While Nikki’s plants are growing and the weather continues to warm, Nikki is starting to feel the very frustrating absence of her Ford F150 Lightning – which has been at the repair shop now for nearly 1 month. Why? She needs more soil for her potatoes!
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 full transcript here
Hey everybody, happy Sunday. I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you are safe, you are well, and you are with people you care about who also care for you.
Welcome to my apple tree — or one of my apple trees. You’ll also see I’ve got some ladybirds in there. There’s one right there. We call them Bishy Barnabees where I’m from — we call them Bishy Barnabees in Norfolk. I don’t know why we call them Bishy Barnabees, but we do.
Check out my cherry tree as well. So some of these cherries are going to be falling off — you can tell — partly because of the random watering that we’re experiencing. Oh, that one did in fact just fall off. Some of them I suspect will survive, and some of them not so much.
Not entirely sure why my mail person was continually throwing things up and down, but hey, c’est la vie.
My other apple tree here is empty. There are no apples on it, and I think this apple tree is having a bit of a break this year — and you know what? I’m okay with that, because we had way too many apples last year and it did cause some issues. We had some branches fall off, and that didn’t do the apple tree any good, so hopefully having a year off will help it.
Meanwhile, if you look at my cherry tree — while I do have some cherries growing, you’ll see we’re having the same issue as the other cherry tree, namely that some of the cherries are just going to fall off. But what we do have here, mercifully, is plenty of apples, so this tree is very happy. It’s going to have lots of apples on it this year. And I think what I may do is come through in a couple of weeks and take some of the apples off, because I don’t want to be in a position where we have so many apples on the tree that we cause problems again.
You know what else we’ve got that makes me really happy? We’ve got some gooseberries. While the gooseberries haven’t gone in the ground yet, we do have some little gooseberries coming on this branch right now. I really need to put this in the ground because it’s suffering a little bit, and we will have some irrigation on it soon.
The potatoes — as you can see, my volunteer potatoes are now flowering. I’ve already had my first volunteer potatoes of the year and they were very nice. But I have a big, big problem, and the big, big problem I have right now is right here.
You’ll see I have some potatoes — lovely job, happy potatoes — in the planter. Why is that a problem, I hear you ask? Well, these potatoes should have soil up to about here, because the more you can heap up your potatoes, the more tubers you will get, the more harvest you will get. But because my truck has been in the shop now for coming up on three and a half weeks, I don’t have any way of going and getting soil. All of these really need to be mounded up, because otherwise the soil is only about two feet deep, and I need to increase the amount of soil we have. It’s making me a little nervous, I’m not going to lie — because if I don’t have a decent amount of soil, I won’t get a decent amount of tubers from the potatoes, which means I won’t have as many potatoes to see me through the winter.
The other thing I desperately need to do is get soil to put here at the front of the greenhouse, because this is where I’m going to be putting my courgettes this year — I’m going to be making a new bed right here. And again, I don’t have any way of going to get it.
Now, I’m filming this the day I was supposed to get my truck back, but I spoke to the garage yesterday and they said it’s going to be maybe another week. And frustrating as that is, it is just what it is.
So I’m giving some extra water to these tomatoes here — because as you can see, some of these tomatoes and peppers, the ones that weren’t picked up yet, they’re mostly doing okay. People said they wanted them but then didn’t come and pick them up. But the majority of those tomatoes have been picked up, so I can’t complain.
Over here at the front of the chicken coop, meanwhile, we’ve got some great stuff happening. I also need to plant some of my local natives — I’m aware I need to do that. The chickens also need some water, which I will replenish as soon as I’ve finished filming.
And then here — look — you’re never going to believe it, but my first strawberries of the season are in fact growing here at the coop. I’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven in there, and then a couple more hiding up there. The lupins, meanwhile — look at those three beautiful lupins — and then I’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight — eight more heads coming up.
The sunflowers are doing incredibly well. The hens are happy because I’m letting them out, and they’ve got it in their heads at last that they’re not supposed to leave this little fenced-in area, and they seem to be behaving themselves. Charlie had a couple of days where he flew up and over, and then he realized he couldn’t easily get back, and I think he changed his mind and decided that maybe — just maybe — he was going to stay with the hens. This time of year the predators are about and on the prowl, and I don’t think he wanted to have to deal with them.
Got some more strawberries coming here — look. Really happy about the number of strawberries I’ve got growing this year.
And the raspberries — well, the raspberries are starting to make some real progress. Looks like I have the very first of my raspberry flowers for the year, so that’s going to be beautiful in a few days’ time. And yes, I need to weed in here, but these are doing incredibly well.
My garlic is actually making some serious progress. Over here in the onion section, again we do have some decent progress from the onions. No carrots yet, but that’s fine — the carrots do take a while to germinate. But what we do have is some radishes. Let’s see if I can pull one of these up — are you ready to be pulled? Nope, that radish is not ready yet. That’s a very small radish. So we have radishes, but they’re not ready to be eaten yet. They will take a while, so the radishes and the carrots will come up later.
Over here though, the beans and the peas — well, we have some good progress. These fava beans seem to be some of the best I’ve grown in a long time. They are doing really well. The peas are making progress — they’re not necessarily where I would like them to be, but they are making progress.
And over here, this is the other apple tree — the unofficial apple tree. It actually belongs to one of my neighbors, but they tend to just let us have the fruit. Again, interestingly, not a lot of action yet, but because this apple tree lives in the shade, it tends to fruit later in the season, which is kind of interesting.
As you’ll know, I haven’t been in the garden much this week, partly because I’ve just been so busy with other things. So I haven’t planted anything new. But you can see the celery is coming up now — interestingly, I think something’s getting in and helping itself to some of the celery, so we need to try and identify who is getting in and why, but hopefully that will solve itself over time.
These are things you learn when you have your own garden — sometimes things grow quite happily, and sometimes things start off well, you put them in the ground, and then they kind of dwindle. Luckily for me, the broccoli is doing incredibly well, as are the cabbages, so I can’t complain really.
Let’s check out the greenhouse though, because the greenhouse has been my happy place this year. Part of my challenge — part of my need to have some decent amount of ground — someone’s eaten that. I mean, that particular courgette has definitely been eaten. That’s not so good. But we’ve got some good, healthy plants in here that are growing nicely, and so once they get going they’ll be ready to go in the ground. Same with this corn — but check out the amount of roots we’ve got on this corn. They really need to go in the ground, but until I get my truck back I can’t go and get soil, which means I’m kind of stuck in a holding pattern.
We’ve got a bramble in the corner that shouldn’t be there — I’ll pull that out later. We’ve got some peppers. The tomatoes are looking incredibly well. These Seattles — best of all — are looking incredible. And then down here the tomatillos are looking incredible, the small tomatoes are looking great, and then the cucumbers towards that end are all looking amazing.
So tell me — what’s going on in your garden? Tell me what is growing, what is not growing, what challenges have you had this year, and what’s on your list for jobs this week.
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