Gardening season is almost here, and that means it’s time to plan the garden layout! There isn’t much growing in my garden yet, but I have lots of exciting plans for the 2024 season, and I’d love to share them with you. Come hang out and walk through my garden with me and we’ll talk about plans for the season.
You can see my winter sowing experiment here: https://youtu.be/OHpkE6sJiPE
Music by Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/
Hey friends welcome back to Homestead on a Prayer we’re out here beside my garden I’m here in Connecticut I’m growing in zone 6 now throughout the gardening season I like to do periodic gardening tours where I just take you through my garden I show you what’s growing it’s
Really kind of fascinating to watch week by week or you know I usually do probably every other week or so and just see how the plants grow and change just to really get an idea of what I’m doing in the garden that’s working and what’s not I think that it’s really useful for
Me as well I can kind of go back and see what worked from year to year and I can improve my gardening from that so this year I wanted to do something a little bit different it’s mid-march right now here in Connecticut there is really not
Very much growing in my garden this year so from that perspective it’s not necessarily going to be the most exciting Garden Tour but what I wanted to do was go through the garden right now while I don’t really have anything growing we’re going to talk about the
Plans I have for the garden this year and then as the season unfolds we’ll see how well those plans work or not as the case may be so welcome to my garden so before we head inside the garden I wanted to first show you my perimeter
Fence as you can see it doesn’t really look like all that much right now but we did did actually just a few days ago plant some snap peie seeds together along this fence they haven’t sprouted yet but ultimately the entire this side of the fence here and then this near side will
Have a double row of snap peas growing on the inside and the outside of the fence so I’m really looking forward to that so that’s really not something new I have been growing snap peas on my garden fence for years now and it always works really well snap peas are climbers
They do really need something to climb so by planting them along the perimeter of the fence I’m saving myself a lot of space in the garden because I wouldn’t really have anything else growing on that perimeter fence and it gives the peas something to climb if you hear some
Random tool sounds over there Dan is doing some work on his car it’s a pretty nice day today here in Connecticut in March that can be pretty rare so he’s taking advantage of the day to get some work done so if you hear some interesting tool noises in the
Background that’s what that is also along the perimeter of the fence you can see some of my herbs are starting to come back this is experiment that I have here which I realize planting in the ground may not have been the wisest choice so far it’s been working okay for
Me but I do have to work to make sure that it doesn’t crawl under the FR crawl under the fence and spread into my main Garden area now as we head on down the fence here’s some peppermint along the fence you know same story there here my oregano coming back this
Actually is smelling really nice and fragrant and then down there we have some lemon thyme and some chives which are just barely starting to come back here if we go around the corner here can see I have some cat mint which this is quite a spread or too this is actually in the
Mint family so it’s not surprising that it would spread even though my cats definitely do their part to try to try to eat a little bit of it and stop it from spreading so that’s the fence perimeter let’s head on into the garden so as we head over here to the first
Garden bed as you can see it’s pretty bare right now I did actually just pull up some ground cherries that I had here they were dead I just pulled up the plants to make space here this bed here is going to have some brasas in it most
Likely I will end up putting broccoli in this bed here but I have this year I’m doing something a little bit different and I’m going to have three beds basically reserved for various brasas that includes broccoli kale cabbage cauliflower plants like that so this one in the front will probably have broccoli
But we’ll definitely have something in that family so as we head on over to the first little mini bed that I have here so I’ve got this bed here and then the one behind it which is pretty much covered with leaves those two beds are going to be dedicated to tomatoes
This year so My really large and determinate tomatoes grow on my trellis walls which we’ll talk about when we get to those beds I think you can actually see one behind me a little bit but I do like to have one of these small 4×4 beds that I use exclusively for cherry
Tomatoes while I really like to support my large IND determinate tomatoes with those trellis walls I find that the cherry tomatoes do okay supported in just tomato cages so because of that I like to dedicate one of these beds to cherry tomatoes the other one is going to be dedicated to determinate paste
Tomatoes because they’re determinate they don’t get as tall they’re a little bit bushier so those can also do well either in a tomato cage or just with a single steak so that’s what these two beds here will be now as I refer to these trellis walls here you can see I
Have one in this bed here this is basically some welded wire fencing we just got at Home Depot supported with some toost I just plant tomatoes along this and they’ll crawl or they’ll climb up vertically they won’t actually climb they’ll have to be tied but they will grow vertically
Which leaves the space in front of them for some other plants so the front of this trellis wall here where we are now gets quite a bit more Sun than the back so what I’m going to do is I’m going to take advantage of that light discrepancy
In this front here I’m going to grow some things that may sprawl but not necessarily take up a lot of vertical space I’m thinking things like zucchinis or plants like that will probably go along the front here I’m going to of course fill in any spaces between these
Plants with with smaller plants like flowers we’ll put some Zenia some Cula flowers like that in here I have lots of flowers planned for this season so hopefully it’ll be a beautiful garden this year and then also some little plants like bush beans can kind of be
Stuck in here and there so that’s my plan for the front of the trellis let’s walk around to the back of the trellis on this back side of the trellis it is going to be significantly shadier once the tomatoes grow up they’re going to create quite a bit of shade here now I
Did actually take advantage of that recent beautiful day that we had to plant some cooler some cold hearty crops here in this bed so nothing sprouted yet but here I’ve got some arugula I’ve got some Perpetual spinach which is a type of Swiss chard this is some type of Asian
Green I don’t know how to pronounce it but I have grown it before and I really like it and then purple po Choy here and then I’ve got four types of lettuce growing on this bed here so lettuce and other greens like that are really sensitive to heat they really like to
Grow in the spring and in the early summer while it’s still fairly cool but once it gets really deep into the summer once it starts to get really hot especially if there’s a drought if not getting enough water those plants tend to do what’s called bolting pretty
Easily that means that they’re going to send up a center stock they’re going to stop putting energy into Leaf production and turn that energy instead towards flowering and ultimately seed production when they do that the leaves of the plants become quite a bit more bitter they aren’t really something that you’d
Want to eat anymore so by growing them back here where where it will be shaded by the time it gets to that hot point of Summer the tomatoes are going to be really large providing quite a bit of shade the idea is that that should hopefully help these lettuce and greens
Survive in harvestable condition a little bit longer into the summer so we’ll see how that goes so here you can see the two mini tomato beds over here is my third mini bed and this is kind of a hodg Podge bed I usually put annual
Herbs in here you can see I have some parsley that overwintered from last year I’ve also planted some dill seeds here as we get later into the season I’m going to be planting some things like basil I’m sure some flowers will go in here too but for now this parsley this
Parsley will most likely go to seed this year parsley is a bial which means that the first year it puts its energy into Leaf production and then the second year into seed production but a lot of times before it really goes into seed production that following year A lot of
Times it will get really big and you can get a nice Harvest of leaves I just want to make sure to harvest what I want from it before it starts sending up flowers and switching to seed production okay so as we cross the walkway here this bed’s
Pretty pretty much empty I do have this Rogue daffodil plant which I did not plant here this has been here for years I think that what happened is most likely a bird originally planted or some kind of creature originally planted a daffodil seed here you know daffodils
Are grown from bulbs you can grow them from seeds but it takes years for them to actually flower and that’s what happened here this plant came up in my garden one year and I was like I think that looks like a daffodil but I wasn’t 100% sure because I didn’t flower and
Then after after I think 3 years of being in this spot it did send up some flowers and since then it’s just been growing larger and getting more beautiful this admittedly is not really the ideal spot for a daffodil to be growing you know in the middle of my the
Middle of my vegetable garden but so far I’ve let it stay because it is really beautiful I just make sure not to plant anything around it that could possibly be confused with it we don’t want to harvest this because daffodils are toxic but they are really beautiful so I’m going to enjoy it
Down here I found a random chamomile plant I did have chamomile growing on the edge of this bed last year but as you can see this doesn’t look like a new Sprout this looks like one from last year that survived the winter chamomile is cold hearty but I didn’t know that it would
Survive an entire winter here in Connecticut so we’ll see what happens with this I’m just going to let it grow and see what happens now the rest of this bed here is going to be an additional Brasa bed I am growing more brasas this year than I have in in the
Past which is really exciting because I love broccoli and cauliflower and all the brasas really so we’re ultimately going to have three beds of brasas I don’t know exactly how I’m going to distribute them all yet but this will be another one of those so it might have
More broccoli or it might have cauliflower and kale I’m not really sure one experiment I am planning to do this year is I normally I start my broccoli seeds inside let them grow and Transplant them out this year I’m doing that but I also tried winter sewing some
Broccoli seeds so I’m planning to transplant some of those out as well and then I can kind of do a side by side comparison to see which one does better now I’ve also got of course these cattle panel trellises here so what I usually end up doing you can see they still have
Little remnants of last year’s beans on them so those will definitely have to be cleaned up before we start planting what I usually do is reserve two of these trellises for pole beans and the third one for cucumbers so that’s most likely what I’m going to do again this year
So across the way from this Brasa bed is what is going to be our third and final Brasa bed this year now you can see I have some scallions growing in here these have basically perennial eyes they come back year after year and then in the back there Milo wants to say
Hi then in the back there you can see I’ve got those are actually a type of Swiss chart called Perpetual spinach similar to what I showed you we planted in that other bed there those overwintered those overwintered and I’m hoping to be able to harvest some seeds
From those this year now this bed here has always been my bed basically my salad bed I usually grow a lot of lettuce in this bed and a lot of other greens as well this year I decided to turn this into a third Brasa bed because
What I am deciding to do as I showed you with that one tomato trellis wall I planted a lot of lettuce and other greens behind it because that’s a shadier spot or it will be once the tomatoes grow my hope is that we’ll be able to harvest lettuce longer into the
Season so since I’m planting my lettuce there I don’t need a whole bed over here dedicated to it so this is going to be a mixed Brasa bed as well so from this new Brasa bed here we can turn across the walkway to this bed where my second
Trellis wall is and there will be another row of tomatoes in this back section of the wall there’ll be more greens just like on the other bed and then in the front there probably Z I might experiment with some smaller pumpkins we’ll see what happens there
And then over here to my left I have my third and final trellis wall which will basically be similar to the other beds that I’ve shown you tomatoes growing on the wall probably some low growing but sun-loving plants in the front and then more greens or more cold tolerant Shea
Tolerant plants in the back so let’s head on over to the Garden expansion the new sidey garden and I’ll show you my plans for there so here on the way to the Garden expansion is my wild and crazy raspberry patch this definitely needs to be pruned
I haven’t done my end end of winter pruning on that yet which I definitely need to do because I want to do that before we start getting new growth on The Raspberries so here along the stone wall on the edge of the garden expansion you can see the th and the lavender are
Coming back Really Nicely over there the chickens see me they’re really anxious to come out so I think when I’m done with this video we’ll go ahead and let them free range for a little bit so over here is the new Garden expansion if you were with me last year
Then you remember when we put this Garden all in together last year so first thing last spring that was my big project we got this whole garden installed and I’m really glad that it’s here because I’ve got lots of big plans for it this year so this is the smallest
Of the raised beds that I have in this Garden here and last year I used this to grow a mix of tomatoes plus some basil and flowers along the edge and I think I’m going to do the same thing this year as you can see at the end of this bed
We’ve got this cattle panel trellis here and last year I attempted to grow melons on the end of this cattle panel trellis which did not work they didn’t really grow very well at all so I’m not sure if I’m going to try that this year or do something
Else so we move back to this bed here this is a strawberry bed and you can see I covered these with a layer of leaves to protect them over the winter but the plants are looking really nice they’ve bounced back really well so I think it’s
Time to clear the leaves away from these strawberries and let them grow so on the second cattle penel trellis here last year I attempted to grow red Chinese noodle beans those were not very successful either I admittedly struggled a little bit with the trellises in this Garden last year none
Of them were really all that successful so we are going to have to rethink things a little bit this year I’m not 100% sure one thing that I am thinking about I did get some seeds for some mini pumpkins I got both the orange mini pumpkin and the white mini pumpkin and I
Was thinking those would be really fun to decorate for fall with and then they would also make a great treat for my chickens once they’re done being used as decoration so I was thinking one trellis with a mix of white and orange mini pumpkins might be really fun so we’ll
Probably do that with one of the trellises over here now on the other side of the trellis this is where I had my sweet potatoes last year I’m thinking that I might do sweet potatoes in the same spot again this year and then I had
Some flowers mixed in as you can see I just left the vines here as kind of a winter mulch so I may do that again this year so I’m still deciding I’m not sure if I’m going to grow quite as many sweet potatoes as I did last year well see I I
Have potato slips or I’m in the process of forming some potato slips and they are starting to sprout so I’m sure if enough Sprout to fill this whole bed I’m sure I won’t be able to get rid of them I’m sure I will end up planting them all
But we’ll see I’m not 100% sure one of the really nice things about growing sweet potatoes is that aside from just being delicious and really good for you they also store really well so we do still have some sweet potatoes left from last summer and it’s really nice to
Still be able to eat something from the garden even though we went through The Long Winter we haven’t had anything growing in a while it’s still really nice to be able to have something like that so for that reason I do really love growing sweet potatoes so honestly we
Will probably fill this bed with sweet potatoes again this year but stay tuned to see what I end up deciding to do for sure so behind the sweet potato bed back here is where I grew potatoes last year and I’m kind of thinking I might change
That up this year the potatoes didn’t do amazingly well for us admittedly we do have this crab apple tree here and that did provide a fair amount of shade to the potatoes which I don’t think they really likeed they didn’t yield as well as they could have so I do have a couple
Things I’m considering for that bed there I was considering doing maybe even more broccoli the thing is that we really love broccoli I know I said I had three beds that I was allotting to brasas but what ended up happening you know planting seeds got away from me as
It often does we did a big winter sewing experiment together and one of the plants that I experimented with winter sewing was broccoli my plan as you can see my rooster he actually likes broccoli too so he’s got a lot to say about this subject so my plan was to if some of
Those Winterstone broccoli plants sprouted my plan was to also start some inside as kind of a backup because I I’ve never sewn winter or I’ve never winter sewn broccoli before I don’t really know how it’s going to do so I didn’t want to kind of put all my eggs
In that basket of Winterstone broccoli and then if it didn’t end up doing well I wouldn’t get broccoli so of course I started broccoli inside too what happened is of course everything sprouted you know I have my Winterstone broccoli in um milk jugs on my deck I have regular broccoli just that I’ve
Started the traditional way inside my house and I also because I wanted to plant enough broccoli to kind of do a side-by-side comparison of those two sewing methods and see how they do I am going to have to allocate a fair amount of space to broccoli broccoli can also handle a
Little bit more shade while it does prefer full sun if it gets a little bit of shade it will still do better than a plant that you’re growing for the fruit so by planting it over here we’ll see what happens and then additionally I also decided to grow sprouting broccoli
This year for the first time I’ve never tried that before so incidentally if you have any experience growing sprouting broccoli I’d love to hear that and I’d also love to hear how you cook it so I wanted to try that as well because of that I’m ending up with quite a few
Broccoli plants so I may stick some extras over here I may also put some Tomatoes over here those do not like shade but one end of the bed gets significantly more Sun than the other so I may end up putting a couple tomatoes in the sunnier half and broccoli in the
Shadier half so that’s a little bit of a wild card I’m not 100% sure what’s going to happen there yet and then here is the final cattle panel trellis of the garden expansion last year I ended up growing a mix of butternut squash and honey nut squash on this trellis which was not
Completely successful but I did get thumb yield from it so I may do that again this year so I think the primary problem that I had with those squashes was getting them to germinate most squashes do prefer to be direct sewn because they don’t like the roots
Disturbed at all so generally what I do is direct sew my squashes but they just didn’t really seem to want to germinate out here what I ended up doing partway through the season was germinating them inside in a paper towel so basically as soon as the little Sprout came out of
The seed I would then take the seed out here and plant it where I wanted it to grow because of that it didn’t really have significant roots to disturb yet and that ended up working pretty well but the problem was that I had done it
So late in the season that at that point it didn’t really have as much time as it would have needed or it would have preferred so I may either I’m probably going to start a few different Milo’s over here getting involved in everything again so I may end up starting squash a
Few different ways to compare I probably will try direct sewing again I may start some inside in pots and I may also try the paper towel method it’s a little Breezy out here so hopefully the wind noise isn’t too bad hopefully you can hear me
Okay so I may end up trying the paper towel method as well and kind of comparing we’ll see so definitely stay tuned and we’ll see what does best for them that so moving on over here you can see that my garlic is up it’s come up really
Nicely so over here I have the classic German white or German extra Hardy that I grow every year and down on this end can see I have some with wider leaves this is elephant garlic which I’m growing for the first time this year I’ve heard mixed things about how
Elephant garlic does in my climate here in Connecticut but I decided to give it a try and at least I mean it survived the winter and it’s coming up so I won’t know for sure obviously until Harvest time but so far I think it’s looking
Like it’s going to do well so we’ll see how that goes so back here against the fence I’ve got my blackberries so we’ll see how those do I may end up because these are fairly young plants and not really large yet I may end up sticking some cucumbers on
The fence in between them so we’ll see how that goes I’m not sure how quickly blackberry plants grow and if I can expect them to really take over this area this year against this other fence here I have some perennial lemon bomb planted which yep you can see it is starting to
Come up here so I have that and then I usually plant cucumbers or something like that along this fence as well so we will be doing that at some point later in the season so finally here is my asparagus Pat which unfortunately my raspberries kind of
Invaded so not really sure how to handle that situation I’m not sure if I’m going to have to relocate the asparagus I don’t know if it’s possible to dig out the raspberries at this point so any suggestions on that would be welcome so that’s my little preseason Garden Tour
I’m so excited about this 2024 gardening season coming up really excited to share my garden with you as the season goes on so thank you so much for hanging out with me as we took a walk through my garden on this cool warmish mid-march day I can’t wait to see you again
Throughout this season I hope you’re having a great day and I can’t wait to see you soon I’ll see you next Time