Live | Garden Success and Challenges of 2023 😃☕ #Live #garden #challenges

Happy Saturday! On today’s LIVE, we’re talking about our garden challenges and successes from this past year. From finding where to plant new plants, repurposing containers, setting up irrigation, and staying to a consistent watering scheduled, it was definitely an interesting year. We also want to hear what challenges and successes you had this year in your garden, so come join us! Bring your coffee or tea, and your garden questions. 😊👍 ☕

And, if you’re watching the replay, definitely leave your comments and/or questions below!❓

Timestamps to jump to:
00:00 Hi and Welcome
13:15 Challenge – Leggy Hydrangea Stems
19:20 Success – Growing Rex Begonias Outside
25:35 Challenge & Success – Starting Seeds Indoors
32:44 Success – Pruning Hydrangeas at The Right Time of Year
35:04 Challenge & Success – Grow More Plants & Need Space
39:15 Success – @SmartPots 8 Foot Raised Bed
43:56 Challenge & Success – Dahlia Area Reno
47:17 Challenge – Filming
50:30 Wrap-up

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All right good morning oh yeah okay we’re up and going here happy Saturday happy Saturday everybody are you guys yep thanks for being here with us and if you don’t know we’re Sean and Alison spoken Garden you know before we get into everything today let us know um in the

Chat if you can hear us okay if you can see us okay just uh let us know how things are going so um yeah and today we’re going to be talking about our successes and our challenges from this past year 2023 out in our garden you know every new season well every yeah

Every new year every new season I should say offers you know chances for us to learn more about our garden right I mean we learned a ton of new things this year yeah um some of it just was related to maybe not having enough time to do

Something or not enough space so we’re going to try it somewhere else next year yeah yeah and you know a lot of the challenges when we’re going to get into them had to do with bringing in new plants and finding space and we’re going to tell you all about those specifics

Here in a minute so before we really get into it Hey Kevin I know let’s uh hi Kevin I know thank you joining us Kevin and Valerie thanks for being here cool I was just going to write a quick good morning to everybody um hopefully our

Audio is okay today right yeah right you can hear us speak um hey so there is a poll in the chat um we might have done this before we might have not but even if we have it’s still very um it’s it goes with what we’re talking about today

With challenges and different things in our garden so go ahead take that poll and um what can you bring up the poll again and we’ll see sure and Valerie thank you for letting us know that the audio sounds okay thank you Val thank you cool um okay let’s see so today’s

Poll um we wanted we want to hear from you guys ultimately like what are some lessons and things that you learned this year because it’ be fun to just kind of share that with everybody it would so the question is just kind of you know what’s a main what’s one main lesson

Maybe you learned this year and only things and only things that you’re comfortable sharing out here in The Ether you know out in the internet so you don’t need to get too personal or anything like that um so but yeah let us know yeah and so

Far three of you have voted that you you learned how to grow a new plant awesome so that’s super good job guys you got to tell us what plant yeah now you got to tell us I know we want to know we learned a lot about some new plants as

Well some specific hydrangeas or other things so yeah it’s always nice to kind of add that to your toolkit you know well we got to trial some plants this year that we’ve never grown before and it’s really really fun and yeah we’re going to get to that in just a minute I

Know I’m so excited Tracy’s here hi Tracy morning Tracy from Lacy um we’re if you guys notice the setup looks a little bit different we um usually we’ve been going live on our phones just cuz it’s easy you know but this time we if you ever

Attended one of our lives in the past we this is how it used to look because we have some slides to show you pictures so we can’t really do that when we’re just talking to you live yeah it’s hard to do that with the phone and you know the

Tiny little screen and just trying to get it to work right yeah so we’re going to we’re actually we got two laptops set up if you if want to know maybe you want to know I we’re ready to go um but we’re running through OBS today um and we’re

Streaming through there and we got the camera up we got some lights miked up so yeah it’s going to be really cool so let’s see Tracy said um she’d never grown Lantana before and loves it Lantana is a fun annual to grow actually it’s kind of a hearty or a tender

Perennial in our area now since we’re 9A but it usually in our experience it did not you know it performed like an annual yeah we couldn’t get it to winner I think we tried it twice we’ve tried it twice so far for Lantana but you know what beautiful plant and we were so

Grateful to have yeah all the colors and just that that flowing growth um when we got to grow it so that was a fun plant and you know um I know there’s a lot of Lantana you can get from seed and whatnot but we bought some from Proven

Winners or no I’m Excuse me they sent it to us us to try in our garden but um they have the colors that they have available from proven winners monana are amazing yep go to proven winners. if if you want to Che them out from there oh before we get into stuff we

Need to let everybody know about the book giveaway um yeah we can also mention it again but yeah so you guys we are running an Instagram giveaway um and I want to put the link up there for you so if you wanted to enter we’ve got two

Books we’re giving away and now some of you are new to us this or like our audience this year we actually wrote a book in 20121 which was right there look on the screen it’s the opposite one anyway it’s it was our goal was to write it for firsttime gardeners but

It’s we’ve heard from Master Gardeners people that have been gardening for years that has actually there was helpful stuff in there and that just like that was amazing to hear from those people it it really refreshed their memory on a lot of different things that they haven’t used in a while or they

Forgotten about and so it was really helpful for them so you can definitely check it out um you know the first time Gardener how to grow plants and flowers and so it’s part of a series too it’s part of a book series for gardeners from Cool Springs press and Cordo and there’s

A lot of other books in that series for gardening that um you might find useful too so anyway but yeah we’re giving this one away and then also from FR Zin yeah we got this book her micro food gardening and this is a really fun book

This is super fun now Jen mcginness is the author and we’ve been working with her we’re got we’re actually gonna I can’t talk we are actually going to have her live on Instagram next Friday coming Friday so if you want to meet her and hear about what she does she actually is

She’s an amazing photographer she has a really awesome book coming out that I’m excited about all about bird photography and different things so um this book is called micro food gardening and it’s all about projects you can do to grow food in really small spaces yeah she really

Lays it out she makes it really super easy super simple and she gives you all different kinds of ways to grow food um in the tiniest spaces that you can imagine and it’s it’s a really fun cool book so go over to Instagram if you want

Um if you want to win if you or if you just want to be a part of the giveaway um get a chance to win we’re giving two sets of these away so there’ll be two winners that will each win each one of these books and um we’re trying to do

This before the holidays right before uh Christmas so we can get these out to the two winners so and they make great gardening gifts that’s what I was thinking too and Tracy I wanted to say thank you so much she said she bought our book this summer and it was really

Helpful thank you Tracy so happy to hear that thank you cool thank you so if you know anybody that would like it as a gift maybe this would be you know a great gift like you just said so so cool all right guys so we’ll remind you about that in a little bit

That’s our plug for the giveaway yeah that’s our plug that I just actually pinned that um link so oh good thinking um just read the rules over there and yeah you can enter if you want so okay Valerie Valerie mentioned that um Valerie loved learning about plants and

Propagation we love propagation yes um discovered that several weren’t in the best spots for their needs so she transplanted several of them including barbery hydrangea and others o wow okay that’s a great learning opportunity too cuz well and those those those plants each one of those from each other like

The Barberry and the hydrange they’re so different from each other they have they definitely have some different needs from each other so they’re going to need different places in your garden to grow that’s so cool that’s really cool really awesome oh and we have to ask uh Valerie

What kind of hydrangeas do you grow oh yeah if if you know panicle big leaf Oak Leaf Oak Leaf Cascade yeah smooth yeah what is it oh we love hydranges which is a couple pieces of our successes and challenges today have to do with hydranges so

Totally um Tracy has a question are bar is Barber supposed to lose their leaves in the winter some do some don’t so um like the Japanese Barberry the the red one it does lose its leaves in our climate for the most part it is deciduous so yes it’ll it’ll shed those

Leaves if you’re not sure um you can check it by using what we call the thumb scratch test but be very careful because there’s those barbs all over those those stems find a bare spot and take your thumb and your thumbnail just scratch the outside of the bark off and see just

Below it if it’s green or any other color it has to do with the leaves losing leaves in the wi well well losing leaves my my point is is if you want to check to see if if it’s alive still after it’s lost its leaves check the

Bark with your thumb scratch it off and see if there’s green underneath that the tissue underneath is green if it’s green you’re good to go um it’s still alive if it’s any other color not so much it’s um it’s probably dead or on its way dying

If it’s brown uh a light tan or even black it’s it’s usually dead that tissue is dead so you can always do that but definitely be careful with um all those Thorns so yeah good question yeah so like you said though um some are Evergreen and some are SM right so it

Just depends on which ones you have yes so that’s that’s fun yeah there’s soat barbaries I just I I move around so fast and I forget which plants which and I yeah I would ultimately prick myself probably oh yeah I do every single time

Cuz so my parents my mom has got um a couple barberries in the front of her yard and they’re the they’re the Japanese barberries they’re that they turn a uh or no they stay that burgundy color all year round but they do lose their leaves in the winter and so when I

Go through and prune them you know you got to you know if you can hedge them or if you’re just going to keep them natural anytime I’m pruning them I’m I’m always getting stuck by those little those little Thorns um when I’m picking up and cleaning up after I’m done

Cutting so yeah definitely be careful yeah so good question um Valerie mentioned that she’s not a big fan of panicle hydranges but she’s got the big leaf ones she thinks oh cool so any of them are beautiful in my opinion those are the best ones yeah I do like those

Two Pentacles are yeah awesome so if you can tell us which one of the big Leafs you got that’d be fun oh yeah yeah like which brand yeah is it fairy Trail bride or Fire Light tid no those are those aren’t those are actually panicles those

Are the fairy Trail was like a it’s a new one they’re calling Cascade it was a hybrid or something supposed to like Cascade out of a con so never mind not fairy Trail brighter or farlight tidbit um there so many but um which ones am I thinking popar I’m thinking of popar

Popar is a lace cap big leaf big leaf yep big leaf lace cap look that’s so fun yep um Tracy mentioned that her barbar are Japanese and okay she has them flanking garage doors ooh good idea perfect spot for them and then Valerie said they scratch test is a quick tool I

Learned that this summer I learned that this summer and used it to pull out some dead things cool so that is helpful just such an easy little thing you know but let’s um so you guys thank you for um sharing some of those with with us we’d

Love to hear more of your Lessons Learned this summer MH you know whether good or bad like things that maybe just didn’t make it through the summer and now you know why or like somebody had mentioned you know something was planted in the wrong place and they learned how

To they realized that and figured out you know needed to go somewhere else happened to us before definitely yeah so let’s get into some of ours okay all right yeah and you guys please uh drop your comments in the chat or any questions you have or any anything

Because we just love to definitely and you know what we need I think I feel like we need to say this um you know there’s there’s not really any failures in gardening there’s just CH to get it better next time to do it a little bit

Better next time so and we look at those as challenges not failures so I I know and I’m glad you said that cuz that’s so that’s so true and while you’re getting that set up I wanted to say um G is here in the chat hi good morning to you and

Um okay so 2023 success growing dalas and taking home best specimen at the county fair nice job G um CH oh being diabetic I’m sorry to hear that and learning to harvest before the heat especially in the summer definitely cool yeah things learned though that’s really important right and just and then 2024

Goal getting his master gardener certification totally cool yeah because you didn’t didn’t she um post on Instagram that he got accepted into the master Garder program exced really cool because there’s usually even up here there’s a wait list to get on and you got to really every year you got to put

Your name in it’s pretty much first come first serve that’s so really cool g nice I know we’re really proud of you so excited can’t wait to hear how it goes yeah he said he’s really happy to be here we’re happy you’re here too G yeah thanks for coming always here we happy

Um Valerie mentioned uh back to the hydranges really quick she thinks they’re Annabel’s but can’t remember the other one because it was a $5 end of season marked down at Home Depot perfect that’s the best those are the best ones awesome that’s super cool yeah okay you

Guys so our first challenge for us but it’s still a success because the plants are still alive and learned some things excuse me our first one is our first Challenge from this past year is leggy hydranges and long long stems and we were we really didn’t we didn’t realize

How important and how um what do I want to say um just just how that’s it’s on the tip of my tongue I’m sorry I was sensitive it’s okay we didn’t realize how sensitive uh our hydranges were to light until this year I mean everything we have is in

Containers and so you know we have the ability to move them around what’s going I’m sorry we need to pull us up a little bit oh oh sorry is it U I’m I’m hidden but that’s okay how about how about that let’s do that yeah that might work okay

Okay so hold on guys we’re we’re doing this here okay there we go I did it and then it moved okay so we didn’t realize how sensitive our hydranges were to light and we can move them around because all of our plants are in containers so we

Had the ability to move them into more light because right now they’ve been this whole past year they’ve been underneath this large spruce tree and at the beginning of the year they were getting enough light and so enough enough morning direct sunlight but as the year moved on and the sun’s angle

Changed and still being in the same position underneath that spruce tree they started getting less light and when plants get less light they tend to stretch with their growth it’s a it’s a common response of plants when they don’t get enough light they stretch and they’re trying to find light it’s just a

Normal response so this is what happened to our hydranges they literally stretch their stems between leaves we had um in the inner nodes we had stem lengths like this long or even longer you can kind of see them in the picture yeah so I mean

Piur it’s um here I’m going to move this over just a little bit okay move it again moving again you’ll see it in a minute um so yeah so we found this out and it’s it’s like oh my gosh you know and it’s not a big deal for the plant’s

Health really as long as it’s not super longterm and doesn’t happen year after year after year um but if it does happen year after year after year what happens is you get these really long stems and you’ll have less leaves the plant will get less uh light from its

Photosynthesis and it’ll start to it can start to just fall over a little bit or have a different form because of uh gravity those those leaves will start to bend down every time every year they have those flowers the weight of it will pull it down so it’ll look different it

Won’t grow right it won’t look right so our challenge this was our Challenge and we know what we need to do now this year this coming year is make sure we’re monitoring that light on those plants a lot better um from midyear on so those those inner nodes and those stem lengths

Don’t get so long this next year I know and there were so there’s a couple things I wanted to add to that um that was exactly what happened but we also had a lot of traveling this summer and we weren’t able that was kind of the reason why we weren’t able to really

Like well they’ already grown I guess by then but we had some watering issues so yeah but that’s okay I kind of am wondering so my I’m wondering what you think about this Sean um what if we take this hydrangea and plop it in the ground in the little ground my mom has

Some of you already know this we say it probably every week but my mom has graciously offered her pretty much almost her entire backyard to us with all of our plants while we’re temporary right cuz we’re still looking for property so she’s given us a little the

Goahead I should say to go ahead and like renovate this whole area we’ve been given the green light we’ve been given the green light and you guys will we’re going to start filming this soon where we’re going to like transform this whole area of our backyard so we can put a few

Things in the ground and then we’ll just dig them up when we move right so I’m kind of wondering if this hydrangea would be a good um candidate to put in the ground over there possibly you have what we’re going to have to do is um think about the morning

The amount of Morning Light it’s going to get versus the dappled sunlight and shade it could get or will get in the afternoon in that spot we just need to think about a little bit more cuz there’s a fence there there’s some other things going on there with a larger

Katon Aster that’s true that so it could there could be some blockage of light from you know it might not get enough direct sunlight okay during the day in the morning and then the the afternoon no problem with the they actually prefer the dappled in the afternoon so yes so

The afternoon is not a big deal but the Morning Light I mean I think I think their light levels is at least 6 hours of sunlight yeah okay and so I don’t know if they’d get that from the morning to midday before they start getting the shade but we’ll we’ll think we’ll figure

It out but the good news is you guys once uh spring hits we will prune these back and let them kind of regrow and do their thing because there’s really not much you can do I think you mentioned already like once they’re leggy you know I mean other than cut the

Flowers off so you have to see them I mean we don’t want to do that and give them a hard prune which we can do we can do y we can do that okay yep all right so um while we’re getting our next slide up um budget gardening V Loca that’s

Such a fun name um one thing uh they learned is how fun it is to forage for greens and make their own winter pots that’s a new one they said oh yeah that would be F cool right on so that’s super cool yeah okay we kind of in the middle

Here so a success that we had this season which was super fun we’ve never grown Rex pagonas Outdoors before some of you maybe have them and maybe have already done this or maybe often they’re kind of grown indoors they with their temperature they’re really good indoor plant totally and they’re so beautiful

Oh my gosh so ball Ingenuity which if you’ve ever heard of ball horiculture they own all the brands like they own wave patunas they own uh let’s see what else would everybody know but burp Cool Wave Cool Wave Pansies so wave um Burpee and oh um the vegetables what are the

Vegetables I can’t remember it right now I think a lot of them are under the Burpee brand but anyway but I mean there’s there’s that one specific indoor the kitchen minis I part of Pan American Seed I think but anyway they put it this way ball has a huge Monopoly on all

These different I mean they’re like a giant company that own a lot of plant compan didn’t realize amazing American own company it’s so cool and they send us all these Rex pagonas to grow and we’re like hey let’s put them outside in containers and see how it goes they grew

Amazing we had them um in the shade they got maybe an hour or two of Morning Sun wouldn’t you say and even some afternoon sunbe a little bit but they we paired them and we we’re kind of weren’t sure what to put them with but we paired them

With a really fun Bonia oh um that’s the other brand they own the Bonas the um oh it’s totally escaping now in no ball the I’m sorry I’m totally blanking out right now Theon company they that’s all right I’ll look it up yeah so you can

See here in the picture we paired these with not only impatience you can see in the center picture oh impatience not Bonas oh my gosh you guys okay I’m not awake it’s okay that’s what I meant okay well so they they we’ve paired them here and you can see in the middle picture

There’s impatience in that planter this is a pedestal planter so it’s really it’s really tall um basically comes up at least I’d say at least 2 and 1 half to 3 ft almost almost to my hip just below my hip um in in uh in height so there’s the impatience in there um

There’s the Bonia and then we also put in there a dusty miller cuz we just randomly have dusty miller everywhere as you might too CU it kind of just spreads and can grow in sun or shade I mean it’s and they did great I love the dusty too

Cuz I love that silver foliage which by the way is kind of trending again next year oh next year there’s this yeah a dusty miller like new plant coming out from yeah yeah we’re so excited to show that that’s fun that’s so total quick question for you do you like silver or

Kind of that white almost folage um color do you like that in your garden let us know in the chat yeah that’d be fun to hear yeah these turned out so well and with all of these plants paired really well so this is another part of the success is these plants paired

Really well even with slightly different water needs where the impatients they like it a little bit more wet than the Bonas or even the dusty miller we were able to balance that out and really we didn’t have to try that hard because again we didn’t make it we we didn’t we

Had some water watering issues so there was a lot of there was a little bit more watering neglect than we would have liked to admit to but they they still worked well they grew really uh really really great um even the um the impatients they during the growing

Season they were super compact they didn’t stretch and I was really impressed with that because usually even the impatients in a lot of shade will stretch now we did see some stretching later on in the in the year in the fall but besides that and these guys are

Still growing by the way I was totally just going to say that the Rex vagonas only they really only like to be outside and 50 degrees or above 50° F and we’ve had some cold nights at at that Tacoma Garden where we’re growing everything freezing I mean like multiple in a row

And these guys are still growing yeah not there’s not maybe a couple leaves have a tiny bit of frost damage but barely yeah it’s more probably water neglect than Frost damage but um that’s great yeah so that was fun this is a really fun plant I know it really was

And we highly recommend trying it out in your garden if you can you know like maybe just make sure that you are aware to put them out at certain times of the year because again they don’t really like to be below 50 degrees outside and

And you know what I don’t know I don’t think we put some links Down Below in the description for these yet but we will we will put those down there so if you want to click through and find out more about these specific Bonas from ball or ball and genoi or whichever

Brand they’re they’re selling it really um oh yeah beacons in I know I had to look it up I was going to let you guys know be why was I call I always get Bonas and impatience makes upas they’re not even that similar I don’t know why I

Just sometimes yeah so anyway um yeah speaking in patience you’ve probably heard of that brand um now the the Rex Bonas are you might have heard of if you’ve ever bought those before the Jurassic if they have the word Jurassic in them or some kind of that’s probably

The ball ones that we’re talking about and see they say we we knew they were Jurassic and I heard I hear Rex I always think a T-Rex I it just clicks over it’s probably from being a kid and always being interested in dinosaurs anyway so

Um so uh real quick uh budget well we can probably move to the next slide but budget gardening V Loa mentioned that she loves silver colors in the garden we highly agree um here in zone 5 sometimes Dusty can over winter that’s amazing yeah they’re a hearty plant they really

Are they really are and she grew um dichondra Silver Falls which is so beautiful I actually we really want to grow that yeah we haven’t grown it yet that’s a fun one it trails and it has kind of just that beautiful shape so looks like remember those little didn’t

We see that at the ball at ball those are they had them in all the um baskets I want to say so that was so anyway okay moving on moving on sorry we’re we’re a little rambly today but you know weing out on our own St this is

So fun so you guys I know definitely keep letting us know about your successes and challenges and this was yeah do you want to yeah sure yeah so um another challenge and a success was was actually starting plans from seeds this year we don’t have a heated Greenhouse

Our Greenhouse house our our temporary Greenhouse our little pop-up Greenhouse if you will um we have heating mats but it’s 2 hours away in Tacoma we’re we’re out here on the coast and so starting seeds we did start some seeds this year two hours away and then we tried to keep

Them watered we tried to make sure we did everything for them this past spring that we could do to help them actually germinate and then grow and and have some some seedlings to grow um it just didn’t happen very well at all because we couldn’t we couldn’t keep the water inconsistent

And obvious right we’re two hours away so what we ended up doing was is we started sewing seeds there but bringing all those cell trays um we we started bringing all the seedlings back with us and we kept up the watering we’re shifting them outside we’re bringing

Them back in at night we’re shifting them outside in the day bring them back in at night they got to travel on the freeway a lot oh yeah they they put we put some miles on those seeds and seedlings so yeah so that was the success part of the challenge for us was

Beginning of the year when nothing was coming up we’re like we’re wasting seed my God so many seeds we wanted to grow and like the space for putting them afterward or to where to plant them afterward that’s a whole other challenge but I mean there’s like over a hundred

Different plants that we want to grow my go we couldn’t there’s probably 200 this is probably one of the main reasons we moved out of Tacoma out of our home because we had totally run out of space yeah and sea and I have like just dreams

Of all these rows and rows of dalas and zenas and all kinds of plants so we’re going to do our best and again my mom’s given us the the green light to like renovate this whole area so we’re going to have some more room for seed

Sewing and and I think next year what we’ll do is just continue bringing them back and forth with us so we can monitor them and then return them to Tacoma when we go and then eventually plant them in the ground yes I like it sounds awesome

Kind of nuts wow really took our old Greenhouse for granted yeah that was fun too cuz we built that really miss that we built that Greenhouse that wasun you built that that was amazing yeah that was a fun thing we got a little mini Greenhouse now but anyway hey if you

Have a greenhouse if you have even have a temporary Greenhouse um let us know in the chat and let us know what you use it for that’d be fun I know that is fun there’s a lot of uses we actually have a video about that how how can you use

Your Greenhouse oh yeah I forgot about that a couple years ago yeah um Tracy just jumped in the chat and said um she’s never started things from seed before and you’re going to be addicted it’s so fun Tracy it’s so fun try in the spring she said oh and um so

For you Tracy and anybody else watching we partner with Eden Brothers if you don’t know Eden brothers.com they sell bulbs and seeds and they we’ve partnered with them you can use a coupon code spoken Garden all one word at checkout you can get 15% off any seeds or bulbs

So Tracy if you’re thinking about seeds this year check them out because their quality is amazing they’re all GM no they’re non GMO they’re they’re not genetically modified in any way they’re most of them are heirloom seeds I know they have some good stuff they they have

A lot of cool stuff so go ahead and check them out if you’re looking for a good seed source they are really good they really are and there’s others out there too I mean we oh there’s so many yes yes Botanical Park seed we’ve grown from uh seedsavers exchange seeds.com

Those are some of our favorites there’s probably some local ones maybe in your areas be Creek oh what’s Seattle there’s a Seattle Seattle seeds company actually used them before so that would be fun to try I know I know we should we should reach out and see CU

They’re local for us yeah um let’s see we’ve got a few comments to catch up on so let’s see Valerie this is super cool she’s excited to try winter seed sewing in milk jugs this year we’re we love it it’s so easy and it’s fun because you can get all these perennials especially

Started early that are what cone flowers straw flowers um Snap Dragons what else yeah Snap Dragons would be a good one to start we grew eucalyptus out in milk and it’s still thriving so we actually need to prune it it’s starting to get really really it needs more sun poppies we grew

Poppies um oh that African daisy we did African Daisies which grew like crazy um through the whole growing season I mean there’s a lot of options so we’re excited for you Valerie so cool Tracy maybe that’s something you can try too you know and maybe start experimenting

With that a little early too before spring good idea yeah um couple other things let’s see so when seed sewing uh budget gardening VCA had a challenge this year a challenge was um fungus Nets taking over the seed starting area yeah bad news pretty sure I brought them in

When I bought I brought in my over wintering um dalot tubers oh interesting yeah okay well at least at least you know what some of the damage um and you know what was going on with that cuz that’s half the battle right so you know

That’s not it’s not hard to take care of it’s not hard to get rid of them but it’s I guess I guess it kind of is a little bit of challenge but it’s not undoable it’s something you can do so I know we had some issues with I don’t

Know if they were fungus snats in the old Greenhouse we had fungus snats we had aphids we had nematodes we’ve never had nematodes before in the old green house and you know what we think we actually brought Now remind me there okay the nematodes were different than

The apens well no I know we brought the we brought a bunch of plants inside that we had just bought at Like Home Depot I want to say or one of our favorite nurseries I can’t remember brought everything in it’s better we don’t and we didn’t uh check everything which we

Usually are kind of nerdy about checking for bugs and stuff we’ll quarantine if we see anything exactly we didn’t do that cuz it was we were expecting a cold snap we quickly brought everything in that needed to come in and then we had like a bug explosion after that yep so

We’re pretty sure that’s where they came from if I remember yep yep I believe so too and then the nematodes that was the weirdest thing but we used this organic and again we’re not going to say the product name the the actual company in cuz we don’t it’s not their fault we we

Took the organic um fertilizer and we put it just on the top of the soil we didn’t work it in like they said cuz we were lazy and it was really cold outside so so what we did was is we started watering and all of a sudden we got all

These darn nematodes all over the place it was the darnest thing I’d never seen that before in our climate in a greenhouse so anyway forgot about that that was crazy yeah um let’s see okay so maybe we need to bounce so people probably a looking at the slide um Tracy

Bought a popup greenhouse and bought it to start use in Spring awesome so yay and you’re welcome she said thank you for that resource I think that was referring to Eden Brothers in the C oh cool yeah you bet Tracy and okay so success uh this is just in general like

This is something that you know it’s kind of we already knew this but it’s also fun to see how things respond after pruning and when you prune the certain certain hydrangeas at the right time of year you’re going to see some amazing growth amazing flowering now a lot of companies out

There just stress and you’ve probably heard this before don’t ever prune anything don’t ever prune your high ranges don’t do it just leave them alone just put them in the ground and don’t ever do anything with them again sometimes you have to prune sometimes there’s reasons with us we’re have you

Know as you know everything is in containers so sometimes we have to prune well we’re pruning for different reasons too there’s multiple reasons not only because they might get leggy or we’ve got these just some stems just come out of nowhere and that the plant itself

Gets a wild hair that just goes you know straight out of nowhere and we’re like what the heck is going on also to contain the size and keep the shape you know there’s a lot of there’s a lot of people in companies and different people out there that’ll say well it’s supposed

To grow Compact and it’s supposed to do all this and it’s supposed to do that it’s like well that’s nice and you know in perfect perfect conditions but most of the time our Gardens aren’t exactly perfect especially all the time Gardens change Gardens morph they need maintenance these are manmade manmade

Landscapes we created these these aren’t natural so we have to maintain them and that pruning is part of that yep so anyway that’s my soap box I’m so and you know Sean loves pruning and we’re we made a couple pruning videos this year for hydrangeas so hopefully if those are

If you have those type of hydrangeas and that’s helpful for you then that makes us really happy and maybe you don’t need to touch your hydrangeas and you can listen to the you know the Breeders and stuff and just don’t touch them but sometimes you have to yeah well and into

Two in different areas the plants are going to respond differently whether because the plant might be grown out in Michigan or Minnesota or somewhere else and when you get it out here on the West Coast in the Pacific Northwest or you know anywhere else it’s there’s a good

Chance it’s going to react differently because the environment’s different right we we’re all in a way products of our environment even us and plants and because of what happens in that environment we react to it and it’s the same thing with plants and so just something to think about all right so

The next moving on get off your soap box Sean okay what we have oh so growing even more plants and finding space this is a really whiny tough problem to have right it’s kind of like ridiculous that we yeah like oh boohoo we had too many plants I mean but we literally did

Because either we overbought that was my fault or well and again we partner with some companies they sent us a lot of product this year to try and we literally were like what are we going to do with everything so that was a little bit of a stressful challenge for us well

In some of the yeah it was in some of the plants we didn’t even know we were going to get a lot of these plants that I mean they just they just kind of came we we signed up we was like yeah we want to tryal stuff out for you that’d be so

Much fun but also the number of plants we we didn’t think we were going to get that many well it wouldn’t have been a problem if we weren’t and if we had our own garden space I hate to say that I was going to say I was I was like wait a

Minute because if you were going to say if we were still at our old our old house and our old yard we already ran out of space so we would have had the same problem so you know but anyway it’s just yeah so but we feel very lucky and

Grateful very grateful you know to have this challenge it was an amazing challenge to have I would have this challenge every year by the way yeah if this was I I want to to but we always got to think about where we planting them how are we going to take care of

Them you know some some different logistical things so and it’s kind of mainly like the stress comes from like we want to show you guys the right way to grow these plants and try them out right and when we we just felt like we were letting you guys down because we

Couldn’t figure out where to put them yeah and we want let the companies down that we’re working with so yeah and some kind totally and some of the plants didn’t get planted for like a month and a half after we had them cuz we didn’t have the space we weren’t ready yet um

And some other things that went on so but the majority of them did really well in our garden WEA whether they were perennials or annuals and so yeah they did and you know that hence the Frantic like uh renovation that we have ahead of us because we need to get all of this

Ready before spring yes cuz we’re going to start seed sewing and all that as as you are too you know probably so we need to make space and leave space available and open for what we know is coming yes and we’re going to this year it’s definitely going to be more ground bed

Work yeah I know so we’re really excited about that um you know we’ve been holding off saying you know oh we want everything in containers so it’s easily moved out and blah blah blah but still kind of feel that way a little bit but but we have to kind of bite the bullet

On some of these plants cuz you you can buy tons of containers if you want to but it gets to be a real big kind of nightmare to have to um and again excuse me and again perspective right I mean it’s a it’s a wow that sounds really

Tough you have all these plants and containers but it gets to be a big chore or two to maintain and keep these plants up in the containers and always planting in new containers so not to mention it’s expensive very expensive we had to keep buying containers and it was like okay

So we’re excited about putting them in the ground this is going to be fun um can’t wait for more of these plants to come especially the newer plants that we got um was it we got a whole bunch of new plants from Proven Winners per

Growing a lot of shrubs for you guys to show you gardinia there new rose that were growing well if you watched our news show you saw the five of them were in that um episode cuz we’re just like so excited yeah oh um the el el el which

I literally like so excited to show you guys more of that plant the two redance those are all coming available this next in 2024 at nurseries so and on Proven Winners probably on their website you know the fun thing about out here too is that um finding the space and um having

These plants even though they were sent to us a little while ago a couple months ago um we can still plant them right now in our climate because it’s been so mild out here the ground’s not frozen the plants will be fine once we get them in

The ground and I think um I’m really excited to get those planted ASAP yeah me too yeah so me too you guys all right so moving along in our list here we just have a couple more we had I think eight total y we’re on five yep so here we go

Um yeah okay so oh this was fun I think we talked to you guys a lot about this already but due to the lack of space right in finding ground bed area or whatnot raise this rais bed option was really really key for us this year and

We have um now they they offer this in a 6t 8T or 12T length if you have the space it’s like a popup raised bed literally and it has a bottom like all the smart Pots if you’re familiar with a fabric bag right it has I mean it’s

Completely contained it comes in a tiny little box and then it folds out it was it’s super cool you just start filling with soil and then you’re ready to go it was I mean I can’t wait to use this I’m kind of like looking at now we had we

Set this up in our Dalia area last this past year um we put a whole bunch of vegetables in it which grew like Gang Busters you can see how full it is you can’t even see what’s going on basil um oh I do miss that basil there was a

Couple of basil plants there was tomato Tomatoes there was that pumpkin plant you can see closest to the screen right there um yeah that was it but it was just like that’s it it just went bananas for La of better a really good part of my mom’s yard that she has completely

Let us use and take over it has Sun like at least eight hours of the day it’s a great bakes it bakes right there it’s awesome what I’m thinking and I might have mentioned this to you already but I’m kind of thinking we like we’ll keep

That raised bed in that same spot along the walkway there fill it with zenas oo yeah maybe or maybe some other things but um I’m kind of like on on the ends I can see the profusion oh I love the the spreading ones that don’t get too tall

Thee yeah I can see the profusion yellow yellow red can’t the specific well we grew that one that grew amazingly well at our old house we also grew there was like a white and pink one and I forget the name I know me too so but the profusions on the end and then

In the middle we’ll have um what is it the sunset mix we’ll get we’ll get the Lily puts in there we’ll get the lime green ones in there there’s so many we have like so many packets of seeds love Z that we got last year that we didn’t

Even open yet oh by the way if you so we love Z so that’s an annual uh flowering plant if you didn’t know that um so what annual flowering plant do you like is it zenas is it Cosmos I do love Cosmos though there’s some beautiful Cosmos

Yeah fun one molds you know what I love about Cosmos tell us in the chat I know sorry I’m going off for a minute Cosmos have the most beautiful foliage I mean I think sometimes they’re underappreciated but I just love that ferny kind of lacy look it’s almost a feather it’s so I

Just think they’re beautiful and again they’re only an ual but I mean there’s some beautiful colors and breeding that has happened over the past you know years and years gorgeous I mean Cosmos to me before you know this last couple years it’s really opened my eyes to how

Many different varieties of Cosmos there are Cosmos to me in the past were just you know this big white flower with the yellow center right but there’s red pink burgundy they even have a you know a what is it a purple and a slight blue there’s you know the yot lemonade that

Botanical has that we have yet to grow I mean it’s amazing the variety of Cosmos now it’s crazy and Tracy mentioned she’s never tried zenas before Tracy again you’re going to be hooked you’re going to be a you’re going to convert they’re really easy easy to grow from seed

Relatively and they’re just they keep going and going and going I mean they will bloom all summer especially the more you cut them like for cut flowers or just most are considered or whatever the tall forms so the elegans and I think it’s just the elegant species

Which are most of the zenas out there they’re the taller forms they’re cut and come again most of them so you can cut them you cut the flowers off bring them inside and use them in arrangements and then they’ll produce more flowers and they keep going now the marandas and

Some of the spreaders they’re not that great the ones that have a spreading form instead of growing really tall the spreaders aren’t that great for the cut flowers but still they’re beautiful and if you have a smaller Arrangement where you can get those flowers and those smaller shorter stems totally totally

Cool and I love like you mentioned like putting those in front of the border of others IND is cuz Z zinas can like you said they can get pretty tall and kind of like their foliage and stuff isn’t that amazing so it’s like it’s not bad

It’s not like aliam fo it’s beautiful to me it’s beautiful but you know if you can kind of spill the space in then that’s nice yes then even more zenas and Tracy said she sold awesome so you will not be sorry cool Tracy so yeah we’re we

We love our zenas that’s we missed them yes okay next I don’t even remember what’s next Dalia area renovation so so the area you just saw with the raised bed this is that same area and you can see on the left hand side of the screen

There it’s all grass where the um the dalas are growing this past spring we took a pickaxe and some shovels and we dug up all of that grass and it was like about I think I walked it off and it was like 100 ft by 100t long and maybe about

30 to 40 ft wide right wow maybe no no it was maybe more like 20 ft so but still though I mean 100 by 20 that was that’s a lot of surface area that’s a lot of square footage we literally dug all of that grass up leveled the whole

Thing off yeah she said it was okay we had the green light it’s all right it’s all right um and then we laid mulch down because you can see the after so the before is on the left the after the after’s on the right here I’ll move us

Out of the way there we go out way get out of the way sorry this isn’t a larger like full frame picture it’s kind of I didn’t I couldn’t find one but this this shows it pretty well you can see so on the left was last year and so in 2022

That’s what we were growing in all that grass this year we started growing all the dalas on a completely new new slate new area with mulch Arbor mulch all packed down on there and they grew on there they loved it it was amazing we actually had a lot better growth and

More flowers I feel like in the newer converted area than we did last year in 2022 I know I totally agree and you know just just the visual appeal as well because we you know again we just kind of threw everything in that first year in

2022 so it’s weird that we’re going on our third year in a temporary Garden wow when does it not become temporary anymore that’s the question maybe we shouldn’t ask that question no I don’t want to know because I don’t we’re not we don’t want to stay there that much

Longer but um the grass grew so high around all those bags that it just sort of Blended in with the foliage of the delad and it was just like icky bugs and lots of different bugs out there yeah nothing not my mom’s fault at all cuz we

Had already taken over that space so it was just like it needed to be kind of yeah we renovated a little bit yeah we kind of updated a little bit and um it it’s the plants really liked it it looked cleaner um we’re pretty sure Allison’s Mom liked it too I think

She liked it yeah she’s not huge on the mulch but overall she liked it it’s such low maintenance it makes it just a lot more visually appealing so so yeah that was fun and we’ll continue kind of expanding that area and like we said probably add some zenas next year and

Some other we have some other ideas for how to maximize that space and go a little more vertical mhm cuz I mean vertical growing right if you’re I mean we are the epitome of a small space Gardener right now cuz we have containers we have very low space we’re

Like cheering my mom’s entire backyard taking over areas that we don’t mean to but we need to go up yes let’s maximize that space maximize it totally everyone’s talking or Valerie and Tracy are saying how much they love marag Golds because they’re just so easy to

Grow and for color spots well they have this smell to them too to them keeps away too maybe you knew that maybe you didn’t but you can companion plant those with other plants that are more susceptible sh family and the vegetables so if you plant them in

And around vegetables they’ll keep a lot of pests away anyway oh Miracles who knew all right so what do we have moving on to the last one oh we’re on the last one the last one I’m going to move us over here this is the last one there’s so

Many more I’m thinking of but you guys filming filming was a challenge for us this year and we um it just kind of like I don’t know what’s the word I’m looking for it kind of hurts our heart that we can’t do more yes we we wanted to film more we

Wanted to bring more videos we wanted to publish more videos out there talk about more things we had so many things planned for this year really did kind of disappoint it was hard um just with the distance and you know the price of gas and you know even some health and

Logistical things that came up which just didn’t go the way we thought it was going to go but overall it’s great we we did what we we like to do and wanted to do for the most part but we would have liked to have done more well and that

Picture on the left there is part of our bloopers video that we just put out because noise was a huge kind of frustration along with the point of like we it was hard for us to get to our garden to do the filming we would get

There and then it would be like just incredibly loud so if you can so just like the movie play Trains and Automobiles all three of those we dealt with while filming and very loud Extremely Loud Like and one after another it would be like a train would

Go by like all right okay we’ll wait we’ll wait it out and then as soon as that happened it would be like loud planes overhead cuz it’s to make to make one video to make a f minute video it would take us three plus hours I was

Kind of like not even kidding a little disheartening and then it would just be like all right we’re done so we you know it’s a it’s a really a tough it’s a Challen this is another boohoo challeng boo thing for us this was really this really hurt this year cuz we like you

Said we had so much more we wanted to bring you guys and teach you and it just it was very frustrating so we look forward to next year being um I mean I guess okay what’s a success out of that challenge if we could turn it into a

Positive we really worked on our patience oh that’s a good point I don’t know if I succeeded in that yet she did she did I’m I’m her witness she did she did I would get really really frustrated it is kind of close to JBL TR it’s not

That far and there’s also sorry um my mom lives by the water in Tacoma and there’s an airport right across the Waterway and you know growing I actually grew up there and it was like oh fun planes you know it was neat to see but y they they were constant like constant so

Tracy if you can think of Tacoma West Side on the water um and so yeah JBLM we had the c130s flying around there was the army helicopters going over the water Aug it sound constantly you know and two helicopter formations four helicopter formations eight helicopter formations be like what’s going on yeah

So it was it was just from that standpoint it was interesting so it’s you know and it’s it it is what it is right and I guess yeah like changing that into a success I love that you said that we learned patience probably like a

Lot of you in the poll said patience was one of your top you know kind of lessons learned this year yes um for us yeah it absolutely was like we also had to learn it taught us to Pivot a little bit on how we on the types of videos and that’s

Kind of where the garden news came from where we can actually film that from here in the studio so to say and just bring you guys a different type of video you know and it’s it’s something that we’ve been thinking about for a while and we finally rolled it out yes and our

Next one will be coming out soon so but we we have no intention of not doing Garden videos still that that those are coming yes more to come a lot more to come so many more videos to come excuse me so up on the screen here we did we

Had a poll is this is yesterday wasn’t it yes yes so this is yesterday’s poll um in the community section on uh YouTube on our YouTube channel we put out there um you know we miss we miss our summer flowers um we miss all the color and just the Vibrance and so we

Put this out there with which of these flowers cone flowers lavender dalas or Zenia which of these four do you miss and um and then so we wanted to see what you thought so this was taken the snapshot of this was taken yesterday afternoon and from that the majority of

People said cone flowers which I agree I know I totally we wanted to show you this because it just look at all that color look at all the look at all the flowers but I I have to mention though and I love Mark’s comment and I think I

Was just telling you about this cuz I was just uh responding to his comment right before before we went live sure and he’s totally right it’s it doesn’t have anything like he’s like I love basically I love all the seasons I don’t miss anything right now cuz I’m enjoying

This time of year and then that’ll he’s like I can wait for a cone flower like it’s okay okay he was basically like you know just enjoy the holidays enjoy the seasons and then you know it’s going to happen again oh yeah without a doubt and

We we do totally agree with that it’s nice to have that that downtime you know because I miss the flowers I do too I miss the flowers it’s like I’m both yeah so yeah but but these statistics these these numbers are really fun so yeah it

Was cone flowers then it was zenas yay zenas Zas and then dalas and then lavender so there’s so many other summer flowering plants out there but these four um were really we we just really love these are really close to our heart we love growing them every year I know

That’s a good point yeah so with that yeah and so Valerie um Valerie said a really helpful thing she was like you know sometimes life just gets in the way and it’s okay regarding our filming we can make ourselves full there okay and she said we still love you and you know

What thank you thank you for that valer we really appreciate that yes hey we’re going big okay we’re going okay back to normal we’re full scre so checking on the poll that we have running right now um 57% of you in the top Place how to grow a new plant

Was a new Su or a new lesson they learned this year followed by patience yes so yes very cool really cool you guys and then yeah Tracy we agree miss the flowers but I’m enjoying the downtime too so that’s kind of where I’m at as

Well yeah I I like the Four Seasons no doubt about it so yeah it’s always nice and we’re lucky enough to have it here so yeah some people don’t get it some people just have kind of a spring winter and then summer fall all the time they don’t they

Only get two of them they don’t get they don’t get all four seasons I know and I think that’s kind of what Mark was getting at too cuz he’s in El Paso Texas and he he’s like it’s so freaking hot here in the summer like I’m literally

Enjoying this right now I’m going to soak it up and then it’ll get you know the cooler weather from over 100 degree weather yeah he’s like I’m liking this right now so I don’t think Mark’s uh here today yet but Mark if you watch later Mark hi Mark and everybody else

Who joins in um and watches the replay yeah but um it’s just you know at the end of a season it’s fun end of the year which is crazy I know we’re in December it’s almost Christmas mid December you guys how did that happen yeah so in the

New Year’s coming up we’ve got we we’re always planning for videos and different things for the garden and stuff but I mean we got to start thinking about our um you know resolutions I I like resolutions I don’t know hey tell us in the chat if you like New Year’s

Resolutions I like them I know um so well we’re starting to think about seed sewing and um Valerie was mentioning about like winter seed sewing and milk jugs that’ll be coming up soon and maybe some other things that we can start earlier yes um so what about yeah it’s

Just fun to maybe that’s we can talk about that a little more the next couple weeks totally yeah it’s going to be fun yeah making those resolutions planning for the new year um new garden areas new types of gardening Oh and before we go make sure make sure to head over to our

Instagram uh account at spoken Garden or FR Zin um because we have with her we’re doing a co- giveaway of both of our books our book and her book um and there’s going to be two winners and each winner will get one copy each of these

Books so it runs all the way until the end of tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow Sunday already tomorrow Sunday at 11:59 p.m. is when the giveaway is over with so make sure to go over there look for all the rules and everything um and how to enter what you need to do

Down below um the post and yeah we can’t wait to see who wins these oh and we’ll announce on Monday afternoon winners on Instagram yeah and the link if you want to join that or send it to somebody else um the link is is pinned at the top of

The chat for hopefully that helps but yeah that’s kind of fun I don’t know we thought why not let’s give away some books help you guys out so um a couple Tracy and Valerie both mentioned um they don’t make resolutions they set goals and I actually agree with that okay

That’s cool New Year’s goals more like uh what do you yeah cuz a res it is different I mean there is a difference right yeah so sure I resolve to do something better or I don’t know I guess I mean there’s similarities between them

But hey how ever you want to do it I know it’s it’s just good to reflect I think that’s the main thing and then just yeah thinking about the new year ahead and what yeah what is going to come and what do you want to do it’s

Going to be amazing it’s going to be an awesome going be awesome I’m always excited for the new year hey thank you everyone we’re going to wrap it up here cuz we’re kind of running on time but thank you no you’re fine honey um thank you everybody for being here today this

Has been really fun we hope you got a little something out of this episode out of this live and maybe it helped you reflect too on your challenges and success ues over this past year thank you everybody for being here live with us thank you everybody for watching us

In the replay definitely comment down below with anything that we talked about in this um in this live um let us know what you think about uh about the successes challenges what you had this year for Su successes and challenges and next week next Saturday this is

Something we really need to do we’re going to talk about seeds and Seed viability and specifically like if you’ve had all these seeds laying around like packets for up to two or 3 years even like longer like are the seeds even viable anymore so we’re going to go

Through some different you know we’re going to check some of our seeds and just see what we think otherwise we’ll throw them out yep yep and we’ll have some we’ll have a little bit of data to back up what we’re talking about too about how long you know are certain

Vegetables or flower seeds actually viable um if that’s been tested what does that say to give us and you some guidelines on should you throw it away should you keep it and use it this year this next year yeah we have a lot of seeds yeah so hope to see you there um

Next Saturday or right not there here next Saturday and uh yeah have a great weekend and be safe out there I know thank you for spending Saturday morning or afternoon with us and yeah have a great weekend yep bye guys bye everybody