A Better Garden Next Year? Putting the Garden to Bed Right Makes All the Difference!
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- Putting your garden to bed for the winter is very valuable. It can save you time, energy, and equipment come spring. If you prepare your garden properly in the fall, you can jump right into planting season come spring.
For all our winter garden prep tips, read the blog post here: homesteadingfamily.com/12-thi...
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LINKS MENTIONED:
- In the Homestead Kitchen Magazine: homesteadingfamily.com/in-the...
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TIME STAMPS:
0:00 - Chit Chat
11:15 - Dunking Temperature of Chickens
14:20 - Preparing the Garden for Winter
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MORE ABOUT US!
WELCOME! We're so glad you're here! We are Josh and Carolyn Thomas. Together with our eleven children, we are The Homesteading Family where we’re living a self-sustainable life in beautiful North Idaho. Let us welcome you and show you a bit about us here: bit.ly/HFWelcomeVideo
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- 5 Steps to a More Self-Sufficient Life - Simple steps anyone can take wherever they are to start a more self-sufficient lifestyle. homesteadingfamily.com/5StepsYT
- Thrive Wellness Checklist - A simple guide for healthy living: homesteadingfamily.com/TWC_YT
- Permaculture for Your Homestead- An introduction to permaculture with some strategies for applying it to one’s homestead and garden.
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- Carolyn’s Cottage Garden herb list - Carolyn’s favorite herbs for growing at home.
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- 5 Steps to a Healthy Garden - Get an explanation of what makes healthy soil and 5 steps you can take to improve your garden. homesteadingfamily.com/5Steps...
- Save the Crumbs- Several Recipes for using bread leftovers, a less committal entry to bread than the workshop. homesteadingfamily.com/STC_YT
- Fearless Fermenting- A simple guide on basic lacto-ferments. homesteadingfamily.com/FF_YT
- Fermenting Tomatoes - Easiest and fastest tomato preservation: homesteadingfamily.com/FT_YT
- Preserving Culinary Herbs - Downloadable, step-by-step directions to drying, freezing, and salting culinary herbs. homesteadingfamily.com/PCH_YT
- Render Your Own Lard - Grab these easy instructions on how to render your own lard. homesteadingfamily.com/RYL_YT
- Grandma Lynn's Blueberry Buckle - A delicious dessert anytime of year: homesteadingfamily.com/BB_YT
Love The “community, country doctor” as a way of life ! We need to go back to that !!!
The potato experiment sounds exciting. I always find the volunteers are more productive.
I would love 1 hour episodes of Pantry Chat! Your show is so much more productive and uplifting than the talk radio i used to listen to all the time at work.
I agree! We need more Pantry Chat!
Love the comment, "I watched that knife clean a squirrel last week." 😂 Carolyn you sound like me.
I am inadvertently doing the same experiment with cherry tomatoes. There was a big ole spider guarding a few nice sized clutches and not wanting to disturb his work, the tomatoes were sacrificed and fell onto the soil. Lol.
I LOVE country doctors/old time midwives. No bs, mostly natural remedies, community driven. Glad you and your kiddo are ok!
Attitude-"you can't get yourself out of a problem by approaching it with the same attitude that got you into it in the first place ".
I had 5 volunteer tomato plants this year. Seeds must have been in the compost all winter. Lettuce and mustard I grow as self seeding annuals. All the brassicas can be planted in late fall. Parsnips do best when planted at the same time as garlic.
Josh, it takes a real man to confidently, and successfully, pull off wearing a hat with a flower front and center! Congrats!
I like Josh’s hat, it shows a lot of personality! :)
Carolyn, I appreciate how you purposely think from the perspective of someone who has no prior experience with which to relate to potentially new concepts you guys cover. I pray the Lord would gift me with this ability and and/or give me reminders to do this as a mother with my children. (I go straight to the punch, and it’s not the best teaching style.)
We had over 100 volunteer tomato plants come up in our garden this year and they were healthier plants than the ones I started indoors in the spring. I joked with my daughter that from now on we will leave tomatoes in the garden at the end of the season right where we want them for the next year instead of planting seedlings in the spring. God does a much better job starting their growth at the right time than we do!
I too will try putting potatoes in before the winter begins. Paul Gautschi is very knowledgeable and does this every harvest. Sometimes I wonder why we make things so difficult for ourselves. If we would ask God and copy the way He makes things work, we would have much easier gardens.
For the first time ever, I have topped my entire garden bed (about 200 sq ft, so small) with composted manure, and covered the whole thing with a few inches of dry leaves. A roll of poultry netting on top keeps the leaves in place, and keeps my dog from burying things. If we get a lot of snow, and some freeze/thaw cycles before spring, much of the mulch will become leafmould. If it's a dry year, I'll rake the leaves back to plant, then return them to place when the plants have some size to them. I didn't mulch this past growing season and we were SO dry, the garden really would have benefitted from a good mulch. I'm feeling a deep contentment over my basement of food, and my saved seeds, and my ready-to-go garden...God is SO good!!!!
I like your mentioning planting the whole tomato cause thats the surprise I had this summer , oh my gosh .... I live in the coldest spot in north america , Embarrass , Mn. , and I thought nothing would survive the horrible winter but this spring I had thousannds of cherry tomato plants come up from all the ones I couldn't get to underneath my crazy successful crop the year before and wow , what a surprise or disaster or whatever it was , I could have made money selling organic tomato plants and so next summer , I'm going to pot up the clumps of baby plants and try to sell them . Anyway , they survived -40 below zero !!!!
And , I didn't have to do anything at all , no planting , no windowsills full of baby plants , no stress , just nature did it all by itself , Yay !!
My great grandmother would always let a few tomatoes from her best plants over ripen and fall to the ground. She would just come back later and stomp them into the ground. They always grew better than any of our starts ever did.
Years ago our huge Boer goat buck knocked me down & stomped me. Bruised my kidneys pretty badly. My husband couldn’t hear me screaming inside the house at first but thank God he did. I couldn’t get away from him. You’re right, that’s just life living rural on a farm.
My kids love to play with my tomato plants after I pull them out of the garden in the fall. Last year they put green cherry tomatoes everywhere so I had whole tomatoes that got buried, over wintered, and grow in the spring. I had tomatoes coming up everywhere! It was a nightmare, so I think planting whole tomatoes will definitely work. I like the idea about the potatoes, I think I will give that a try this year!
My (adult) children were helping me harvest in the garden and started throwing the fruit (tomatoes and pumpkins) that wasn’t good enough to bring inside at the back fence and dropped some of it in my compost pile - well, the next year I had volunteer plants growing out of everywhere I didn’t expect them lol. What a fun treat lol
That's always fun!
I accidentally grew onions in my yard from chucking them into snowbanks to decompose, couldn't stop laughing all spring.
I always have volunteer tomatoes in my garden. And I loved getting “free” potatoes the next year from the ones I missed.
"Oh, that isn't right" 🤣 I had a similar problem with the chainsaw earlier this year. It's amazing what your mind can choose not to feel in the moment.
As a N. Idaho resident for 27 years, I learned early on, after moving here, that if I wanted RIPE tomatoes, I had to start with BIG tomato plants. This year, I grew lots of extra veges and herbs to sell as well as grow. And because of our crazy cold Spring, had MUCH BIGGER tomatoes to plant than usual (5’). I always sink them at least a foot into the ground, which helps the stalks to grow even thicker and stronger. (Hint: They’re setting fruit or at least flowering when planted)
Thank you for the help on the dunking advice. Today was butchering day and we used the extra pots of hot and cold to keep a constant temperature and it worked great. It was a much better experience this time.
we use a large propane burner over a 55 gallon metal barrel and use an infrared thermometer to periodically check the temp
I have “volunteer” tomatoes in my garden all the time! Seems we always miss a few along the way in cleanup. Potatoes will rot where I live over winter so I can’t do that. More and more I experiment with letting some things go to seed where they are. Parsley, cilantro, carrots and parsnip have all successfully self seeded in my gardens and given me back lovely produce!
Rain country on you tube always does her tomatoes somewhat that way. She takes several of her ripe tomatoes from the garden and slices them puts them on paper plates, they naturally dry and come spring she just cuts the paper plates with the tomato on it and plants it all together. Works for her all the time. Nancy from nebraska
Great idea!
Thank you!!! I've just cut my plants back at the soil level. Always happy to allow nature to do it's thing!
My whole tomato of seeds sprouted in one tight clump from compost the same season I composted it. All of the plants were pretty productive. Just a word of warning…don’t wait too long to separate them. It led to quite a forest of spindly grape tomato plants. 😂
In KY..I drop the "bad" tomatoes (bug/bird bites, etc.) back into my beds and get a bed full of tomato plants that I just basically "weed" to keep the best plants.
I’m so bummed, I had cored, skinned and chopped 4 gallons of green tomatoes, popped something in my back and was laid up for a week. I live alone and all those tomatoes soured 😢 ugh, all that work wasted !
Glad your hand wasn’t more serious and I will pray for your complete healing !
Blessings
Living in Southern California I pretty much have a perpetual potato bed. I love the tomato idea. Maybe I’ll plant a block and see how they do. Sorry about your hand. I hope it healed quickly.
I have been growing my tomatoes in place for 3 years. I take a ripe tomatoes and put it where I want it next year. I make a shallow hole and put the tomato in it but don't cover it with dirt until it starts to rot. Then I cover it with dirt and place a cage over the spot so I won't forget where it is. It may depend some on the variety as I have had luck with 2 varieties but not a third.
I would love to see videos of you actually harvesting your garden and doing your compost. Even if you think it is boring, I would find it very helpful. Thanks
Thanks for the idea!
@@HomesteadingFamily Thanks for reading my comment! ☺
I learn so much from the chit chat part, great nuggets. Not sure why people complain so much.
I LOVE THE CHIT CHAT PART!!!
I can't speak to planting a whole tomato, that sounds interesting.
In my last garden 2 or 3 heirloom tomatoes dropped and stayed on the ground through winter. The next Spring it looked like tomato bombs went off because every seed had sprouted where the tomato was and there were so many seedlings it was incredible. We were moving, so I don't know what happened to them.
We live in mid Missouri and had to pick all our tomatoes due to a two day cold snap . I got two large paper sacks full. Someone told me to let them ripen in paper bags. I divided them into four bags and put in garage floor in dark corner.Temp in garage somewhere between 45 to 60. Tomatoes are slowly ripening . I take those out and place in sunny window for end ripening. We will see how this goes. If this process continues, I will have tomatoes over the next month.
I did something like the tomato experiment this year. My family got slammed with sickness last year during our tomato harvest and a whole box of ripe tomatoes got left in the garden. by the time I got back to the garden in early winter, they were all mush. I took 3 of the biggest ones and stuck them in the soil of my high tunnel and gave the rest to the chickens. In the spring, loads of seedlings germinated and I planted them as my 2nd planting of tomatoes. They did great!
I planted a yummy tomato slice in a pot & it did eventually grow, but the regular seeds I started early inside got a way better head start on the year. Zone 6/7.
I agree my potatoes come up better and I seem to have more when I leave some in the ground. I planted my whole tomatoes in the ground already this year. Same with these they seem to come back better. I also sliced three tomatoes, layer them on top of the soil in three pots. I placed them in my basement to see how well they do come spring. I also seed saved a ton. Funny we are doing the same experiment. It should work as they need to ferment before sprouting. I have also left my cucumbers and some squash in the garden. I composted them will get to the mulch. So busy with everything right now…Thank you for all you do, it has helped me so so much. ❤❤
Planting a whole tomato should work… it does here in Southeast Mississippi of course you’re a lot colder so I’d think your stratification period would preserve the seeds nicely! 💚
We tarp our annual raised beds in the fall. It is a technique that market gardeners use. In northern New England we have cold wet weather all year except for July and August. Tarping the beds after we do our fall clean up helps kill weeds and prevent fall weed seeds from blowing into the beds. Tarping till we are ready to plant in spring gives us drier and warmer soil in the spring that allows us to plant cool weather crops as soon as ground thaws in early spring. If done with a no till method you will dramatically drop you weed pressure after a few years. Our raised beds do not have side walls so we use silage tarps over the beds and walkways. Come spring we remove the tarps, broadfork our beds, add compost, soil amendments if needed, and plant. We also mulch our pathways with wood chips for the same reasons Homesteading Family does.
My grandparents used a large metal pail, sitting on cement blocks with a large torch (hooked to a 20 lb propane tank) propped up on another cement block, with the fire hitting the bottom of the pail. Seemed to work.
I had so many volunteer tomatoes this year, I really didn't need to plant any (except I had started them indoors long before I knew this)! So, tomato seeds definitely survive the winter and thrive in the spring when they're ready! I think this is true for most everything I've grown through the years!
Another benefit of mulching footpaths with woodchips is the effect of "composting in place." Those chips will decompose, and that resulting compost can be easily moved to the growing bed right next to it!
I've been dehydrating green tomato slurry... it's more flavorful (imo) than red tomato. It has a lemony flavor.
We're growing trees from seed, in what is called an "air prune bed." (It's a box with hardware cloth on the bottom, so the roots just stop when they get to the air.) I plant the entire core: apple, pear, etc. I'll leave some pulp on pits of stone fruit. The seeds get enough chill time being outside over winter, and the only thing needed is protect the beds from digging squirrels and birds.
I do something similar with tomatoes: I just swipe the pulp onto a paper towel, note the variety right on the towel. Let it air dry. Fold it up once dried. Then plant the whole thing in a container when I want to start them next winter. Pick the best seedlings to plant, compost the rest.
I have been experimenting with fruits and veggies this past year. Paul was also an inspiration for me. I let a patty pan squash sit on my counter for 6 months to see how long it would last. It finally starting getting soft the last few weeks. I cut it in half and about half the seeds had sprouted. I buried the halves in the ground to mimic nature by sprinkling a little soil and leaves on top.
I tossed some soft seed potatoes into my compost pile (I use vermiculite) this last spring. I do water my compost pile regularly and this pile was pretty well done anyway. Well those old soft seed potatoes sprouted. I did my experiment and let them go all summer. This fall I harvested ~ 10 lbs of potatoes from the compost pile. AND it was easy to get them out since the compost was so nice and airy! I will try planting potatoes next fall to see how they do.
We learned our lesson last year by waiting too long to clean the garden up for winter. We got greedy--we had some brassicas (we were especially excited about some Brussels sprouts!!) that were still puttering along and coming into their own...so we left part of our large garden with those plants still going and weed fabric on the ground. Wellll, we got the virus in November and were much too ill to tend to it and we ended up losing the brassicas to weather and chickens and had to leave the ground cover on all winter and remove in the spring. IT wasn't the end of the world, but it wasn't optimal. This year we got it done in time! (Last weekend!) We got our garlic planted, chickens butchered, pork belly smoked, and will butcher turkeys this weekend, Lord willing!
Great topic and tips!
I planted a whole tomato in a pot with a few compost worms this spring just to see what would happen. WOW! I could have planted a tomato forest! Have fun with your experiment!
For context, I had a few harvests of vermicompost that sprouted tomatoes so I figured they were efficient at processing and planting the seeds. I wanted to see if it would work in a controlled setting so I planted cherry tomatoes whole. It definitely works.
Hi, I've never commented before but you asked so I am answering.
When I grown tomatoes, any that split and start to mould, I smush into the soil below the plants. At the end of ghe growing year I pull the adult plants and add amendments.
At exactly the right time next year, the tomatoes start popping up and I always get my best tomato plants from the ones that over wintered.
Hope this helps, God bless x
The garden information was excellent. I never knew or thought of cutting back to ground level and leaving the roots in place to decompose, but it makes perfect sense. Thank you! It is what I will be doing going forward.
In the autumn I replant any small onions that didn't grow well over summer. Each gives me a clump of early spring onions.
I have done potato replanting for years. When I harvest potatoes, I put the tiny ones back in. I get a small crop earlier than my normal planting harvest time. For tomatoes, I also just let ones that fall-stay. I always have a large “volunteer” crop.
Maybe try next time planting the very biggest potato and see if it makes a difference.
I meant to say that I only use the small potatoes, on purpose. The rest I harvest; this way, something is always in the ground and I feel I always have a rotation of crops going, rather than waiting til spring to plant.
I can understand why some of the newer to gardening people would get overwhelmed. Then there are people like myself who was raised farming,gardening, and preserving food by every method possible. As far as green tomatoes, us older seasoned gardeners know exactly what to do with them. I myself will be able to have ripe tomatoes all the way through January. I will also use some in green tomato ketchup, chow chow, slice and dip in egg and cornmeal, flash freeze for the family members that like fried green tomatoes. We have 2 orchards full of mature fruit trees. When you are planning your orchards you want to make sure that you have many different varieties of say apples. Our start to ripen from June and will go all the way up into November. We did that with every variety of fruit. It’s an easy way to keep up with harvesting and preserving and giving to the needy and selling some also.I was always taught not to be greedy and clean everything bare but to leave some for the animals that have to eat also. It’s also a good practice to put up enough for a couple of years because we never know what the weather will be like in the coming year. We might get a frost that wipes out our new fruits. That’s what happened to my early pear tree this year last year I had a bumper crop and we have plenty put up. Fall is a very busy time, gathering all the food and seeds, all in time to beat the killing frosts, kicking in overdrive, sorting what & how it’s to be preserved, cured, stored etc. Happy Fall Y’all🍁🎃
It's amazing how changing a mind set changes your outlook on the plants you grow such as tomatoes. Here in the UK where I live I can generally only get 2.5 trusses of tomatoes to ripen. I plan my preserving around that amount. The other way to get around it is to top out the plants at 2 trusses and grow them closer together thus getting more ripe tomatoes in your space. They ripen up better as the plant isn't putting energy into trying to ripen or grow more than the 2 trusses. You can grow them closer together as each plant will need less nutrients than a full grown plant. I obviously do grow some on as I do have recipes for the green toms. Another way to get more ripe toms is to grow cherry toms as they are quicker to ripen being small and start earlier (taste great turned into soup). Good luck with your experiments this winter/spring.
I did have a volunteer tomato plant pop up in my is my horsemanor pile this summer.
But I also learned, from off grid with Doug and Stacy, who learned it from their Anish friends, that if you slice your tomatoes horizontally, put the rings on top of the dirt in a pot, and put the pot in your rootseller or just some place dark and cool. In the Spring you will have tiny tomato plants. The goo around the seed protects it for a period of time and it will naturally sprout and take root.
That's my experiment this fall.
This spring I planted organic red potatoes that were getting roots on them. during the summer I noticed where I had grown potatoes the year before were potato plants. These "gifted" potatoes actually yielded more than my intentionally grown ones did! We've all discovered tomato plants growing where we didn't plant them. Volunteer plants are so fun!
Yes! I have 4 Napa cabbage plants that I found popping up. I moved them into a bed together & am enjoying harvesting leaves to add to stir fry & soups. Such a fun gift (from birds?)!!!
My absolutely best tomato plant was one that came up volunteer. I also had a raised garden that I ran out of soil to fill it this year so I did not plant anything in it. The planter was full of cherry tomatoes 🤷🏻♀️ good luck 👍
We left all the roots in our old garden(I built your “instant garden” topped with chips for a kitchen garden next year)for 2 reasons, it needs more nutrients & we had blight in 2 tomato plants. Trying to break my husband’s tolling habit. It’ll bring those spores back up.
Planting tomatoes actually does work in the fall. I am from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so it’s very cold like you would have it in Idaho. I threw tomatoes in my compost pile the year prior and I had several tomato plants popping up all over that pile which I did not plant myself. I am going to be trying the method that Stacy of Doug and Stacy does which is slicing the tomato and just placing them on top of soil in pots etc. and having all the transplants to plant in the spring.
The concept of letting the potatoes stay and grow and the tomato idea is very cool. Look forward to hearing the results of your experiments! Makes total sense
I have three separate potatoes patches each year. One permanent, like Paul Gautschi, under woodchips with three varieties: Charlottes, Marfona and a ghastly blight resistant main crop that keeps returning. We just pick what we want/need. If we pull a whole plant we always put one back in the hole.
Elsewhere, I plant a rotating bed of Charlottes (tasty waxy salad/boil potatoes) and Marfona (tasty easy can’t go wrong mash) sown end of March, and a rotating bed of maincrop which is sown end of May and harvested around October.
The permanent woodchip bed has produced wonderful crops throughout summer, fall and winter for 6 years now. We only harvest fresh from that one as and when needed.
Not tried planting a whole tomato but we get volunteers all over from the compost top dressing that have passed through the chickens. They pop up on warm spring days but usually disappear after a spring frost.
Although we have mixed specific beds, we allow spinach, white Swiss Chard, coriander and parsley to go to seed everywhere. Providing winter greens for chickens and self sowing dotted about in between other crops in the mixed beds. Acts as ground cover, too.
In central UK, we’re lucky enough to succession sow and eat fresh all year. Saves on pantry/freezer space. I do have specific tomato and pepper beds, and garlic and onions but all other roots, beans, salads and greens are given mixed beds that we harvest as needed or as their “season” allows. I top dress throughout the year when required. I’m afraid I still use tarp or weed fabric in areas that become free for a while when time/compost is short.
I put my tomatoes in paper bags and close them with clothes pegs. They release ethylene gas and ripen. For really green ones you can add a ripe banana to the bag. Last year I had red tomatoes ripening right up to Christmas.
I always leave some tomatoes and tamatillos in the garden for voluntarios next year
Last year I planted a tomato slice just to see what would happen and yeah, it took off! I can see burying a whole tomato over winter (skin protecting it maybe) but next spring...just plant a slice from the BLT you're making and you should be surprised at the results like I was.
My mother used to do just that, she’d leave some tomatoes in her garden each fall, and have beautiful new plants in the spring. Did it for years with great success!
This was an AWESOME pantry chat!!
The first thing I want to give some food for thought about putting down your compost in the fall. I am in MN and I WAS all ready to compost my beds and something was tugging at me not to do it....after weeks of feeling that; I really thought about why am I pondering this. Well it came to me. Where I live and garden is out in the open. We are in wind tower farm lands; aka we get lots of wind. I have seen how even wood chips will blow off if there is not enough snow cover. Wind erosion is real here. So I decided nope, not going to chance putting down that hard earned "home grown" compost to chance it blow away over our long winter months. We are never guaranteed a good snow cover here. Or my other concern is having frozen ground in the spring and days and days of rain to have that top layer get washed away. So for me it is worth it to cover my compost pile and wait to use it in the spring. And another benefit of doing that way for me is I do not use a broad fork either....and truth be told my beds can be a big tough in the spring, so crop by crop as I plant from earliest crops to late crops, I will use my compost bit by bit to lay down and plant in. So the timeline issue is an advantage for me to apply it as I plant.
The other thing I LOVED your comments about experimenting with over wintering crops like the potatoes. Yep, same happens here in MN and it is COLD here! I have experienced the same thing with onions and carrots too. SO, this fall I seeded in carrots and purposely left small onions in place and see what happens in the spring.
Carolyn! I LOVE your tomato idea!!!! I am only ticked I only have a hand full of tomatoes left in the house to try that on! I am going to do it! I am going to up the ante a bit by digging in a plastic jug over the place where I plant it so "when", not "if" I forget about it in the spring and it sprouts it will have some protection.
Oh man so much good info today! Thanks Josh and Carolyn!!!!
Youch....that gave me some SPF listening to that knife story!!!
For green tomatoes, try making green tomato sweet relish. I made some this week. It's great, we use it in potato salad, for sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, deviled eggs, lots of things. Recipe: 4 cups green tomatoes, 4 cups green cabbage, 4 cups onions, 6 green bell peppers, 6 red bell peppers - chop all vegies, put in large bowl with 1/2 cup of salt, overnight. Next day rinse and squeeze out some of the liquid. Add to big pan. Add 7-1/2 cups sugar, 4 cups 5% acid apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon of celery seed, 2 teaspoons Mustard seed, 1-1/2 teaspoon Tumeric. Boil for 8 minutes, then can.
I always triple, at least this recipe. This is my family recipe that has been passed down for generations!!! I hope this helps you with your tomatoes!!!! Good luck!!! 😊
I had the same idea as you! I just planted 75 potatoes two weeks ago (zone 4). Fingers crossed they will do well.
Hi 👋 Brenda how are you doing?
I am in northern New England with a short cold and wet growing season. We winter over some of my Winterbor Kale and let it start to flower in the spring. The floret heads are little broccoli florets and give me a harvest a month early than I can get from my broccoli plants.
In my herb garden I have Ever Green Hardy Bunching onions. I only cut the greens and do not remove the white build when harvesting. This has allowed the bunching onions to perennialize and I can harvest these greens from Early May to mid to late November.
Everbearing Strawberries are planted in areas we are establishing fruit trees and shrubs as a ground cover. They do great mulched with wood chips and the strawberries produce fruit for 3 years and move them as they get crowded out by the bigger plants.
A little trick regarding tomatoes that we learned was when tomatoes are done growing outside, just pull the plant and hang it upside down (we used our concrete-lined basement). We had RED tomatoes (thinking of you, @carolyn 😊) up until Christmas. We didn't have any green tomato recipes so we just gave it a try - what did we have to lose?
My Mom used to do the same with the plants with green tomatoes when the first frost was expected. We had red tomatoes until midwinter.
I have about a dozen green tomatoes remaining. Now I want to go find a recipe for green tomato chili!!
I'm in northeast Texas. I figured out that I can leave my fall carrots in the soil (raised bed) all winter by covering with roughly 8 inches of leaves/mulch. I pull perfect, fresh carrots, as needed, all winter. I let a few go to seed (pick only one variety each year to set seed so they don't mix) and harvest seed when the heads get brown and very dry, around June. I may try to replant just the carrot tops of some for seed instead of leaving the whole carrot. I'm going to try this with other root veg this winter.
Also, If you like radishes, try white icicle radish. They grow large like a carrot and only take about 30 days to mature.
I had a volunteer paste tomato come up late this year....it had more tomatoes on it than I've ever had, absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, it was too late to get them all to ripen before the frost hit.
This is usually my end result as well with any volunteer tomato plants. Beautiful but late starters so more green tomatoes in the fall. … but then I make and can mock apple 🍏 pie filling out of those.
I planted tomatoes in the house in March and still over half of them did not ever start to ripen.
Another great pantry chat! Thank you! I had several tomato volunteers this year. I had left some leftover tomatoes in the garden last fall. I also had a gorgeous sunflower volunteer pop up in the middle of the tomato patch this year. A butternut squash plant grew right in front of my porch and produced a lot of squashes. I love all the volunteer surprises!
I made green tomato salsa Verde with my green tomatoes that didn't ripen. I will use it in the sweet pork Enchiladas that we love.
We call those plants “ volunteers” 😁 I always have volunteer tomatoes every spring.
This year I made green tomato salsa Verde for the 1st time, it is delicious
Sounds great!
I have always found that self sown and volunteer plants are more robust and produce earlier. One of my first gardens was in an area that had such a short growing season that the only way I could get watermelon , or pumpkins was to have them grow from the compost heap, as it would generate enough heat to actually ripen the fruit/vegies.
We have had a cherry tomato seed itself back through the winter.
You mentioned using chicken heads in your chicken bone broth. We harvested our chickens Saturday and saved the heads as well as the normal feet processing. I haven't been able to find any information on the internet as to how to prepare the heads for making bone broth. Could you please address this on your pantry chat this week please? Thank you so much. You are my favorite homesteading people. Keep up the good work!
I learned a trick to get rip tomatoes on the vine. if you let the tomatoes get to the size you want and they are not turning red. Turn the water off to the tomatoes and the tomatoes will turn red.
I live in Minnesota and I don't purposefully plant my tomatoes in the fall but I always have volunteer tomatoes in the spring from fruit I threw on the ground. We don't however reliably get potatoes to over winter in our garden. Only occasionally do I have volunteer potato plants. Maybe we just don't have many we leave behind, doubtful, but possible I suppose.
Tomato’s that I miss on the ground volunteer in the Spring results, often, tight clusters of young plants that I break apart or just thin in place.
I live in Southern Oregon. Going out right now and planting a whole ripe tomato to see what happens next spring.
Burying a whole ripe tomato to see if it grows in the spring is a great experiment I'm going to do today with my kids! I've still got some ripe bell peppers and jalapeños to try as well! Can't wait to see what happens over time!
I put a slice of tomato in a pot of soil, and lightly covered it with soil. It grew.
My slice, not covered, grew several (10 to 15) tiny plants. Which I then transplanted to induvial pots.
Just my experience with pre-seeding the garden…. Our garden is not full sun all the time, it’s a medium sized backyard garden with trees around our yard and neighbors. I love it but it does hinder the garden. That being said I tried this year to just plant seeds instead of funding the big box stores by buying their plants. What I didn’t keep in mind was the morning sun not being over the whole garden, I only had a few hours over different areas. Only a few popped up, our garden didn’t do so well this year because of it, lived and learned. I’m sure if we had full sun all day that the results would be different. I plan on doing the milk jug greenhouses this coming January, this way I know I will have them all in direct sun giving us a good start.
I love your show.
I always look forward to Wednesday mornings!
Me too!!
Wondering how these preparations change with the hoop house?
Good Morning yall !
Carolyn you look great!!!
I have made thick slices with tomatoes and buried the slices and got a lot of plants that way, Fub experiments to try,
Great info! Paul has done so many garden experimentation with replicating nature. We recently bought raw land last fall so this years garden was a hurry up and see what we can grow in our new climate. Too much time was in creating a garden where it’s only had forest before.
Many plans to get garden raised beds and regular beds done before spring next year.
Thanks again! Linda
This past summer, I had some aha moments with winter sowing. Parsnips, mesclun mix, borage and tomatillo plants all came back from seeds left in the garden. I also haven’t planted oregano in 5 years now, it self seeds and I treat it like a perennial. I had some leeks and onions from the previous year that regrew and were very early but put up flowers so the discovery there was about saving my own seed! I was thinking the same thing as you, intentionally sowing some seeds in the fall for earlier start because our season is so short (June 15-Sept 5 typically) and I’m in a zone 2B. I too have had potatoes grow from leftovers as well as carrots (the carrots were woody though, probably would have flowered if I left them as they are biannual like the onions) in the flower garden, the cosmos self sowed and filled in the area really well. It‘s very exciting!
I’ve learned so much from you guys. Thank you for everything ❤
I had my best potato harvest this year, and it was because I did absolutely nothing other than toss sprouting store-bought potatoes into the soil and left them there until "closing up shop" at the very end of summer. It was like an Easter egg hunt, digging up all those taters!
I was so excited for this video! Thank you for the great tips 🥰.
You mentioned your cottage garden- I started watching you all last year and I watched your older Cottage Garden Video- and I want to thank you! I created one last year- with alot of learning curve. This year I was so happy and it thrived! Thank you for that encouragement.
I was able to share numerous volunteers/divide larger plants with my local Homesteading group of Sage, Yarrow, Thyme, Chamomile, Comfrey and Lemon Balm.
Thank you for all the suggestions of herbs to grown in a cottage garden!
Wonderful!
Garden expansion and new beds are built in the fall when we have more time and less biting insects.Ideally we tarp the space in the heat of the summer to kill the grass. After our first frost in the fall we build and prep the space, add soil amendments, compost, wait for a good rainstorm, and then tarp it till spring. This way we are not trying to build the garden in the time we need to plant the rest of the garden. This is most useful when preparing to add trees and shrubs in spring plantings.
Winter sewing sounds good!
I've found that my "volunteer" plants are stronger than the ones I plant. That, of course, means that I've been growing heirloom or open pollinated crops. I've also had it happen that I sometimes get what looks like total failure of a seedlngs in trays but if I leave them out and it rains, all the seeds that didn't sprout, sprout.
Great information! Thx for sharing!
We get volunteer tomatoes and potatoes every year! Great ideas about planting them on purpose in the fall!