01Much better than black-eyed peas, in my opinion. I know that's sacrilege for some people, but you gotta try it, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so anyway, so that's kind of we've got a lot of things going on out there, but it makes me so happy to see all of the things growing.
SPEAKER_00Growing.
SPEAKER_02And so, so tonight, part of what we were doing tonight was all of those different squashes and pumpkins and things that we planted, and all the corn, some of them did awesome, and like every one of them came up, but some of them we had not the best germination rates, and uh the corn, especially like the corn, then there was a a couple of varieties of the squashes that they just didn't get up.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, you had a couple of holes, right? They just didn't come up.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, like when okay, number one, we had kids helping us.
SPEAKER_01That's true, it might have been user error.
SPEAKER_02So maybe something happened there. Um also we just put the plastic out. We didn't retill up that space. We'd already kind of previously done it. We just put the plastic out and we just worked the little holes where we were actually planting the the seeds, and so you know, maybe that's affecting some of them. Now, the other things are doing great. So I what we did tonight, we just kind of went back through and replanted the areas where the seeds didn't germinate, where they didn't come up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we just made a bunch of corrections, um, patched bare spots, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We added reseeded some things some of that mulch, added a ton of mulch. The areas that needed it.
SPEAKER_01We probably put down by hand, we probably put down four or five yards of mulch tonight. We put a bunch down. We made a huge dent in our huge pile of mulch. Um my girls are they're pretty good shovelers. Mackenzie was shovel for shovel with me, so yeah. She's a good worker.
SPEAKER_02Um so yeah, so that's kind of what's happening in the garden so far.
SPEAKER_01So it's nice.
SPEAKER_02Of the stuff that we're planting, I'm really excited about the strawberries because they're already like coming up.
SPEAKER_01We eat a lot of strawberries, but we would eat probably three or four times as many strawberries if we had the access, right? Like if we could afford to eat more strawberries than we do and we already eat a lot, right? I think our kids would just literally go sit there and eat a pint of strawberries in a sitting each. Yeah. If we had that many strawberries available to us.
SPEAKER_02So and then I'm also excited about the asparagus.
SPEAKER_00I am too.
SPEAKER_02Now it's gonna take us a couple years, so if you've never grown asparagus, you get these crowns. You can grow it from seed too, but you can get these crowns so it's already kind of starved. It's like the root. You put it in, and so now it's making these like fern-like frond things are all coming up where we planted it. Um, but we won't have any asparagus this year. And next year, it may try to make a few little pieces, but it won't really be much of a thing.
SPEAKER_01But in a couple years, yeah, it's kind of one of those you've got to get it started and just let it go.
SPEAKER_02And once it kind of takes off, but once it gets going, we're gonna spectacular and we're gonna have so much asparagus.
SPEAKER_01A bed full of them.
SPEAKER_02But I've had people at the farmers market, so right now, because of where we are, and the farmers markets that I'm a part of, um, none of the people are like wholesaling produce that they're bringing in. Everybody is the the farmer, the producer that's actually growing it.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And because of where we are and because of how cool it's been, um, pretty much the only thing that people are showing up with is like lettuce and radishes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, lettuce and radishes.
SPEAKER_02I showed up with turnips this past week and I was the only person that had turnips. Like people were like, Oh, what's that? White radishes?
SPEAKER_01And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no, they're turnips. Um and they're really pretty turnips.
SPEAKER_02But I've had somebody come up at the market and be like, Man, I thought I thought somebody would have asparagus out here. And I was like, Well, like, we will, but it's gonna be a few years. And several of the other people, they're like, Yeah, I've started mine, but it's it just takes time. It takes time.
SPEAKER_01It's like if you plant a tree, right? You're not gonna eat fruit off that tree for years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so that's the thing. So the strawberries got me thinking about our peach trees, and I'm like dreaming of the day that that of peach juice running down your face, and you just like But it's gonna be several years before we get there.
SPEAKER_01But uh, you know, that's like the old adage like what's the best time to plant a tree yesterday. Yeah, and which is why we literally planted them the day we moved in because Yeah, because they needed to get started, and in fairness, all of our trees look great, they're all growing, they're all green, then leafed out, and they're getting taller, so um, they all took, right, with the exception of the willow tree that the deer absolutely murdered during the wintertime. Um But no, all it's all going good, but the asparagus is the same way, like you kind of got to get it started, give it some time. Really, the blueberries are the same way in a little bit, right? We may get a few blueberries, but odds are they're they really need to be established pretty well before they start giving fruits. We had friends in Mississippi when we lived there many years ago. They had what 20 large blueberries, like way over my head, tall. And they made so many blueberries, but again, they were probably eight. They've been there for 10-year-old blueberries. And you gotta get started though, right? I mean, you you can't just have it right now, you gotta start it sometime, and um, so some of it will enjoy this season, like as like the strawberries, but uh but even that next year will be better because those plants are more established and stuff, so it's good. You want to talk about um tools? You want to talk about the tools that you use in the garden?
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_01Because I think that's um yeah, that's something we didn't realize how important just like the hand tools, even.
SPEAKER_02Right. So I mean we we have some of the standard, you know, we have shovels and the metal garden rakes, and we have the small hand shovels so that when you're working in the rays better in a little spot, you can do that. But um, just for Mother's Day, you gifted me a hori hoory knife. And when when I got it and I opened it up and I'm looking at it, I'm like, okay, like Yeah, I could tell you weren't just like over the moon about it. I know, I know people use these and I know they rave about them. I know people say how awesome they are.
SPEAKER_01For context, she had asked me for a knife after she absolutely wrecked my pocket knife cutting soil and plastic with my good pocket knife. She asked me, she was like, Well, get me a knife and I won't ruin yours, right? And so I was like, Okay, I got you, I'm gonna get you a knife. Um so I bought her a horihori, and it's there it wasn't terribly expensive. Uh they could they you can pay 50 bucks or more for a horihori, but I did not pay that. Um but it's full tang and it's sharp on one side. Anyways, container. So yeah, so that's her garden knife.
SPEAKER_02So it kind of looks like a straight shovel almost. Or a shovel. Or a knife, it's it's kind of got a curve to it, and one side is serrated and the other side is smooth.
SPEAKER_01Right, it's concave.
SPEAKER_02It makes this point and it's concave, yeah. So um tonight while we were out in the garden, going in that area where all of the squashes and things were planted that didn't come up, there was areas where we needed to pull out some grass and weeds that had grown up and get that soft and broken up so we could plant those seeds. And I like stuck that into the ground, and the first big lump of I literally I just stuck it in the ground and kind of tucked the tip of it under the the chunk that I was trying to get out. Snatched it and it literally just like jumped out of the hole, like it just fell out, and I was like, Where has this tool been all my life?
SPEAKER_01It's I was across the garden and I hear this, yes!
SPEAKER_02I love this tool, and it was like a few places where the holes that we had made in the garden plastic, again, we had kids helping us, they were a little small, and so I could just use the edge of that knife to enlarge the open.
SPEAKER_01Because it's sharp like a knife, it's not just like a like a shovel sharp.
SPEAKER_02It's sharp like a in the new area that we tilled for the beans, we laid that garden paper, we rolled out garden paper, and when it got to the end of the row, I was able to just take that knife.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you just slice it.
SPEAKER_02It was fabulous. Got everything planted. It saved me probably, I it would have taken me twice as long if I didn't have that tool.
SPEAKER_01Well, and one of the things I like about it is so if you imagine, um, if you've never seen a hori hori, if you imagine that you had a bayonet shaped like a garden shovel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? So it is sharp, it's slightly concave, about six inches long. Um, but one of the things I like about it is it has inch markers on the blade. So if you're planting, which tonight we weren't doing a whole right, you were doing more like weed removal and stuff, but if you're planting, you can stick that knife in the ground and know exactly how deep you are.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, the horihori knife, like it's now I think my top favorite tool. Um, which kind of unseated what was previously my favorite tool, which she bought me last year, which is uh a comma hand tool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a Japanese tool, Kama K-A-M-A, I think is how you spell it. It's like a curved like a hand hug.
SPEAKER_02It's like a mini size.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, kind of. But it's pointed, it's sharp, so you can kind of smack it and get it down into the dirt, right? Like a point, like a yeah, now but it's got a sharp shape.
SPEAKER_02I will make a point about this one. So when you first purchased me one, yeah, uh, it arrived. I opened up the package and I pulled it out and I picked it up with my left hand because I'm left-handed, and I was like, How does this work? I took it out to the garden bed and I couldn't, and then I realized I was like, oh.
SPEAKER_01Because it's right-handed.
SPEAKER_02This is made for a right-handed person. So I went and I told you, I was like, hey, I love this. It's probably epic.
SPEAKER_01Also, it's for you, not for me.
SPEAKER_02Do they make one for left-handed people? Because, like, if not, this tool is useless to me because it's not, it's not angled the right way for me.
SPEAKER_01Right, it's curved in such a way that like the shaft is straight and then the blade goes out a little bit, dog legs right, and then comes back to the left. Like you said, kind of like a scythe, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so But it kind of scoops, so you can't, it's not like flat where you can use it reverse.
SPEAKER_01Right, it's curled on one side and pointed on the left side, and if you're left-handed, your point is on the on the top, right, or on the outside, and so you're you can't do anything.
SPEAKER_02So then you very kindly ordered me the left handed version.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is a thing.
SPEAKER_02When I got that, that was my favorite tool. Um, especially my race, but it's so great for kind of if you need to make a little hole with. You need to make a row if you need to pop you stubborn weeds out.
SPEAKER_01It naturally kind of bites under, like when you drag it like a rake, it just the blade kind of slides under the weed and s and cuts it because it's really sharp.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it cuts the weed and kind of scoops it up. So then you're just able to kind of pick up whatever you need to get out of the bed. And um, so that is also a fabulous tool. And I have been using that one a ton. And now that I have the knife also, I mean that that's I I feel like that's almost all I need. If I'm like actually doing planting and weeding work, that's those are my go-tos.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, and I think I would say that the comma is better for um I don't know. It's out it's the one's not really better, it just depends on what you're doing. If you're planting, you probably want the hoary, right? The plant, the hoary, you it's better for making a hole, digging dirt. But again, the comma, if you're planting shallow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, not to get my plants. I can see where the comma's still gonna be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because it's a tiny little sharp hoe that you use with one hand, and you can really get close to other things that are growing. Because you know, you always get clovers or something that grows up like right out of the same hole as whatever it is you're trying to actually grow. And that it's really good for that.
SPEAKER_02Um what other tools? Another thing that I've started using, and I I didn't want to, but I kind of was led to because it was causing problems not to. Um, I've always just liked the feel of the dirt and having my hands in the dirt.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Here, the dirt really dries out my hands.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's not nearly as humid as we grew up. I mean, we for 40 years we lived in the fruit. That's true.
SPEAKER_02So my skin in general is just drier here. I'm having to moisturize my skin more here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then the soil just sucks what little bit of moisture I have in my skin. So it was making my hands super dry and cracked. I was ending up with like sores and stuff on my hands and my skin splitting it anyway. So I just decided, you know what? We're gonna use the gloves. And you brought me some gloves, and it's taking care of the problem.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So yeah.
SPEAKER_01I don't think I'd even had a chance to ask you how those were working out for you, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02They're working great.
SPEAKER_01Um, and you don't have to spend a lot on gloves, by the way, for gardening. I know some people have the cutesy ones that you know.
SPEAKER_02No, these cost you like 99 cents. They were not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I bought them at a discount store and they were like 99 cents a pair. And you can buy them in bulk, even on Amazon. The like the ones you have are kind of like a dipped cotton situation. They're basically disposable. I mean, you once you wear a hole in them, you just throw them, you don't even think about it because they're super cheap. But you get better grip, it keeps the moisture in your hands. It's it's a win-win. Kind of like not like dish gloves at all, really. Dish gloves are rubber and make your hands sweat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01These are these breathe really well. They're cotton. They've got some like dip stuff on the on the palms of them, so your tools don't get slippery and don't cut your fingers. Nice. Don't stick your fingers as many. Oh yeah. Because a lot of those little weeds have like little hair thorns, you know, little pricklies down at the base of them when you pull them out. So what else have you been using?
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean those are really those are my weed fabric weed papers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so I know those aren't tools, but they're supplies, but I I will say this.
SPEAKER_02So we did not order like name brand expensive stuff. We got off-brand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, but honestly, so far it's been working with the fabric probably as well as any of the other stuff would be working.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's doing good. Um, but nothing's coming through.
SPEAKER_02Nothing is nothing is coming through. Um, and it's holding together really well. But I did I have noticed, and so part something that I had you help me with tonight, around some of the edges, especially like where the blueberries were, that's like the outer row.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Even though we've had that covered since the fall when we planted those.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think we I think we talked about this in a previous episode that the grass looks better underneath than it did on the outside.
SPEAKER_02And I don't know if it's because the wind is kind of moving, disturbing it a little bit. I don't know what's happening. But I did go and kind of have the kids help me stomp down the places where you could see the the fabric was kind of rising up.
SPEAKER_01The grass is like rising up from underneath it.
SPEAKER_02Um we went and kind of mashed that down and um we put wood chips on that part of it because obviously it's gonna be a while before the blueberries are substantial enough to shade out grasses that might grow underneath it.
SPEAKER_01Well, the weight of the mulch on there is gonna help it and it'll help block.
SPEAKER_02And so we'll probably end up doing a similar thing to the side where the raspberries are.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, where the candy.
SPEAKER_02And I just realized we should have put some more mulch over where our potatoes are growing. I mean, it's fine for now, but we work.
SPEAKER_01We work till dark, so we did what we could do.
SPEAKER_02But the whole rest of the garden space that we have covered in the fabric, we are not gonna be putting mulch there because all of those things, I purposely planted those things because all of those squashes, those pumpkins, those watermelons, they'll spread. They're gonna have these giant leaves and they're gonna spread and vine all over the place, and they're gonna cover that plastic up so that it really helps cut down. And part of my strategy, the reason we put all of those things back there was so that it can help us have something there to kind of control the grass and the weeds that are trying to grow up there. And every year I think it'll get I'm hoping.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll we keep removing grass and seeds and weeds, and and it gets better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um I really enjoyed watching our six-year-old this evening. We were out working, yeah, and he is helping mom plant plants and generally getting in the way and rolling down the mulch pile, and then he saw the deer across the other pasture, and he's like, Oh, look, the deer, and so he's watching the deer. Then he decides to try and scare the deer, and then he ran away from the turkey.
SPEAKER_02I would say that he was scared by the turkey.
SPEAKER_01But he, you know, he was just absolutely living his best little boy life, right? Outdoors, and being sweet about it, good natured, not one squabble, not one complaint. He was helping work, he helped shovel mulch, he, you know. Well, and it was fun just like it was really enjoyable, and then he's like, Oh wow, look at the sun, it's like purple, and like he was experiencing this sunset, and he was just awestruck by this gorgeous purple sunset.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, anyways, it was just fun watching him really appreciate being outdoors and yeah, um that we weren't spending our evening huddled around a screen, but in roadblocks or something, yeah, but we were outside, yeah. And so he started by me, he was helping me kind of pull out some of the grass and weeds and replant seeds in areas where they didn't germinate. Um, and he was doing a fabulous job. But he would so like we talked about what the weeds look like because there were some squashes growing, so I'm like, look, if you don't pull the squashes, these are our squashes, this is what we want to grow. All the other stuff that looks like grass, that's the stuff that you're taking out. And so he would work and he would get it ready, and I would hand him the seeds. And at first he just sprinkled the seeds on top, and I was like, wait, wait, wait, no, like we have to cover they like to be covered, you know, bury them. Oh, okay, and so then he's you know hiding them, and then as he's working through some of the other holes, he's like, Oh, I found treasure, and he, you know, he just it was lots of fun. And he was he was very helpful and he was doing the job, but doing the job in the way that a curious little six-year-old boy would do it, and just learning so much and exploring and just being in awe. Oh, yeah, it was so great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was really good, and the girls were helpful. I think Ruben was inside doing dishes because it was his dish night. Yeah, it was his night. Um, but the girls were really helpful.
SPEAKER_02They usually earlier, he got on the I had him on the mower helping us. That's true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I forgot he was cutting grass when I got home.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, he had already done his outside time.
SPEAKER_01And there's I guess just a side note about that, like sometimes your kids are gonna be more excited than other times about helping. It's important that you get them to help you in both of those times, um, right? Because sometimes they're like, Yes, I will help you gather squash and green beans, right? And then other times they're like, Oh no, we gotta weed again, you know. But it's important for your kids to understand that life is like that. Sometimes you're pulling weeds in the sun and it sucks, and then other times you're gathering the reward of that work that you did already.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes the job is fun, sometimes the job is not so fun, but both jobs have to be done.
SPEAKER_01Everybody wants to eat the bread, nobody wants to grow the weed, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, but it's again, it's important to teach your kids to do both. Because just being honest, I mean, there's times where she's like, hey babe, before you go inside, can you do this job? And I'm like, Oh, you're the one that likes gardening, not me. Right? Just being honest, right? But then also there's times where we get out there and we're all out there and it's a nice evening and we're shoveling mulch and the garden's looking great, and you're like, Yeah, you know what? Like I get it, right? And it's worth it. And I will not complain when I'm eating a plate full of roasted asparagus or strawberry shortcakes that we grew in our in our raised beds, right? So it's worth it. But it's important for your kids to see both sides of it because you gotta work for everything. And and we've talked about this before, you choose your hard. It's hard to weed asparagus in the sunshine. It's also hard to eat food out of a box. That's my take on it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So another thing that I wanted to bring up, this was the first year that I have started seedlings to the scale that we did this year.
SPEAKER_01By a long shot.
SPEAKER_02So in years past, we just had like a small raised bed, and so just doing one little tray with a couple of things, and I would end up with a dozen or so cups out on the patio with plants and that I could then put into the garden. I would buy these packages of seeds, and I'm literally, you know, only taking a couple of seeds out of each package because that's all the plants we had space for. Sure. This year we had flats and flats and flats of seeds. And I started different varieties at different times. I tried to think through like when this is actually gonna get to get planted, and I don't want it to get too big. I was trying to follow some of the guidelines and recommendations. Right, because you don't want to get but still you see these itty bitty scraggly little things, little nothings coming up. And when we first started, we had basically grow lights for one shelf.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We just had the one that worked for the first for like six hours and people figured out for the first few weeks, no, because we did like when we started, it was just like our brass, our broccoli and cabbage, and so those things that fit on that shelf just fine, and I had room to spare, and it was great. And then when it came time to start tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and some of these other things, um, we didn't have like I was putting them on the shelves. We had the space on the shelves, yeah. And I had trays, but you needed lights. Needed lights, so by the time we got lights, some of the plants were looking pretty sad. And I wasn't sure if we were like, I wasn't sure how they were gonna do.
SPEAKER_01Looked like they had given up.
SPEAKER_02Um, and it's been weeks now. Back in the end of March, beginning of April, I started taking those tiny seedlings. I just had the little the little six-pack, like what you would find if you go to the nursery and you buy a little six six cells and the little black plastic thing. So that's kind of what we started everything in. Um, but those are so small, the plants can't really grow very well with them. Yeah, if they grow at all root bound, and then they start dying. So I started putting them in little three-inch pots.
SPEAKER_01Pots, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which takes up more space, so we got more lights. Yes, we did. Um, but I will say, once we did that, I really could see them growing and taking off.
SPEAKER_01There was an aggressive difference. Yeah, once you repotted, everything just exploded.
SPEAKER_02And then, fast forward to like a few weeks ago, we had all of these plants, and I'm getting ready to put them out in the garden. So, part of what you do, if you've never started seedlings inside, um, your seeds have been inside where there's no wind, no wind, no sunshine.
SPEAKER_01Very moderate temperatures.
SPEAKER_02So you have to gradually acclimate them to outside where there's wind and there's sun and there's temperature swings where it's hot and cold, and they've been in this super stable environment, and now they're gonna be outdoors where it's much more.
SPEAKER_01They gotta learn to survive a little bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you have to kind of gradually, if you just took them straight from inside to outside and put them in the ground, they're gonna die. So I was gradually taking them in and out, and we've eventually moved the whole rack outside so I could just roll it in and out, so I wasn't because I was having to move individual trays of things. Um, and I was looking at those plants and looking at those and comparing them to what I would see at Lowser Home Depot or some stores garden center that's selling you these plants. I was like, oh, like I don't know. I don't know about my plant. I'm not sure because it was the first time we've done it, right? This way. Right.
SPEAKER_01So you some of them you weren't sure how they were supposed to be.
SPEAKER_02And I was like, mm, they look kind of small to me. Maybe I needed to feed them. So I started using, we have this fish emulsion fertilizer that I use on some. It oh, that was a mistake to use it inside.
SPEAKER_01She used it when the plants were still in the basement.
SPEAKER_02Don't use fish emulsion fertilizer indoors, and that seems like it would be common sense, but I did it and then I regretted it later.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it smelled interesting.
SPEAKER_02It was in the basement in my space where I sew, so it was.
SPEAKER_01We have good air circulation.
SPEAKER_02Anyways. But I'm saying all of that to get to this point.
SPEAKER_00I our 10-year-old. Oh mom, what did you put?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. I show up to the first farmer's market with extra plants, we have extra plants.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have a lot of plants.
SPEAKER_02Um, and I'm I'm holding back a few just because I'm still not sure if everything that we just planted this week is gonna survive. But once I see that everything's taken off, all of those will go away too. Um, but I took my plants to the market and I saw the other plants that other people were bringing to the market, and I was like, Oh, my plants look good. Like my plants look at least as good as theirs. And in some cases, I was like, Oh, I think my plants look stronger and healthier than that.
SPEAKER_01I know your tomatoes look better, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, which made me feel really good. And the girl that is in charge of the farmer's market, she came over and saw me setting everything out, and she's like, Oh, your plants look really good. And I was like, Yes, I did it. I like my plants, and then just this past weekend, one of the customers that stopped by my my table at the market, he ended up buying, you know, like a dozen of my plant starts, and I was like, This guy, like his whole garden is now my tomatoes and my peppers. Yeah, because we started, and I was like, how how cool is that? So, all of that to say, like, I was nervous about it because we hadn't done it before, and I wasn't sure if they were really gonna be strong enough and healthy enough, and like I was like, Do I really know enough about this to be successful at it?
SPEAKER_01I think you took the time taking the time to repot those things.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it made it.
SPEAKER_01Because I know you spent a lot of time doing that, but like they exploded once you did that, and I really think that was the difference because when people were looking at your plants, your plants were like a whole jump ahead of a lot of other people's because they weren't root bound, they had plenty of room, you had already started hardening them off, so they were sturdier than so you know, they looked great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so okay, so now we're at this place. All of these things that we started inside, we've moved them out, yeah, all the spaces are full, and so you might think, like, okay, we're good, and we're just gonna wait for all this stuff to be done. But now what I'm doing is I'm looking at when are these things going to be ready for harvest? And then how much time do I have after that to then reuse that same space over again? And what am I planning to put there? And do I need to start that thing inside?
SPEAKER_01Right, to give it a head start to make your time.
SPEAKER_02Right, so because there's a lot of things that some people will just succession sow, where they're just they'll pull it out and then they'll put more seeds. But if you start with plants that you've already started indoors, you've already given them a couple weeks head start, right? A lot of these things take at least a week, some of them two weeks to even germinate and kind of get going. Yeah, so you've totally taken that waiting time out of it. So what I heard, I heard somebody even make this recommendation, and it's only for certain plants, but they basically they put when they put their plant start out, they also planted a seed so that by the time, and this is for something like green beans, right? Okay, if they maybe maybe they started green beans. Well, their green beans are gonna be ready. A lot of those, some of those are it's like less than two months, right? Yeah, so you're starting to have this several week old plants, they're kind of succession planting, but all at one time. Right, and so she was like, if you do that, you have this this thing is making you beans, and when it's tired and done and not making you beans anymore, and you rip it out, there's already one that's coming up and starting to make beans, so that you're not having that big lag delay where you're waiting for weeks before it starts producing. Yeah, this one has finished producing, and the one that you started is already producing as soon as that one's done.
SPEAKER_01And they can share the space because of the time lag, they can share the space. The one they're not both trying to make beans in the same space, right? Like one is just a plant coming up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you're not so you're not crowding out, right? Where you otherwise you would have too many in the space, they wouldn't be able to produce properly. They need to spread and breathe, but that one's just a plant coming up, it's not trying to produce yet.
SPEAKER_02So that leads me to my kind of, I guess, my last tool is my journal, my garden journal.
SPEAKER_01So I didn't think about that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When I plant something, when I started seeds, I was writing down like what it was and when I started it, so that I knew, you know, how long it had been growing, how long it took us to get to that point. When we planted things out, I have diagrams of what's planted everywhere, and I made notes about when we planted it there so that I can kind of know when to expect those things for harvest.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and then I can look at that and be like, okay, at this such and such time, we're gonna need things ready to go in these spaces. Sure. And these things are gonna have X number of time to develop. So obviously, I'm not gonna start something that takes a hundred days to get ready in July.
SPEAKER_03Well, sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_02Because it'll freeze before it actually gets to produce what it needs to produce.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But there are those other things that we're and like we can have a whole this whole idea of like this is our spring garden. People have a spring garden, and then people have a fall garden.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, if you wait till the fall to think about your fall garden, you can see it's a few years.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's yeah, it's way too late. Your fall garden is really your summer garden that you harvest in the fall, and so Yeah, because you're you're starting it well before fall season, you're just putting it in the ground towards the fall.
SPEAKER_02So this summer will start later in the summer. I'll start another round of broccoli and cabbage and some of those things inside so that when the time is right, we'll move them out to free open spaces in the garden, and we'll have this second wave of broccoli and cabbage and some of these other things that we're able to grow, some of the greens and things, um to kind of keep the garden going for the entire growing season.
SPEAKER_01That's good.
SPEAKER_02So anyways.
SPEAKER_01Um, I guess my my closing thoughts are number one, we talked at the beginning of the episode about um The mulch, free mulch, right?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh and just a reminder, we j I could I literally passed a mulch truck on the freeway, saw the number on the truck, called them and said, Hey, do you guys do this? And they were like, Yes, we always are looking for places to drop chips. Let us know, we'll drop them. So they call me now every well.
SPEAKER_02And on that note, we had tried, we had signed up with Chip Drop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because there's a s a thing online, but you pay for that too.
SPEAKER_02You pay for that. Sort of. And we never, ever, ever got a call about that.
SPEAKER_01Not ever.
SPEAKER_02You called this local company that you see the number off of the side of the road.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And they've brought us two loads now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they've they probably brought us close to 20 yards of wood chips. And my point that I was getting to on the wood chips was um if you have any kind of garden, you're gonna need way more wood chips than you think. Like they brought us that first pile, and I was like, oh my god, what are we gonna do with like 10 yards of wood chips? It's pretty much gone around. We spread four yards of wood chips in one hour and a half session tonight. Yeah, we haven't even touched the garden. I mean, we've got I could put wood chips down for days. We'll put that whole 12 yard pile there just on what we did right there. Um, so just for what we have going on, we'll use 20 yards of of chips this season. Like before winter, we'll use that's not putting bedding for your animals, that's not putting it in for your chickens, that's not using it in your compost pile. I mean, that's literally just spreading on the garden.
SPEAKER_02And they're breaking down and turning into soil.
SPEAKER_01Nice and steamy this evening. We were digging in that pile.
SPEAKER_02Next year, we're gonna need at least that much again.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, oh yeah. But my point is, like, again, it you probably do need wood chips, and you probably need more than you think. So don't turn your nose up if they're like, oh, we're gonna bring you five yards, and you're thinking, Oh, well, I only need like a yard. I don't, you know, just take the five yards, you'll figure it out, right? You can use it for pathways, you can use it for to kill weeds, you can literally use it as chicken bedding, like it's it's got so many uses. And when you're all when it's all said and done, it turns into dirt. So what's what's not to love, right? So um and be careful where you get your garden soil.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We bought some garden soil mix and it was mediocre. We were not as happy as we thought we would be. It was supposed to be like a mixture of compost and manure and topsoil and stuff, and it was just not high grade. I give it a B minus.
SPEAKER_02Lacking a little bit, but also one of my friends from the farmer's market, they ended up um the person they have they do large-scale gardens. Yeah, they do gardens. Commercial gardens, and so they get seed starts from somebody else who's starting them for them. Um, and they had hundreds of tomato starts that they were expecting to get from this place. The place ran out of their usual mix and just went to the big box store and got bags of mix, and that bag of mix had a fungus in it that ended up like they couldn't they couldn't bring any of those plants onto their property because they had an issue a few years ago where they ended up with something like that, and they basically had to kill everything and starting to dig everything out and bring in all new because it just completely contaminated their entire garden. So, so yeah, be careful. So the more you can make on your own space by composting the wood mulch and your animals manure and animal bedding and scraps that you have from around, um, the better, because those things are not gonna have the risk that some of the other stuff you bring.
SPEAKER_01Well, especially like if you have your own property, like if you have extensive property, especially, if you can have that cleared out, get all that dead wood off your property, it's all local, it's all your trees and stuff. That makes great wood chips. I will say, unless you have an industrial wood chipper, we have a what a three-inch chipper. It's big enough. I mean, I've chipped stuff bigger than my arm, like bigger around than my arm. It's a pretty good machine. But the time it takes to make 12 or 15 or 20 yards of wood chips, like you're talking multiple whole chips.
SPEAKER_02When those trucks, they literally just eat a tree.
SPEAKER_01Throw it into that giant machine and it goes and shreds, and it does in in 30 seconds what would take me 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_02And one word of caution.
SPEAKER_01It's worth it's worth getting them in bulk as well.
SPEAKER_02One word of caution. I do know when we started looking at what we were gonna plant and what we were gonna do, I had thought about planting some black walnuts because they they're native here, they grow really well here. Yeah, and they but I learned that if you use their like leaves and if you use their wood chips, if you like chip it up, if you chip the walk, it has something in it that actually will stunt, if not kill, your tomatoes and stuff that you put in the ground.
SPEAKER_01So it's weird, right?
SPEAKER_02You just gotta kind of know what you're using and be careful about about that.
SPEAKER_01And everything has risks. Um, shredders have by law there's rules about how much metal can be in your mulch and things like that. Uh out here, we've had good success. All of our mulches look really good and it's very active, and you know, the microbes are working already super clean. Uh, we haven't found any plastic or trash.
SPEAKER_02Well, because that's not a big commercial thing. It's like they're literally cutting down branches branches off of the tree and throwing them in the shrub.
SPEAKER_01But especially if you're in a more urban environment, you may get chips that have shredded coke cans, you know, because it those machines will eat a person, much less a coke can. So um sometimes you'll get a little bit of debris and trash in your in your stuff. Again, is a little bit is one coke can gonna kill your garden? No, but if you get a uh a dirty load, then you know, you know for next time.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, anyways, good stuff. The garden is thriving and it makes my heart so full and happy.
SPEAKER_01So she was like giddy all evening. I have all week, dirty fingernails and a warm heart.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it's really good stuff. So yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_01That's all I got.
SPEAKER_02Wraps it up for this week. So um, to wrap it up, just a reminder um that we have that garden tour video on YouTube. If you want to kind of check it out, it'll let you visually see what's going on. So you can go over there and you can check out all the other videos that we have there as well. And then we have enrollment now open for the foundations and quilting course that's gonna be starting in August.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Thanks to to everybody who came out uh this weekend to the to the homeschool show and and supported us. Thank we appreciate it, and we hope you'll be around for a little bit.
SPEAKER_02I'm so excited to get all of that started. And if you didn't get to go, and if you haven't seen any of the things I've been putting on social media, we have the foundations and quilting class now open for enrollment. Uh, the classes won't start until the very beginning of August, but when you enroll, you will get access instantly to two of my other courses of sewing 101 that teaches you how to use your sewing machine and all the basics you need to know about sewing machines and my beginner quilt lab, which is a basic quilting class to kind of get you going. Um, but that way you can kind of be using those things and working on those things. And then August comes around, and we've got 16 jam-packed weeks of amazing uh content to teach you lots of different quilting techniques, and um it's you should be a proficient quilter by the end of that course.
SPEAKER_01It's going to be so good.
SPEAKER_02Um, so yeah, so I will make sure to put links to that in the description, and you can use code launch20 right now to get 20% off. Um, and I also figured out how to you can either pay it all at once or there's an option for a five-month payment plan that you can get all of that set up. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's good.
SPEAKER_02So, anyways, I'll put all that that information. We're super excited about that. So I'll make sure to share that in the description.
SPEAKER_01It's exciting. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on.
SPEAKER_02Lots of stuff.
SPEAKER_01We're tired, we're busy, we're ready to go to bed. No, okay.
SPEAKER_02But good, good tired. It's good, busy, it's good, tired. Full tired. Yeah. And belly full of fresh arteries. Tired. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's it's not bad. No, it's not bad at all.
SPEAKER_02So thank you for joining us for this one for episode 31. I still can't even believe that. Right. Um, we look forward to seeing you in the next one. Thank you for choosing to spend some of your time with us. If you've been enjoying the podcast, one of the simplest ways to support us is by telling a friend and leaving a review wherever you're listening. It helps more people find these conversations, and it truly means a lot for us to hear how our stories are impacting you. You can also go to thelarklife.com slash podcast. There you'll find an option to give a small one time or ongoing gift. And it helps support the time, tools, and energy that go into creating these episodes. Until next time.