The weather has been notably warmer this week at TE HQ, and Nikki’s been putting some extra hours into the garden. This week, there’s a lot to show – plus some much-welcome cherry blossom to share.
These informal, unscripted vlog-style videos are a chance for the team to share some of the fun things happening in their respective gardens – and are filmed without a teleprompter in a single take.
Read the transcript here
Hey everybody, happy Sunday. I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you’re safe, you are well, and you are with people you care about who also care for you.
Welcome to another chicken and garden update. I know that these are not watched by many people, but I enjoy making them, so I’m making them. Someone once told me that the whole thing about YouTube was find a way to make videos you enjoy. And this is a video I enjoy. Check it out.
Our cherry blossom is finally coming in, and yes, I did kind of cheat a little bit with our thumbnail this week, but you can see there is some cherry blossom right up there. There’s some cherry blossom here and all of this cherry blossom this time next week — I am hoping that we are going to have huge amounts of cherry blossom. We actually had a really cold, hard frost last night, but the trees seem to have come through it unscathed.
We’ve got some more blossom coming here on the cherry tree that I planted. I think I planted this five years ago, and it’s already twice as tall as me, which is phenomenal.
Last weekend I also went through and I did some tidying up. So I’m going to show you. As you can see, this apple tree here is starting to bud up, but I also went through and I chopped off some of the limbs that were getting a little bit long, including this one. Now, this was a limb that broke about here last winter and I actually chopped it back to have a clean break for the spring. I also went around and I cleaned up some more of this here to just try and make sure they clean everything up so that it doesn’t suffer the same fate it had last year.
Now, last year what happened was we had branches getting too long. We had that main branch broke. We had some other branches break. And so this year I’m kind of trying to keep the branches a little bit shorter and tidy things up. I did the same thing with this apple tree here — same kind of setup.
And then over here, I didn’t touch the ancestor, which is our really tall tree, but I did sort this one out. This one here was getting a bit on the, a bit on the scraggly side. So I cut the branches off and I’ve used them just basically to reinforce our border. Same thing over here with our apple tree, our other apple tree. And again, I just came through and I cleaned some of these things off.
Now you’ll hear some noise here and I kind of — oh, that’s warm. That’s toasty. I actually never heard this make a noise before. So this is actually our, one of our network switches. And I know it’s got Ubiquiti products in it. I know Ubiquiti is not doing great, has not done great things, but I already ordered this before I found out about that. But this has got fans in it that just run and operate to help keep this cool. And it will run and then it turns itself off, which is very useful. And it just keeps everything nice and clean and dry and also will help.
Vi is going to hate colour-grading that bit because I just got completely blown out. Anyway, over here, this tub has not been officially planted yet. But look, we have volunteer potatoes from two years ago coming back up. And we also have some volunteer parsnips. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do about that, but I think I’m going to go ahead and get a new tub to put potatoes in for this year because they’re inside — they’re cheating — they’re going to be ready to go outside very soon.
Over here, we have our parsnips. I don’t think there were any parsnips that have come up in this one. But if we wander over to this one right here, we’ve got some — one here, one here, one here. There’ll be a few more parsnips coming up, I am sure. Let’s see if there are any more. There are no more, but it’s early days. So we will see more parsnips, I am sure.
And look at this, we have our beautiful, beautiful roadside daffodils and accoutrements here, and one here, which is frankly looking absolutely beautiful.
Meanwhile, over at the front of the house, we’ve been working really hard to try and keep everything tidy and clean. So in addition to, you know, going through and working really hard to try and sort out the trees, I’ve also cleaned up all of the brambles at the front here and at the front of the house. Let’s see if I can do this without showing anything I shouldn’t.
You’ll see we’ve got my honeysuckle and we’ve got some other things coming up here. There’s some violas and pansies coming up. We’ve got my — I’m picking hollyhocks — we’ve got some irises. And then here, this is a grape and the grape is growing great. On the other side, we’ve also got some flowering currants that have gone up, which is pretty cool.
And then here at the front of the — not the greenhouse, the chicken coop — at the front of the chicken coop, I filled in some of the holes and you can see we’ve got some growth here. The lupins are looking fantastic. Charlie’s upset because I put him inside just before we started filming.
Meanwhile, wow, a lot has been happening over here. I’ve been trying to get outside in the garden most days wherever possible. So I haven’t done any weeding yet this year. But these are the garlics and as you can see, these garlics are growing really well.
I’ve also made a decision on my herb garden, by the way. I think I mentioned this last week. I’m going to dig this up and I’m going to put all of my herbs in pots, which will give me another really well-situated bed.
I also need to get up and cut down some of these, but I’m going to ask my beloved to help me with that. And I’ve had a buy-in from one of my neighbours to make sure that we cut that back in the appropriate way here.
I’m not sure what’s happening with my raspberries. So some of my raspberries have actually started to sprout. So this one has got these two — I think I’ve got some on this one — some of them haven’t started to sprout yet. And it’s made me wonder if they’re actually dead or if they’re going to grow. But then the more I look — you’ll see one here — the more I see. And they do tend to come up pretty quickly once they, you know, they have half a mind, they kind of get going.
Sorry, that was a cobweb right on top of my face.
Now over here, the usual garden disruption is happening thanks to gophers. I have now put in my radishes. I put in my radishes and I’ve got my onions in and you’ll see that some of the onions are starting to poke up, which is good. That’s what we need. And after a short while, I’ll put carrots in and then we’ll have carrots in there and the carrots will deter the onion fly and the onions will deter the carrot fly over here.
Well, look, I’m not sure how successful my pea protection has been, because if you look here, you’ll see that some of the peas and some of the beans — they are coming, just very slowly. And it looks like some critters have been getting in and helping themselves. But I over-seeded this on purpose. So you’ve got some Oregon Snow peas on this side, you’ve got some fava beans in the middle, and then over here we’ve got some shelling peas — the Progress peas. And I can see some of these peas have been nibbled and eaten and some of them look like they’re starting to grow.
Now, I think there are gophers underneath and they just keep pushing them up. Whether that’s actually what’s happening or not, you can say. But this is the first time I’ve actually tried growing peas from the start in the garden in like five years. So previously, I grew them in the greenhouse and I had limited success in there. So I’m like, you know, I’ll just put them wherever and we’ll see what happens.
I also need to still replace this greenhouse cover, which is fine. But if you come in here, you’ll get to see what else has been going on.
Now, on this side — and I hope these are all good — you will see I have some broccoli and some cauliflower coming in here. It does look like someone has been getting in here, but the lid was on, which makes me wonder how they’re doing it. Because if the lid’s on and folks are getting in there, I don’t know if they’re putting the lid back on. That must be very considerate if that’s what they’re doing. They’re smarter than I thought they are. I think that might have been a dog. That might have been a dog and then the partner who put the lid back on.
Over here though, we have some success with our celery. I had to think about that for a second. So this is the really expensive celery that came in a packet where each seed was covered in a special special protection. And then this is just regular run of the mill celery. I’m going to pull that one out because it seems to have got a little bit confused. But this is all just general celery and you’ll see some of it’s growing really well and some of it not so much. But hey, it’s growing.
Over here in this far corner, we have some tomatillos. They’re growing really, really well.
And then I have some great success news. I really like these little 3D printed things I made. It’s made things so much easier over here.
More tomatoes, which really do need to be pricked out as soon as they start putting up their true leaves.
But what I’m really super excited about — and this has never happened to me so easily before — is that look, one, two, three, I think I saw one over here earlier that seems to have vanished. These are peppers. So these are tomatoes, these are tomatillos, and these are peppers. And these are peppers. And these are California Wonders. And they’re just doing really well. And that’s thanks to this heat mat. It’s thanks to the watering. It’s thanks to this.
I’m going to shake that off before I put this back on. As I said earlier, it got down to like, got down to freezing last night. We had a frost. So being able to keep these in the greenhouse and keep it warm and have this on top — really brilliant. And I’m really glad that this generally works. I say it generally works because I think I might have just screwed up the lid. So let me just make sure there’s nothing catching. There we go.
And then I’m going to slide this up. I’m going to put the secateurs on top of the celery, and then I’m going to show you the tomatoes because — there were some tomatoes in there — but now look in here. So the number of tomatoes I have — I have a tomato problem. I’m just going to be honest. I have a tomato problem and I also might have a tomatillo problem, but that’s okay. Lots of tomatoes to give away. So if you’re a friend and you want tomatoes this year, please don’t grow any. Don’t buy any. Just come see me. I’ll give you some for free.
I was actually looking up the possibility of selling them. But apparently in Oregon, there are some rules about setting up stalls and things, and you can’t earn more than $250 a year from seed sales if you’re doing it sort of from a commercial point of view. Plants are different, but everything else not so much.
Now here is going to give you some more water. This is a mint that looks dead, but it does that every day and then it looks fine in the morning. So I’m not going to complain.
And then in here — nothing yet, just cucumbers. Now these cucumbers are going to pop out of the ground any day. So by the time we hit publish on this video, there might already be cucumbers poking out of the ground. So I’m very happy with that as well.
And you’ll see here, I’ve got so many other things to put in. I’ve got more cucumbers to put in. I’ve got Brussels sprouts to put in. I’m falling a little bit behind, but my hope is that this weekend — in addition to going to no-kings, which would have happened the day before you watch this, and something I wanted to do on Sunday in Portland — and going to see Project Hail Mary, I will somehow miraculously have lots of time and space to do other things, because I’m like that. That is how my brain works.
Anyway, that was nearly 15 minutes of me breathlessly showing you around my garden. If you’re watching and you watched it that far, I suspect you enjoyed it as much as I did.
But anyway, thank you for watching. Thank you for being the positive change that we need in the world, especially at this time in history. Thanks also go to the amazing list of people scrolling by either side. We haven’t updated the list for a while. Erin has been working on a new update system and suffice to say there’s only three of us now at Transport Evolved, because the lovely Kate Walton-Elliott is off to pastures new. And so three people — there’s a limit to how much we can get done, especially if we don’t use AI, and we try not to use AI for stuff. We try and all do it manually. And so it’s proving a little bit of a challenge, but we will get there, I promise.
So you can support from $1.50 a month. Link in the description. And if you are going to consider supporting us, I learned something cool the other day. Vi is again going to hate me. I’m going to turn so I’d better lift.
I learned something interesting the other day. And that is that if you subscribe to us on the $1.50 a month tier, and then you decide to do a custom amount — so technically you’re on the $1.50, but you actually give us $10 a month — $8.50 of that is classed as a tip. I didn’t tell you that. But it means no tax on tips. It means that we can earn like $25,000 and have those tips be taxed less. Now last year, I think it was about eight grand of our income came from tips, just from people who had done that unintentionally. So we don’t have a huge gap, but I think it will help. So if you want to do that, consider it, or maybe you have to keep an eye on it and figure out how much, how close we’re getting to that limit and how it’s going to work.
But anyway, it’s been wonderful talking to you all today. As usual, tell the people in your life that they’re important to you, because you never know when you’re not going to be able to. I will see you this time next week. Spring is most definitely here. Keep evolving.
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