Vegetable Garden Update December 2023

Thought I’d do a last update for the year on how our vege patch is doing, including the big crop of potatoes and corn we’re trying to grow as an experiment in one of our fields.

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Hi I’m Sarah and here with another very amateur V patch update I’ve just been getting a bit busy because my cauliflowers Have Been Going Hammer and tongs you might have seen in my last video I picked a couple of huge ones I picked another one the other day and then

Today now I picked this one cuz it was just starting to separate and go all spindly but also it had started to get it purple tinge but apparently a slightly purple ting you can get some that grow purple on purpose but this one is meant to be

White so I looked it up and apparently it’s still it might not be picture perfect Supermarket worthy but it is still fine it’s perfectly edible it’s just had a little bit much sun exposure so that’s fine that’s all good um now I also mentioned as well that I eat all

The leaves off my cauliflower of course there’s a lot of leaves in these and I’ve actually been ripping out all my old cauliflowers um a lot of them still have leaves so what I’m going to do with most of these is actually just chop them up and put them in the freezer because

They’ll be perfectly good for months to come so there we go lots of leafy greens there so I’m just clearing a spot because I had a lovely lady who I don’t know if she wants to be named or not so I won’t come to visit me the other day

Um with a whole heap of seeds a lot of which were heritage seeds um that she just wasn’t going to get around to planting she’d she’d got heaps of them and they were borderline expiry so now that I’ve got a bit of space after taking my cauliflowers out I’ve

Still got a couple that are growing so that’s cool um but I’m also going to put in I’m going to have another go at cucumber I’m not going to bother nurturing them in pots inside this time of year I’m just going to put them straight in the veggie patch fingers

Crossed if they grow yay if not hey so something else that I inherited off her was the last of one of her packets of sweet Bell mixed capsicum so I’m just going to put that there I’ve got my um my next lot of carrots are just starting in the row

Over here got some potatoes over here but um here’s where I dug up some of my leaks and so there’s nothing growing there at the moment so I’m just going to pop some capsicum seeds straight in the ground I’m just going to put them along the edge because I know when capsicums

Grow they tend to grow up and they often need some kind of support so at least on the edge there I can put something just to hold them steady so I just been doing some watering and some weeding and look what I found not only a fourleaf this is a

Six leaf clover how cool is that I decided not to pick it I don’t know if you meant to pick them or not but six Lea Clover that’s cool I’m going to leave it there I’m hoping it’s good luck for the veggies I have no noticed my

Yams that we planted in the bathtub last time look at that look like little clovers they’ve just started to pop up so that’s cool got the first signs of Life over here we planted a um sort of a we trelly thing all hopeful that I was going to grow girkin but some late

Frosts completely killed them off so um but I do have some tomatoes in my Deli counter Greenhouse there that need transplanting so I’m just going to put them here cuz they need a bit of support anyway I’ll show you while I’m here at how impressive look at that that you’d think

That was a um you’d think that was a beetroot it’s actually radish my radishes are growing absolutely huge this year the garlic I think this is called rust what’s happening to the garlic here so I’m going to have to uh look up some advice if that means I should be picking

It or if I should just leave it to die off but another thing I am going to do you saw in my last video I picked a whole heap of my leaks from the other vegie patch cuz they started bolting well same thing same thing there as I

Say this thick stalk that isn’t kind of like the rest of the leak I still I chop that up into little bits and use it in cooking my kids actually quite like just snacking on it as is bit weird but any that haven’t started bolting I’m going to leave

But most of them actually have even the little ones so I’m actually just going to chop them all up small I’m just going to put them all in a bag and freeze them and I’m going to keep them for like the winter months when I’m not so good at

Growing stuff so we’ll still have some veggies going on where I just dug all those leaks out from I’m actually going to have my first ever grow growing brussel sprouts um it might be a bit early to plant them I’m not sure but my theme for today seems to

Be Chuck it in and fingers crossed so I’m going to go with that you meant to space them out I think I read about 60 cm apart um I’m actually really good at not following instructions so I’m not going to space them out that much I’m

Sort of going to crisscross a little bit I’m a bit of a weirdo I really really like brussel sprouts both my girls do but Aston and Clint can’t stand them so all the more for me I reckon so I’m just going to Chuck these in the ground so another thing I’m harvesting

Today May notice my broccoli it’s actually just on the verge of uh bolting on me so I’m going to chop up a couple of these it’s going to go with our dinner tonight there we go little bit late harvesting those but two awesome broccoli going to go with our bangers

And mesh tonight all good I’m just heading back out to our uh our Paddock where we planted all those potatoes and everything I think it was in my last Garden update I did that um we’re planting heaps of potatoes as a bit of an experiment um just to see how well

They’ll grow in the ground there if they don’t get decimated by bunnies if they do okay I’ve tried and failed in the past um the ones in the veggie patch that I’ve got planted they’re basically just for our own use the Heat we’ve got in the paddock over there will potentially be for

Piggies um cuz we want to get pigs again but we’re just experimenting with different ways of feeding them cuz we just couldn’t Source enough food scraps locally to fully feed them and we don’t want to have to be buying food in if we can help it so

Anyway bit of a Funny Story with these potatoes the potatoes themselves are doing brilliantly really happy with how they’re looking now one thing you may have seen the clip of both me and my husband first of all uh Clint went driving around the paddock was a plow to

Get all the soil up um but one thing that he didn’t realize was that I still I’d left some Jerusalem ARA chokes in the ground from last year and um so he completely plowed over where they were so I thought oh well never mind if they pop back up they do if not

Not they’re popping back up now these things are really hard to kill we’ve been told so not only have they um been plowed and spread around of course we got the rotary hoe I think that may have chopped some of them in half cuz I’m sure I didn’t leave that many in the

Ground um we’re we’re getting a decent padic full these are all the potatoes that we planted interestingly um the one line in the middle there is doing a lot better than the rest of them but all in all we’re we’re getting heaps of them so pretty stoked with how the

Potatoes are doing now walking through these that there’s a Jerusalem AR choke starting to pop up um I had originally planted them way over there so these things we’re we’re getting there’s there’s one there so we’ve got we’ve got one popping up in the middle of a potato Mound there’s

There’s one there there’s one there there’s all around there we’re getting these Jerusalem AR chokes there’s there they’re popping up all around there there’s there’s a big heap of them around here it is absolutely hilarious there’s a few here few there so I think they’ve actually just kind of been chopped up

And spread throughout the paddock there’s a couple there there’s a couple there there’s one over there some there I mean it’s a good problem to have cuz at least they’re edible and they’re nice there’s one down there that’s kind of hilarious we we’re getting all these

Standy back here I can see them there’s one I can see one all the way out there so that is really funny I did spread some pumpkin seeds around I wasn’t sure if they’d take there’s another AR choke but yeah there’s a couple of you know patches of the

Pumpkin seeds coming up so that’s pretty cool and another out of Choke as for my corn that I planted some of it is growing that’s a bit of corn there got a few bits there we got got one there got one there so we got a got a few bits of corn

Popping up but again I’m going to have a weed around them and just do a bit of a inventory I can see another one there as for the beach root I’ve sort of got maybe only about half a dozen of them seem to be coming up so I mean we’ll

Just leave them to it see what happens so we’ve set up this sprinkler on a pole and um but yeah we actually need a secondary one cuz it Doesn’t reach the whole way around just been doing a bit more harvesting I’ve just grabbed out a broccoli and a

Few little broccoli heads That Grew From ones that I’d already picked out and another big monstrosity that’s starting to go purple in the Sun but that’s awesome that’s that’s going to be roasted up for our dinner tonight and some of these radishes now look check out the size of

These look at that that is a radish they’re meant to be like Smalls however some of these radishes I’m actually going to Gra and put in the freezer cuz they’re actually they’re good just in one pot cooked dishes and that sort of thing oh it’s bright out here um but

Also apparently they’re good roasted I’ve never tried roasting a radish before so because I’ve got so many of these big ones I’m doing a roast dinner tonight and going to Chuck some of these in I’ll report back okay so I just thought I’d finish this off I’ll just

Give you a quick rundown of what’s going on cuz a lot can change in a month and of course I’m sort of filming these as like a monthly or bonly type videos so we’ll start off down on the ground round here cuz we’ve got a lovely little pumpkin I obviously dropped a

Seed I’ll just leave it see what I oh my goodness I’ve only just noticed we’ve we’ve got a little pumpkin patch growing down there what how did that happen seriously I don’t even remember dropping seeds oh God that’s funny anyway potatoes some of them are starting to

Flower now I mean of course these potatoes we could Harvest them early and get Christmas potatoes but I don’t want to I like I like getting them to grow nice and big yeah I know I need to weed all right leave me alone so we’ve got my

Next lot of of carrots coming up I’ve got a couple of rows them going on we’ve also got bit harder to see but my little wee baby spring onions starting to spring up there so I’ve got a little row of them we’ve got some more random

Potatoes from of course I where we plant our potatoes each year inevitably some get left behind we’ve got a pumpkin plant here that’s doing really well and because quite a few of my pumpkins died off in the frost and we had pumpkin for dinner one night and I just put some I

Didn’t bother drying the seeds or anything I just thought I’ll just bung them in the veggie patch see what happens so that’s one of them that’s one of them and there’s one of them over there so I’m pretty happy with that it looks like we will be getting Pumpkins

This year so I actually just picked the last of my cauliflower so I just need to have a bit of a tidy up around here now sort out some of these leaves pull the plants out I’ve got broccoli that’s going to seed there well and truly um

You can eat the leaves I mentioned on a previous video you can actually just pick all that Chuck it all in your cooking I leave them here as you know because you get little bits you get all little bits and you know you can put

Them together you can make a bit of a meal out of them and also the leaves the leaves are great for chopping up putting and things my yams are doing really well now um much like the potatoes when they first start growing if you cover them

Over just just get some dirt and cover them over and they’ll just keep springing up and you’ll get some more yams so we’ve got quite a few quite a few springing up here my spinach has kind of gone nuts I’m actually going to look at plucking a whole heap of these leaves a

Lot of people don’t like eating them when they get to that stage they reckon they taste a bit bitter but I don’t it doesn’t bother me I’m going to look at plucking a whole heap of these leaves and just chucking them in a bag in the

Freezer use them as needed cuz I’ve got to P little tomato plant under there trying to uh trying to survive so I don’t want it to get swallowed and I’ve got another tomato plant here that’s doing really well and another one that’s that’s hanging in there under the spinach so yeah that’s

On my to-do list today sort that spinach out as for these radishes I’ve actually just noticed theyve started bolting and going to seed on me um so I’m actually going to look at digging all these up too and I may look at planting some more cuz

They’re quite a good year round thing um the ones that are in here I’m going to grate them I’m going to chop the leaves up and I’m just going to freeze them all just so you know those ones the other day that I roasted beautiful really nice I highly recommend roasting radishes if

You’re not big on their peppery flavor roasting them actually mowed out that peppery flavor a lot I chucked them in there I had them with some broccoli and some roast cauliflower and potatoes so nice once they start getting to this sort of stage they do T they do start

Getting quite Woody so I’m going to grate what I can cuz they’re really good at just chucking in one pot dishes sew are the leaves chop them all up going to freeze them keep them the carrot the carrots are looking gorgeous I don’t think they’re quite

Ready for picking so if I just just dig down a little bit with you know we’re nearly there we’re not quite there but we nearly are um I had a look somebody said if your garlic is rusting which mine well and truly is they said just just Dig

Down see if there’s a bulb growing if there is a bulb growing just leave it Harvest as normal so that’s what I’m doing but apparently I’m not to plant them in the the same spot next year I need to find a different spot I’ve got heaps of lettuce here growing

Beautifully amongst the weeds you’d think I’d weed actually before I start filming wouldn’t you you’d think but I don’t I keep things real so what I actually did was quite often when I plant my lettuce I plant them like an individual seeds in a row

But then I saw um the guy who does the self-sufficient me he does Facebook posts I think he might have a YouTube channel as well and basically I want to be like him when I grow up he’s awesome I saw him plant lettuce and he just

Sprinkled it all in a row and I thought I’ve never thought of doing that so I did it and it’s it’s brilliant I keep coming out here and picking leaves and they just grow back so I’ve just got a lovely Weir LS row that just keeps renewing itself so I’m definitely doing

That again I’m not sure if any of my Brussel sprouts are coming up yet but I’ll just keep an eye on them but the rest of those spuds look at them they are looking absolutely beautiful so I’m just going to let them run their course wait till they start dying off

Which will probably be in another couple of months or so and see what kind of harvest we get from there Christmas is approaching this will be my last video for the year cuz we’re actually heading over to the West Coast on holiday next week um going on a camping traps going

To be good so I may slack I might be slack for the next week or so at releases videos I hope you all have a really good Christmas happy New Year stay tuned I’ll be back after New Year’s with some more videos some more ideas any ideas you guys have got throw

Them at me cuz when I say I’ve got more ideas I lie I come up with these week by week seriously um that’s how unorganized I am stay tuned have a good one and we’ll see you in 2024 bye