My Laziest Garden Yet! + BABY SURPRISE! | FULL Summer Garden Tour 2025!

Can you really garden while 9 months pregnant and lazy? Also, stay tuned for a HUGE surprise at the end 👶 …Your next chapter starts today. Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/anneofalltrades (Sponsored by BetterHelp)
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Stay tuned for more in the next video…boy howdy do we have a story to tell!

Huge THANK YOU to Eric Holljes for helping to edit this video so we could spend some much needed quality time off as family. 🙏🙏🙏

0:00 Intro
0:24 “Banana Tree”, Grape Trellis, Tomato Cages
1:28 9 Months Pregnant!
2:06 Asparagus
4:07 Paw Paws
5:27 Rhubarb from Seattle
6:24 Grapes
6:45 Cucumbers
7:53 Self-seeded section
8:33 A quick word from our sponsor
9:57 Cucumbers cont.
10:33 Onion Harvest, storm, Cilantro
11:51 Lucy the Pig and The Goose
13:34 Cilantro, lettuce, garlic, dill, amaranth carrots
16:04 Harvesting garlic scapes
16:57 Watermelon, Pepper weeds
18:18 Bee swarm!
19:13 Dahlias, carrots, horseradish, zinnias
20:18 Strawberry Fields Forever
21:46 Fruit Trees, figs, and randomness
23:18 Beware of Passion Fruit!
23:48 New Fruit Tree Orchard
24:54 “Sweet Potato, Strawberry, Okra, Watermelon Factory”
27:35 Perspective is Everything
28:52 My Best Harvest Yet!

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MORE ABOUT ME

I’m Anne of All Trades. In NASHVILLE, I have a woodworking, blacksmithing and fabrication shop, a selection of furry friends, and an organic farm. Whether you’ve got the knowledge, tools, time or space to do the things you’ve always wanted to do, everything is “figureoutable.”

I became “Anne of All Trades” out of necessity. With no background in farming or making things, I wanted to learn to raise my own food, fix things when they break and build the things I need.

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Being days away from having a baby during the time of year most people are busting their butts in the garden. Really put every premise of lazy gardening to the test this year. I’ve done the absolute bare minimum in 15minute increments when I can actually waddle out here to get something done. And yet we’ve still got a pretty dang impressive garden. Let’s go see how lazy gardening has paid off. As we walk in, please note the banana tree that I got for Adam and did not get planted because, well, I ran out of breath while I was trying to dig the hole for it. And there it still sits. As we walk past the grape vines, you see where I did actually spend a little time trimming because it didn’t involve bending. And that has resulted in what looks to be a huge oncoming harvest of grapes. There’s another one down there I’m also really excited to show you. You’ll see right here something I tell every gardener not to do. Don’t use tomato cages for your tomatoes. I think in this video you’re probably going to hear me saying do as I say and not as I do. The tomatoes are in. That’s what’s important. There’s something kind of holding them up off the ground. That’s what’s important. Tomatoes need a little bit more structure that allows them to breathe more. But use what you got to get where you need to go. Better than having no tomatoes is having some tomatoes. Oh, perfect. My favorite little garbage disposals have showed up just for such an occasion as this. As I’m out here getting super sweaty in the garden, for those who are very well-intentioned and probably very concerned that I’m out filming a garden video for YouTube, like the day before I give birth, I’m out here because I want to, not because I have to. This is so fun for me to capture this moment in time and to share it with you. And also, I think all of us need a reminder from time to time that things don’t always go exactly the way that we want them to. And that’s totally okay because in the end, everything generally works out pretty okay, even if we felt crappy about it at the beginning of the season. Okay. Oh, this is a really important thing. You’ll notice all throughout this garden, I have asparagus and strawberries interplanted. Those are great things to plant together because they’re both things that can grow in early spring. They’re not going to compete with each other. Both of them are perennials, which means they come back every year. But look at how this little asparagus has these little dots everywhere. This is actually one that you absolutely want to pick because each one of those little round things is going to turn into a seed pod, which will then encourage the plant to put all of its energy into creating more seeds instead of creating more edible stocks. Here’s the crazy thing, though. Normally, I think this would be considered an inedible piece of asparagus. Uh, nope. Uncooked. raw, delicious. Here’s one other important thing. As we’re picking asparagus, though, we want to make sure to pick it all the way down to the roots because leaving a little bit of like snapped off asparagus right at the top of the soil there is going to open the roots up to potential for rot and other disease. So, when you pick, go down low. As we walk through here, we’re going to be picking dinner as we go because, let’s be honest, we got to conserve our steps these days. Everywhere I look right now, I’m embarrassed because this isn’t done. And I’m bummed because I didn’t have enough energy to do that or to get that planted in time. But the reality is in this season, we’re not majoring in the minors, we’re majoring in the majors, and that’s growing a baby. So, here we are doing some baby growing, harvesting some scapes, harvesting some asparagus, keeping on top of what we actually can keep on top of and letting the rest happen as it happens because that’s reality sometimes. Oh my goodness, look at all this asparagus. Take this one and we’ll leave the others. Can’t wait for watermelon. Oh, my papa tree. Look at this. Last year, you saw me frolic through the forest with my little paintbrush and my pollen collecting, getting different ryomal species of paw paws to pollinate my paw paw flowers here at home with. And that resulted in a pile of delicious fruit from this tree I planted myself. And I think we should have some little paw paw clusters starting to appear on here. Oh my gosh, look at this. Yes. Not only will I be the proud baby mommy of an actual baby this year, I will also be the proud baby daddy of dozens and dozens of fruits. June has joined us. She has a little storm anxiety. Here, come here. Usually, the dogs are very much welcomed in the garden because of all the helpful things they do in here. But when we have storm anxiety, we’re a little too needy. Okay. Well, I guess we’ll just take our tour over here for a minute. Right here is a classic example of best intentions and zero execution. I wanted to get some taller garden beds in before I got too pregnant to be able to move. Well, this is how far I got on that project. So, if you have some undone projects around your homestead and you’re feeling bad about it, cut that out. We’re all doing the best we can. Okay. My favorite neighbor. Don’t tell the others. Come over here for a second cuz this is very exciting. If you saw us go back to Seattle our last trip before baby came, you saw us stealing a bunch of rhubarb crowns and I smuggled these back in June. Hi. Love you so much. I’ll pet you over here if you sit over here. Okay, right there is good. I guess something I am phenomenally excited to point out over here is how much the rhubarb plants are thriving. Thanks, I think in most part to Eugene, our bunny’s poop that I have been absolutely loading it down with. Rhubarb is really hard to grow in Tennessee, but I have every faith that we will eventually get some delicious rhubarb custard pies out of these babies yet. I’m actually really surprised all these roots took as well as they did and are already starting to multiply. Okay, June, move your fat little butt so that we can see them. I know you just need a giant thunder shirt. We all do, really, honestly. And while we are picking our asparagus, look at these grapes. If you haven’t seen our propagation videos, check those out. But I did a ton of grafting experiments on these this year, and I am so excited to taste the fruits of my labor. Oh, look at this chunky boy right here. Delicious. A lot of people in the south have a ton of problems growing cucumbers, and I think there’s a few reasons for that. First, this is a succession planted crop, which means it does best if you keep planting more seeds throughout the season. So, for the best cucumbers that actually last all season, put a few more seeds in every 2 weeks all season long. And when the plants start dying off, discard the plant and don’t try to be too precious and save it. Another huge pro tip is keep those leaves up off the ground. So, give them something to trellis on. And probably the most important cucumber tip is to make sure to never leave any of your cucumbers on the vine too long. If you give it the chance to create all the seeds it feels like it needs before the end of the season, it’s going to be like, I can die now. So, be vigilant about picking your cucumbers and your plant will still continue to put energy into staying alive as opposed to succumbing to the many, many, many pests and diseases that we have prevalently living on our cucumbers here in the south. As we’re walking through here, I want you to notice a whole bunch of things that selfseed. I did not plant anything in this row myself. It all just showed up. So, here we’ve got a whole bunch of different colors of snapdragons. Beautiful. Some kind of squash or pumpkin that came out of the compost pile, apparently. Some of my pimmen trees that are growing back there. Here we’ve got some of Frank’s raspberries that we brought over from Washington when we originally moved here that are nectar of the gods just ready to be snacking on. So, the lesson to learn there is that even when things don’t go exactly according to plan, wait a little while cuz something beautiful might show up. I want to give a huge important thing to remember if you have a hard time growing cucumbers where you live is to plant a variety that has some hybrid vigor. So, when a few of my very favorite cucumber varieties were harder to grow, I started growing these. And they are delicious and delightful, and I don’t ever let them go a day past ripeness. It’s raining. We better go inside. The best thing right now, especially with gardening, oh my tea, I forgot, is all the snacks. Everywhere you look, there’s a snack ready to eat. Here, come into the absolute chaos of my office for a moment. And you can see our onion harvest, which is drying in here because it’s raining outside. And this was as far as I could carry it before I got too tired the other day. Are these onions perfect? Absolutely not. But will they dry and store? And will they give us some onions to eat? Absolutely. [Music] Are you so nervous about this dorm, buddy? [Music] Well, the storm is over now, and these two fierce guardians have weathered it inside. These guys will run into a burning barn to save their goats. But a single raindrop and oh no. Let’s go back out to the garden. [Music] Let that marinate for a second while we pick up where we left off out here. This is cilantro, which there’s a bunch of cilantro that are still pickable down at the bottom. But if you let cilantro go to seed, it turns into the spiced coriander. But as I’m saying this, I’m suddenly getting a crowd of animals behind us because they love cilantro. Hello, Lucy. While we give some cilantro snacks, have we actually talked about the hilarity of Lucy and her pet goose? This goose is the guard goose from the chickens that moved over to Miss May’s house. But because the child is afraid of the goose, the goose stayed here. And now the goose has taken it upon herself to guard Lucy the pig. Hilariously, the goose is following Lucy around all the time, eating flies off her ears and also eating whatever Lucy drops on the ground, which isn’t a lot. But another funny side note is because the donkeys, who are also supposedly flock guardians themselves, are deathly afraid of the goose as well, we had to start putting Lucy’s food dish inside this little fence thing because when there’s food for Lucy in the food dish, the goose gets extremely territorial, starts chasing the donkeys, and all heck breaks loose everywhere on the farm. Sorry to tell you, Lucy, I didn’t actually bring you a snack. This feels like a real ripoff. I know. Okay, Lucy, we’ll give you if you come over by the garden, we’ll give you some garden snacks. Okay, before anyone dare tell me that this is a glorified petting zoo and not a working farm, which it very much is, I want you to know right now that these guys are doing the very important work of eating all of the diseased leaves that have fungal spots on them to make sure that they’re fully and completely and forever eradicated from the garden. Back to the grand tour of the self-seeded plant. So, we started here with this cilantro, followed very closely by these lettucees. We’ve got garlic that planted itself and now it’s actually turning into bulbs. I don’t love all this rust on these leaves. But here’s the thing. We’ve still got nice healthy garlic growing under there. So, I’m not worried about that at all. This now gentle reader is called green garlic. Right here we’ve got some more self-seeded lettuce. This one is still totally pickable. We can pick it. As long as we never pick more than one/ird of the plant at a time, it’ll keep coming back until eventually it gets tired. And then it’ll start producing seeds, which is exactly what this plant is now doing. We’ll let that go to seed. Let those little seeds blow all over this place, and we’ll have more lettuce again soon. And then all through here, we’ve got more self-seeded dill. This is basically a pickle factory at this point because it’s very conveniently right across from the pickling cucumbers. Tada. Keep those pickles picked and your plant will keep on growing. Shush. I know it’s so hard not to get snacks on demand and I’m over here eating pickles and talking about all of your favorite foods. We’ve also got some more lettuce that is self-seeded. Also definitely didn’t plant this amaranth, which will itself grow seeds that are an ancient grain. You can grind them and use them for flower. You can eat the leaves, but far more importantly for our purposes. We let amaranth grow wherever it wants to in the garden because it’s a fantastic trap plant for a lot of the pests that bother things like our cucumbers. I feel like I’m talking with my mouth full here and that’s a big no no in our house, but I’ve given up. All of these carrots have self-seeded from one carrot that I let go to seed all the way down there. Here we’ve got some more self-seeded lettuce. A whole bunch of self-seeded strawberries that just keep migrating over from our strawberry field over there. Can’t stop it. Oh, I did actually technically plant these figs that are growing right here, but it’s actually for a really funny reason. So Johnny and June were previously using this little doggy run and I didn’t want them running through the bed. So I grabbed a bunch of fig clippings, stuck them in the soil like little fence post. And shock of all shocks, now we’ve got some figs growing in here. I’m coming in and harvesting all these scapes even though they’re a little past their prime. If you ever want to hear a really long winded explanation about how garlic grows, which is really, really fascinating, check out our fall garden tour video from 2024, it’s a real hoot. I’m taking these now because I want all my garlics that are still in the ground on there to put all of their energy into creating giant big bulbous garlic bulbs. Even if I am a little late, far better to get these scapes before all those seeds escape. And we basically only have a garlic garden next year. The Italian in me really loves the idea of a garlic only garden, but we still got to have space for artichokes and other important things. So, this is a garlic scape that has started to make seeds and already grow little garlics. This is what you don’t want. Right here, we have a little baby watermelon. Yes, this obviously came from some watermelon I obviously didn’t get to in time last year, but lucky me, that means I get more watermelons this year. In here, we have a literal forest of what I’m going to lovingly call pepper weeds. Clearly, when I was harvesting the habaneros that I had planted here last year for my hot sauce, I must have dropped some habaneros that have now turned into hop habanero pepper plants that are growing of their own valition. But I have left them here to grow to basically select out the one or two pepper plants that are going to be the healthiest, most vibrant, most disease resistant because those little jerks, Howdy and Bella, ate the tops off of all of my Carolina Reaper scorpion peppers, Korean peppers. So, we’ve tried to save them. They’re over here. Oh, just before we go, oh, a strawberry. Of course, this is a great opportunity to have a second look at my beautiful grapes and a whole bunch more self-seeded strawberries. Some figs I propagated with an accidental stick. And oh boy, here we are at the peppers. They don’t look like much, my friends, but with enough Eugene poop, they will potentially survive. And since we’re standing here, here’s another self-seeded watermelon. I am so proud of you, buddy. Oh my gosh. Do you hear that? There’s a bee swarm. We should go see if we can find it. Follow your ears. It’s coming from over there. Oh, this is exciting. Oh, Mother Goose, don’t mind us. Ah, there it is. There it is. There it is. H. Okay, so here’s what’s happening. When a beehive senses that they are getting too full for the boxes in which they’re living, they will start raising a new queen. And that new queen and a handful of bees will abscond from the hive together to find a new place of residence. And that’s exactly what’s going on right here, right now. Back to our garden tour. Okay, if we can just round this corner really quick, we’ll say hello to the Chinese mulberries, which are doing their thing. Here’s some Dalia that are doing their thing despite my best efforts with the weed whacker. And a whole bunch more carrots that have selfseeded. Oh yeah, also my horseradish, which is clearly under attack by something, but thriving nonetheless. Here’s even more carrots and some carrots that are even going to seed, which will reseed this just so nicely again next year. We love that. I said earlier that amaranth grows little grain. This is the start of the grain that you can grind up and use as a wheat substitute. In all honesty, they turn into enormous trees because of the Tennessee sun and our very healthy soil here. So, I usually just pull them up when they’re in the way, toss them over the fence, and the cycle has just continued. Some snapdragons that are just a whole bunch of different colors that just showed up here, probably because there was a snapdragon over there last year and it migrated over here. I think I might have called these snapd dragons and they’re definitely zenyas, but welcome to pregnancy brain. It’s a real hoot, let me just tell you. As we’re walking down the way here, you can see how all these strawberry weeds self-propagate. They send out runners which put down roots. And if I’m not careful, they’ll just keep jumping over lane to lane and make a zillion more strawberries, which is actually fine with me for our love of propagation. It’s just that I don’t want my pathways full of strawberries. So, I’ll keep these pulled up and plant them somewhere I actually want them. Will I actually get to that with this handful? Only time shall tell. I’ve been taking all the strawberry weeds and putting them in this vertical grower, but it’s gotten full a long time ago. So, now we’ve had to create a new space. Subtle foreshadowing. If we continue on this Oh, there’s baby figs all over this. Look at this. Oh, they’re so cute. Yes. Love to see it. Lucy and the goose are in Lucy’s little house right now, and Lucy is really ticked off that the goose will not leave her alone in there. Love that. And then over here, this is yet another brilliant project that will remain undone for another season. But you can see the strawberries in this little section got completely out of control. And I had every good intention of uprooting all these crowns and taking them over there and planting them. I only got a small selection of them actually moved. So, there’s probably a bunch of rotting strawberries in here, and that’s just going to have to be fine for the year. Also, my apple tree that I planted on the same day as I planted my peach tree remains much smaller than the peach tree. Yet, it still holds on and survives another year. Some random squash that I don’t even know what it is has planted itself over here. I guess we’ll find out what that is eventually. Some fig sticks that I trimmed off of that are growing wonderfully there. We’ll have some new butterc crunch lettuce seeds coming up on those soon. Arugula, my favorite pizza garnish, is uh mostly going to seed now, but that’s okay. 7 billion peaches, which I’m very excited to eat soon. All right, let’s just laugh about the fact that this whole section, this whole section, and this whole section of the garden has completely been taken over by strawberries, and there’s literally no room to grow anything else except for the garlic weeds, which obviously also grew up in here, which is great. I mean, we love garlic. We love strawberries. But this is what happens when Ann’s propensity for propagation gets a little out of hand. So, we got to figure out something to do with all these crowns next year. It was the plan this year, but here we are still in the midst of strawberry fields forever. Down strawberry pathway, I have mulched all of my fig propagation projects with some Dalia clippings. Oh my gosh, look at this enormous strawberry. This is like the most perfect strawberry you’ve ever seen. Two years ago, I planted passion fruit in the garden over there on those trelluses because I thought it would look really cool and grow really well, which it did. But then it became an absolutely noxious weed that, like pretty much everything else I propagate, took over the entire garden. So now I learned my lesson and I plant it in pots now. And once these pots start doing something, I’ll take them and put them somewhere that we can actually get some passion fruits. But at least we’ve got the growing process started. Oh my gosh, look at how cute this baby asparagus is. All right, we’ll take our strawberry weeds, say hello to the orchard as we’re walking by. Some of the trees are doing better than others, and that’s okay. I say everything in the way on the way. I’ve been meaning to come over and clip this dead little section off of here for a while, and I just knew I was about to walk by here. So, that’s done now. Oh my gosh, Adam almost just fell into the pond, which would have been truly unfortunate given its current state. Oh, buddy. Really happy about this is probably our best fairing apple tree we’ve ever had, which that pleases me so much because they’re so hard to grow here. But of course, that’s a heat loving variety. So, this is kind of neat. This is the hazelnut trees that I’m working on propagating that are intermixed kind of unintentionally with a whole bunch of thornless raspberries and blackberries that I’m working on propagating over here cuz you know this is a place that I end up having to weed eat all the time and I don’t want to. Which brings us now to my new and improved sweet potato, strawberry, okra, and watermelon growing factory right over here. So, we can see some little baby okras are already coming up. That’s very exciting. We have five or six different varieties of sweet potatoes that I grew last year that I’ve just planted over here as well. I don’t know if you remember me pulling those baby legs sized sweet potatoes out of the first year lazy garden I used as an example last year, but each one of those things overwintered amazingly well. So, I’ve gotten a ton of slips from those giant, incredibly successful sweet potatoes that I’m so excited. And the cool thing about growing the sweet potatoes with the okra, which I did last year, is the sweet potatoes will spread out on the ground here. They’ll keep the weeds in this area, which are prevalent to say the least, a little bit at bay, but it truly doesn’t really matter because we have to fork this ground to get this up anyway. But then the ochre will still be able to grow super tall and have a nice shaded root system thanks to the sweet potatoes. So that was a great thing to make happen last year. Glad I did. And since we have our strawberry weeds with us here that I just pulled out of the garden over there. These are random Dalia bulbs I pulled out of the garden while I was weed whacking. And we can interplant a whole bunch of strawberries which will creep around. We’ve got some random beans growing. I literally just tossed a like handfuls of random seeds, I think. Also, you maybe saw me establish this bed last year in the fall garden tour video. Oh, yes. This is the section of the garden that I caught on fire with the blowtorrch. So, roll tape. Oops. Oh, that was too much. And as I’m dropping a few of our strawberry weeds, I’ll just tell you that this area is a classic example of the principle of done is better than perfect. Because someday I want this whole orchard area to look as beautifully put together and chaotic as the other area of the garden. But this place is not quite ready for landscape perfect planting yet. So, we use what we’ve got, which is space to plant or propagate the plants that we eventually want, and we put off what we were planning to do this year for yet another year. And that is 100% a-ok. Okay, as long as you can convince yourself that that’s the case. And I’m doing really a lot better at doing that this year. I think it’s really really important, especially if this is one of your first years gardening, to first never compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. This is very much a middle. I was able to basically do nothing this year because of all the hard work that I’d put into creating a lazy system for the last several years. Even that wasn’t a ton of work, but it is a bit of work every year. And part of my own discouragement as we’re entering a new gardening season is that I know I might take a step or two back this year. But it’s in service of something that’s way more important to me than a garden ever was. Adam and I have been trying to have kids for 12 years. And this is the first pregnancy that actually took long enough to actually get somewhere. Am I scared as hell about how the next few days are going to go and then every day after that? Absolutely. But we’re going to do our best like we always do. And sometimes our best looks a whole lot different than it does other times. And that’s just got to be okay. My mom always said, “In the end, everything’s going to be okay. And if everything’s not okay yet, it must not be the end.” And now for my next magic trick. I’m going to snap my fingers and then there’s going to be a baby here. Whoa! I can’t believe that worked. All right, little buddy. Wild stuff. Let’s go teach you to be a lazy farmer, shall we?