36 June Garden Update: Harvesting, Seed Saving, Food Preservation & What's Growing Next

The garden is finally beginning to provide an abundance of fresh food, and we're sharing everything that's happening on our homestead this June.

In this episode of Handmade Happiness, Jessica and Thomas share a June garden update, including what they're harvesting, preserving, and planting for future seasons. From fresh vegetables and herbs to berry picking, seed saving, and building healthy soil, this conversation explores the rhythms of seasonal gardening and the satisfaction of growing your own food.

Whether you're growing a backyard garden, building a homestead, or simply trying to eat more seasonally, we hope this conversation encourages you to start where you are and enjoy the process of growing your own food.

Find more gardening inspiration, recipes, handmade projects, and homestead life at The Lark Life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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 this week's episode of Handmade Happiness. I'm Jessica.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

And I'm Thomas.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And we are glad to invite you in as we have a conversation today about uh our summer garden, what things are looking like, what we've harvested, what's soon to be harvested, how we're using all of the things.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

It's kicking. Everything is growing. Well, I take that back, not everything, and we'll talk about that in a second. But yeah. For the major broadly speaking, if you look out over the garden, it's exploding. Explode. Right? Tomatoes everywhere, peppers everywhere, squash plants everywhere. It's looking good.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

It's looking good, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

By far the best garden we've ever had. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

So it is it is great. So it feels like like we put all the stuff in the ground, and for a long time, like that first month, it just feels like nothing, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, and then all the work from all springtime is like paying off now.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

We've had rain, we've had warm sunny days, and things have just exploded.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

It's been different this year. Last year, the rain was all like April, May, right? Right. And this year it's been all June. It's the rain, it's like the rain came a month late, but um, but it's good and the garden is loving it.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

So yeah, it's been it's been great.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

So nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Um, so I guess let's just kind of go in sequentially um the things that we have already harvested and either preserved or eaten. Um some of our favorites that we're finding because we're again we're growing a lot of things for the very first time that we haven't tried before just because we've never had the space. Um, so let's start with some of those early crops. We grew French breakfast radishes.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Which is a misnomer, in my opinion. Unless you really like radishes. I I wouldn't eat them for breakfast, but yeah, they're good for radishes, I'm just saying, and they're beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Part of it, I think, was we had it was so warm in early April when those were coming on. Ironically, it's been cooler as of late than it was when those were.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, it was in the 50s.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

And the warm temperature really affects the spiciness of them. So I think next year if we try them a little bit. I want to try them again earlier and see if if that helps uh with the spiciness. So we did that. So we ended up um I sold a bunch of those at the market, and then we ended up pulling out what we wanted and canning up some pickled radishes that we're planning to use on like tacos and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Which we haven't tried yet, actually.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

We were giving them time when you make pickled things, yeah, um, you don't eat them right away. They need time to do their like good wine or cheese or soup. So we did radishes. We pulled turnips. Our turnips were beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

We did, and they were tasty. Like they came out really good.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So um we've eaten some of the turnips fresh. I made some of the greens, and we also have roasted some of the turnips and just eaten them. Yeah. Um, and then I blanched the rest, and so we have greens in the freezer that we can pull out anytime, and we have uh little diced pieces of turnip that we can pull out to throw into soups or mix in mashed potatoes. Roast in a pan of veggies or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So that's one of our favorite ways to eat veggies, just broadly speaking, is to cut them up in little cubes, a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, roast them in the oven. They they come out really nice.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah, they've been good. Um let's see, and then we just had our first of our golden beets.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

And carrots.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Uh, and our carrots, yeah. Those took a little longer than the radishes and turnips. So the golden beets, it's the not never really been a beet fan.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Um yeah, still not, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Well, those we had the other night were really good.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

So beets, they were good.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

I'll say that.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

I I sliced some of our golden beets pretty thin and kind of uh melted down some tallow and kind of rolled them around in the tallow and seasoned them, roasted them in the oven. They were good with some of our carrots.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

They were good.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

So we had some purple carrots. So we had like the golden beets and the purple carrots roasted in the oven with the tallow and some seasoning, and it was fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I didn't expect for the different varieties of carrots, like the different colors, yeah, to taste as different as they did.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Right. So I planted a rainbow mix, so we've got some orange, some white, some yellowish, yellowish, yeah, some some purples. Um, there's a variety out there. Um, and yeah, we've been surprised at how different the different varieties actually taste.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, I I think my favorite, honestly, is the purple ones. They're really good. They're really good. They're they're a little more mild, a lot sweeter. They're just really tasty, almost more like in the sweet potato zone, right? In some ways.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, yeah. That's a good way to explain that.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Whereas the white ones are more turnipy. Yeah, they're definitely more um, a little more bitter edge to them, which again, that might be what you're going for depending on what you're cooking, but yeah, just to eat, like in a roast and potatoes and carrots situation. Um, the purple ones are, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So we will definitely plant more of those purple ones in the fall. Like we're gonna pull out what we have and use what we have because I need that space for other things.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Um, but in the fall, we'll definitely put some some more of those purple ones.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

I'm pretty sure that's not the scientific name for them. The purple ones.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Right?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

What kind of carrots are these, Mom? Purple carrots.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

They're they're purple dragon carrots. It's the ones that are so close. I know. They really are. They're delicious. So we've done that. We have the last thing in that bed that we've been harvesting is the snow peas. So we harvested the snow peas. Which are really fresh. Um, we put them in like stir fries and things, uh, and they were really good. Um, and now we are kind of that bed is about to be empty so that I can plant some some other things in there that we're gonna have this summer.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

We also got some strawberries. Yes, they were not very big, but the ones that we got were like super sweet, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I'm I'm excited to see and it was our first year, they just got into the ground. So it takes them a few years to get established. They're focused on you know their roots right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

But they're running out lots of runners everywhere, and again, the berries that we got were crazy sweet, like they were delicious and super red, super shiny.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Um, like something you'd see in a magazine. They were really gorgeous. Yeah, we also uh went to the UPIC and picked approximately a hundred pounds of berries.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

We have planted blackberries and blueberries and strawberries, but they're not really they're young, so they're not making what we need. But just 10 minutes from us, there's this amazing berry farm that has tons of strawberries and blueberries and blackberries, um delicious berries, and so we've been out there several times to pick, and so we've been able to eat all the fresh berries we want, and we've we literally picked a hundred pounds of berries. Frozen berries, we've made jam with berries and pie filling with berries, and yeah, they're they're delicious.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

They know how to grow them. Uh the blackberries are humongous, like the size of eggs. Oh, they're like thumb size, yeah. They're huge. And all of the all of them have been really we've been really pleased with the product.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

So yeah, they're really good.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Fantastic. And it's been nice to grow like just to go pick fresh herbs and fresh veg and throw in dinner, you know, snow peas or basil or whatever it is that we're using. Yeah. It's been really nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Um, the other things that we've already harvested, we had bot choy, which was really good. Um, and so again, with that one, we were able to eat it fresh as we were pulling it out. It was it's one of those things you can really for a little while, and so I just waited until we were ready for it, and then they all started to bolt in the heat.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Um, and I was picking flowers off of them and doing what I could to kind of keep them going. The purple ones did a lot better than the standard green box choice. Um, I think just they're tolerate the heat a little bit better. But we pulled out what was left and I have put some more of those in the freezer.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

And you let a bunch of them go to seed, right, for next year?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yes, which we'll talk about the seeds in just a little bit. But yes, so those we have some of those going to seed. And then the surprise harvest that has just been crazy is um the elephant garlic.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

We had no idea how much elephant garlic was growing because it was, I guess because it was fairly dense, right? And because of the way it grows, the plants, each stalk, it kind of looks like a tulip bed or something, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

But then you get digging garlic, and it's like, dear God, there's a million garlic in here.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

We it came up, that was the first thing that came up in the spring, right? Before the grass is even growing, we have all of these stalks of the elephant garlic coming up. And at first we weren't even really sure what it was. We were like, well, maybe this is daffodils, or it kind of looked like the daffodils that were blooming in our neighbor's yard, but they never got flowers.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

So we were like, um these are not daffodils, something's going on. And then they made little scapes like garlic does.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

And I went and dug one up to investigate and see what it was. And lo and behold, it was elephant garlic. And so I was like, great, we'll wait, and when this is ready, we'll have garlic that we didn't plant, we didn't buy, it just volunteered and came up in the spot.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

And it's still great.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Um well, the way you know when garlic is ready, it kind of starts to get brown and yellow, the leaves do, and they flop over, and that's your signal. Like the bulb is done growing, it's time to get out of the ground. And while that happened, we had some of the crazy heaviest rains for like weeks, and so we ended up just going and digging out what we could.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Um, and literally my first shovel full. I went out one day and I was like, I'm gonna go pull up all this elephant garlic, and I stuck the shovel in the ground, and that one shovel full probably had two dozen, not an exaggeration.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Oh yeah. The whole shovel just came.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, and it was all garlic. Um, and so elephant garlic is supposed to be, you know, this big giant bulb that has really large cloves. Ours was not like that. Ours, most of ours is single rounds, and it's still sizable, but they're just they didn't, it's not a multi-clove bulb.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

And all of these that we were pulling out, you see little tiny corms attached everywhere to the roots. And so when I started digging and doing some research, what we discovered is that when elephant garlic is left unmanaged, it just will continue to reseed itself from those little corms.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

From the corms, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

So the little corm is there, and next year, any corms that are in the ground, it's gonna make one of those single rounds. And then those single rounds the following year will make a large bulb. Right if they don't rot in the ground, which is the part that you want to eat. Yeah. So we pulled out a bunch. We've got shelves of it down in the basement curing. It's cured nicely, it's it looks great. Um, we're gonna save a bunch of it for seed.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

It did not make our basement smell nearly as strong as I thought it would.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

No, it doesn't really smell like garlic at all down there.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

No, it doesn't. I I thought it might, because we remember we had that conversation.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Because when we fresh when we first picked it in the room.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Oh, we have giant stainless steel bowls. I'm trying to think of how many quartz.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

It's easily five gallons. It's like a five-gallon bucket of garlic.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

And we had two of those for what we brought in for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Well, I'm saying the two bowls. When if you poured them together, it'd be more than five gallons.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, it's a lot of garlic.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Um and that's trim, that's with all the green cutoff. That's just the bulbs.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So we pulled what we wanted, and I still had a ton. So we gave some to friends, gave some to family. Um, there's still more out there. I had this crazy thought in my head. Knowing what after I researched and knowing that the bed was like way overcrowded, and the reason we weren't getting giant bulbs was because it was way overcrowded because it had just been reseeding itself. I was like, well, I'm gonna get out all of this stuff so that next year we just start fresh. Um, there will be no getting all of the garlic. No, there's all the forms are still there. There's so many forms of gold. There's no way possible. So I'm just gonna know that whatever goes in that zone next year, um, I'm gonna be pulling out volunteer garlics. I'm gonna plant my intentional planting of them.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

But you'll just know those are different. But yeah, and now I know what's happening when that happens.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

But, anyways, it's been really exciting because now again we have plenty of garlic for eating and plenty of garlic for seed that we can plant in the fall so that it'll be ready next spring.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

And well, and we've given away a ton of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Oh gosh, and there's like pounds and pounds and pounds of garlic. More out there that is. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

So if you need some, you know, holler at us. We'll be up. We got plenty to do.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

So and then our herbs are doing great. So I've been clipping herbs. Uh that makes such a big difference. Rosemary and thyme and basil, rosemary and thyme and basil, chives and um tarragon and mint, all the things.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

You've also got a bunch of like calendula and chamomile coming.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

And so I've seen it. The calendulas are gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I didn't realize that they were like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

They are prolific. And with the calendula, the more you cut them, they just keep putting on flower heads. And so I just keep cutting them, and then I bring them in and dry them out, um, so that I can use them as well. And then they just keep making more.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Well, they're gorgeous, they're like sunset color, these are big bright hot orange.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

So they're related, they're in the marigold family. That makes sense, but they're not, you know, it's it's a specific kind.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

They're like it's like a darker color than sunflowers.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, they're not yellow.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

They're very orange, orange, like highlighting.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And that's why it turns the salve that yellowy orange, that golden color. Um, because it's nice, yeah. And they're really pretty, they're beautiful. They are great at kind of pulling some of the pests away from the other things in the garden, and then also the flower, they're super resilient. So then I just go cut flowers and yeah, dry them out. And the chamomile is just starting to flower, so I've harvested a few of those.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Um, so that's that's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Um, and we've talked about, I think in the future we're gonna probably end up planting more of that kind of thing, right? More flowers, um, but specifically flowers that are like useful, not just flowers that are pretty, although we're planning to do that too. But again, like the calendula and the chamomile, and um, I mean, we've talked about we like dandelions because they're useful to us, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Then so many of those grow, we're not ever planting that.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

No, no, we're never planting them.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Um, but like nasturtiums, they're great pest deterrents, but they also are edible and can be used in your foods and stuff. There's there's a whole wide range of flowers that we can plant.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Well, and we haven't even got into like rose hips and and oh yeah, you know, all those other things.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

All the things we like to use for our tea and our the violets and the if only all you had to do was garden all day, every day, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:46

And if you if only we weren't going to work and running a company and taking care of kids.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

So those those things are kind of what we have already pulled out. Um and those just have kind of trickled in slowly. I have a feeling we are about to be in uh crazy overload of produce.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

You're gonna be canon tomatoes for sure. We've talked about how many tomato plants you have planted.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Like 40 tomato plants out there. Um and that they're all different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, which we'll get to that in in a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Um, we've got tomatoes, and they're all loaded with green tomatoes and with flowers that are about to make great. Yeah, they're really looking good. They're they're doing great. Um, we've got lots of peppers out there that are starting to flower, so we will have an abundance of peppers coming. Right about the time our tomatoes are ready. We should have some peppers ready.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Reuben will be happy he can make some salsa.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

The onions and the garlic that we intentionally planted, um, those will be ready probably about the same time as the peppers and the tomatoes, which is convenient because we can make some salsa with all of this fresh stuff that we've got. But yeah, the the onions now, the shoulders are kind of sticking up out of the soil, so that's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

The corn's got tassels on it.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

The corn, um we've got two corns, so there's a red corn that we're gonna use for like we're gonna dry it and use it for flour. That's tasseling, um, and it's making little ears already. The sweet corn is looking great, but it's a little bit a little bit behind, and that was intentional because I didn't want them cross-pollinating, so I I intentionally did that.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Um all manner of squash coming.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Oh my gosh. The squash, and so let's talk about the squash for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Our garden back there looks like a Minecraft biome. It's like there's squash leaves everywhere. Everywhere, like a thicket of squash leaves.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

And squash flowers everywhere. Um, and little baby squashes starting to grow.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

And so some of them will be ready soon because they're summer squash varieties that grow quickly. Um, we have a whole bunch out there that is like winter squash varieties and pumpkins that will take the whole summer to Oh, yeah, they're there's still a ways out, but the plants are healthy and going well. We do have, I don't know if you want to talk about that right now, but we've got a couple that so we know we've got some pest issues with all the squash out there.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Um, we can see holes in the leaves where bugs are eating things. Um a few of them, there's a couple of them that have totally wilted. So I'm thinking we might have some vine borer issues going on where they literally are something eating from the inside out. Um, and so the plant is gonna die. So but we knew when we put all of that out there that it was wild before we started. It's totally wild, untamed. Yes, there's gonna be lots of bug issues. Um, it's our first time gardening here. Um so learning the timing of things, like I may have planted those a little bit sooner, which would have helped with some of the pest issues.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Right, because they would have been more established. Um the other thing is like again, like you said, this is the first year that that ground has been worked in years.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

And so before, like last year, before we had a garden, we cut five foot tall grass, like hay, off of that pasture, right? And so that that it looks pretty good considering.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

It looks very good considering.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Put in some work and pull some weeds.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

And ideally, I would not have all of the squashes in the same area, yeah. Getting all of the squash bugs and all of the pests and all of the phones. Monoculturing um, I would mix in different companion plants and flowers and things that help some trap plants to pull away some of those pests. Um, so we knew going into it that we were gonna have some loss, yeah, but we're also still gonna have a crazy abundance because we have awesome.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah, we're gonna have to.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I mean, what? It's like 300 square feet of squash out there.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

No, three thousand.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

No.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, you have a lot of squash. Okay, two thousand. But it's she's got about four thousand square feet of garden, and over half of it is currently squash.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

It's it's a lot of squash.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

But it's gonna be great. We eat a lot of squash. In fact, that's that's probably our most consumed veggie with squash, right? We eat zucchini, we eat yellow squash, we eat uh like acorn squash or but you know, butternut squash.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So there's a bunch of um that's one of those things I'm constantly buying at the store. So we knew we wanted to have it. Um all of those tender summer squashes, yeah, we will eat what we can fresh, and then we'll can and freeze the rest. Yeah. The beautiful thing about the winter squashes that we planted, so we've got delicata, we've got butternuts, we've got pumpkins. All of those things we can let cure on the vine and we can bring them in and store them in the basement and they will live there happily for months and we just pull them out as we need them.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

If you've not ever, I think we've talked about delicatoes before way on early on. If you've never had delicato squash, it's freaking phenomenal. Yeah, they it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Um, and something that we never were able to find before. I heard from so we mentioned this before in an episode, and um somebody who listens to the podcast shared with me that they are up north, on like on the east coast up north somewhere, and that delicatas are everywhere. Like you go by and all they're like selling them on the side of the road and doing I know, and so recently um for those of you that have the luxury of just being able to go and buy them somewhere grocery store, that's wild, phenomenal. Yeah, um, for those of you that don't, it's a good one to try because they're you can get them, you can order them.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Um Azure, I think, has Azure Standard sells them sometimes, occasionally it's not you can find them online, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Um, anyways, they're phenomenal. So that's okay. So that's what's coming. We've got some squashes, we talked about the corn, we've talked about berries, tomatoes, we have some green beans that we planted that we'll be starting to produce pretty soon, and we've got our potatoes out there that they're making potatoes. Um, so we're just kind of waiting for those to die off. With those potatoes, there's a lot of people in our area that are already digging up their potatoes, but they like those small new potatoes.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

They like a big potato, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

I'm just letting ours go until the plant dies back and we can have big potatoes that potentially we could store a little longer than those tiny little biddies.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

We I think it's interesting because this whole year, this garden is definitely kind of an experiment.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Absolutely, 100% an experiment.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

You see what's working, you see what's not, and you realize some of it is just because a bug ate it, right? And then some of them are just not doing well because they're just not good varieties for you. Right. Right? Maybe your dirt or your zone or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Um, and we're definitely seeing a little bit of that. There's ones that we're looking and they're just going nuts.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

So, in particular, like when you look at the tomatoes, also starting to start in the soil. The tomatoes are in raised beds, side by side, all in the same space.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Yeah, very equal footing.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Their conditions are the same.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Um, some of them look incredible, and others we've noticed some curling of the leaves.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

The stress, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Which just indicates that they're stressed.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Because it's been hot, wet, hot, wet, cold, hot, wet, and again, nothing is sick.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Everything is growing, everything looks healthy. But it's just one of those things we're gonna be keeping an eye on it, like we did with the bok choy. It was very evident the purple did much better than the green um just at that time that we planted it. So again, I think if we had started that much earlier, the green would have been just fine and we wouldn't have had the bolting issues. Um, but never growing anything in this zone.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Um Well, we get late frost day sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Learning a lot about when to plant things and to have a successful garden.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Well, a lot of people here, their rule of thumb is like you don't plant before what?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Mother's Day, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Like, but a lot of the market gardeners I'm talking to, they put their stuff out in early April.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

But it's also a gamble because last year it froze.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Well, and it did, and so we did have a freeze.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

And she told me like freeze, not just a frost.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

She told me they planted their seeds.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

But the seedlings hadn't come up yet. They literally planted them. We had that frost, but they were still and then the seedlings came up. So they like they got super lucky in the timing of it. Um so now they already have they have onions ready and corn ready and some other things ready that again we're behind because ours went out weeks later, um, which is fine. We're not in a hurry, but just learning lots of things. Um I guess let's talk about saving the seeds. We've kind of mentioned that for a minute. So I intentionally let the snow peas and the bok choy um go to seed. Both varieties of bok choy, the purple and the green. Um, they are loaded and they are starting to dry out. So basically, um when you let those vegetables go to seed, they make a flower. And then after that flower forms, um, like on the bok choy, you have all the flowers, and then all the little stems where the flowers were, there's these long skinny pods full of seeds.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Yeah, they made a lot, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:00

A lot. And when they're green, uh the seeds inside are green, they're not fully developed. So you have to leave on them and wait until they totally dry out. And so we have a few that I went and checked today that were totally dry. And again, if you crack open a green one, it's wet green seeds inside. When you crack open a dry one, it's tiny little black choice seeds, like you get in a seed packet. Um, the snow peas, they you're supposed to eat them when they're really small and tender. I left left them on there. I knew the plant the plant was getting sick. It was done, it was hot, so I was like, we're just gonna leave the rest on there. Well, after I made that decision, it shot out a ton of pods, and they're huge now, and so now we're just waiting for them to dry out completely. We'll save all of those seeds. And the plan is late in the summer, we're gonna plant them so that they will produce in our fall garden, um, so that as we have those cooler temperatures, we'll get a whole nother round of those crops that we love so much because we really enjoyed those snow peas. We loved the bok choy.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

The bok choy was great. We like to make ramen uh from scratch, right? We buy the nice noodles. We could make our own noodles, we just not there yet, but um we just we buy just noodles and then we build our own ramen, so we make our own broth and our own egg and bokchoy and scallions or you know, sauce of fish sauce, whatever you want to put in there. Um, and that bok choy really made that. Like it just really added a layer of yeah, fresh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

And so we will save those seeds. I bought so for instance, I bought the package of purple bok choy seeds, and it was two or three dollars for the package. And we planted the bok choy, we ate the bok choy. I think I still have some seeds, Tom, in my stash of seeds, but we're also saving these packs of seeds. So now we're gonna be able to replant them for free. For free. We already got way more than two or three dollars worth of bok choy off of the page. More than three dollars worth of bok choy.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Um, and then I sold some of it too, and made I made way more than what we paid for the seeds back. And we're just gonna at this point, you get to keep that ball rolling and perpetuating free food. Start your seeds, and again, we would have never been able to afford to put in a garden the size that we did if we hadn't started all of those seeds and had all of those plants. 40 tomato plants would have been you know how much that would have cost us.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's what I was gonna say. You've got thousands of dollars just in plants.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

If you had grown them from plants, but when you start with a three-dollar pack of seeds and you end up with multiple five or six or eight dollar plants of bok choy, yeah, that math works out really nice, especially when it gives you seeds to make another hundred dollars worth of bok choy next year.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Now, something that I probably won't be saving seeds on. It's not too late. I could if I wanted to, but I don't know that I want to go through the effort. So squashes, all of our squashes are planted very close together. Yeah, and squashes is one of those things they cross-pollinate. And although the cross-pollination will not affect the squashes that are growing on our like we're the zucchinis that we planted are still gonna be zucchini. But if I take those seeds and that zucchini, when it flowered and made that zucchini, if a bee came along and had been in the butternuts and the delicatas and the other things, well, now that's crossed, and so those seeds aren't gonna be what you need. Now, gardeners save those things and plant them all the time. That's kind of how we get some of these random varieties. But it's very unstable. Um, you don't really know what you're gonna get. If I wanted to save those, I could go out to the garden um like early in the morning when a flower is brand new, like it hasn't opened yet, a bee hasn't been in there yet. I can see that, oh, look, this is forming a flower, and this is a female flower that's gonna make a plant.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Um, and you can basically put a bag around that, like a mesh jewelry bag kind of a situation where it still gets airflow and light, but insects can't get in there to pollinate that. I would have to go and hand pollinate that with a male flower of that variety, and then that particular one that grew, I could save those seeds and it would be true.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

And is that worth it?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

No, I don't think so. I don't think so. Not for this year. Um, I may do that again in the future. Squash seeds are abundant and they're plentiful and they're not very expensive, and we are going to have so much squash, um, it's well worth the money to have those seeds. So so that we don't end up disappointed next year with some crazy hybridized drinking squashes. Um, we're gonna just we're not gonna try to save those. We're just gonna eat what we eat and we'll buy new seeds for those.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Well, and I feel like squash too, I don't know that we ran into like uh an absence of option with the squash. There's a lot of variety out there. There's a lot of different even within, say, Patty Squash or zucchini or yellow squash.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

There's and this year I'm there's a lot of varieties available. It sounds crazy to say out loud, but I have close to two dozen varieties of squashes out there.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

I'm not shocked.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Um, because there's so many that we've never tried. Yeah. That you can't.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Well, like the delicators. We had never we didn't even know those existed until somebody read.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Banana squashes. I've never had a pink banana squash. It's a big old I'm I wanted to try them.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Sounds delicious.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

We've got a variety of pumpkins planted. Um some of them look really cool, but if we open them up and we don't like how they taste, well, we might not grow those again. So again, this is our experiment year. Yeah, we planted all the things, and we're gonna see what our favorites are, and eventually we'll end up narrowing it down and reduce if we just had a couple of varieties, but we know we like them. Trying to save seeds from that at that point is not as challenging as trying to go out and figure out what plant is what and what to isolate and and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

So well, and and again, too, this is the whole point of gardening, right? Is we're growing food. At the end of the day, we are not commercial gardeners, we're growing food that we like to eat. And so we're trying a bunch of different things this time around, and then next time around, when we've decided, you know what, those pink banana squashes are freaking amazing, we're gonna grow a million of them. And we really, really hate the what you know, whatever variety that we grew that was looked really pretty but tasted like dirt, then we won't grow those. And um, but that's the point, right? So, like when you're gardening, grow a bunch of stuff, see what works, see what doesn't, see what you like, and then grow a ton of the stuff you like and eat like a king.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Another thing, um we like to can our food and put things away, like to have an abundance. And I've gone in past years to UPAC farms and things, or just gotten bushels of various vegetables that we canned and put away to have on our shelf for the whole year. And so now that we're growing so much of our own, I'm wanting to do that with some of the things that we have. But at the same time, I'm resisting the urge to just save everything and put it all away because you also want to eat it fresh while it's here. And so what we have that we're not able to eat, like if it's ripe and ready to harvest, again, at this point, things have been kind of trickling in, so we haven't really had that. I think when we get to our tomatoes and peppers, it's gonna be a different story.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

But at the same time, like I want to eat those things. So what I've told myself is there's we know plenty of farmers around us growing all the things that we like to preserve.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

So if I need to go get a bushel of green beans or something from somebody else, because we're eating all of the ones that we're having as they come ready. Well, that's fine. Right. Um, and I think like you can you can go too far one way or the other, and I'm just trying to find that nice happy balance where we're eating fresh in season and kind of planning our meals based around these are the things that are ready in the garden this week. So, what can we how can we use these right now when they are literally at their best? Yeah, and then when we know that we're not gonna be able to use those things, how do we want to put those away?

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Makes me think of bluebell ice cream. We they used to say we eat all we can and then we sell the rest. That's how we do. Oh, that's a good one. That one's for me.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

So, something else that we recently planted in the garden that has nothing to do with what we're eating, but it does. Um, we planted a bunch of comfrey. So, you want to talk about the comfrey a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Um, yeah, so you're probably uh more up on the subject than I am, but the comfrey, so the good thing about comfrey is it's uh a nutrient fixer, right? It brings nutrients from deep down underground, it roots really deep, brings up those nutrients to the soil. So it's phenomenal for using as uh fertilizer, right? As mulch. Like what do they call it, green mulch, right? Where you're you're mixing that back in and it really brings a ton of those nutrients up to where the other plants that you're growing can use them. Um, they're also great to put on your compost pile. So if you just grow it and mow it and throw it on the compost, um that's a that's a great way to use that plant because now your compost is nutrient enriched.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

And you can make like a compost tea. You can put that in a bucket and just cover it with water and let it sit, and it extracts all of those things, and now you go water your garden with that.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

A little bit of fishy malty water. Oh, yeah, it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Um, so that's one of the things that it grows abundantly. It was completely free because it was given to us. We're gonna just let it go wild and crazy and cut and use as much as we can, and that's a way that we can feed our soil, feed our produce, that then is gonna turn around and feed us. Um, and uh without spending a lot of money or having a lot of chemicals that was.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Another thing that we and we've talked about this before on the show, but uh free wood chips are amazing. Yes, they are, and we have put out a bunch of those. We made a pretty good dent in our 20-something yard pile back there. Um, just using it to top dress our our beds and help suppress weeds. I feel like it's been fairly effective in that regard. Yeah, it's been a good thing. Obviously, stuff still grows through it, but um it definitely suppresses some of the weeds where in the areas where we literally didn't hardly weed, we just kind of tilled and went for it. Um, it's reduced the amount of work that we've had to put in there. But also, it's I've noticed uh the other day because of all the rain that we've been having, it's already starting to break down.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Yeah, the the pile of just it's like a it's like compost. Compost pile, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Um, so that's been a really good a real boon for us, I think, was those chips. And again, we've said this before, but if you don't know, you can get them for free. A lot of times the tree trimming companies that are grinding trees and stuff in your area, they'll bring them to you for free. All you have to do is call them and tell them, hey, you can dump that at my house, and I won't charge you a $75.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Yeah, because you're saving them a dump fee. And if you're close to close proximity to where they are.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Right, and they won't be all the time, it's just when they're in your neighborhood. But you won't need 20 yards every week.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

It's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

So that's been really good for us. Mix it with some comfrey and got it.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

And a really, really happy garden.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Um so what have we learned from the garden this summer?

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

A little bit of patience.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

I'm learning a lot of patience because I just want things to, you know, like jack in the beanstalk and magically sprout up overnight and be ready. And it's um, we started this garden in January. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

And in the basement.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

A lot of the things that we started way back in the beginning of the year um haven't even made us food yet. Yeah. Like the tomatoes and the peppers, they will soon make us food.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

But but our it's nice to see that our work is paying off.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Because the plants that we have are really hardy, they're really sturdy, they're healthy, they're coming tomatoes everywhere. And so it's nice to see that like it was worth starting those little plants in blocks in the basement under grow lamps, because now they're really they're really taking off.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah. Um, and it's been great seeing the kids like harvesting things that have grown is super fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Nick was out there today looking for straw on a strawberry hunt.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

For the kids, he was on a strawberry hunt. The pulling carrots, it's like a magic treasure hunt because you don't know what you're gonna get. It's it's chronically hidden treasure. Yeah, and so um, some of those things it's been fun because they want to be out there in the garden doing it. Yeah, and then you bring that inside and you turn it into a meal, and they're tasting things that they haven't tasted before, and finding out that they actually do like some of those things, um, which is really great.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Well, it's been good work. I mean, there's some work ethic involved there too. I mean, the other day, a couple of weeks ago, we were out there and everybody was out weeding, and you know, you get the typical song, bruh, right? Yeah, but once they got into it, got their fingers dirty, everybody was out there grinding and working and slinging mulch or whatever it was, and and it becomes just a thing that you do together. And yeah, uh, and again, like you said, it's paying off. They're getting food to eat and they're trying things and realizing that maybe bok choy is actually pretty tasty.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Oh yeah. Um, so it's been and I'm it's been great on making lots of notes of like what we did this year, what we want to repeat again, what we're definitely gonna do a little bit differently to see if we get some different results, and uh sure exciting to see like you know what the future year's gardens will hold as we get better and better each year.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

That'll be the next thing for us after garden season. Um, we're really gonna lean into getting that dirt ready, right? Like um, eradicating more of the grasses that are just native to that spot. Um, we had there was something weird with our weed fabric last this spring. It just didn't do what it was supposed to do, but uh the new stuff that we have is working pretty well, and so so again, things like that that we're gonna work on to improve that space to then improve our yields. Um, we'll probably have a little less variety, but then again, we might bring in some new varieties that we didn't try this year.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Um, but we're gonna eat good, we're gonna eat great, yeah. That's for sure. It's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

That's for sure. So I hope that you guys are gardening. I hope that you are growing something, even if it's in a little pot on your back porch and it's just a little flower that makes you happy.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Yeah. And if you have something that you're growing that's just out of this world that you think we need to try, put it in the comments. Let us know.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Send us a picture.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

I'm always looking for new things to grow. So that's true.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

She's always got something she needs me to plant.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Oh goodness. Well, it's late. We should say goodbye.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah. Thank you so much for spending time with us and uh kind of getting the the scoop on our garden update, and hopefully it inspires you to get back out there and happy Father's Day. Oh yeah, happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

I like it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Yeah, thanks to all the all the dads out there and thanks to you for all the things you do for our family.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

That's right. They are numerous.

unknown 43:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Humility is one of my strong suits.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

You got anything else for the kids? Uh no, that's all.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Awesome. We'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

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