Pumpkin video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKTCE8HGBIU
WHERE TO FIND US:
– read my writing on substack: https://jesssowards.substack.com
-Our Website: https://rootsandrefuge.com
-Miah’s Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@miahsworkshop
-My Cooking Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@The_Farmers_Table
– Sign up for our newsletter: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-signup
-Order Coffee & Tea from our roaster: https://www.beulahroastingco.com
-Our Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/SFA0IZHZRCOZ?ref_=wl_share
-The Roots and Refuge Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roots-and-refuge-podcast/id1669328823
-Merch sales: Real Food Comes Dirty Shirts: https://roots-and-refuge-farm-shop.fourthwall.com/products/real-food-comfort-color
PRODUCTS I LOVE AND SUPPORT:
Greenstalk Vertical Gardens(Use code ROOTS10 for discount): https://greenstalkgarden.com/?rstr=ROOTS10
The white beds in my tea garden (Birdies Beds from Epic Gardening): https://shop.epicgardening.com/ROOTSANDREFUGE
BootstrapFarmer Site: https://shrsl.com/3w46t
The Roots and Refuge Shop: https://roots-refuge.myshopify.com
Order our T-Shirts and Sweatshirts https://roots-and-refuge-farm-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/all
Dramm Watering head: https://amzn.to/3Djs9yF
Long neck Dramm watering wand (for more established plants): https://amzn.to/41xxcoH
Heat mats: https://amzn.to/3QCyhVX
Grow lights: https://amzn.to/41yscAd
(Some of these thinks are affiliate links which means I make a small commission at no additional cost to you. Using my affiliate links helps me buy seeds and soil and goats, so thank you.)
30 Comments
Let’s check in the beanstalk look comical, almost cartoonish
Those pods are comically huge 😂
I'm so excited that you'll be selling seeds from your garden! I've been selling seeds from mine and I can confirm, the Dutch Fork Pie Pumpkins are very much wanted by many!!
If you don't like the sword beans maybe try Greek Giant or Gigantes beans. My stalks get 15 ft tall on bamboo teepees and the beans are huge: pure white and so creamy and delicious when cooked.
Yeah, I smuggled some seeds from some stunningly delicious grapes from a vacation in France…the one vine I got out of those is thriving and I hope for grapes in the next few years. I thank you, Jess, for even considering that. 💚💚
My two plants this year of Dutch Fork pie pumpkins yielded 16 pumpkins! I’ll always plant them.
Wow, do you know what cauliflower variety that is? If I recall you bought the starts locally to you right?
🐝🌻🐝 Thanks for the great video 🐝🌻🐝
Yes, I'm looking all over the place for Dutch Fork pumpkin seeds to try.
Thank you for your encouragement in saving seeds… it adds to the hope of the harvest! Blessings Kiddo! 💚🌿
Coming back from the grocery store today; there was a pumpkin sitting by their mailbox. Thrown out. I roast & puree mine. There are so many things to make with pumpkin. I love it!
Abundance story: We have a volunteer yellow tomato that has come back every year and it's SO prolific. I originally bought the seed from MI gardener and it was labeled "yellow currant tomato". I think I first planted it in 2020? Maybe it was 2021, but I have not planted it since. It grows wild not just in the garden but ALL over the farm. Every spring I get a little worried that it might not return and I worry that I should have started some (I do save seed from the volunteers), but every year they come back more numerous and vigorous than before! Actually this year we got a volunteer that was a cross between that yellow currant tomato and a supersweet 100. It's THE BEST tasting tomato I've ever had the pleasure of eating. I saved seeds even though they may not breed true. You never know!! Thanks for this video, Jess. It reminded me a lot of the older videos where we just putter around the garden and have a chat with you! Loved it.
Darling Jess, I would love to support your burgeoning seed farming business, and I understand I may not get the chance when your audience is currently growing demand faster than your production.
This is a good problem! I would solve the people-pleasing anxiety by not announcing each 'product drop', but by simply promoting your store and letting people explore it organically, whether current audience or new. ❤ (That's what waitlist automated emails are for!)
I have no doubt you will easily sell just as many seeds as you can grow, no matter your production! 🌰🌱🌿🍅🌰🔄
I bought some mini red n yellow sweet peppers, I snacked on them a couple nights ago and I saved seeds from them so I can grow them in the spring. This coming spring will only be my 3rd year for a garden. I will be 60 in February & I want you to know that you are the one who taught me how to garden because my family didn't ever have a garden. So I want you to know that I'm grateful for you cause I can't afford to buy many groceries at the store. Plus I just got rabbits and I'm raising them to be meat rabbits & their poop will fertilize my garden so I bless you, until next time ❤
I can't even get pumpkins in my area of Mexico. There is a type of squash almost like them though
Thanks Jess, was considering sowing delphinium seeds that I collected from my last garden to just throw along the walkway at my new home! I never got to separate them from the stems and debris that are just hanging out in a bag! Well as soon as I finish watching this video I am throwing those seed/ debris into the garden! If they don’t come up no harm no foul! But if they do how beautiful will they look as I walk the pathway to my front door! 💙💙💙🩵🩵🩵
I really want to try and grow butterfly peas next year for tea
Cool Beans😊
I'm having the weirdest season… we've had at least 4 good frosts in November but they're not damaging my crops. My potatoes and peppers are still okay. Our first frost is November 5th typically… we dropped below 28°F over night one night. I think the sun being out the day before the frosty nights is saving my crops. I'm not complaining!😂
You do have the best comment section, if I do say so myself!!😅
I can't believe that I always have so many spoon tomatoes popping up everywhere! Those miraculously tiny bites that appear to be a falling rainbow of color when they are maturing. Guests love to help me pick them. They freeze beautifully to use as miniature ice cubes later on in my bloody Mary's. They work splendidly in all kinds of salads. They were my first taste of true abundance. Truly something I could not use every bit of myself. It would take hours to pick them all actually. The chickens loved them when I was tending to a friend's flock for a few months. I saw other birds getting them all the time! They are just fascinating.
I just moved to my "Lily Pad" property… The one in between my three bedroom ranch and my eventual homestead. So that's what I'm calling it. I'm debt free at the moment. It's a place to hang my hat and turn into a different kind of classroom.
Point is… when I was leaving my last house, it took every bit of my inner strength not to save a bunch of those spoon tomato seeds! The ones coming out of the compost pile, The ones from a plant I have grown from seeds I've saved over the past few years, or the ones coming from underneath the fence or just right in the middle of the concrete intersections!
These are the seeds that I know would be the strongest! But I'm not going to be able to plant that tomato here, I don't think. I could be wrong.
I'm in a mobile home park for the next few years socking away money, and I'm going to be very limited with what I'm allowed to do. I even have to submit sketches of my plans and get written permission! Lol
I'll be growing and mostly containers. I didn't even put my spring bulbs in the ground or my garlic in the ground. I spent good money on those, and I just got them from Luke and his team. I hope I can put them in containers and they'll at least come up next year. Moving at the end of October was difficult. I had much more to do than worry about saving seeds.
I did dig up some things and bring them. Of course I brought my seed collection and everything that was already in containers. That was my entire haul on the first trip over here to drop things off. I bought a utility trailer so that I could fill my vehicle and my trailer and just take smaller trips for a few weeks and put things away as I brought them. I sold my house for cash, to accompany that is going to renovate it and resell it. I got stuck in the analysis paralysis. Buying and selling at the same time is nearly impossible nowadays. I couldn't decide what to fix what not to fix. I sat there for 5 years and stressed about it, knowing I needed to find a lily pad. So the perfect time never came. So when the equity got to where I was going to be almost doubling my money, I made a jump. Sometimes you just have to take some kind of a leap. You've got to do it scared, as you know.
But still, I'm in Ohio. The most southwestern point of Ohio that I could be in. I am not a fan of taking everything at once. Putting everything away all at once would have been the misery. I didn't box anything really, I just was using baskets and bins and bags. I had friends helping me on both ends. We would just get together and do things. I had nearly a month. But talk about another form of abundance! My goodness. Even though I thought I paired my possessions down over the past few years enough, there is still much to get rid of. I've got a big pile of things I'm going to be selling and donating. After I took the effort to move it here of course. Lol
I know I won't get to move slowly next time. I'm going to have to go whenever I need to go. And of course I'm going to want less possessions to manage. I'll spot the property and I'll know that I need to make a move fast and put an offer in right away! Watching your move was sensational and mind-boggling and I can't even fathom the stress. But, I actually hope my next move is like that.
I hope I leap that much closer to the Carolinas where my family is. I'm still too far away from you and my family. Lol I know I talk about it in every long comment that I make, because it's my dream. And because I'm allowed.
For now … I only moved 35 minutes away from the neighborhood I was in, but it's moving in the right direction.
I'm probably the only one that knows how to get the gate open to my backyard and the last time I asked my old neighbor, there's still people working there on the house. Could I break in my backyard and go and get some more things? I'm sure I could. Before they get the excavator back there and turn it all into grass, I just might. I'm torn. There's a reason the front windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror and I've grieved so much already over that space. I know every year of it. I dug it up with my bare hands and turned it into the best thousand foot Oasis! Seeing her the way she is today, most likely would upset me. Especially knowing I won't be seeing her come back to life!
So… I might find myself stealing some spoon tomatoes. Some nice shriveled up rotten ones!
Oh and speaking of abundance, I also forgot my comfrey!! That plant is something I have divided, potted up and sold or given away dozens of times already. It's about 8 years old. And all I know that I need, is just a little chunk.
I'm already starting to feel the drab days of winter, but I'm setting up my sunroom to be a nice microgreen growing space and seed starting space. Even if I don't get to grow much, I'll at least have that! I'll get to say happy birthday countless times Over the next few years!
*Hopefully the park will at least let me sell some container variety seedlings. I've already got a new batch of those seeds that just arrived from MI Gardener, too!
So the notion of abundance is a little bitter sweet right now, But I still had a chapter of my story to share!😊
See you February 7th, Jess! XOXO
My volunteer pumpkin story. I had so many pumpkins growing in the yard outside the garden. I had an abundance in the garden. I lost count at fiftyish. I placed them on our country roadside with a sign "free to a good home." The neighbors, deer, and chickens enjoyed them. One neighbor left me a thank you note.
I love your stories about your seed collection. ❤️ 😊thank you Jess.
I’m zone 5b/6a we get really cold for long stretches in Jan, Feb, ad March. In the 2020 mad gardening season I had an over abundance of tomato starts of 10 different varieties of seeds. After planting and giving away as many as I could I dropped what I think was a blueberry cherry tomato plant within 15 ft of my dryer vent and have been getting 4-5lbs every season from the volunteers that are relentless. I wonder at this point if it’s not crossed with mint…..LOL
Thank you so much. You always share such encouraging and valuable information ❤❤❤
Is it weird that I like you more because you have known poverty 😂? I've been a working single mom of 3, for the last 15 years, lots of survival mode! I had a dream too, it took about a decade, but I moved to SC from Seattle and bought 2 acres. The budget is tight, but in 6 months I've built, filled and planted 12 raised beds. Sometimes its hard to be patient for things like irrigation, but that will come. Totally busted out of my waiting room ❤
Hey hey! You were missed ❤
I know you guys are in the Midlands, but I'm kinda surprised your area looks like our Northern gardens right now, I thought your season would be extended and your weather would be brighter/warmer longer. Retiring early next year and looking to head your way….or at least Upstate. Will definitely check out your seeds if you do sell. Can't wait to make the move!
I'd love a packet of mystery seeds. I'd pay for the adventure not the harvest. Love to you Jess!
Thanks for this video! My abundance story is my "Celery Story." During the lockdown a few years ago, I couldn't get celery in the grocery store. (I just wanted to make soup!) Of all the lack of things on the shelves at the time, that panicked me the most. Celery?? So I said, it's time to start growing. Well then there were no seeds either. I eventually found seeds, and the first year I fried the little seedlings. Next time, I had some plants but most of them died. The ones that didn't let go to seed and I saved them. The next year, I planted those seeds, and I've never had to start celery again. Every year I let them go to seed, and when they turn black, I scatter-cast them all over the bed. The seedlings make it through winter uncovered (Zone 7B) and now I have a rotating abundance of celery whenever I want it.
I used to buy SunGold cherry tomatoes until I discovered that they always self sowed and the volunteer plants were best. So, now I just wait for those sweet volunteer plants. Abundance.
Thank you Jess
I’ve been following you since 2018 and you have taught me so much about gardening and I’m forever grateful to you. Thank you again.
Bless you 🌻
I never knew you could eat all pumpkins!