#sweetpotato #recycling #sustainability #homesteading #spring
Today we will take a tour of the late winter garden and talk about Spring 2024 plans for the homestead! We have been so lucky that the weather has turned warm so early; allowing us to get a jump start on our spring projects! Seed sowing has begun and I’ll show you how to take those toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls and recycle them for garden use! Last year I had a hard time finding sweet potato slips, but not this year! I’ll show you what I’m doing to make sure I have an abundance to taters this season! Thank you so much for watching & for your support! Like, subscribe & share! I really appreciate it! Leave a comment! I love to hear from you!
Music: SHAKE THAT LITTLE FOOT/ SHADY GROVE
Hi everybody thank you so much for joining me here today at Rewritten vintage Homestead well the days are getting longer and the sun is out we don’t have snow in the forecast the weather’s getting warmer these are coming in the mail and these get me really pumped up
So we have started in uh full force on our spring projects trying to get those underway as the weather holds out in between between rain and planting our garden doing some odds and ends so I’m going to have you follow me around today as we plant some seeds we go take a tour
Of the garden I’ve been saving my containers for seed planting my daughter ordered a tray of strawberries and got me all of these really nice plastic containers these are great if you guys can get your hands on some like these in the produce aisle because they were work as like
A h house or is that called a um I can’t think of it but you put your terrarium you put your dirt in here you plant your seeds you’ve got holes here where the water can run through and then the humidity will form in here because of
The Sun and they’re just great little containers to plant your seeds in I I’ve also saved my egg containers I really like these paper ones the best because they can go right into the ground uh once my seats start coming up because these will de compose I did save
The plastic ones as well however I’ll transfer those to something um more sustainable and Earth friendly when they get bigger I’ve got milk containers and I take these and I cut the bottoms off of two I leave one intact on the bottom the other one I cut holes in the
Bottom probably see here fit them right into each other I’m going to put some pine cones in the bottom here to work as a drainage system put my dirt plant my seeds and then the water will run into here I started my seeds Outdoors uh under their grow light but it started
Getting a little cold so I brought them in on my kitchen table with the heat light and I am amazed that just in six days I already have zenas a whole tray of zenyas up and blooming so I’m so and of course to celebrate the occasion I
Got some new chicken boots aren’t they adorable I heated up some warm water here and I’m just going to add a little bit oops there goes my seeds just going to add a little bit of warm water to every Square just to moisten the pellet you don’t want hot Water and we’re trying to get these so we can smush them up so these are the before water these are the afterw you can see they go from being hot dog size to swelling up like a sausage so I got these all broken up and
As you can see some of them filled in really nicely other ones I’m going to have to add potting soil to or a seed mix so make sure that you keep some of that on hand another trick is that you want them to go okay so this is the seed
You want it to go up and down like this don’t put them in like this because when they swell up they’ll get stuck and you won’t be able to get them out okay you want to soak them in water for about 5 minutes and then you can start breaking
Them up now I’m going to top these off with a little seed mix as I’m adding uh my soil to top these off I want you to see I’m not packing it down tight I want to leave the soil nice and loomy so that the root systems don’t
Have to struggle you know it’ll just be a natural process for them and and they’ll germinate a lot faster so don’t push them down and try to pack your squares now that these are all topped off with soil I brought them in and I’m going to very lightly squirt some water over the
Top I don’t want it to turn into mud I just want each of my squares to be doused a little bit because once we put the uh the roofs on or the tops of each of these the humidity that the sun creates inside there will keep them
Moist here we go I think that one’s nice and moist but it’s not mud so we’ll be able to start putting seeds in this one right away in this pod pad I put three seeds of sweet peppers all around here I ran out so in these four pods I have jalapeno
I’ve marked them with toothpicks just in case this would get jostled around and moved a different way but also on my lid here I have a chart that I’ve used that I put what I planted where they are at and then I have the date up in the
Corner so I keep a book on all of my gardening and my plants and that way I know when I planted when they germinated and what I can plan for the next year so I’m all set up in my garage here I’ve got beef steak three rows of
Beef steak three rows of Better Boy three rows of best boy one row of cherry tomatoes and two rows of Cherokee purple which I was not going to plant this year but I didn’t want those seeds to go to waste I have six rows of zenas three rows of
Milkweed one row of yellow peppers and two rows of yellow tomatoes this is all jalapeno early jalapenos back here I have the carnival Peppers they’re all different colors and three rows of Roma tomatoes over here these are all all six rows are sweet banana peppers that my son
Loves and these are all California Wonder peppers and I’m probably not done so I’m probably going to need another light but for now this is a good start I had a really hard time finding sweet potato slips last year and the year before so this year I’m going to
Grow my own I have a whole bunch of small to medium sweet potatoes left that aren’t big enough to do any type of cooking with and over here I have an aluminum pan and I’ve poked holes in it and set it in its lid and then I add my just my regular
Seed mix or potting mix and then I’m going to take the sweet potatoes and I’m just going to lay them in there next to each other you want to give about a half an inch in between uh each of them so that they’re not crowded and I’m going to put these in
Here and I’m going to fill up my other tray here and then I’ll tell you the rest so now that I have these nice and situated in here I’m just going to take a little dirt to spread around them I’m not going to bury them but I’m tucking
Them into bed I want them to be nice and cozy and dark and I’m going to keep these in a dark area of my garage and I’m going to water them about every other day because I don’t want them to dry up I want them to stay nice
And moist and then in a couple weeks each of them should have some sweet potato slips so I’ve watered them slightly and they’re in the nice dark corner here of my garage we have the door shut almost all the time so it stays about 50° in
Here or above and we’re just going to leave them alone water them every other day until they start to sprout these are the two trees that I showed you last summer that had carpenter ants really bad so these were on our list of spring projects deck and got those down today now we
Have to remove all of the debris out of our driveway but this will be nice so we can widen the drive the summer I have got a ton of pine cones I need to clean up but I’m just going to uh bag them up and I’ll be using those for the bottom
Of my PL panners instead of spending a lot of money buying a lot of soil I’ll put a layer or two of these pine cones to take up room and then I’ll add my uh my soil and I also use these to mulch too so I’m not getting rid of
Them but I have to uh I have to get them up off the ground before we start mowing which won’t be long and I want to keep some of the uh little petals off of this off of these pine cones to use in my fire starters see if I can get one off
Onehanded you stick those in their fire in your fire starters and they look so pretty so I’m going to save some for that too let’s go over here and look how my hydrangia is doing aren’t those still pretty you know I’ve been to craft sales where they sell the
Dried ones like this for fall Arrangements that’s something to keep in mind for me next year everything looks good over here and I have a new batch of lambs here coming up I’ve got some flowers coming up here and I can’t find the tag so I don’t remember what they
Were but over here I have Lupine coming back up and it is beautiful when it gets tall we’ve got a long way to go but we’re getting there so I’m expanding my strawberry bed this year uh we added more railroad ties I’m going to have dirt delivered for right in here I’ve already
Got my strawberries ordered it got to the point where the strawberries I had quit producing which is typical um they’ll produce many years for you but then they just go dormant so I’m going to have to uh replant those and I’m so excited that it’s going to be
Bigger and I’ll be able to make pie filling and jellies out of that this right here is the chicken run um it will be covered and have a roof over it this is where the chicks are going to go in about a month and a half and their Coupe will be off the
Ground but they’ll be able to get down down here and run down there and when we are outside with them they will be free ranging they have plenty of room to free range they’ll get a shade there’s trees very nearby right here so their CPE will be nice and uh Shady on hot
Days I can’t wait to get my chickets so we’re going to do some changing to the beds this year I am debating as to if this will be entirely flowers because I I’m going to have my um my little uh store in the front of the yard over
There and I might want to sell cut flowers too I I get a lot out of this little end right here and you can see I already have Holly Hawks coming up they are so resilient and I am so excited to see the colors that they produce and they’re just very
Hearty I have my rhubarb over here oh got something coming up right there but I’m not sure what it is yet and it’s always tricky to see if my uh butterfly bushes are going to come up but I hope so cuz we’ve really been trying to attract the butterflies in the
Bee here bees here remember I mulched all my flowers with leaves and they’re still here see they don’t you don’t lose them all and they just work themselves right back in the soil I water them uh when I first mulch so that they stick and I’m sure I’ve lost a few but
As you can see there’s still a whole bunch on here I came out here the other day and I was really excited to see that the elderberries have gotten their new little sprigs on them so they survive the winter and this is my second year with these so I bet we have some
Fruit this year so that’s Reggie everybody that’s my daughter’s dog and he is Marshall’s birth brother litter brother and he’s actually the older brother aren’t you Reggie but he’s smaller and he is not the most dominant of the two he’s a sweet boy I think this is so pretty right here
On his legs if I can get you a good shot right here if you look at him just the right way it looks like somebody had black fingers and they just grabbed the hold of his leg this over here is where we had our corn pumpkins last year but uh I think this
Will probably be part of the main Garden that we will expand my son’s putting a garden out here as well for his corn he just did not grow enough corn last year he lives uh in town and has limited space this is going to need a lot of
Work here before long I hope the weather holds up but we have an abundance of green nuts out here so I’m going to have to do some raking on this bed before we start working on it but see I have plenty of room I can go further out that
Way with my garden and then add add on for him too he’s wanting to sell his corn as well boy it’s good good sweet corn one thing I worked on over the winter was saving as you can see we were busy this winter saving all of these paper toilet
Paper rolls and paper towel rolls anything that came on a paper roll they were mine so we’re going to work on these today and we’re going to make our pee pots because once our seeds start getting their true seeds which is their second set of seeds up on the stem we’re
Going to have to take them out of their smaller containers and put them in their larger containers and I want those to be something that are recycled Earth friendly sustainable and good for the soil so let’s get started so I tore up all of my toilet paper rolls into pieces one to two
In wide and I let those soak in water overnight and now I’m just squeezing the excess water out the best I can then I’m going to put them in my blender and I’m going to blend them to a pulp I’m going to beat them to a
Pulp and then we’ll start making our pee pot see all that water come out of there I’m going to try to get that most of it out to the best of my ability there we go so you want to just keep on working with it in your blender until you get a
Nice pulp something that you can squeeze into a ball like that so I’m going to take what I just did pour it back in my drainer here and you know it may take it took me four times to get it uh Blended to this consistency so keep
Working with it and you’ll see that now it’s almost like mud so I’m just going to keep squeezing the water out of it which is going to go everywhere that’s okay let that water drain out it’s just like plain in a mud pie but I want it to be wet enough that it’s
Pliable the reason I’m squeeze squeezing the water out is because I want it to dry pretty quick I don’t want to sit for three weeks waiting on my pots so I think we got yeah we got quite a bit of water out so let’s get rid of
That I’ve been saving all kinds of containers these are the bottoms of water bottles that anytime I saw anybody throw one away I was right behind him trying to pick them up so I’m just going to put a little in each of these containers and I’m going to work
It all around the best that I can push it on the bottom first and then try to work your way up now what’s going to be nice about these containers is I’ll be able to put these right into the soil I won’t have to transplant again so it won’t stress my my plants
Out any any more than what they need to be so you just keep working and working and going up the sides here I don’t need it to go all the way up to the top you can see through here I’m just going to take them right about
Here just just enough to give them a place to spread their Roots get a little bigger and go into the ground and the more I squeeze the more water comes out so that’s good we’re almost halfway up this one now and then after I get these where I
Want them I’m just going to leave them alone if it’s a nice day I’ll put them outside on the picnic table to dry uh if not they’ll be in my kitchen and then in a couple days we’ll see if they’ve dried out I can cut the plastic off and I’ll have my containers
I did find that if you have a small spatula like this it helps to squeeze out some of the excess water and it’ll move further up your your container here so this is where I’m going to leave it I don’t want it too thin so that it
Falls apart when I take the plastic off I think this is going to be a nice little size container I ended up getting 12 pee pots made and one big square one before I ran out of Pulp so as each day goes by I’ve set them outside here
To dry I’ll come out here and squeeze the excess water and fill in any holes that I see with my fingers by pinching just pinching it together more until they start getting dry and they’re they’re not flexible anymore and then we’ll cut the plastic Away