Editorial Note: While Nikki refers to the truck in this video as having been totaled, there’s been an 11th hour change: Ortegas will in fact live! – Video incoming next week.
The weather has been a mix of warm and blustery this week, but Nikki has had a surprise visitor this week in the garden that’s taken a shining to one of her apple trees…
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 whatever you are and whatever you are doing, you are safe, you are well, and you are with someone you care about who also cares for you.
As you can see from my hair, it’s very windy today — we’re probably going to get lots of wind noise on the microphone, I apologize for that. But we are over here by my apples because look, someone has been helping themselves to my apple tree and eating all of the leaves.
And I say “someone” because I know exactly who it was. I think it was Sunday last week, I just finished mowing the lawn. And I was inside having my evening meal and the dog started barking and I looked out the window and there was a young buck on the driveway. A deer had come from through there, had come here and stopped and was helping themselves to the apple. And then kind of moseyed around on my driveway for a bit, tried to eat some of my potatoes, kind of decided they weren’t very tasty, had a sniff at my parsnips, decided that wasn’t very nice, and ultimately headed off down the road.
But look, talking of potatoes — my flowers are out. And this is delightful because it means that my first potatoes of the season are just about ready. And I must admit, I have already had some new potatoes from the volunteer potato gallery and they’re doing really well.
Last week when I was talking about the fact that I needed more soil for these — yeah, that’s not going to happen. As those of you who watch the main channel will know, my 2023 Lightning is no longer my 2023 Lightning. We had that little accident back in February when someone ran into us while we were stopped at a red light of all things in California. And they cracked just a tiny little crack in the rear bumper. And it was enough for the insurance company, when we finally got it to the repair place, to go, “Yeah, we can’t fix this. The truck is totaled.”
And it’s just so maddening because there’s so many things that I wanted to get done that I’m not going to be able to get done as easily because of this darn situation. But hey, let me show you what’s been going on.
As you can see, I have been busy in the garden. I’ve cut all the lawns. The garlic is looking incredible. We do now have some scapes here. I’m just going to nip this out. This is basically like a garlic flower and I do not want it to flower. I want these garlics to put all of their energy into making the garlic bulb, not making flowers. And I feel terrible doing this, but this is a good way of making sure that your garlic actually grows really well. And you have to remember that garlic season is like just two months away now at this point.
Guys, it smells really nice. I’m going to put these in my pocket and maybe we’ll use them in some cooking. You can cut them up and put them in an omelette. And it looks really good over here.
We have some great news on the bean front. So my beans are now producing flowers. My peas over here are producing flowers. Yes, I need to put some things for them to grow up. These peas are doing great as well. So my peas and my beans are doing great.
My carrots still haven’t popped through the ground yet, but my radishes are doing really well and they’re starting to pop flowers. I don’t know how big they are. Let’s have a look. I don’t think they’re very large. Let’s have a look. Yeah, the little baby ones. Look. That’s kind of embarrassing. That always happens. I don’t even bother eating the little ones. So I’m going to keep them in a little bit longer and hope that the carrots come up in between.
Looks like I might have one thinking about coming up there. And these guys over here, that looks like broccoli. I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s definitely not broccoli. I don’t think I’m going to have much in the way of onions this year. I think this corner of the garden is too shaded for that. And obviously, I haven’t done anything here.
But over on my strawberry patch, we do have some good stuff going on with the strawberries. We definitely have the first strawberries of the season coming along and looking incredible. Technically, the first red strawberry is right over there by Vi’s car, but I haven’t eaten it. I’ve just left it. But the strawberries here, they’re going to be ready in about a week’s time. So that’s a good job.
Over here, the cabbages — the winter cabbages are doing great. The broccoli is doing great. So again, I’m super happy about that.
Now, let’s show you what’s going on in the greenhouse, because the greenhouse… the greenhouse has really started to accelerate. And this is the time of year I really enjoy, because things are growing really quickly.
So my corn is ready to be planted, and I think I’m just going to have to suck it up and plant the corn in one of the spare beds in the back, which I didn’t want to do. I wanted to plant them out front, but I don’t have any way of getting enough soil because I don’t have a truck anymore. So… sucks to be me right now. And it, you know, in the grand scheme of things, I can’t really complain because that’s a very, very small grievance.
I do now have some pepper flowers in there. And yes, that’s a bramble I need to take down. I haven’t done that yet. My peppers are growing nicely. My tomatoes are growing incredibly well. Look at how healthy some of these tomatoes are. So these ones are Brandywines. Or sorry, this one is a Brandywine. This one’s a Brandywine. This one’s a Brandywine. I believe these are… yeah, these are the San Marzano ones that are like a tomato paste and pasta tomato. These guys here — Seattle’s Best of All — are really coming on well. I’m going to have to go in and start snipping these lower branches to try and encourage them to grow up. That’s not a problem at all. And the garden smells really wonderfully of tomatoes.
I’m expecting that I’m going to get some flowers soon on these little guys. These are the small tomato varieties — like cherry tomatoes and whatnot. They’re doing incredibly well. My tomatillos, as you can see, they’re doing great. And then the cucumbers in the back, they’re really starting to kind of… they’re starting to pick up. They’re starting to pick up a gear, which is lovely.
Because… it means we’re soon going to be at the time where we’re going to have all the plants and it’s going to be lovely and we’re going to be able to really start harvesting. But for now, it’s just very, very windy.
And I don’t talk about this very often because it’s just a weird thing to talk about. But one of the side effects that I have learned about losing weight is that it’s much easier for me to do this and stand on the edge of my greenhouse, which makes it so much easier for me in the evening to drop down this and not have to worry about jumping up on a ladder. Let’s see if I can jump down. There you go.
And the benefit of that is it takes a lot less time for me to shut up shop at the end of the day. I don’t have to go and get a ladder from the garage or have a ladder in the shop getting in the way. I can just jump up there and jump down, which is something I couldn’t do two or three years ago.
So that is literally for me just working out every day — cycling or doing a strength workout. It’s been part of my weight loss program. I do feel a lot younger most of the time, as long as my heart is behaving itself.
So today was a… what was today? Today was a weight day. So I did upper body strength. Tomorrow it will be cycling. At the weekend, technically, I’m supposed to do lower body and then Sunday is my day off. But I generally do housework or other things that involve a lot of heavy lifting. So that tends to end up being like an ad lib weight day. And then on Monday, I’m straight back to cycling. Tuesday, I do full body workouts and then we go on from there.
I’m going to show you this… Oh, there’s two now. Oh, there’s three. Look at that. One, two, and three. This one has been eaten by someone. Has this one been eaten by anybody? No, it has not. You know what? I am going to leave… I’m going to take these two and take them inside. I’m going to let them ripen up and then they will be our first strawberries of the season. I know this one is not quite right yet, but it will stop people from coming and eating it.
Tell me what’s going on in your garden. What are you waiting to do? What have you not done yet? And are you getting this heavy strong wind? Wow, I just got attacked by a piece of tree. That’s not particularly pleasant.
Anyway, enjoy your weekend. Be most excellent to one another. And if you’d like to support the channel, you can do so from $1.50 a month by joining the amazing list of people scrolling by on my screen right now. I know the audio here is going to be really terrible, so let me move over to the side.
And if you join this amazing list of — this long list of amazing people even — you will know that you are part of the reason that we still do what we do. This week has been particularly tough for me mentally. I have had a really horrible week. I’m hoping that next week is a better one. And every time I’m feeling frustrated, I just look at this amazing list of people and the people who support us financially and share our stuff and engage with us. And it reminds me why I do what I do.
I don’t do Transport Evolved to become rich or wealthy. I do Transport Evolved because I want to help make the world a better place and I hope that TE does that in some small way. And thank you for helping make the world a better place in your small way. Keep doing it.
Remember to tell the people who are important to you that they are important to you. And as always, keep evolving!
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