Fall Garden Tour Growing Vegetables NOW & Preparing for Winter & Spring Container Gardening w/Nature

Composting old Plants to create free soil and How to grow a vegetable container garden and growing a rodent and pest free. Growing a flower and vegetable garden all year, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, greens, kale, collard, mint, dragon fruit and more…with lots of growing tips.

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on such a gorgeous day. Maybe we need a garden tour. And maybe I’ll walk you through this time instead of just being always behind the camera, which I prefer. I’ll be more in the front with maybe some guests that live on the property here with me. November 1st. Ready for a garden tour. Hi, it’s Robbie from Southern California. Oh my goodness. Let’s go through the different gardens I’ve got because I garden differently all throughout the yard. Now, this one is the chair garden. And you know how I do that? Chairs I got for free, painted them up, and put some totes on there. This is my favorite garden. If I had only one garden to do and for whatever reason, whether I moved into a small place or decided I don’t want to grow that much because I don’t need all these gardens. I want to do something else. I want to go back to work and do a 9-to-five job or whatever. What garden would I do? And it would be this one. This is pretty much maintained on its own. It is the easiest garden to do. It’s the easiest garden to put together. We can get into details another time, but each container, each tote here is its own garden, its own entity. If this would have been one large garden, then I have to cater to the whole thing and put the whole thing together at one time. You’d have to fill the whole container full of soil and then you would have to water the entire thing. You can leave part of it dry. Doing it this way, it’s its own garden. So I can grow here like all this beautiful brassica. This is a purple tree collarded and you don’t throw anything away. We’ll get back to that in a minute. I can grow that there. I can put in other pots and layer and grow parsley or different things with it. Each one, this one was full of tomatoes. Now it’s got Malibar spinach. Then I’ve got I had squash all through here and tomatoes and red vein soro and green soro and celery. In other words, I garden at my own pace, which makes this garden one of my most favorite. If one plant needed more water than another plant, let’s say peppers, they like to get a little bit dry sometimes, but let maybe your brassacas or your tomato plants or your watermelon need more water. Then you would separate those plants and you would have different plants growing in a different container. These are 18gallon totes. Then you can cater to each individual plant and at the same time you can layer. So if I had to pick and we’re going to walk through and see all the different gardens I’ve got here. What garden would be my favorite? It would be this one. Favorite as far as growing food. I’ve got other gardens that are my favorite because it brings in nature. Does this bring in nature? Of course it does. But this entire little garden that takes me less than five minutes to water, so quick to set up, so easy to maintain. This is my favorite vegetable garden. And you’ve watched it grow from 2020 to this, and every year it’s different. I’ve done watermelon all through here, all different squash. I had okra once, just everything growing in here. And it’s just, well, what can I say? It’s easy. Let’s keep going and then ask questions on each type of garden because I know I’m not going to be able to get into every single thing I do. And I’m going to forget because we’re kind of doing a beautiful walkth through on this day. My goodness, it’s been warm and blue skies and we’ll see how long this lasts for. But the point is, every garden is different. And I want you to come through my gardens and look at it and say, I like that. I can do that. Maybe I’m not going to put as many chairs. Maybe I’m going to do more chairs. There’s no bending. Everything is right at my fingertips. And even to break all this off here, this tomato plant is done. I’m going to break this off and compost it. Where? Well, right now I put it in a bucket and I keep it here and keep pulling off what is not growing. But if I wanted to, I could throw it right back in there. Now, as far as what else do I do to amend the soil? Nothing. I continue to take everything off and put it right back and let it do as nature all around this does. The leaves fall, they decay, and build soil. I would never spray it or put any type of insecticide in there. That would not work for here because we have so much nature here. It would wipe out the entire ecosystem. But we can talk about that another time because I do it the way nature does it. And you know, a lot of my garden is grown on the free. Of course, you can buy plant food and all that. That’s up to you. But this is the way I do it. This is the way I’ve been doing it for years. And let me tell you something. We have a freezer full of food. And I didn’t freeze everything. I just kind of selectively went through. I froze a lot of it. We’ve been eating a lot of it. And we also compost a lot of it. We put back what it pulled out and it will feed the next set of plants, the next generation from what it gathered here. Let’s keep going. I have Malibar spinach growing through here. Big leaves. So this is the garden. These tables I set up for ginger and turmeric. Now most of it here is turmeric. I had my ginger somewhere else. This is ginger. As you may or may not notice, my leaves are starting to turn yellow and some of them are turning brown. Now this is what happens this time of the year. This is normal. And I’m thinking harvest time is probably about a month away. I’ve been taking care of it here. It’s all been growing. It’s been doing really good. They’re quite tall and I’m happy with them. But I will say that the ginger struggled this year. Now, we were kind of thinking, why in the world did the ginger not grow as good as the turmeric? Well, we have a room that the dogs go in. Last summer, the room was air conditioned. I would just leave the air conditioning on. They have a doggy door and they go back and forth in that room all they wanted. We had it on for weeks on end last summer. We realized we only ran it one or two days. In other words, it got warm, but at night it cooled off so much that we didn’t have to run it all the time. These are tropical plants. They want some water, but they want that heat. If they don’t get the heat, they’re not going to grow as good as they should. And I think this year, we’ll see what happens. I’ll take you with me and show you when I harvest it. I don’t think we’re going to get the amount that I normally get, especially on the ginger. Look how bad this looks. So, come next spring, I’m going to set them up different. Ginger is important to me because I put it into my rice dishes. We make tea. I grate it up and just put it into everything. Soups, stews, it’s so good. Cookies. But I don’t know how much I’m actually going to have. Turmeric. I should do pretty good. So, I’ve got a method on how I’m going to incorporate that more into my diet because this has turned out to be a very valuable plant for me personally. And then how I’m going to store it to plant out probably in around May, maybe April. And then how I’m going to freeze it. Because if you don’t freeze it, it will rot. You can bring it in the house and set it up, put it in the fridge, but it will start to dry out and it will kind of fizzle back. In other words, once it’s out of the ground, it thinks it’s done. It there’s no place for it to grow. So, nature pulls it back. And we don’t want nature to pull it back. We want nature to hold on to it. So, I have a method of storing it, which I will do when I go ahead and harvest this probably probably in about a month. And then I’m going to freeze some of it and we’ll go over it. But this is really good. I think I’m going to have a really nice hole in here. I even propagate some plants through here. Since it gets shade from the big plants, so I can propagate down here under the, you know, the sun cuz sun is up there. So, it’s kind of tucked away. It’s a really nice area to do it. Now, this table, we found this this year in the trash and we didn’t know where to put it. Gary brought it home and I said, “Just leave it here. It’s good to work on because I’ll probably harvest it on this table.” But I’m looking at it now and I’m thinking it’s really not in my way. I think I’m going to go ahead and expand this. I’ve been expanding. I started with that table. Then Gary set up this table. Then we pulled this one over here. So I am saying that I believe in the spring I’m going to start setting up more turmeric here. And I think that’s going to be really good. Most of it, you know what, the outside ones that is very interesting. The outside ones are yellow. I don’t know if I can pull this out here, but the inside ones are really green, which means they’re being protected and not getting as cold at night. And I might just put that there. So, by staying underneath all the other plants, when the cold air comes up through here, it’s being protected. So, this one is very green, but they are still dying back. This is what they do. So when come off season during the cool times the ryomes you know end up staying under the soil and then come spring they would grow on their own but I can’t do that here in Southern California because if we drop down into the 40s at night what will happen 40s and we get rain then we end up with wet soil and when we end up with wet cold soil the ryomes will rot. Why? We go back to nature. Nature says something’s not right. It’s not the right weather. It’s not the right spot. You can’t grow here. So, let’s just feed the soil, feed the microbes, the earthworms, and it pulls it back. That’s why for us, we have to go ahead harvest it a special way, store it a special way, and then replant it. I have brought them in the house before, but I can’t bring an entire jungle in the house. If you have a place in the house where it’s going to stay dry and you just wet it a little bit here and there, you can grow this as a house plant in the house. We have done this with both turmeric and ginger, but it’s just as fine as storing it properly a way that I started storing it, which is different than a lot of other people, and then coming back at the right time and start planting it. We don’t want to be too early because if it’s wet and cold and it stays out here too long, let’s say a month or two, at that point it will rot. Now, could I cover it? Yes, you can cover it, but you wouldn’t want it to stay warm and wet because even that could start to because wet is the big thing that could start to rot it. So, we’ll get it out in the spring after we harvest it. We’re not ready to do that, but there should be quite a bit of turmeric, which will be really a lot of fun. And I think most of you have gone on this journey where it all started with a piece and now I’ve got not just here, but I’ve got in the front yard too, which was my big ginger and turmeric garden. Now I think it’s this one. But again, I think I’m going to be setting up a lot of this differently because there’s been changes and with cooler nights in this area, there’s certain plants that don’t do as well now. So, I either have to think about other plants or I cater to the ones that I really want. And I chose to cater to the ones that I really want. And that’s what we’re going to be doing later on after all the holidays are over. We’re going to start catering to these plants and growing more of this because like I said, this has turned out to be a health benefit for me. And I know I don’t want to really talk too much about it because I’m not a doctor, but I do know that turmeric lowers my blood pressure and it’s really good and I want to help other people share it by giving some to my family. And I even gave a plant to my doctor. She was all excited. But really, you got to grow a lot to get enough because I know how much works for me and everybody’s got to figure out what will work for them. And I happen to like it. We looked out on the variety we’ve got. We don’t know the exact name, but ours tastes really good. I just eat it like carrots. Just take it out, wash it, and then I take about a piece that big a couple times a day, and it’s been really good. But I think I’m going to cut back a little bit on that since I don’t need that much. Okay, let’s keep going around the garden. And what do you think of my ginger and my turmeric? Especially the turmeric. Absolutely gorgeous. This has been a really nice place to grow it, too. I have a pomegranate up there. I didn’t get out yet. I got to get that down. Oh, one of these. Should use this. This is shark fin melon. Small is okay. I don’t like them big. It’s not my favorite. What I’ve been doing lately is growing things that I really like. And I wasn’t sure what to do with the truck bed. So, I ended up growing pot miracles, different geraniums in here. And then there’s milkweed for the butterflies. What else do I have in here? Celery. There’s walking onions. There’s garlic chives. I don’t know what I’ll do next spring, but for now, I’m going to let it do its thing. I have Malibar spinach growing in here as well, but I’ll trim it back later and step back and see what I’m going to do later with it. Right now, it’s so nicely self-contained that the birds come and hang out here. And well, I think it looks nice and it doesn’t take much to do anything with except hit it with some water. So, I am really pleased with that. The ponds, I haven’t gotten to the ponds yet. I’m going to work on that another time. It’s been so much going on with the raccoons. The raccoons come and tear everything apart. So, I go set something up. They take things out. They shake things up. So, for now, we’re just going to leave it. Gary’s talking about some changes coming to the bathtub. So, maybe we’ll do something later with that. But, this has been really nice. This has been really something to have over the years because I have grown tomatoes in here, squash in here, watermelon in here. The truck bed that’s been here since the day we bought the property has been sitting here. I tried to give it away. Nobody wanted it. And it was like, well, not only is it an eyesore, we don’t need it. And then one day I decided, you know, why don’t we just grow in it? So Gary filled it up and we’ve been growing in it. Now like I talk about the chair garden. You have to maintain the entire bed. This is a growing bed, a raised bed garden off the ground. And that is an issue. And that’s why it’s so hard to maintain this one. If I had to fill this with soil, it probably would cost me three or $400, if not more. We do our own soil. We go ahead and we save all the leaves that we don’t want. Anything we don’t want goes right back. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be tomato plants. It could be geraniums. It could be celery. Whatever we’ve got goes back in there. It could be wood chips with maybe a layer of leaves on top and then maybe just gather some soil or plain old dirt to put on top from around here. Gophers, they dig things up and they make these beautiful piles of soil and it’s so fine. There’s no rocks or anything in there. I don’t know how they do it, but a lot of times I go shovel that up and I add that sometimes to different things around here. So that is the only issue with this is the whole bed’s got to be maintained where when you have one tote, it doesn’t matter if you got 20 totes, it’s one tote at a time, it’s one truck bed at a time. A lot more work. Let’s take a walk over there. So this is the wall garden. I’ve got chairs spaced out with totes here. Now, I’m not catching any of the water like I do in the chair garden where I’ve got under the chair where it leaks, I’ve got containers, and I’m growing geraniums here. I just let the water flow. I go through with the hose, which I’ve got here, and I can water this every day or every other day. This is just old celery seed, which is going to fall all over and grow. But I have grown got tomtatillos growing in here. I’ve got celery. I’ve got squash that I have to desperately pick. I’ve got green sorrel. And in between, by the way, I’ve got walking onions through there. So, when I come through and water, I wanted to leave this open so it would keep more critters away like the squirrels. And it worked. I had less squirrel damage this year by keeping it open. So, when the squirrels come running through here, there’s hawks. and they know the hawks can see them because they really don’t have a whole lot of place to hide where when I had the chairs one on top of the other at that point they had so much running ability that they could get underneath but now they’re out in the open and that did help. Did it get rid of all the squirrels? No. And there were times I toled a lot. I still have tool here. Like I’ll show you. I’ve got squash growing here. Let me put some gloves on. Let me tell you something. Zucchini has spikes and it really can dig into your hands. So, what I do is I usually carry some gloves in my pockets. Now, the tool has helped for me, this tool 100%. When I don’t have the tool on, it’s a hit and miss on whether I’m going to get any fruit because they like it and I like it. Let’s see if we can get some of this off because I think this is pretty much done. I doubt I’ll get any more. Here’s two here. Okay, I’m going to slice this up and freeze it. I’ve got one more. I can Let me move the steak. Some of this stuff if it looks like it’s done, I’ve been starting to yank it out like old tomato plants and just compost it. What do I have in here? One. Yep. on the bottom. Now, with with squash, you really do want to wear gloves because it may be rough, but us people with sensitive skin, oh my goodness, they will really get in there. All right, then I had tomatoes growing all through here. They look like they’re on their way out. We’ll see how long they last. More tomatoes here. Red bane sorro through here. And then I’ve got Swiss chard. Now, Swiss chard will grow all through the winter. That is really good. And walking onions. Got milkweed in here. But this was a lot of This had tomatoes and onions. No, the onions are there. The tomatoes were here. We cleared a lot of that out and we composted it. Here’s another one. It still has tomatoes. I’ve got nersium still growing, but I’ve got in here. Yep. I still have old garlic and that’s growing in there. So, it’s that’s going to take off. I didn’t pick them all. I picked a couple and the ones I left will probably come back. And then I’ve got all in here. I’ve got larger totes on the bottom. And I removed the smaller totes on top. I decided I’m going to keep this open. And later on, I want things to go up and go on this trellis we have here. So, I think I’m going to leave it open and not have anything on top. I stacked them, but the 18gallon totes, they’re not stackable, so they get kind of wobbly. But the black ones that are stackable totes, keep that in mind. Those last forever. They’ll never crack. They do really, really well. Here I’ve got celery, eggplant we’ve been picking. It’s yellow and they’re yellow from the start and they’re bitter. And then I’ve got milkweed. I don’t want to grow any more yellow. And I’ve got different mint tomatoes there. Let me grab all the these are heavy. And then red vein sorro and malibar spinach. So this is my butterfly garden when it starts from this trellis here and all the way down. The other side is still my vegetable garden and there’s different things growing all through here. This has been really good. Now if you want to do tote gardening and you’re looking on the cheap then you get the 18gallon I get the 18 gallon sterilite. They’re like $6 and they go for years now. Here in Southern California if they’re full of soil and you keep them damp I’ve had them go for five and six years. I’ve got a couple that are still going and they’re 9 years old. But if you let them dry out, kind of like your skin gets dry, the plastic will get dry and you could lose them after a couple years, which is still good. How much does toilet paper cost you? I mean, it’s so what? So, if it turns out to be disposable and it’s only going to last you two or three years, that’s a good thing because look at all the foods you’re going to grow or whatever you’re going to grow in there. Now, the black ones that are called stackable totes, I haven’t even had one break. They’ll last literally probably a lifetime. So, if you want something that’s going to last a long time and you don’t mind it being just the color black and it doesn’t get hot and everything grows good, there’s not a problem with it because the soil stays nice and cool, then get those. They’re a little bit more money, but I think they’re worth the money. I mean, they really are. I got a lot of them at the thrift store and I paid like two and three dollars for them and then sometimes you can find them at discount stores for like five bucks, but the real regular price is like $8. So kind of six versus eight or sometimes they’re nine. It depends on the time of the year. You have to decide which ones you want and what will work for you. I grow them both. I like them all. They all work. I’ve got the avocado tree that’s still here leaning. And then I’ve got Mexican sage. This is for the hummingbirds and the butterflies. So, this has really worked out nice. This is low maintenance because this is mainly for the butterflies. So, all I have to do is water it. And it just works fantastic that way. And then I’ve got the vegetables in between growing here. Like the beautiful tomatoes growing in here. Here I’ve got tomatoes here. Beautiful tomatoes. They’re sweet. Yeah, talking with my mouth full. They came up on their own. They’re really sweet. They’re not too tiny. I really like them. And then I’ve got just I’ve got even turmeric growing in here. All kinds of stuff. So, you can make a butterfly garden. Okay. Make a p of swallow. Make a butterfly garden and then incorporate some vegetables. So, it’s not just flowers. It’s for you to eat, too. So, you got the butterflies coming in, the ladybugs eating, and you can be eating as well. And this has been really good. The rest of the garden that way, I got rid of. I shortened it because it was too hard to drag the hose there. And I wanted Gary to have a place where the trucks did have something to bring in. And a couple times they have dropped some wood chips back here. Wanted to make sure they can get up the driveway. And that was an issue. And then you had to move things. We don’t have to move anything anymore. So, this has been really good. But I just love having all the different flowers growing in here and the vegetables in my butterfly garden. And the monarchs, we have had hundreds and hundreds of monarchs all through the spring and summer. We still are getting monarchs now, but not as many because now they’re heading south and they’re starting to get ready to basically hibernate for the winter and then just come back to life in the spring. All right, I better get this in and then we can keep on going on the garden tour. Cool. I love my zucchini. My number one vegetable to grow. And you know why? It goes into everything. Let’s look at the rainbow garden. Have any idea why I call it the rainbow garden? With all the colorful totes, the colorful table, the chairs I painted all different colors. And now flowers fill the entire garden. All kinds. Got the kofias for the hummingbirds. I’ve got the zenas well for the butterflies and the hummingbirds. And there’s also some marolds in here. And there’s going to be a whole lot more because I’ve been planting a lot of flowers. But of course, the sage and the mints, the basil, they’re always full of flowers. Not even counting the milkweed that brings in all the beautiful monarchs that fly around here. This garden is a really nice garden. It’s very similar to the chair garden, though it takes longer to take care of. Because with the chair garden, all I have to do is get the hose out and spin in a circle and everything’s watered in less than five minutes. This one can take me about 10, sometimes 15 minutes, and sometimes longer if I just want to gaze at everything around here. I like the table I can work on. I like everything the way it’s set up. It’s worked really well. I allow the totes to drip down many times on buckets or containers so I can propagate in here. It’s kind of like a little cubby hole hidden away from everything else up against the house that we painted green years ago. And then I’ve got the dog kennels here now. I’ve got the first one which is the small one that isn’t really that small. It’s 8 foot long. I’m going to pack it more because I’m going to use it for the winter. And then of course I’ve got the long one that is just two dog kennels put together which made it 20 foot long. Do the math. Eight foot versus 20. Because I had extra panels by having those extra panels that I didn’t need because they were put together. The front and the back. You only needed one front and one back. That’s two. I was left with four extra panels to give it an extra four feet, which now gave me instead of 16 feet on the dog kennel, 20 feet. So, that worked out really well. I’m really pleased with this. Now, a lot of you may or may not remember that we had the really bad storm that blew our gazebo down that was here, and Gary fixed it, but we never put it back this year. We kind of didn’t need it. We’ve got the shade from some of the trees off and on and we kind of stepped back and decided, let’s wait and see. Are we going to put it back at some point? I don’t know. I have no idea. But that thing went flying and it was crushed and he took it and fixed it up and he kind of stacked it away back there. So, we’ll see if we put anything there. I usually work in the evening on the table here or early morning and then like now the sun is starting to come up. it kind of changes and then it will drop down behind the pepper tree. So, it’s not that important. So, we’ll kind of figure out later as things go. But, this is a nice work area for me. I’ve done craft projects here. I made some cement balls for the hummingbirds that they take baths on. And then, of course, my plants that I go ahead and work on here. And right now I’m planting some ginger I got at the grocery store and it’s showing life and it’s growing. Is it going to grow a large hand? You know, a bunch of ryzones right now. No, because we’re really late in the season. But with this one, I can either put it in Gary’s little greenhouse room that he’s got. Look, a tiger swallow tail. Or I can just put it in one of the dog kennels that are not being rained on. That one’s got a solid roof. The other one does not. maybe in there because you don’t want it to be wet and cold. It can be cold but not wet and cold. So, we’ll see as time goes on. We still have a little bit of time on that. But this has been really a nice garden. I like sitting here and listening to the birds and watching the rabbits and different things come through here. One day we’re thinking about fencing this area. So, if I have it fenced, I can bring Zoe in here. Right now I cannot because the deer come through here which we really like but also the coyotes do. So that’s what’s going on in this garden. It’s it’s almost one of my favorites. But then each garden is its own garden. This one is just straight and then I expanded it last year so I have two straight gardens going. I have the chairs facing me this way. So it’s facing here and the totes are long. Then last year I set them up, you know, like front to front on the chairs, which gave me a whole different perspective on the stuff I was growing. I hadn’t decided yet, and I’ve been thinking about which way I like it better. Am I going to change anything? Nope. I’m going to keep on going. I’ve got a lot of the irrigation tubing already set up here. Of course, it was set up for the past two years, and it’s going strong. Why should I take it down? And this holds everything up. What I am going to be doing this year though, and I will be doing it all through the fall and winter and into the spring, is all this milkweed is coming up. And I think I can put that in the front yard to maybe bring in some monarchs there. And the milkweed is going in containers so I can move it around as I need. And then I can get back to business in here and get watermelon and squash and different things growing here. Used to have all kinds of stuff. I had okra growing here. So, that’s the goal for the next growing season. But that doesn’t mean I don’t do anything now. I do it now. I don’t wait. I hope not because if I wait, then I’ll be doing everything at one time. Do I do it now? And I start to compost back in my totes where I’m going to grow. Everything goes back just the way it is. My soil in all these containers, whether it’s on the ground or in my containers, is alive. If you dig in there, you’re going to find earthworms, you’re going to find microbes, you’re going to find leaves decaying with all kinds of insects on there. And what does that bring in? Not only a beautiful garden and good, healthy plants that can fight off insects, because if your plants are healthy, a lot of times your plant can fight off the insects themselves. You bring in the birds and I want to keep everything alive as nature does as it all over here. The trees drop their leaves. You don’t want to put any type of insecticide in your soil. If you’ve got a major problem and you were told to do it, then go ahead. But please, we’re going to talk a lot about that. All insecticides are toxic. So, you may be killing off something you don’t want to come back, but you most certainly are killing off things that you do want to come and you do want to make your soil. All those microbes and earthworms, don’t you want to do it organically? I mean, isn’t the whole idea of doing it as much in the organic method like nature? Unless that’s what you want to do. But we have to have a big conversation on that because I’ve been seeing a new trend and the trend seems to be get this type of insecticide. We’ll get into this. Go ahead and spray all your beds after everything has been pulled out. You know, a lot of the stuff that’s living in there on the living leaves, your insects can’t live on it. If the leaf is gone, where is it going to live? Some of them may survive, but 90% of them are going to be gone. And the microbes are going to get in there and break everything down to feed your plant. Why would you want to put insecticides in there? And you know what the worst part is? Not only are you going to lose your ladybugs that come and forage through among lace-wing insects and all different insects, I have heard if a hummingbird eats one insect that’s been tainted with most any type of insecticide, if the hummingbird, it’s very interesting. If it doesn’t disrupt the entire system where it takes it down, it can make it where it mentally cannot think for a while and that they don’t know where to forage and they kind of lose their mind a little bit. It’s some it’s an article. It’s something I had read and that alone can take them down because by the time they come out of it, it may be nighttime and they haven’t eaten and you can figure from there. So, if you want, if you’re trying to be organic, please don’t spray your soil. Don’t spray your compost, you know, there’s different ways of doing things. If you want to get rid of everything, you can do a hot compost system. That’s where it cooks everything. You keep it piled. It gets really hot. It’s a whole different way. I do not do hot compost, but you can, and that will break everything down. Then you bring it back to life. So, let’s keep going because I’m really excited with this. I’m hoping you saw everything here that you wanted to see. I’m really happy with all the flowers. My pizza garden is doing fantastic. It’s now an herb garden cuz all I’ve got basil and sage and rosemary and thyme and oregano and just everything growing in there. And the basil, if that makes it to next spring, it will be two years old. I have not had that happen before, but a year and a half and it’s still trying to keep growing and I’m still using it. Fantastic. Did not have to buy or plant any basil this year. Came up. It It stayed there and then it just bursted up. It didn’t come up. It’s been there, but it’s been growing. There’s a lot of seeds. It didn’t come up from seeds, though. I should be collecting seeds. And the thing is, the old plant after I cut it back a little bit, continued to grow it. I had basil all winter last year, so we’ll see what happens this year. And then my papinos are growing, my peppers are growing, tomatoes are still growing, kufia is everywhere. So, we’ve got a lot here going on. And I’ve got a lot I need to do because I’ve got this tote, that tote, this one, this one, this one. Been cutting down as you can see all the milkweed that’s down there. And that one all have milkweed. Now, I could just chop it out and compost it. But do you ever go to the nursery and go price milkweed to feed the monarchs? Little container is like $7. And if you need a big one, it could be $15 to $20. No. I’ll yank them out. We’ve got them cut way back. And I’ll get them in their own pots. And then I’ll move them anywhere I want. And I won’t have to buy milkweed if I end up with a hundred caterpillars or more because I already have it here. Or if one of my neighbors come running over, we’ve got a ton of caterpillars. We need some milkweed here. Take some pots. Go for it. So, just before we run to the front yard, I just want you to see this. It is doing great. This garden gives me peace of mind. I don’t have any squirrels in here, no rabbits, no nothing comes in here. Only me and Gary and we get what we need. If you are dealing with furry critters of any type, and you know what I’m talking about, this could be your answer if you want to garden. It’s been fantastic. No mice, no rats, no nothing gets in here. And a little bit more organization because this was the first year I grew in this big dog kennel, which is two dog kennels. I’m going to tell you, I’m learning more and more. There’s so much going on in here. I’ve got lettuce. I’ve got different types of kale growing. The peppers are everywhere. Just as you walk through and see, they’re just exploding. And for some reason, I also have watermelon trying to grow, which is the wrong time of the season to grow now because our nights are cooler, but it’s desperate. So, if they make it, they make it. If they don’t, they don’t. But I did end up with one butternut squash. It came up really late just a couple months ago and I ended up with one of those and then Gary’s all excited cuz he’s got the tall it looks like a Christmas tree. It’s poppo and he loves it. It to him it tastes like cilantro but then I’m not real big on cilantro either but he’s been really excited about that. So, this has been a really cool garden because I am covering everything with tulle to try to keep the furry critters out, the deer and all the rodents and the rabbits and the squirrels, especially ground squirrels. But not in here. I don’t have to think about it. I just come out here, take what I want, and if there’s any plants that I’ve got in small pots and they’re being eaten by something, if they’re in a pot, I just bring them in here and drop them down on the bottom and just leave them and let them do their thing. And then I get the forage like Swiss chard and different things like that in here knowing nobody’s touched it except for me. Now, I did not cover this with tulle. I was thinking about it, but you know, I haven’t had a bug issue. If I end up with something really bad, then I’ll go ahead and cover it by leaving it with quarter inch wire. The little hoverflies, they look like miniature bees. They’ve been going in and out and pollinating everything for me. Though, I did grow zucchini in here and yellow squash early in the year. And I did handpollinate. I may not have needed to because even the ladybugs have been going in and out, which means they’re finding something. So, it’s worked out perfect. But just quarterinch wire wrapping the building and that’s it. We don’t need shade cloth because the quarterinch wire acts as shade cloth. It gave all the plants that we wanted to have sun shade. Sun shade because remember vegetable plants need sun. So we’re learning as we go. But I expect as we go on forward, it’s even going to get bigger and better on the inside. Now let’s take a walk to the front yard. Things are still going on here. I’ve got a lot of flowers in here, but I have a ton of brassacas all over. I’ve got my ginger and turmeric growing down there. And though the turmeric did okay, the ginger I’m going to say was a failure. I’m not sure if it was me. I’m not sure if it was the weather, but whatever it is, I’m going to have to re-evaluate next year when I start to plant it back. probably around April or May and analyze how I want to do it and what I want to do because our nights weren’t as warm. We had hot days, but our nights were cooling down to 50° when it really should have been closer to 60 plus almost 70. That could have been the issue. I’m not sure. But all in all, I’m really pleased with the geraniums that are growing and some of the succulents I’ve got here. I do want to spot more food plants in here. That is the thing I do want to get going and I’ll do that little by little as we go. Right now it’s kind of a deserty looking type front yard. I do have milkweed and I want to get more milkweed because I think it’d be really cool if people see butterflies all over here. Especially the neighbors that tell me you do know there’s no monarchs in the area. Well, they haven’t seen that part of the yard that usually has hundreds all through the spring, summer, and early fall like now. They come up through the canyons here at different times. So, I’m going to get a lot done in here. And the table, I did not get to it. Everything that’s growing there is from last year, and it’s still growing. I’ve got brassacas. I had beets. I still was picking lettuce, walking onions, garlic, chives. I’ve got uh all kinds of stuff growing in there, but I want to get to it because there’s even celery in there and peline. I want to clean it up and get the lettuce growing in there, which I can do at any time because lettuce here in Southern California, we can get it going all through the winter. So, we’ll see how that goes. So, I hope to really get to it. But I’m really pleased because all I have to do is have it hit with water and it’s doing its thing and I don’t have to think about it. The rabbits live all through here. The birds have nested all last year. We had so many bird nests through here. Maybe because it’s not as busy. They’ve got a lot of the pine trees on the other side and then they’ve got just this whole area with plants that they can dive into some of these plants, build a nest and raise their babies. and they felt comfortable doing it. So, some of my yards, I’m kind of tending to it more. So, they come in there and eat and forage. But this one, they’ve decided they’re going to come in here, eat, forage, and raise babies. So, you can’t get anything better than that. I had babies back here. I had babies over there. It was fun to watch the nest being built and then the babies coming out and foraging through the area and then going down probably into Gary’s garden. So, with it looking like I didn’t do anything, maybe I didn’t. Nature took over and just started having everything that was here grow. So, all I had to do was hit it with water and my walking onions, my mint, my chocolate mint all through here. Garlic chives, which is receding itself, but the plant’s going to live for years. More onions back here. Beautiful brassica. I mean, everything kept growing. I even have sweet potato back there. I should dig it up and see what type it is. It’s been growing back there for a few years. And then the geraniums and the elephant food and well, you name it, it’s kind of here. Even some turmeric is sitting on the table. This has been really nice. And then of course the pine trees that are behind me. We have tons of woodpeckers that come through there. And the tree squirrels go up there and they eat their pine cones and throw all the pieces from the pine cones on your head as you’re walking back and forth. I think they do it on purpose. But this is really a nice peaceful yard. Sometimes we even come out here, grab a cup of coffee, and just sit here and watch everything in this direction because all the different yards are different. They have a different sense and different feeling to them, which makes it really nice if you want something unusual from just sitting in the bird garden. Speaking of the bird garden, let’s go take a look and see what’s going on there. So, I’ve been working on the bird garden. Look at the butterflies. They’re all over the place. And I’ve been adding in a whole lot more flowers. I had a maringa that was on my deck. Brought that here. It’s not planted yet. So, I’m gonna have a maringa tree if all works out there. And then I’ve got one on the other side. So many of these plants, which is unbelievable, is all propagated. So, it’s free. There was one plant in here that is now spread all over the garden by me, of course, because I’m propagating it. Salvas. I’ve got new salvas that I planted also propagating which could turn into big bushes like everything else. The blanket flower, one free plant brought in by a bird is now spread all over the garden. They’re still in smaller pots, so I’m going to change them into bigger pots. And so it’s kind of a growing thing. So things are going very well in here. And keep in mind, these plants are also edible. So, I have not only flowers throughout here. Where are you? I thought I just saw you. There you are. Come here for a minute. Look, Zoe’s here. Not only do we feed the birds in here and we have flowers, but we also have a lot of vegetable plants. And of course, we have all the dragon fruit. This is the garden that we come in the morning, have coffee at the crack of dawn, and we sit here and watch the birds come in. John, we watch the birds use a kissy kissy. This is such a stress reliever. Really, you’ve got to understand there was nothing here. And the soil here is rock hard, just clay. Nothing added to it. So, when you look at these plants in here that are all over the place, This is a camera. It’s my wife’s cam. It just keeps an eye on the area for me. They’re all in pots. But what they did was they released their roots underneath the drain holes into the ground. So so many of them are now embedded in the ground, the plant itself, but they’re still actually in pots. And the reason they’re doing so good here and it gets full sun is because being in a pot, you know how I talk about layering. When you water, that plant is getting the water to the roots because it goes into the pot and then it goes straight on through to where it needs it. So, I have been expanding it to where you are. I’m going to add in more flowers, more plants, more water features. And then behind me, I’m doing the same thing, aren’t I? Let you go do your thing. So, this has been really a joy to set up. And it’s never going to end because there’s always going to be something dies back and has to be replaced or something gets eaten by a squirrel and has to be replaced or it just fizzles out. It might only live a few years. But the point is, if you keep propagating, it’s not going to cost you anything. I’ve got a table full of plants I’m propagating and as soon as they get big enough, they go into a pot and they get shoved out here and then they get too big. This has been really a wonderful place. I literally get to go birding, which is bird watching, in my own yard. We have brought in 60 species of small birds. Birds that are not even supposed to be here end up finding their way here, finding food, finding water, finding shelter until they’re ready to move on. It has been absolutely amazing to watch this thing grow, considering there was nothing here at all. It was just dirt. And I never thought I’d be able to grow anything. I started with the totes in here to grow some vegetables. And then all of a sudden, a few years ago, I decided, well, why not bring in flowers? And that’s when all this started. I’ve got a swing back here that I love to just sit down and swing. Gary fixed the top because we bought it years ago. And you know, a lot of these outdoor furniture items are designed to be one-time use. They’re a throwaway and you’re supposed to they’re disposable and you’re supposed to buy a new one because you can’t get another top for it. That’s just the way it is. Well, Gary made a top for it. And he painted it a certain way where now it’s waterproof and it probably won’t ever have to be redone. Let’s go over to the swing and wrap it up there. Another place in this garden we like to hang out which is still not you know set up for birds but starting to be changed over so the birds can feed and water back there as well as this section. So this is another place that we can sit. We’ve got the swing. We’ve got the tomato plants growing. We’ve got all type of tree colors. Lemon verbina. I don’t know what else do I have here. All kinds of different things grow. And this is just a different part of the bird garden that I am slowly transforming into a place that the birds can enjoy too. And then this is the swing that he painted that you how many years ago do you know? It’s got to go back maybe 10 years, mate. Possibly. 10 years ago. Wow. And it’s still going strong. We must have bought this thing 15 plus years ago. Easy. Easy. Oh my gosh. This might be 20 years old. This is before we had the house. Yeah, it could be 20 years old. Wow. The canopy went and I hung shade cloth over it and and did your thing. And ever since you’ve done that, you haven’t had to redo it. It’s the only thing I need to do. I still have the cushions that came with this is find some material to cover. So, it’s kind of fresh and clean to sit down and when it goes, it goes. This thing cost me a dollar, the the whole sheet. So, we kind of look for bargains to keep our garden going and we don’t have to spend a lot of money. So, I hope you enjoyed this garden tour. Anything you got to say? We should do your garden soon. How’s your garden doing? Hold on. I just Let me Let me take the mic off for a minute. Sorry about that. So, how’s your garden going? Anything new we should go see? No, not really. It’s starting to Wayne down a bit. So, I’m still harvesting plenty of passion fruit. So, Okay. Well, that’s You’ve got a lot of He’s got a lot of stuff in there. He’s very modest. His garden’s full of food. It’s like, nah, if it’s not full, then he doesn’t think he’s got a lot. Well, it’s full. I I harvest every day, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything missing. Yeah. So, anyways, we’ll do a garden tour if you want to see Gary’s garden pretty soon. But I did something a little different by walking around and showing you and talking about the garden. And I think it’s going to be a lot of fun even all winter on days that are nice. I will work out here. You want to say something and we’ll be working all fall. I mean, and we we still have a whole month of November into December for fall. And we’ll see how the weather goes because we never know if it’s going to be hot or if it’s going to be cold. Every year is a surprise. So, I hope you enjoyed this. Leave your comments. Tell me what you think. and tell me what you what garden do you like the best cuz I I kind of switch it up. Sometimes I think it’s the bird garden, sometimes it’s the chair garden. I guess it depends on what I’m doing, but I’d love to hear which garden you think is the best. Do you have a favorite garden? No, it’s all pretty good. So, with that, have a wonderful day and don’t forget to what you grow. Bye-bye, everybody. And leave those comments because I want to know which one you like. Bye-bye. Zoe, where are you? She’s gone.