How To Plant An EASY Lazy Fall Garden: VERY DETAILED!

Fall is one of the best times to grow a vegetable garden. The weather is beautiful, insect and disease problems fade, irrigation needs reduce…a fall garden is a lazy gardener’s dream! Growing a fall garden is rewarding, because it produces harvests into winter. But, how do we know when to start a fall garden, and what do we plant? I answer these questions in this easy, very detailed guide to fall gardening for beginners. This is how to plant an easy, lazy fall garden!

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Contender String Bean: https://amzn.to/3JtJF5Z
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Detroit Dark Red Beet Seeds: https://amzn.to/3J4NPkV
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Prospera Basil: https://www.pjatr.com/t/8-12781-345111-269073?url=https%3A%2F%2Fterritorialseed.com%2Fproducts%2Fbasil-prospera
Prospera Red Basil: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/herbs/basil/purple-basil/prospera-red-dmr-organic-f1-basil-seed-4650G.html

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Introduction
0:34 When To Plant A Garden
2:18 Easy Fall Crops To Plant
6:18 Garden Layout Plan
7:39 Planting Peas
11:00 Planting String Beans
13:58 Planting Lettuce
18:02 Planting Carrots
22:34 Planting Beets
25:18 Planting Basil Transplants
26:40 Planting Dill
27:23 Planting Radishes
28:43 Installing Drip Irrigation
32:38 How To Fertilize A Fall Garden
36:00 Easy DIY Trellis
38:30 Germination Results After 7 Days
40:16 Fall Garden Tips And Advice
43:03 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about how to grow a garden for beginners, want to learn more about growing fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #fallgarden #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

What’s going on, gardeners? On today’s video, I’m going to show you how to plant a loweffort fall garden that is a lazy gardener’s dream. If you are burnt out from summer gardening, but you still want harvest for months to come, this is the video you’ve been looking for. This video is going to be minimally edited so I can show you as much detail as possible. This way, if you are new to fall gardening, everything will be easy for you to understand. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. And the most important thing you must understand to have success with a fall gardening is that it all boils down to timing. If you wait for things to cool down to start your fall garden, it will already be too late. Unless you live in a place where the winters are so mild, you see very little frost and freeze. That’s because even if you grow frost and freeze hardy fall crops, you’re going to find that towards the middle of fall, the days are going to become so short and the sun’s so weak that your plants are going to stall. So, if you don’t reach maturity roughly around your first frost date, you are going to have your crop stall out on you before you get a harvest. So, the way we get around that is we start our plants in the summer when it’s still nice and warm, but we begin them underneath shade cloth. And that is what you see right here. Today is August 1st. And I always plan my crops 6 weeks ahead in my own mind. So if today is August 1st, in my mind on our crops timeline, it’s really September 15th because once we get them planted and they take a week or two to germinate and they grab hold, we are going to lose four to 6 weeks of that season. So always start early. Use shade cloth to your advantage if it is still too hot at the moment. And you don’t need some complicated roof over your garden with shade cloth overhead just to make the system work. You can build yourself a simple PVC hoop house or secure the shade cloth overhead by any other affordable means. I’ll link to a video both above and down in the video description that’ll show you how to build a simple PVC structure over a bed in only about 20 to 30 minutes. I will also place links down in the video description to some really affordable shade cloth that comes in all different sizes. Now, let’s get into which fall crops we are growing. All of these have been selected because they are not only easy to plant, but they are also easy to maintain and they suffer from minimal pests and diseases. And the first on my list is peas. Now, you can grow any kind of peas you like. I specifically like snap peas, but there are also snow peas, shelling peas. It’s up to you. I’m specifically growing this sugar daddy snap pee because it’s one of my absolute favorites. And these are very fast to mature. They’re more like a bush type. You don’t really need to stake them very much. So, they’re easy to grow. They produce in about 60 to 70 days and they can tolerate a light frost. So, if I get an early frost, no big deal. We’ll just cover them with a sheet and we will still get a nice harvest. And of course, because they are a legume, they are easy to direct sew. You don’t need to transplant them or anything like that and they take very minimal fertilizer. Similarly, number two on the list is string beans. String beans are also a legume. They’re easy to direct sew. They require very little fertilizer and they also grow very quickly. Now, these are frost sensitive. So, if if these plants get frosted on, it will kill them. However, these fruit in only about 50 to 60 days. And because today is August 1st, I will be picking off of these by late September, early October. and I don’t usually get a first frost until November. So, plenty of time for that harvest. Next on the list is one of the easiest things you will ever grow. Carrots. Carrots are a root vegetable, so they should only be direct sewn. You never want to transplant carrots. So, we are just going to make a very light trench, sprinkle them in, and they will germinate in about 7 to 14 days. And then we can thin them later if we wish. They’re super cold tolerant. They can take cold all the way down to 10 degrees. So these are an awesome thing to plant in a low to no maintenance fall garden. Then we will also do beets. Another root crop that is easily direct sewn into the garden. You never want to transplant beets. They don’t do well from transplant. Easy direct sew crop and also frost tolerant. Next up is Roma lettuce. Roma is specifically this giant Caesar variety is a warm season lettuce. They like temperatures in the 70s and low 80s. So this is one of the first lettucees that I sew in my fall garden because they can actually take the summer warmth at the end of summer where many of your other more cold tolerant lettucees cannot. And this lettuce actually doesn’t like frost very much. It will tolerate it. But this is one that you want to get in early in the season. And then if you are going to get a frost, just cover it. You can start these from transplant or direct sew if you want. I’m going to do this direct sewn in my garden because of ease. Then we will plant some dill. Dill likes very moderate weather in the 60s and 70s, so it is an awesome fall herb. It can take a frost. I recommend covering it, but I’ve had my dill survive 25° unprotected all the way down into the upper teens with protection. So this is another thing that is easy to direct sew. Uh and then the ultimate direct sew crop, radishes. Usually from the day you plant them, you are harvesting radishes in only about 30 days. So awesome fall crop that will produce for you very quickly. Then the last thing on my list is basil. Basil is frost sensitive, but it grows very, very quickly and you can start harvesting them as soon as you get leaves on them. Now, I have some basil transplants that are ready to go. So, I’m going to transplant them in my garden, but if you want, you can also direct sew them. They are fine being direct sewn at this point in the year in the summer when your soil is nice and warm. They will germinate in only about 3 to 5 days, and you can probably start harvesting them in as little as 3 to 4 weeks. Another thing I recommend is before you start planting, you get some kind of layout going. Design the layout before you start planting your seeds. This is especially important when you are direct sewing your crop. So, what I did was uh behind me is a 4TX 10 ft raised bed and I’m going to direct sew all of these crops in that. I actually made a little sketch right here and I mocked up how I am going to actually plant these with rough approximate row spacing and things like that. This doesn’t have to be perfect. Just having some kind of layout pre-done beforehand so you know what you’re doing is a really good idea. Also, the raised bed that I’m choosing to start these fall crops in had tomatoes growing in it beforehand, which I cleared out about a month ago, and I cleaned up the raised bed. A tomato bed is a great thing to grow your root vegetables and lettuce and herbs and things like that because they generally don’t share a lot of the same garden diseases. So although tomatoes get a lot of garden diseases, they probably aren’t going to transfer to anything that I’m planting in the bed right now. So it’s a great thing to rotate from your tomatoes to things like lettuce and carrots and beets and radishes and things like that. I will also place direct links down in the video description to seeds featured in this video if you’re interested in any of these varieties. In front of me, I have a half inch piece of EMT conduit that is 10 feet long. And I bought this for like $5 at Lowe’s. And I’m going to use this to sew and dig perfect trenches. I cut about 2 in off of it so it would fit perfectly in this 10-ft raised garden bed. And I’m just going to take this and I’m going to wiggle it back and forth like this. And this is going to create a perfectly uniform trench of roughly equal depth. And what we’re going to sew in this very first trench is going to be peas. And my peas, while they are a dwarf bush variety, uh they still will need a little bit of support. So that’s why I’m going to sew them on the end of my raised garden bed because we’re going to put just a really small trellis up against the back end to just give them a little bit of support. So I’m sewing the peas about 6 in from the edge of the bed. So we’re going to begin with that. And I like using a chopstick in order to open the top of seeds. Makes it really easy. Slide it across. It’ll open right up. And it specifically says that we need seed spacing of two inches with a depth of one inch here. And we may have to thin the plants later if a lot of peas come up. But that’s okay uh because they will be easy to thin. Now, my trench that I made with this conduit is not a full inch deep. So, I’m going to take the peas and I’m going to just press them down lightly and I’m going to follow the instructions and I’m going to plant them about 2 in apart. And it really is that simple. That is all you have to do when it comes to planting peas. And this is a very easy process. We’re just going to press them in. And you have to figure when you are planting things in your garden that you are not going to get 100% germination. Seeds usually germinate anywhere from 85 to 90%. And if you are using seeds that are a couple of years old like I am, uh most of my seeds are anywhere from 1 to two years old. that can shrink down to more like 75 to 85%. So that’s why we recommend a very close plant spacing because we have to factor in that we’re not going to get perfect germination. And then we can always thin the plants later where we get some over germination where we can just pull them out directly by the roots when they are small or we can just take a pair of scissors and we can uh just chop them down. And the cool thing about pea plants is you can actually eat the plants. Uh they are quite delicious. If you overplant your peas, you’re not necessarily wasting them because you can eat the plants in a salad or in a stir fry if you so wish. So just like that, I planted all my peas. Now the next row we are going to do are going to be string beans. And string beans can be quite bushy plants. So, we actually want to give them some decent separation from our peas. We want to give them about a full foot spacing or so. And I’m just kind of eyeballing it. This kind of looks like 1 ft. So, again, I’m going to take this EMT conduit. And I’m going to wiggle it in order to get myself a trench that is about 1 in deep. Because your string bean seeds also like to be planted about 1 in deep. And my bed isn’t perfectly level. So at some at some point I may have to take my finger and just slide it across to get me a little bit of trench depth where things are not level enough to just press this conduit in. Okay. And that’s probably adequate there. The other thing I’m going to do is I want a marker for where my peas are because at the end of this I’m going to run drip line and I want the drip line to be run very close but not directly on top of the trench. So I have these garden stakes right here that will delineate about an inch or two off that trench and that’ll be very useful for later. So again, we are going to take our string bean seeds, and they recommend again a planting depth of 1 in. And they recommend for these a plant spacing of 3 to 4 in. And although these are brand new seeds that I just got in the mail actually yesterday, I’m going to assume I’m not going to get 100% germination. So I’m going to be a little bit conservative with that spacing. I’m going to go more like 2 to 3 in. And I’d rather overplant them a little bit. So again, this this doesn’t have to be perfect. This is supposed to be easy and lazy. So all you have to do is just put down a pipe or a piece of wood or a steak or something like that and press it into the ground or run your fingers along the ground and then just sew your seeds. And then you give them just a little tiny easy press. In this case, because these legume seeds, they get buried a little bit deeper than most other seeds that we plant in our garden. Okay. And just like that, we sewed all of our string bean seeds. And just like with our peas, we are going to take a stake and we are going to delineate where that trench is. And you could run a piece of string if you want. It doesn’t really matter how you do this. It’s up to you. You may not need to do this at all if you aren’t going to run drip line like me. Okay. The next thing we’re going to sew is our Roma lettuce. And while you could do this in transplants if you want, uh, Roma and your other lettucees can be directly sewn in a trench. And you can choose whether you want to sew these either in clusters for larger heads and then thin them out later or you can decide if you want to sew them uh side by side in rows and then they won’t become large heads. So that is kind of up to you. I’m going to sew these in little tiny clusters because I really like larger heads of Roma. And if I just drop a whole bunch of seeds in the row, then what’s going to happen is uh I’m going to get really small lettuce leaves. And that’s really not what I want. So, what I am going to do right here is I’m going to take some lettuce leaves and I’m going to pour them or some lettuce seeds and I’m going to pour them in my hand and I’m just going to drop a couple maybe three or four lettuce seeds and a little cluster about every 6 in or so. And then what’s going to happen is they are going to germinate in little clusters. So maybe only half of them will germinate and then we can thin them down to one head later after they germinate. And lettuce leaves or lettuce seeds, they only need to be sewn a/4 in deep. You can’t bury them too deeply or they won’t germinate. You can even go as shallow as about an 8 in. So we need to be very careful that we don’t overdo it. Again, three or four seeds in clusters spaced every 6 in apart. And then we can thin them out later once they grab hold. We will save the strongest seedlings. And just like that, we just sewed all of our lettuce seeds. And now, because I am done sewing the first half of this raised garden bed, I’m starting to run out of reach. So, I’m going to start compacting and backfilling these trenches. Again, our lettuce seeds need minimal cover. We can’t bury them too deeply or they will not germinate. So, we want to be very light with that. And lightly tap it down. I’m going to start back filling our string beans here. Again, they’re going to be buried roughly one inch. And we’re going to delineate where those string beans are with these stakes. Then we’re going to back fill our peas as well, about 1 in deep, and lightly press that soil down. Just like that. Tamp everything down. And then we’ll do the second half of the bed. Start with our peas up here. Tamp everything down. Then we will move to our string beans. Tamp everything down. And it’s important that we make this as low stress of a process as possible. This should be easy. This should be fun. Gardening is all about the journey. So, take your time and enjoy the nice evening spent outside. It’s a little hot and humid for us today, but we’re under the protection of the shade cloth, which makes life nice. That’s why I recommend everybody install shade cloth. Okay, so now the first three rows, our lettuce, our string beans, and our peas are sewed. Now, I’m going to reorient the camera so I can work in the other half of the raised garden bed. Okay, now we’re going to work on the second half of our garden bed. And I pre-laid out everything. This big piece of conduit right here is going to represent our carrot row. These two right here are going to represent half rows of beets and they can be planted more closely together because they are all root vegetables and they occupy a small footprint. Then we’re going to put in our two basil transplants. And on the far end, we’re going to put in our dill and our radishes. Now, we’re going to start off with the carrots. And carrots need to very carefully be sewn because they will not germinate if you bury them deeply. They only should be covered about a/4 to an eighth of an inch. So, for that reason, we are actually not going to press this conduit into the ground because we will actually press it in too deeply and we may not get good germination. So, I’m just going to lightly run my finger along the conduit in order to give us a very, very shallow trench. Now, carrots also need to be generously overseed, meaning we need to plant lots of seeds very closely together because germination rates of carrot seeds are very low. And even if they do germinate very well, well, they have a very high chance of death. See, carrot seeds are very, very, very tiny. So, we want to very lightly sprinkle them over the surface of the soil, very closely together in a very shallow trench. So, we’re going to sprinkle them like Parmesan cheese on a plate of spaghetti. You want to be generous with them because you have to figure the majority of them are not going to germinate. And of those that don’t, you’re probably going to have a high level of plant death. And it’s very easy to thin carrots later. You generally want to thin them to about one to two inches apart depending on the size of carrots that you are growing. So don’t worry about them all germinating very closely together because you can just go along and wait for the strongest seedlings to emerge and then once they do pull out the weaker seedlings like you’re plucking an eyelash or an eyebrow or some other kind of hair and they’ll come out very easily. And good thing carrot seeds are very, very cheap. So, there’s no reason to be cheap with them. This packet of seed right here was $1.99. And I’m probably only using about a third of it to sew a 10ft row. So, feel free to be generous. And I’m going to very gently cover that trench over like you see right here. Actually, before I do that, let’s put our stakes to delineate where the trench is so we can run our drip lines later. That way, we don’t make any mistakes. We’re going to lightly cover that trench. Now, sometimes, um, people have had better luck actually covering the carrot seeds with a board or with a piece of agricultural fabric. Uh because carrot seeds are sewn so shallow that heavy rain or over irrigation can actually wash them away. So you can cover them with like a 2×4 or something like that and then check underneath that 2×4 in about 7 days and look for germination. Uh that is a great way to speed up the germinating process and it’s worked for me. However, sometimes when you place a wooden board or a piece of agricultural fabric down on a piece of on your garden soil, it will attract pill bugs or mealy bugs and they will actually fester underneath there and eat some of your seedlings. So, it kind of depends. It can work to your advantage. It can also work to your disadvantage. I’ve had mixed results doing that. Usually covering them with a board works to my advantage because I sew so many seeds. Even if the bugs do eat some of them, it’s not a big deal and I’ve had better germination doing it that way. But you can take these tips and tricks however you want. I will leave it up to you. Now, beets are going to be one of the easiest things you ever sew. The package instructions recommend that we sew them/ an inch deep and thin them to 3 in. Now, when you plant a beet seed, it’s actually a cluster of seeds. It can germinate anywhere from three to six beets. So, we don’t really need to plant them more closely together um than uh than other seeds to overseed because every beet seed is going to basically um germinate more beets than we need. So, I’m just going to take my fingertips and I’m going to place a little spot about 2 to 3 in apart, closer to 3 in, along each of these stakes that I set up, just like you see right here. And what that is going to do is it’s going to give me a little shallow hole to drop my beet seed. And then they will germinate in about 7 to 10 days. And then we can thin them out later to our strongest individual plant by just plucking out the weaker ones like little tiny hairs. And that is really all you need to know when it comes to sewing beets. So, I’m going to pour a small handful of beet seeds out in my hand and I’m going to go planting hole. We’re just going to do one in each planting hole. You can put two in if you want to be safe. Beet seeds are cheap. So, that way if your seed is a little bit old and you’re concerned that it won’t germinate, not a big deal. You can always toss a couple extra in there. But keep in mind, the more you throw in a planting hole, the more you will have to thin them out when they do germinate. Because usually beets germinate pretty well. Even in seed that is a year or two old, 3 years old, as long as you store them correctly in a cool, dry area outside of uh all sunlight, they can keep for several years without any issue and still germinate fairly well. So, there are our beads sewn that easily. And we’ll just pinch those holes shut. Nice and easy. Pinch them shut. Pinch them shut. Pinch them shut. Tap them down. Pinch them shut. Tap them down. And it really is a simple and should be a relaxing process to do it. Nice and easy. Nice and easy. And just like that, we sewed all of our beet seeds. So now we only have our herbs and our radishes left. Now we’re going to sew our basil transplants. And normally we would probably give these about 18 to 24 in spacing. But because our season is more than halfway over, these plants are not going to get all that large. So, we are just going to dig a planting hole. Don’t worry about fertilizer. I will amend this with fertilizer as a top dressing at the end of this video and show you how to easily fertilize your garden. We’re just going to press them in. Easy peasy. This right here is Prospera purple basil, which is a downey mildew resistant uh basil. And it’s a great option to plant in the fall when humidity is high because of that downey mildew resistance. So again, these are spaced about 1 ft apart. So we’re just going to dig a planting hole with our hand. Normally, I would throw a little bit of organic fertilizer in the planting hole, but again, we’ll do that as a top dressing. Press that down nice and easy. And these will be two downy mildew resistant late season basil plants that will carry us all the way until frost. Frost will kill these plants, but that’s okay because we’re going to have 60 to 90 days of harvesting, even planting them this late. Now, next up is going to be our dill. And to plant the dill, dill does really well being direct sewn. So, I’m just going to take my hand and run it across this line right here. And I’m going to take this dill and just sprinkle a few seeds into this trench. So, they’ll go in my hand first and then we’ll just we’ll sprinkle them. They’re going to germinate like little hairs. We will thin them out later. Believe it or not, that’s all it takes to sew dill. They’ll be about a/ inch deep. It really is that simple. Then, the last thing we’re going to sew are our radishes. And in order to do that, I’m going to take my finger and I’m going to make like a little square. And I’m going to plant the radishes about 2 in apart or so, just like this. And we’re going to make them about/ an inch to 1 in deep. And I probably could fit more radishes than that if I really wanted to. But the thing about radishes is, well, number one, how many radishes can you eat at once? So I don’t really need a ton of radishes germinating at the same time. And because they’re so easy to sew and they’re ready in less than a month, you can basically just sew a couple of radishes every week. Just plant six or seven in the ground for a never-ending supply of radishes. And you can drop one in the hole, you can drop two in the hole and thin them later. It’s up to you. Um, again, consider overseeding a little bit because radishes don’t have 100% germination. But even if they don’t, it’s not a big deal. Again, this isn’t like you messed up sewing your tomatoes and it wrecked your season and now you have to go out and buy plants. These germinate in 3 to 5 days and they’re ready for harvest in less than a month. So, that is really all you need to do. And just like that, everything in this bed has been sewn. And the very last step we are going to do is install drip irrigation. And truth be told, this is a completely optional step. Most people probably won’t need to do this because for fall gardening, usually we get enough rainfall in the fall that we have to water minimally. However, just in case we’re having a dry end of summer or a dry fall, it’s really nice to have in place. But again, root crops and a lot of our fall crops don’t have the water demand that something like an indeterminate tomato or a big bed full of peppers or cucumbers need. However, it’s still really nice to have. Now, keep in mind that when you run these drip lines, you’re not going to run them directly over the trenches. You’re going to run them a couple inches off the trench. So, for that reason, they’re not going to be effective right away because the seeds are going to germinate with a very narrow footprint. So, if you run the drip line, the water is not going to collect close enough to the roots. However, once those roots grab hold and they spider a couple inches away from the trench, then the drip lines become very effective. So factor in watering manually with a watering wand the first couple of weeks. Now here I have drip line where the emitters are spaced every 9 in. I’m going to plug that into a mainline distribution tube that I already have run. So of course this assumes that you already ran your distribution tubing and we only need to run the drip line. Then I’m going to take some garden staples and I’m going to line the drip line right up with these stakes that I put down because that roughly delineates where the trenches are going to be close enough that the roots will be able to collect water. And we’re going to space the garden staples every few feet in order to hold down the drip line. And I’ll link to all of these things down in the video description so you have a direct link for everything. I’ll also link to my drip depot store where I strongly recommend you get your drip irrigation parts because it’s way cheaper than buying from a retailer. Going directly to a manufacturer is the best way to get things. And I’m probably going to speed up this part of the video because it doesn’t apply to everybody. And I just want to make it clear that, hey, drip irrigation is really nice to have. I strongly recommend it. However, for things like your root crops and your fall garden, because the evaporation rate is lower, it’s not completely mandatory like it kind of is in a summer garden for best results. But still, again, it’s a really nice thing to have. And now I have all of the individual drip lines run to where I approximated the rows could be. And I have the drippers on. in order to test and make sure that everything is working. And I’m seeing water drip through the drip line just perfectly. And that is exactly what I want. Now, if you didn’t lay things out perfectly the very first time, that is not a big deal because once everything germinates, you can easily adjust those things later by just moving those garden staples around a little bit. No problem. The most important thing though that you must know when using drip line is that you have to plug it into the distribution line both in the front and also in the back. If you only connect it from one side, you are not going to get any water pressure on the far side. So it is very important that we connect them on both sides in order to better equalize the pressure. That way you get even dripping throughout the entire raised garden bed. So now that everything is planted and our irrigation has been tested successfully, we are going to remove those stakes because we no longer need them to delineate the trenches. And the very last bit of work that we are going to do to this garden bed is we are going to put down some slowrelease organic fertilizers. Now it’s very important to note that all of the crops that we planted for the most part do not like strong fertilizers. Your peas and your string beans are both legumes and too much fertilizer actually is harmful to them because they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. They need minimal fertilizer and if you give them too much, it can actually harm or kill the plants. Your root crops like your beets, your carrots, your radishes. If you give them too much nitrogen too quickly, they will grow big tops and they will suffer from poor root development. So, it’s very important that we only give them a small amount of slowrelease organic fertilizers rich in calcium and phosphorus once or twice. That’s it over the course of their entire harvest. The only thing that we planted in this bed that enjoys quickly, readily available nitrogen will be your dill and your basil and the romaine lettuce. They enjoy a little bit more water soluble fertilizer. So, for almost everything that we’re growing in this bed, we’re only going to fertilize it once, maybe twice tops, with the slowrelease organic blend that I have in this bucket right here. And then, if we want to give our lettuce or our basil or dill a little bit of fertilizer to help them grow, we can mix some fish emulsion in a watering can and target them directly, making sure that we don’t really get any on the peas, the beans, or any of the root crops. Now, in this bucket right here, this is my own blend of fertilizer I use. It’s three parts organic 555, uh, which is any all-purpose fertilizer with one part bone meal and 1/2 to one part azamite. You can just use a good 555 organic slowrelease fertilizer if you want. I’ll link to a video both above and down in the video description that shows you how to make this blend. But all I’m really going to do is just take some handfuls and just sprinkle it basically along the drip lines that I just put down. Just kind of evenly coating the entire bed in this fertilizer. And it really is that easy. And this is probably the only time I’m going to do this over the life of this entire bed. Maybe I’ll do it one other time 30 to 45 days from now if I feel like things need a little bit of a boost. But again, it’s entirely possible that this is the only time I ever fertilize this garden bed like this. And it’s not going to take anything more than maybe six to eight handfuls of fertilizer over this entire raised garden bed. So, this is really easy. You don’t want to overdo it because we’re growing root crops and legumes predominantly. They actually do better with fertilizer that breaks down very slowly and is very low in NPK and has a good calcium component. So, that’s really all I’m going to do now. I’m simply going to take my watering wand and I’m going to water everything in well. And that is going to both help facilitate the breakdown of the fertilizer and it’s also going to help compact the soil around all of the seeds that we just sewed. And the last thing I’m going to do is I’m going to build a little cheap easy trellis for my peas to climb up. And to do that, I’m going to use these cheap 4ft Tposts. They press right down into your garden soil easily. If your garden soil is a little bit harder, you can whack it down with a mallet, but mine is very light and lomy, so I actually will need to compact around it a little bit because my soil is so light and lomy. And then I’m going to use some of this tomato twine. And I’m just going to take this and tie it around the tops of the tost. And you can use welded wire fence or something else if you don’t want to use tomato twine. Uh, peas are not very heavy, so they’re going to put a minimal amount of stress on the trellising. All they just need is a little something to grab onto. So, I’m going to take that and I’m going to place the string uh in these little hooks that are cut out on these Tposts that are made for such an occasion. Then I’m going to go way down at the bottom where the hooks are inverted in the other direction. That way I can have a little bit of tension on these posts. And if you have a uh if if your soil is not heavy enough to apply enough tension, you’ll see me just tugging on these is actually causing them to move over because my soil is so light and lomy. Um, you can always screw them into your raised garden bed to give them a little bit more oomph, but if you don’t want to mar up your raised garden bed, again, not a big deal because these peas are going to put minimal amounts of weight on this trellis. You just need something easy for them to climb up so they don’t spill all over the ground or over the sides of your raised garden bed. And this is going to fit the bill just fine. And I put a couple bricks in the corner just to prop up the tost a little bit more. And that gives you something really simple and affordable just to support your peas. And remember, this is a dwarf bushier variety of snap peas that I’m growing. If you’re growing a longer, taller variety that needs more support, use something like a welded wire fence or a cattle panel or something that’s a little bit more sturdy. And here we are one week later and we have had absolutely brilliant germination of our raised garden bed. You can see in the back row here, we have almost full germination of our peas the whole way down. Germination on the sunnier side of the raised bed is even better. Then in the next row, we have our string beans. And again, it looks like we have almost full total germination. If anything, they almost over germinated. And I will have to thin some a little bit. You’ll see we have some random mushrooms popping up here and there. That’s because it’s been so hot, wet, and humid. Then in the next row right here, we have our carrots. The carrots are just starting to come up, so the germination is still a little bit spotty. But we’re still getting really strong germination and these rows are going to fill in in no time. Then right in front of the carrots are the beets. I’m starting to get germination here and there. The beets take a little longer to germinate, so they are just starting. I only see two plants so far. Our basil transplants are doing absolutely brilliantly. The one on the right is really getting large. I’m starting to see my first couple lettuce seeds emerge. They take a little bit longer to germinate than our radishes. These are the fastest to germinate. They are coming up like wildfire. And I think right here you’re starting to see a couple of dill. There’s a dill plant and there is a dill plant. So, in about 7 days, you can expect substantial germination and over 10 to 14 days, probably total germination in this raised garden bed. And that right there is how you can plant a fall garden that is a lazy gardener’s dream. While it is true that there is no such thing as a truly zero maintenance garden, this is as lowmaintenance as it gets. All of these crops, well, you don’t need to start them indoors as transplants. You can direct sew them all. They have minimal needs for fertilizer. They get minimal pressure from insect pests, have minimal trouble with diseases, especially when compared to a lot of our summer crops that we know and love and grow and struggle with in the heat of the summer. So, if you’ve never planted a fall garden, please I urge you to give this a shot. If all you’ve ever grown is a spring and summer garden, well, it can be so difficult come the heat of the summer to maintain that because our common spring and summer crops, well, they have high demands for irrigation. Every single insect pest and mammal pest wants to harvest them. They’re being attacked by all sorts of diseases. And you have to go out in the heat and humidity and the blazing sun and deal with all of these problems. And a lot of us come the middle of summer, we’re just over it and we don’t want to be cooked by the heat anymore and we’re just frustrated with all of the problems that pop up in a summer garden. That is what makes fall gardening so wonderful. The humidity goes away. The temperatures become comfortable. The sun doesn’t scorch our skin anymore. The insect pests and diseases are going away. And because the weather is cooling down, we don’t have those wicked irrigation needs that we do when we get summer drought. everything is so much lower pressure and you can really get out there and enjoy your fall garden without a lot of the obstacles we get in late spring and throughout summer. So please, I urge you give this a try. You will absolutely love it. You won’t regret it. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video enjoyable and helpful and it was the right length where I can give you lots of detail, but I didn’t ramble on too much and give you too much unnecessary information. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these. For any of the products that I featured in this video, including the seeds to the varieties, I place direct links to all of them down in the video description for your convenience. For everything I use in my entire garden in real life, I have that all linked in my Amazon storefront. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you’ll see everything I use in real life. And while you’re down there, please consider checking out my Spreadshop if you want to buy custom merch to support my channel. Please, if you have any questions about the concepts in this video, ask them down in the comments below. I will do my best to address them. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Well, I just got done pulling apart two whole rotisserie chickens. And Dale didn’t bother me at all. He’s nowhere to be found. But let me ask him, Dale, do you want a piece of chicken? And he is so smart and well behaved. So, we’re going to give Daly a huge juicy piece of white meat chicken. Now, now you be gentle. Gent, Dale. Gentle. Look how restrained he is. Oh, that was so good, Dale. I’ll give you one more piece. Oh, one more. Cuz you were so good. Gentle. Oh, very good, buddy. You are so sweet and well behaved. I’m so happy with how far you’ve come. He takes food so nice and gentle now. Thank you buddy.