Winter vegetable garden update – getting ready for spring

This is a july garden update video to show you where my winter garden is at. The garden is full of brassicas and leafy greens along with my broad bean plantings the patch is pretty full. Although spring is still a few months away i am planning the summer garden and starting my spring seedlings now.
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timecodes
0:00 main garden bed front section
5:24 main garden bed back section
13:06 north facing beds
17:08 south facing beds
17:50 my seedlings
19:03 plans for my garden coming into spring

Hi, I’m Anthony Sydney backyard veggies. We are in the middle of July in my winter garden. It’s now peak season for all my winter crops. Now, lots been happening in my patch. And in today’s video, I’m just going to give you an update on where my garden is at the moment, what are my winds for this winter’s cropping season, and what I’m looking forward to planting out in the coming months moving into spring. Just coming over to my main bed here at the back part of my garden. And what I’ve got here growing is my broad bean uh plot. Now, this here is taking up a lot of my main bed. I’ve got four rows and these were planted out in March, if I remember correctly correctly, direct seeded and they were struggling at the start, but they’re looking absolutely amazing. Now, I’ve had to give them a little bit of support with this bamboo trellis that I installed in uh midappril. And I installed it because I was really struggling with the winds and the the plants were leaning towards the sun. So to keep them upright now they are starting to flower which is really exciting. So getting a lot of first flush of flowers coming through. Still got a lot more to come but really excited that I will be harvesting in about 6 weeks time. At this stage I’m trying to stay on top of any aphids infestations. Now, I’m not having any problems at the moment with these plants, but as it does get warmer, they will start showing, especially on the tips of the plants. I’m going to make sure that I uh stay on top of them, and if they do show up, um hit them with a bit of python to hopefully control their numbers. As a planting, these were planted, I think I gave them 40 cm between rows, and I plant them about 20 cm within the rows. Hoping these will be starting to get harvested in that early September time, and then I’ll be able to clear these out. And I’m looking at planting sweet corn in this location. Moving across from my broad beans. And over here is my kalan patch, my Chinese broccoli. Now I harvested this patch about a month ago. And as you can see, a lot of nice new growths coming through. And this is the next harvest that I will be harvesting off these plants. And the key here is to make sure when you do uh harvest it, you harvest just above a leaf and the new crop just grows straight out from that spot. I’ve also interplanted some coriander in between these uh Chinese broccoli and it’s a good way to get that second crop um from the same patch. To the left of that is my next planting of radishes and I’ve been harvesting these uh I started harvesting these this week. The variety is called Scarlet Globe. And I do really enjoy growing this variety because as you can see, puts out a beautiful radish, but also not much greenery. So, you get more radish for your buck. And if you look closely, every single every single radish has produced. I’ve had a lot of problems with radishes in the past where got a lot of leaves and not much of a radish, but the scarlet globe is been producing well and I’m still trying to grow a few more of these and I’ll be planting a few more to from now till about end of September when it just gets too hot for radishes. Next to the radishes, I’ve got this season’s silverbe. Got eight plants in this spot. And I’ve been harvesting these a couple of times now, and I’m finding that they’re not growing as vigorously as they were in April, but still putting out some beautiful leaves. And I’m going to be harvesting a lot of these all the way till September, October when I’m expecting them to bolt. Next to the silverbeat, I’ve got some cos lettuce and I had close to 20 seedlings here, but I did lose a few in the big rains that we had starting to really form up and I’m expecting these to be ready in that mid August time. And next to that, I’ve got my third round of Chinese broccoli. These were seedlings were gifted to me and I was quite happy to take them and plant them in and looking okay. Just need a bit of fertilizer. The issue here in this part of the garden is that I’ve got the orange lemon tree here in the back and it’s been casting a bit of a shadow across this part of the bed. So, the veggies haven’t been grown as fast. Just don’t have that much sun. But, as the days get longer, this part of the bed will get a lot more daylight. My second wombok planting uh Chinese uh cabbage again, I planted this out in about about 4 weeks ago now. doing okay. Again, it’s really slow growing because of the shade, but I’m expecting these to start moving on pretty fast. Uh fertilizer will be added this week, I’m going to be adding a little bit of chicken manure pellets to each of these plants and really giving that nitrogen boost to get them going. And then finally, at the end of the bed here at the front section, I’ve got a few more kalan seedlings that I planted. Some of them are starting to flower. And I’ve got perpetual spinach growing here in the back. This has been quite a um a star performer considering it’s full shade in this spot. They just seem seem to keep producing. So I’m really happy with those. And I’m looking at planting just a few more uh silverbe seedlings here at the front in the back half of the main bed. It’s all about brassacas. And here in the first section here I’ve got is my next planting of cauliflower. And I’ve got 15 plants planted over here. And these have been slow growing, but now just about starting to curl up as you can see there. Now I have come across on the weekend, added another round of fertilizer, added um chicken manure pellets. Then I hooked the soil around the base and you can see the soil’s just firm up against the plant. It keeps them upright and supported. I’ll be harvesting these I reckon about four 4 to 6 weeks time. I do have a third planting that needs to come out and I will find spots to put those seedlings in, but I’m really looking forward to getting this second harvest out of the ground. And moving across then I’m over to my Brussels sprouts patch. Planted out six Brussels sprouts here. Been slow going, but at the moment you can just see their first buds are just starting to show. They don’t look too pronounced at the front here, but if I take you to the back, you can just see they’re starting to ball up. So, I’m expecting to harvest probably this one in about 3 weeks time. Looking really excited to get another harvest. This is this is my third year growing Brussels sprouts. Family don’t really eat them, but it’s a good fun to grow. Got these planned out in u March. Should have planted them a little earlier, but still glad they’re going to be producing. And then with that, I have six rows of cabbages. And the variety here is green coronet. Starting to head up, which is great. Not getting huge sizes to them this year. Last year I had a lot better crop. And again, it comes to the position where I’ve planted these with the shadowing from the trees adjacent. But six plant heads, six rows, probably about 30 30 in total. Hoping to start harvesting these soon because they will expect them to start bolting um in about 4 to 6 weeks. And then over at my third plant of broccoli, 15 plants here planted about 8 weeks ago. Starting to really respond to now as the daylight starts getting longer. And I’m just trying to see if there’s actually there might be a head showing up soon. At the moment, it’s still a bit early. Again, like I did with the uh cauliflower, added a lot of extra uh chicken manure pellets to these plants and held them up to give them a lot more support. Again, you can see the soil’s hard up against the stem. Stops them from being knocked around in the wind. And then across adjacent to them, I’ve got my spinach. Really struggle with spinach. planted these out. They’re still taking a long time to grow. So, it might be because it was too cold when I plant them. I plant them out as seedlings. Hopefully, they get some sort of harvest from these. And then over next to them, I got my green shelling peas, green feast. This is my first planting. And I’ve got them stringed up here on my string trellis system. Looking good. I haven’t started flowering yet, but I need to add some more strings cuz as they get taller, um, they got more of a habit to get blown around. And then over at the back here, I’ve got my lettucees. These lettucees are a bit more advanced than the lettucees at the front. Should be able to harvest these first before the second ones are planted. And I’ve got interplanted with them some silver beat. I’ll be expecting these to take over this space uh once I harvest the lettucees. And just in front of me here is my lemon tree. Our lemon tree produced heaps of fruit this year, but the tree just got absolutely too large. So, I had to come and take out some of the height in the plant. And I’ve pruned a lot of the top part of the tree. I just couldn’t harvest the fruit. It’s still quite tall, still probably about 3 3 and 1/2 m tall. And there’s still a bit of fruit in it, but it is starting to flower. So, um I need to get a lot of that fruit off it. And I will be adding fertilizer to its base. I’ve been pruning a lot of my trees here in my backyard. It’s been getting too big. And another tree that I’ve been doing a bit of work on is my avocado tree. Again, this tree was just getting too tall and it really struggling to make it produce. Uh last year, not one single fruit. You can see this year all the new flowers, the new buds are showing. So, it’s again it’s promising, but we’ll see. Let’s see how we produce. It’s got to it better produce this year. um quite I gave it one more year to see if it produces. And if it doesn’t produce this year, I might just cut it back down to its stump and try to uh graft it. At the moment, I’m getting no love out of this tree. The pruning I did do allow me to take advantage of some space here, which will get a bit of sun, and I’ve been planting uh more broccoli here as well. Big believer in planting as much broccoli as I can. In winter time, I try to get close to 200 heads planted. Here, I’ve got about 25 broccoli seedlings. And they just got planted out yesterday. So, you can just see them just settling in. Over here, I’ve got my fourth planting of broccoli. And these broccoli plants again planted about 2 months ago. Lot slower growing because they are in the shade. They do get a little bit of sun here, but not as much as they they should. And you’ll find that um they will still produce. Uh it just takes them a lot longer and the head won’t be as big. But they’re looking they’re looking okay. Just need a bit of healing. I’ll probably come through this month and this week do that and add a bit of chicken manure pellets too. And in front of those broccoli is my mango tree. Now this tree does produce and this year I took to giving it a little bit of a tip prune. Just removing some of the the tips of the plants to encourage more side shoots to grow out. It’s a way to get more product production out of your plants. As you can see, the new tips are starting to grow and hopefully I’m expecting it to start flowering soon. These trees generally flower in mid to late August. So, it’s just starting to put on a bit of extra growth and it’ll start flowering. So, as you can see right there, that’s a flowering spike right there. adjacent to my mango tree, I got my second plant in a broccoli. And this is now this has been grown in full shade uh all the last 3 months. And look, you can get a crop, but what you’re going to do is get really small heads. So, you can grow broccoli in full shade, but you’re just not going to get the most production out of your beds. I will plant excess seedlings in shade. It’s just part of just getting getting the productivity up in my garden. If you can find more more of a sunnier spot for broccoli, they will do a lot better. But as the days get longer, this whole area is going to be full sun. And as a result, this is space has been earmarked for um this season’s tomatoes. In previous video, I started preparing this bed for my next plant of tomatoes. Added all the amendments and compost. And what I’ve been doing at the moment is trying to get a quick planting of pack choy in this spot. And I planted these out seed by uh individual seedlings. Just put um dibble them straight in the ground with my finger. And you can see this is 2 weeks in there. They’re growing great. They’ll get their first round of liquid fertilizer. Another two weeks these will be harvested and they should be ready. Then I can clear the bed for my tomato seedlings. Over on north facing side of my garden and over near the chicken pen, I have my first planting of broad beans. Now, I really struggled with these ones earlier on because of the olive trees that I have planted here, and I sort of throw a um shadow over the plants, but they’re doing okay. Again, they got the uh bamboo um treatment to keep them supported. Not as they don’t look as nice as the main planting, but I’m hoping to get a bit of a crop out of them. And moving across to the bed adjacent. This is my salad greens patch. And over on the end, I’ve got some pick and go lettuce. I’ve been harvesting these. Have my first harvest. It’s a really nice uh way to grow lettuce for the kitchen. come in here once every two weeks and I just harvest the whole lot, give them a wash and they go in the fridge and get made into salads and sandwiches throughout the week. Next to them, I’ve got my next planting of spring onions. Again, they seem to be laying about bit and that’s because of the sun or lack of sun in this corner because of the trees, but they’ll come they’ll come fine. I might try to give them a little bit more support on them. Adjacent to them is the old coriander patch and I’ve gone and seeded the bed again and planted my next patch of coriander. Now I’ve got the cloth on top of those plants on the bed. Uh when I planted the bed, I watered the bed through that cloth and keeping the cloth on for a few days really protects those seeds u from ants and pigeons which will eat the seeds but also to keep the to keep the soil moist so they can get proper germination. It’s been now 2 days since I planted out this bed and I’m expecting it will germinate at the end of the week. And next to the coriander is my star performer, my rocket patch. This is planted out 4 months ago and I’ve been harvesting uh every two weeks for the last uh 6 to 8 weeks. Absolutely beautiful. Really clean leaves, really good harvest. And it grows really fast now. Once you get it established, you’re harvesting every 2 weeks. I add a lot of liquid fertilizer after every harvest to really encourage it to grow at these leaves. And it’s good to grow your rocket now in while it’s still cool. um it stops you from getting the white fungus or white rust they call it on the leaves which makes the leaves almost inedible. They’re just got white patches all over them. And at the end of the row I’ve got my overwintered jalapeno patch. And about and about 2 months ago I pruned all these plants back to um see if I can get them to produce next spring. And as you can just see um starting the new growths for next season have just started to sprout. Now that could be that I may have and according to my dad I may have jumped the bullet just a tad early and pruned them uh a month too early. Next year I will prune I pruned in end of May, early June. I may next year if I do the same um treatment I will prune in late June, early July so they’re not sprouting in the cold but they should be okay. It’s a warm spot, full sun. They shouldn’t be uh they shouldn’t get too much frost in this spokes. And I’m hoping that they’ll start producing come September, October. Again, I’ve interplanted this bed with pick and go lettuce. These guys have been harvested about yeah, at least twice now, coming for a third harvest this weekend. More pick and go lettuce adjacent. And then this was my old onion bed, which I pulled out and planted leaks. These were planted a week ago. They’re very settled in and I’m expecting them to start responding to the longer days and start getting a bit uh starting to put a bit of size on. But they’re they’re okay. We’ll see how they go. Usually don’t grow them this late. But what if we can get a crop out of them? I’ll be happy with that. On my south facing beds, I don’t get much planted simply because there’s a big shadow cast across the bed or throughout the cooler months. But I did get a crop of uh green feast shelling peas planted out here. And I find if I get the planting in early enough, I’m able to beat the shadow essentially. So they get the fence. If I get them to get long enough, they’re able to still get a bit of sun. So I find that’s the only way I could utilize this space is by growing tall plants to chase the sunlight. They still getting more strings similar to my um first planting string trellis. String trellis in treatment. I’m hoping to start seeing a few flowers. I haven’t seen any flowers yet, but expecting them to come in soon with my seedlings. Want to give you an update of where they’re at. These are my capsic and eggplant seedlings, which I started about uh 2 and 1/2 weeks ago. And as you can see, my jalapeno seedlings have all germinated. I’ve got my capsic slowly germinating there and a bit of few eggplants. Now, they’re taking a little bit longer than I expected. I was expecting that 18 to 21 days and they’re taking them closer to 4 weeks, but they are still g germinating slowly. Hoping that they’ll start um growing out and I might get them trans transplanted into larger pots to grow them out for spring planting. I’ve still got a lot of celery seedlings. These are taking forever to grow to a size to be planted out, but I’m going to try to plant a few of these out over the next few weeks. Still planting a lot of winter veggies. So, these are my cauliflower seedlings almost ready to be planted out. Probably one more week and as soon as I get a bit of spots in the patch, I’ll plant them out. And there’s some leftover wombbox seedlings which I may or may not plan out. And then finally, just some last of the broccoli seedlings. I did plant a few out in that northern back part of the northern bed. Still got a few more seedings. I might just find spots for them and plant them out. Now, work that I’m going to be doing in my patch over the next few weeks. First thing I’ll be doing is starting my tomato seedlings. I’ll be starting them this week. Um, I’ll be doing in the next two or three days and I’ll put up a separate video showing you what I’m growing and how I’m going to be starting those seedlings. I’ll be starting my bush beans, my green bush beans. I like to get an early crop in in September. So, I’ll be starting my seedlings for those in about 2 weeks time, end of July for planting out in the end of August. I’m also going to be starting to dig up this patch of ground. It’s a bit of a mess at the moment, but I am expanding the veggie patch and I’m going to be digging up another 2 3 m of land here just to make some more space in for the garden. I am expecting to struggle to be planting a lot of my seeds and a lot of my plants from the garden. Want to plant a lot of corn, want to plant a lot of beans, want to plant a lot of tomatoes, a lot of cucumbers. And as much space as you have in a patch, I’m expecting I’m going to be running out of space quick smart. So, you know, let’s convert lawn into garden beds, why don’t we? Look, I hope you enjoyed the tour of my garden now that we’re in the middle of winter. Things are a bit slow at the moment, but I’m expecting them to start heating up once the days get longer. Thank you for watching this video. Really appreciate all the support. If you have any questions about what I’m doing in my patch or what my plans are for the next few months coming into spring, please feel free to leave a comment in my video or message me via Tik Tok and Instagram via my socials. Thank you again everyone for watching and I hope you see the next