Vanilla beans come from a vining orchid. They don't bloom until the vines are about 20' long. I've had mine for about 5 years and it's just now getting long enough that it MIGHT bloom. When it does bloom, you have to be the pollinator (there is only one bug that does it and it's only located in the original country) and there's a special way to do it. The blooms only last ONE day so you have to pay attention and be quick, lol. If the bloom pollinates, it takes 9 months for the bean to mature. Now I understand why the beans are so expensive.
@@veliaantila1099 I grow them indoors. They're doing beautifully. If I can get citrus trees to bloom, then provide the pollination with a paint brush and get fruit - which I have done - then surely once this vine blooms (and it will since it's an orchid and orchids bloom in indoor environments), I should be able to pollinate it and hopefully get vanilla beans. Yet, isn't the experimentation half the fun? The challenge? And what time am I wasting? It doesn't need to be constantly watched over. Open up to the possibilites that are out there, my dear.
@@KaiSub Mine were on a shelf in a sunroom where the vines were growing up a window frame and the sunroom has gotten as cool as mid 50s and they showed no stress.
Wowee, gents I was so surprised to hear you mention my plight with kale. Your advice is taken. Just to let you know, I do grow tomatoes, many colours of cherry as well as huge Alisa Craigs that were fantastic, as well as a 'black' cherry tomato that ended up more purple than black. I also grow Paris atlas carrots, a variety of beetroot, I love the burpee golden; and lastly, salad blue potatoes as well as red and purple Duke of York potatoes. Entering the boat in the Summer is challenging 🤔, but the produce is a blessing and a joy😄 Kevin, thank you for your channel, I started growing microgreens after watching you!
@@Estertje93 Hi Ester, thanks so much for your message😁. No Instagram account as YT is about as far I go in social media. If you are growing this Spring/Summer, hope all you grow turns out fabulously 😆
hahaha i noticed that too. i think because he is european, i wear shorts and tshirts from around 13-15c for californians those temps are prob too cold.
@@dirkjanrulez23 Years ago I was on Tenerife on vacation in February. There it was like 18 to 20°C. At my place it was freezing. So I was walking around in Tees and shorts while the locals were all bundled up
Funny story about broccoli. I grew collards from seed that I purchased from a local seed provider. They were labeled as collards but seems they weren't. So I did a cut and come again method for harvest for a few weeks only to have them 'magically' grow into broccoli. I was none the wiser, the greens were delicious! 💚
That pineapple one is true. I’ve been growing em for decades here in Hawaii. Takes time to fruit but when you do get one, it’s beyond any store bought one. Ridiculous sweet. But yes they do take up a ton of space. I grow them in their own individual containers. 10 gallon squat pots. They do really well. At least they are portable and not permanent. Try it!!🤙🏼👍🏼🙏🏼👊🏼
I learned to grow pineapple from my Grandfather in Florida. He had a huge patch next to the shed, had to cage ripening fruit so the rabbits don't steal them! I have now grown them in pots in both NY and WA! They take a while, yes... But I agree that the fruit is far better than store bought. I think since they're picked before ripening.
Rhubarb and strawberry smoothies were my FAVORITE this year…recipes online with coconut milk for a pie like smoothie. AIP COMPLIANT auto immune protocol elimination diet. Rhubarb freeze dries well for southern folks to enjoy.
My favorite use of ground cherries was with cheese and spinach as a stuffing for perogies. The sweetness of it combined with the tart of the spinach and salt of the cheese was soooo good! Another fun way to use them is to slice them in half and dehydrate them: they make great candy.
Hey guys! Love the show :) A small tip for Rhubarb is to put their feet in the shade and make the leaves stretch for the sun. This way you get much longer stalks and you get to your pie sooner! Big hugs from SA! keep growing :D
summer. I would never have tried it except for a hydroponics grower in Ohio does it. She sows broccoli seed like for micro greens but grows them out til the leaves are almost a bit bigger than your hands. Maybe 6 to 8 inches. Then she cuts them like micro greens and uses them in stirfry or in salads. I had a few broccoli that went to seed on me last year so I kept the seeds and grew them like extra big microgreens. Cut and put in stirfry they were awesome. I plan on letting a few plants run to seed to have extra seeds for winter growing in the house under lights. (I have led shop lights and led grow lights and they are the best. Plus hubby did some math according to the specs on the box and with the timers my electric is only running about $3.50 to $4.50 extra a month. Totally worth it for my greens/houseplants/green onions and lettuce I grow under them.
I know a lot of people think they are bland but as someone who tends to prefer icebergs and romains, I found the broccoli leaves to be VERY pleasant. It took me 3 years to successfully grow broccoli heads, so being able to eat the leaves made the crop worth the failure otherwise lol
I don't think that I've ever eaten rhubarb that wasn't from a plant that was at least 100 years old. It seems like it's impossible to kill, my buddy buried an ancient rhubarb patch under 2 feet of bony gravel to build a driveway and it pushed right up through it in 2 years..it's still there 40 years later...
istg some people in the past must had seen a big ol' rhubarb and thought _“man, I bet this plant will lives for centuries and become a plant spirit”_ then create the myth about Mandrake 😂
I kinda agree about the broccoli, thats why I started growing Chinese broccoli. You can fit tons of plants in a tiny space and get lots of crowns, leaves, and stems.
Growing Yod Fah and Rapini this time. I hope I actually get something to eat this year. Last year was my first year growing Brassica of any kind. All bought from local stores got a few leaves of Cabbage but all the broccoli got a tiny head the size of my thumb and then bolted within a day or 2.
Yes, or try one of the sprouting broccolis or broccolinis. Purple sprouting broccoli does very well for us over our whole cool PNW growing season; you treat it like a "cut and come again" plant and it's super-productive for months. Nothing better after a day of gardening than a broiled broccolini and fresh mozzarella sandwich with butter and lemon zest!
Living in Maine I can't imagine not growing rhubarb! There's so many options for cooking with it beyond just strawberry rhubarb pie: drinks like wine or shrubs; using cherries instead of strawberries for less sweet pies, cobblers, and jams; in marinades it's perfect for pork or turkey; and the leaves make good compost or lay them flat to suppress weeds. As an additional benefit when your bed gets too full, cull it down and give the plants as gifts (though, hopefully the recipient won't notice your eye twitching).
I do a lot of the same things, but I also use it to make the Filipino dish, pork adobo. I replace the vinegar with rhubarb and it makes an amazing sauce!
Here in Denmark it's very popular in jam, both in different combinations like strawberry or elderflower but also on its own. It's great as compote for "old-fashioned chicken" which is a whole chicken stuffed with parsley and pretty much lightly caramelised and then cooked low and slow until it's fall off the bone tender, served with potatoes, a brown sauce made from the juices, homemade pickled cucumber, and depending on the season either rhubarb compote or foraged mushrooms. With the rhubarb it's a perfect summer classic here. Rhubarb cake is also fantastic if you need a variation from the pie, and keeping with desserts the ultimate Danish classic summer dessert that we also use to torment foreigners with by challenging them to pronounce it, rødgrød med fløde. It's a variation of a compote served with cream according to the tongue twisting name although I personally prefer it with whole milk (which only adds to the linguistic torture as that's called sødmælk). Rhubarb syrup mixed with water, either still or sparkling, for a refreshing cordial is also quite amazing.
I use radishes as diversion crops to keep cabbage flies and other nasties off my crops. The bugs seem to develop a taste for whatever grows early, and losing a few 20-day radishes is a good trade for untouched bigger veggies! Elk ate my rhubarb down to the roots- oxalis acid-housing leaves and all!- 3 years running. Now in a broody gray marine climate where sun-starved tomatoes and peppers die of depression, but cold weather crops do well in my Eeyore raised beds! Fond of groundcherries, beets reach dental floss proportions here, and broccoli got leg cramps and didn’t get beyond 2-bite size. Looking forward to spring- my brassica crops grew through winter!
I grew in me cucamelon plant one year and ended up with so many! They are prolific. Took some to a group meeting and the one person who couldn’t stop eating them was the young teenager. I can see how kids would really like them. I think if you have little garden snack foragers who pick your garden clean, they’d be great. But you’d probably need 2-3 hungry kids who like them to keep up with their pace because they’re prolific to the point of almost becoming a weed.
They're a weed here in my area, we didn't know it was edible until I saw TH-cam video about, now I eat here and there since I like cucumber, still annoying weed tho.
We're going into our 7th year with all our raised beds here in Virginia zone 7A. We decided last year to focus mostly on the staples that we eat and preserve. The last 4 years have been very successful and we've been able to share the bounty with friends/neighbors. Beets do okay. Turnips do great. Collard does well. Pole beans and okra do fantastic. Squash does very well and I keep succession planting on them because they're a favorite. We don't eat much on the green leafy side as it doesn't set well with my wife's stomach, only small amounts of butter crunch. Keep Planting Folks!
I’m in your same area and we doubled the size of our raised beds to try more varieties. Hot peppers do exceptionally well here too, we have many many jalapeño plants among other hot peppers. Okra eggplant and other heat lovers do well in the summer here too. Mild winters and hot summers are great for gardeners here! Carrots are my not worth growing pick. Too much range of success, mostly tiny in my experience, and not worth the effort compared to the price of a bag of organic carrots at the store.
@@ilanaregan7507 Okra is one of our FAVORITES to grow and eat! My wife and I are both from GA, so fried okra all the way! We're growing in Spotsylvania County
@jacquesinthegarden If you are growing Rhubarb, you should try making rhubarb crumble ice cream! Also, another big hit with the family is my rhubarb, orange and ginger Jam. Once cut it doesn't last long in the fridge before it starts to go floppy, so if i am not making rhubarb, apple and raisin crumble, i cut them in one inch pieces and freeze it. It also needs cutting every 3 years during winter, when it is dormant as you need to cut off and separate the baby nubs to create new plants. i grow spinach next to it as when the rhubarb grows it give the spinach a bit of shade during the hotter months.
Pineapples grow very well where I live (Puerto Rico), but I had 2 grow beds dedicated to them for a couple of years and I decided not to do it again like this. Now I'm growing them on rectangular 1 by 2 feet pots (2 for every pot) and they grow even better cause I can move them around the backyard depending the time of the year. I have 4 fruits growing right now and around six more that are still without fruit. I did struck out with Broccoli. I will try again in the future following some tips from some agricultural experts of the UPR who have a channel dedicated to home gardens.
Hi! Or should I say, wepaa! What's the UPR channel? I'm from PR too! I have a hard time finding resources about growing certain things in our grow zone.
Cucamelon is wonderful for me! Where I live cucumber beetles have been horrible for the past few years, and they've destroyed any cucumber I've tried to grow, except cucamelon. So I can get that nice cucumber flavor when all of my plants have wilted over from the disease those buggers bring.
My brother grew cucamelon's last year. They are such an odd fruit. The best way our family could describe them was that it was a cucumber that couldn't decide if it also wanted to be a lime or not. We didn't end up experiencing any soft of bitterness with them.
Yes, I was genuinely surprised that they gave cucamelons a thumbs-down. We grow them every year, we always get lots of them and they're delicious! I've never tried to peel them, I just give them a quick rinse and toss them in a salad. Sometimes I eat them straight off the vine. Ours are delicious and crunchy and I'm always a bit sad when the growing season is over (we're zone 5b). I've never noticed any bitterness either. Maybe it depends on the climate or the soil?
I'm one of those super hot pepper fanatics and that's nearly all that I grow, and there's a lot of reasons to grow them in my opinion! Not only do I really enjoy some of them raw like peach and chocolate ghost peppers, but I like to use them in sauces and dehydrated in my own seasonings. String them up on some thread and let them air dry and the flavor is totally undamaged by the dehydrator!
Chiltepin Peppers are my favorite hot peppers. Hot enough to add a serious kick but they don't last long enough to leave you with a burning mouth for the entire day. They're also really tiny like the size of peppercorns so that makes them very useful for seasoning food.
With ground cherries, I let them ripen a while indoors after picking (about a week or so). If they are at a certain ripening stage, they taste way better IMO. But it can be hard to find that sweet spot
I swore off brassicas after I tried growing brussel sprouts and fought cabbage moths for months to ultimately get nothing out of it. Last year I tried some faster growing broccoli and cabbage and had decent success. I think interplanting with my garlic helped hide them.
@@RobMyself Not the outer leaves. The secondary shoots that form after you harvest the main crown! They're the reason to grow your own broccolli. Absolutely delicious!
We have a couple rhubarbs on our allotment, and used to have one in our tiny 2m wide front garden, and they get huge, and you can harvest so much just from one plant. Rhubarb jam is really nice too
I’m in Michigan-My parents bought their house in 1991 and there was 3 rhubarb plants. Those same plants are STILL there and we couldn’t kill them if we tried. They have been run over by construction equipment, had the roots messed with, and neglected for years but still produce every year!
I live in southern Spain and have a teeny garden. I finally got a brocolli plant to survive but it never made a florette BUT the leaves and the insect loving flowers were very welcome
Pinapples. I'm in south florida so pinnaples are simple and tropical looking in the landscape. They are Bromilliads and require minimal resouces. Also they love to be overcrowded.. i plant mine 6-8 inches apart. So DON'T waste space putting them in your vegetable garden beds, but rather just tuck them into your landscaping. They even do well in dappled light / afternoon shade ( especially in the south florida summer heat). Every grocery store top finds a home in my yard.
I didn't know they can be so TIGHTLY grown. I bet you can make it well worth it with quality grow bags due to aeration of the roots or at least a heavy coir mix for almost the same effects.
@@rickytorres9089 the thing about bromilliads is the root system is more there as an anchor to hold the plant in the ground... most of its "eating" is through the top crown. This is the main reason why u can bunch them together.
@@stokelymarco8042 Ah that make sense now, thank you so much for explaining all of this to me. That further make sense that any of their pups that comes up, you don't need to be concerned of digging them up either.
That's what I love about most brassicas: you can use the leaves like kale most of the time, and often even use the flower buds like a broccoli rabe if you time it right.
Interesting to hear all of the ways a plant might not be worth it for a particular situation. Beets and turnips around here have a hard time because of the micro-climate, supremely dense clay/rocky soil, and wandering herds of vagrant deer. So many factors play a part in whether a crop can be a worth it for any given area/person. How about a plants that you didn't expect to do well, but actually did? I have a bunch of peach trees that I started last year, started from local orchard peach pits. (No stratification needed, just crack open the pit with a vise or a pair of pliers... carefully. Extract the almond like seed and soak between wet paper towels until the brown seed coat can be peeled off. Watch out for the growing tip! Then put them between some layers of damp, but not soggy, paper towels in an old plastic Chinese take out container, and let them sprout.) Now I need to figure out where to plant them and how to keep them trained low.
This year I’m doing peppers and tomatoes like usual, lemon squash, radishes, and huge sweet onions. Probably beans in the bed I used for sweet corn last summer. But there’s a lot of other things that will be in the garden. I share it with my dad and he grows beets and potatoes.
Pineapples and pumpkins are the plants I should have done my research about with space being taken up. especially when you bring the pineapples inside for the winter. There is hardly any space to walk around and water in my plant room. And those babies will poke ya. His Challenge on trying to survive by growing his own food for a month is what really opened up my eyes on what's important and what isn't.
Last year was a disaster for growing gardens. Many around here and a few I know of in other states. I want to blame the hot, dry weather we had ALL summer. I have not heard of a good reason that this should be. All I know is that I obtained very little produce and my BIG tomatoes only grew as big as cherry tomatoes. I'm glad I have found this channel. It's already been a bit of help and the season is only just starting. I'm going to do everything I can to have a proper garden this year, dog gone it! 😊
I don't actually like raw tomatoes but I'll make stuf out of them, I have friends who love them, and I'm weirdly fascinated by growing them. :) I have a rhubarb plant that came with my house and it does it's own thing. I've split it a couple times every year and given people plants and it's still comes in huge every year! Sometimes plants are just meant to be where they are
I love ground cherries, they make a great salsa addition, I toss them in my pineapple salsa. I’ve also canned them whole with lemon drop peppers and Tabasco peppers to make a syrup like jam. I use that on so many things. You can make them sweet, use as a pie filling or fruit leather, or you can go savory. I’ve tried them on crostini with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.
I grow pineapple in SoCal 9b in fabric pots. I can (and do) drag them around to new locations if I need too. They are very neglect tolerant. I currently have about 15 in different grow stages that all came from one top.
Rhubarb is almost a weed up here in Canada. It's almost impossible to actually REMOVE it from a garden here. If you don't get all of it when you dig it up, everything left behind will sprout as a new plant
Basil! It’s literally the easiest herb to grow and you can keep them for the leaves first then let them flower. It’s beneficial for the garden while also having uses in the kitchen. Plus it smells so so so nice when you walk by them. I’m planting two whole trays this year just to have random basil plants in between crops where there’s room 🥰
I hear you on the cucamelon, but it does really work for me. I an balcony growing, and I have 2 large trellises that I use for peas and beans in window boxes, but the boxes are not as wide as the trellises. I got some little dollarama pots to hang on the railing next to the trellises, and the cucamelons grew up the sides (and over the top, and back down....) and filled things in nicely, especially when my beans pooped out in early September. 6 plants and we got almost 1000 cucamelons. We got about 12 cucumbers before powdery mildew killed the plants.
I will always grow pineapple, I planted a three by 5 foot garden section and now five years on and we get about 1 pineapple a month throughout the year, they just keep pupping and spreading but still easy to keep in their designated space
I grow pineapples in SoCal. Love them. Easy to grow. Drought tolerant. Fruit is so much tastier than store bought. What more can you ask for? I grow them with my landscape vs. in the vegetable beds.
Same here. I get fresh pineapples every year and don't have to do much but cover the bed with alfalfa hay once a year. I don't have a problem with overgrowth because I pull out the plant once it is done flowering and the new one fills the space.
@@rickytorres9089 Use it as mulch. As it breaks down it makes excellent fertilizer and makes plants grow huge. There is something specific in alfalfa that acts as a growth stimulant. I use organic bales from tractor supply. I use it on everything.
I don’t know, I’ll always grow broccoli. It’s one of my favorite vegetables, but also here in Seattle it’s not cheap. I also grew ground cherries for the first time last year, and I absolutely loved them. I’m planning to grow a couple more plants this year.
As a swede i was confused on rhubarbs being hard to grow, it's almost a pest (but a loved one) in gardens here. Like if you have it, you can't get rid of it, and people will be giving them away by the pound. Then you mentioned them being cold loving. Glad we have one thing we grow well 😅
Cold loving could be a problem in San Diego where Kevin and Jacques are, but rhubarb also hates hot summers. That's a problem where I live (south central US). It easily gets cold enough for rhubarb here, but a couple of months of high temperatures from 30-40C and lows commonly above 25C and it's toast. If it makes you happy, you should know that you can also likely grow potatoes far better than I can. It's hard to get a potato crop in during the four weeks it takes temperatures to swing from 30F to 30C.
As someone who doesn't really eat much spicy food and definitely can't eat the super hots, I still love growing them. I have two Reaper plants that I'm over wintering right now and I planted a third Reaper for this season. I'll make hot sauces out of them (which I also enjoy making) for a couple friends who love super hot foods. It's a win-win.
Not for a boat, but for landlubbers, grow kale in the fall. The cool weather keeps the bugs away and kale doesn't mind the cold. In fact many vegetables are sweeter grown in the fall. Same for lettuce in my experience. In the summer my lettuce is infested with white fly, but if I just grow in spring and fall, it's clean as can be. For me, I hate growing zucchini. I love cooking with it and I can even get a great crop for awhile but the borers make me feel like an absolute failure. I'm not wrapping stems in foil or bandages, and I'm not interested in eating bt drenched vegetables. Then along comes the powdery mildew to top it all off. My baking soda spray works great on that, but then I have to worry about the bees that I might be harming. At this point, the only way I would grow zucchini is with full tulle netting, in raised beds and hand pollination. It just seems like too much work when I can just go buy some at the grocery store. It's not like tomatoes and strawberries that taste so much better homegrown.
You guys are super entertaining, and I love the humor. I'm a pretty new viewer, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe Kevin's humor. Is it deadpan? In one video, Kevin explained the expression "chitting out", and said something like: "Interesting phrase. I don't use it often.". For some reason the way he said it made me laugh out loud, and I've been wondering for days if it's on purpose deadpan humor or not.
I have struggled with broccoli too. Mine is bolting right now in the greenhouse. I thought it would do ok over the winter in the greenhouse but too warm I guess on sunny days. I really like videos like this. Just watched the Q & A pepper one the other night and I laughed a lot! 😂
Yeah, depends on the zone, I'm south Fla 10b, some years I can plant late November, and it stays mild and cool until spring, other years it's barely noticeable that it's winter lol. I love broccoli though, so I plant it and cross my fingers it will do well, always worth it when it does!
Rosemary from seed fought hard with me for years. Proper vernalization was the key. Shiso is doing the same right now, I am not a quitter. Thou shall yield Shiso.
I couldn't grow shiso in pots but I accidentally spilled some seeds in the yard in late summer I had more shiso than I wanted. I froze the rest. Apparently it has to be quite warm for the seeds to germinate.
Pineapples basically grow themselves in the part of Florida I’m from, we actually used to be the pineapple capital of the world 😂 It’s a nice set it and forget it plant for the side of your yard but be prepared to battle raccoons and squirrels for the fruit 😤 On that note, if you don’t like regular/pineapple ground cherries you might like Peruvian/Aunt Molly’s ground cherries. They taste more citrusy and not savory at all.
If you're in a climate where they're pretty low maintenance pineapple can be a pretty cool decorative plant, but they are definitely slow to produce and even if/when you do get a fruit it just takes one trespassing a hole for it to all be gone cause you're getting one fruit at a time, it's not like how trees take awhile to fruit but after enough time end up loaded with fruit.
I enjoy hearing about the struggles it always reminds me that I'm not alone when it comes to those one or ten that seem to give us problems 🤣 Cauliflower and Brussels are those for me.
I HATED the Aunt Molly's ground cherries, they had the weirdest taste, but last year I tried the Pineapple Ground Cherries and they were SO good, they were so sweet and delish. Try the Pineapple Variety! My kids loved them too!
I can't imagine not growing Rhubarb, probably because my grandparents grew it and my parents grew it and I'm growing it - all from the original roots. A few years ago I started some new varieties which are heirlooms -- they are Glaskin Perpetual Rhubarb which allows harvesting all summer long, right up until the fall frost.
I like growing the rhubarb and sunchokes because I have been adding more and more perennial food providers to my garden that also add visual appeal. I wouldn't bother growing amaranth for the grain. I grew a ton of it and got very little grain for the amount of work that went into harvesting it. The leaves, however, were delicious, so I will likely plant it for its ornamental value and grab some leaves from time to time.
Beets! I cannot grow beets but giving it one more shot this year! I LOVE beets! No go on sunchokes and kale for me. I don't care for cooked greens, I know, I know...never tried ground cherries but am this year. Broc!!?? LOVE it!!! I would have half my garden in it! lol Pineapple, if only. I watch Danny n Wanda and they have a ton in a small side greenhouse and I will try to go that route one day but know it takes forever....lol Great video guys! Oh and no go on hot peppers besides the big J's!
In agree broccoli takes too much space in my small garden, but when I did grow it I had a lot of success. I grew it for the leaves and stalks only which I found delicious. It was a plant that kept giving throughout the growing season from the cool spring and rebounded in the fall.
I love that I am not the only person who has a bucket grow list. I always throw in 1 or 2 weird off the wall growing challenges a year. Some have more become must plant regulars. Ginger yum
You both as so good at the banter. Loved this video. I would agree with almost everything except the rhubarb. I'm Polish so I have to grow it 😁. I have 3 young plants that I'll be transplanting to more permanent locations this spring and can't wait for the harvest.
Pineapple I have in its own dedicated bed. I am in Florida so as long as I can keep the occasional frost and freeze at bay, it is relatively care free. Home grown pineapple is like a home grown tomato, nothing in the store can quite get the same flavor profile. But, it is a long term investment crop and for me worth the investment.
I love topics like these and I love it when these two making episodes together! 💗 I live in Indonesia and I agree with the pineapple one, although it's actually one of my most favorite fruit, I will never plant them again. I got lots of scratches on my calves from their tiny thorns, too. Ugh. 😅
Broccoli is one of my favourites to grow along with cauliflower and romanesco the kids love them and here in central catalonia, Spain broccoli grows very well as a autum/winter crop we normally get nice big heads and then plenty of sideshows. It's great boiled and then covered with olive oil, lemon juice and some chopped toasted almonds. 😋
Dr. Grinspoon in zone 5a southern VT. It's like growing a 16-foot apple tree in one season (seed to harvest) with three-pounds of apples at harvest. The "apples" taste great and they produce a desired result, but a 16-foot plant should yield ~10-pounds. Otherwise, I'm not planning to grow apple trees, for real. We have so many sources of great apples in our area that planting more of them is redundant and a waste of space for a small grower of things. Y'all be well! Thank you.
Well with the spicy peppers you can dry them to later blend them into a power to have seasoning of, that you can put in your dishes. If you keep the powder dry and away from sunlight it can last for 2 years. Also with a lot of ghost peppers or Carolina repears you can also make hot sauce out of them. Cook it very good and bottle it up, will last you 1-2 years if kept in a dry cool dark place, even more if in the fridge. Some ways to have a lot of super spicy peppers put to good use from your garden.
The small cucumbers my Mother in law use to slice it length wise and fry it with garlic and onion. Until a little brown on the edges add salt and eat it with a flat bread that we call sada roti. But u can sub the flat bread with pita or flour tortillas. And we like things spicy so she would also add hot peppers. Like scotch bonnet or habanero. Or birds eye.
Foraging fact! Japanese knotweed has the exact same flavor profile as rhubarb without the strings! And it has a ton of vitamin C. I live in western PA and it is a horrible invasive that chokes out literally everything around it and is virtually impossible to get rid of. I harvest it in the spring and make a knotweed and strawberry cobbler and omg is it good.
Yeah. I tried growing pineapple from crowns and half of them rooted. Started planting them they were fine until the recent river rain. Many are rotting. If they all die, oh well. Meanwhile, the one plant I didn't care so much was the avocado plant from seed. It survived the cod, heavy wind and river rain.
One year my dad grew two full seed packs of broccoli in on 6×6 area. The wind had other ideas and as he was hand-casting them they went where they wanted and a couple of weeks later we had a hundred plants. Yes, I think they all germinated. Talk about broccoli 100 ways. Also, love ground cherries and rhubarb
Ground cherries are weeds with perennial roots, although they have a unique taste. I took a liking to Purple sprouting Broccoli I let some resseed and always have more than enough.
We grow and freeze rhubarb. It’s wonderful in pies with other fruits! Hint: it grows best under a shade cloth. I grow all the brassicas under shade cloth as well.
I’ve got 17 pineapples going right now. This batch, I set up 3 in a hydroponic system (basically ran out of dirt space). If I have a yard, I’m darn well going to have pineapples.
@@epicgardening We’ll see how it goes. It was actually by accident, I left them in a container with water for 7 months(with refills as needed) while I tried to figure out what to do with the extras. They’re actually as big as the ones in dirt for the same period of time. I transferred them to a dedicated “actual” hydroponic setup last week so we’ll see. Some googling has found unsubstantiated claims that hydroponic pineapples not only work well but grow larger and faster…
Here in MN it seems like everyone has a rhubarb plant in their yard. They come back every year so it's really low/no maintenance. We had some on my parents' farm my whole life, but I don't think it was in the best location--on the north side of one of the barns. It finally died out a couple of years ago; either it got too old, I over-harvested it, or it got buried in too much horse poop. XD Pineapple is on my bucket list of things to grow.
hey kevin! i’m really excited to start my first year gardening myself. i work with students in a private high school and i would love it if you could recommend some simple gardening projects i could do with my students. love the channel, so excited to start my berries when my garden center gets them in :D
I am all about the cucamelon, all the time. There's no better way to de-stress than to just harvest a half dozen and eat them right then and there. And I discovered Aspabroc last year. It's a game changer for me. The leaves are also delicious fried crisp in olive oil or butter. p.s. I am planting both Fartichokes and ground cherries this year. I just love the stubborn privacy hedge of the Fartichokes with the beautiful flowers. And my husband has never had ground cherries. He has a sweet tooth and I don't. I am going to give it a try to see if he likes them.
We literally picked our Pineapple that we started growing from a store brought Pineapple at the beginning of covid 2020, yesterday arvo lol we have a sucker that started growing while the Pineapple is growing so we are going to re plant that. It took 2 yrs on the dot to grow in a pot plant
Rhubarb here in zone 4 canada is crazy. You don't have to do anything not even water it. Just the rain we get here where I am is a dry climate. It gets huge and is unstoppable haha
I’ve tried beets in different types of soil and fertilizer and can’t get beets to form. The first year all I got were greens. I give up. There are many other things to grow in that space.
Yep, same here, beets and turnips, i just cant grow. However. I dont really care cause i dont eat em anyways, i was only growing them as a "friend" plant to my other crops. To help keep away pests or lure other pests.
Funny how often I hear trouble with growing rhubarb. It my most neglected and ignored plant 😆For me its the perfect shade plant and I’m in Northern Alberta, Canada. I have it tucked into a corner on the north side of my garage so it gets very minimal late afternoon direct sun in summer but it comes back huge year after year with next to no maintenance. Just toss the leaves around base when harvesting for natural mulch. And it is the perfect fruit for freezing because of the stalk strands almost every recipe calls for it to be frozen overnight first to break down the fibres. So I cube and freeze to have on hand when the berry season is done. But I do agree once its established it gets big with huge 1-2’ diameter leaves it takes up a good space and chokes out stuff around it.
New Zealand spinach if you enjoy the spicy slightly bitter flavor (good addition for mixed green salad) is a surprising win in my 7a garden. It's a fairly heavy producer, self seeds with vigor, and is damn near impossible to kill. One thing I loved about it was, it was one of the few vegetables that the ground hogs seemed to leave alone (along with peppers and tomatoes)... They love potato and squash greens, making those nearly impossible to grow in my yard.
Ground cherries are a great novelty for kids. The birds did the insisting that the ground cherries come back though. They helped it right along. And I feel like my pineapple tasted SOOOOOOOOO much better than the grocery store. Mine was small, single serve, but the flavor was sweeter and more delicious. I was able to pick it when I wanted. the original plant does die back, but a new shoot comes off of the side(dont rip it out immediately after cutting). I love my pineapples near a fence or border. Pineapple is not inviting(especially 2ndgen) and that's usually what im going for along the fence :) I like hearing peoples reasons for not growing these different foods though. good insight, and a joke helps you to remember why not a little better!!!
One plant I would add to the list is cantelope. I had many produced and they had very little if at all fruit inside. I spent a lot of care on them but they did not turn out well. They seem very influened by the amount of water and we had a very wet summer that might have affected the fruit.
I’ve grown pineapple. Mostly in pots. It’s a joy to see the flower emerge as that means you’ll have a fruit in about 6 months. This year I’ve got 3 pineapples getting flowers. I’m dancing. Fingers are crossed. Although I’ll probably not grow them for a bit as they are a large chunk of time commitment. But I have enjoyed the challenge of growing them.
I've just started learning to plant and grow vegetables and easy to propagate plants like mint and I've been trying to grow Alyssum from seeds here in the tropics and so far no success. I tried growing it since according to you guys, its fairly easy to grow and has this sweet and beautiful flowers which I like but i don't know if its my soil or other factors making it almost impossible to germinate
Vanilla beans come from a vining orchid. They don't bloom until the vines are about 20' long. I've had mine for about 5 years and it's just now getting long enough that it MIGHT bloom. When it does bloom, you have to be the pollinator (there is only one bug that does it and it's only located in the original country) and there's a special way to do it. The blooms only last ONE day so you have to pay attention and be quick, lol. If the bloom pollinates, it takes 9 months for the bean to mature. Now I understand why the beans are so expensive.
😮😮😮
You do not have the weather or the environment of which these orchids grow, so you are wasting your time.
@@veliaantila1099 I grow them indoors. They're doing beautifully. If I can get citrus trees to bloom, then provide the pollination with a paint brush and get fruit - which I have done - then surely once this vine blooms (and it will since it's an orchid and orchids bloom in indoor environments), I should be able to pollinate it and hopefully get vanilla beans.
Yet, isn't the experimentation half the fun? The challenge? And what time am I wasting? It doesn't need to be constantly watched over. Open up to the possibilites that are out there, my dear.
I've always wanted to try to grow vanilla beans, but my house gets way too cold in the winter.
@@KaiSub Mine were on a shelf in a sunroom where the vines were growing up a window frame and the sunroom has gotten as cool as mid 50s and they showed no stress.
Wowee, gents I was so surprised to hear you mention my plight with kale. Your advice is taken.
Just to let you know, I do grow tomatoes, many colours of cherry as well as huge Alisa Craigs that were fantastic, as well as a 'black' cherry tomato that ended up more purple than black. I also grow Paris atlas carrots, a variety of beetroot, I love the burpee golden; and lastly, salad blue potatoes as well as red and purple Duke of York potatoes. Entering the boat in the Summer is challenging 🤔, but the produce is a blessing and a joy😄
Kevin, thank you for your channel, I started growing microgreens after watching you!
Do you have an Instagram where we can follow the boat garden?
@@Estertje93 Hi Ester, thanks so much for your message😁.
No Instagram account as YT is about as far I go in social media.
If you are growing this Spring/Summer, hope all you grow turns out fabulously 😆
I plan to live in a boat in the future too
Wow amazing.
I don't grow it because I don't like it
I love how Kevin is bundled up and Jacques is in shorts and a t-shirt. 😂
hahaha i noticed that too. i think because he is european, i wear shorts and tshirts from around 13-15c for californians those temps are prob too cold.
It’s those Bulgarian genes!
@@dirkjanrulez23Canada too. 15C is a beautiful late spring day.
@@dirkjanrulez23 Years ago I was on Tenerife on vacation in February. There it was like 18 to 20°C. At my place it was freezing. So I was walking around in Tees and shorts while the locals were all bundled up
The Garden Hermit is NEVER COLD!
Funny story about broccoli. I grew collards from seed that I purchased from a local seed provider. They were labeled as collards but seems they weren't. So I did a cut and come again method for harvest for a few weeks only to have them 'magically' grow into broccoli. I was none the wiser, the greens were delicious! 💚
That was funny, but kind of cool too! Glad it worked out for you!
That pineapple one is true. I’ve been growing em for decades here in Hawaii. Takes time to fruit but when you do get one, it’s beyond any store bought one. Ridiculous sweet. But yes they do take up a ton of space. I grow them in their own individual containers. 10 gallon squat pots. They do really well. At least they are portable and not permanent. Try it!!🤙🏼👍🏼🙏🏼👊🏼
I love my pineapples here in Fla. I gave them a bed close to the house and I get pineapples every year from them. Far better than store bought.
I also grow them in pots in FL, nice to be able to move them if you need to.
I learned to grow pineapple from my Grandfather in Florida. He had a huge patch next to the shed, had to cage ripening fruit so the rabbits don't steal them! I have now grown them in pots in both NY and WA! They take a while, yes... But I agree that the fruit is far better than store bought. I think since they're picked before ripening.
I live in Ohio, pineapple is a nope... not right weather.
I’m in Wisconsin. I have a 4x4 rhubarb patch. 100% with it. Love to chop it up and freeze it. I make rhubarb, cake, torte, and pies all year.
Rhubarb sauce! My mom used to make it, of course, you have to make it really sweet.
Send me some 😆 I moved south from Michigan, and it's too hot here for rhubarb. I miss pies and muffins
Rhubarb and strawberry smoothies were my FAVORITE this year…recipes online with coconut milk for a pie like smoothie.
AIP COMPLIANT
auto immune protocol elimination diet.
Rhubarb freeze dries well for southern folks to enjoy.
My rhubarb gets HUGE. I give tons of it away. I love it raw with salt!
My favorite use of ground cherries was with cheese and spinach as a stuffing for perogies. The sweetness of it combined with the tart of the spinach and salt of the cheese was soooo good! Another fun way to use them is to slice them in half and dehydrate them: they make great candy.
and Ground Cherry Pie
make jelly
That sounds so good that now I want to try those, thanks for sharing that!
Hey guys! Love the show :) A small tip for Rhubarb is to put their feet in the shade and make the leaves stretch for the sun. This way you get much longer stalks and you get to your pie sooner! Big hugs from SA! keep growing :D
I'm not a huge fan of sautéed greens, but I used my broccoli leaves and made broccoli and cheese soup and it was amazing.
That’s great to know. I never would’ve thought of that. Thanks!
summer. I would never have tried it except for a hydroponics grower in Ohio does it. She sows broccoli seed like for micro greens but grows them out til the leaves are almost a bit bigger than your hands. Maybe 6 to 8 inches. Then she cuts them like micro greens and uses them in stirfry or in salads. I had a few broccoli that went to seed on me last year so I kept the seeds and grew them like extra big microgreens. Cut and put in stirfry they were awesome. I plan on letting a few plants run to seed to have extra seeds for winter growing in the house under lights. (I have led shop lights and led grow lights and they are the best. Plus hubby did some math according to the specs on the box and with the timers my electric is only running about $3.50 to $4.50 extra a month. Totally worth it for my greens/houseplants/green onions and lettuce I grow under them.
I know a lot of people think they are bland but as someone who tends to prefer icebergs and romains, I found the broccoli leaves to be VERY pleasant. It took me 3 years to successfully grow broccoli heads, so being able to eat the leaves made the crop worth the failure otherwise lol
I don't think that I've ever eaten rhubarb that wasn't from a plant that was at least 100 years old. It seems like it's impossible to kill, my buddy buried an ancient rhubarb patch under 2 feet of bony gravel to build a driveway and it pushed right up through it in 2 years..it's still there 40 years later...
My rhubarb patch will be in my will and my great grandkids will still enjoy it :)
istg some people in the past must had seen a big ol' rhubarb and thought _“man, I bet this plant will lives for centuries and become a plant spirit”_ then create the myth about Mandrake 😂
LMFAO that’s amazing. Never tried rhubarb before but growing it sounds fun
@@spamsausage Only until you want to move it 🙃
I thought for sure I killed our rhubarb a year or so ago, when we were prepping for winter. Nope. Now we have two rhubarbs. 🤷♀️
I kinda agree about the broccoli, thats why I started growing Chinese broccoli. You can fit tons of plants in a tiny space and get lots of crowns, leaves, and stems.
This was my third year of trying to grow broccoli...again unsuccessfully. Will try the Chinese broccoli next year
Yes I love Chinese broccoli!
Growing Yod Fah and Rapini this time. I hope I actually get something to eat this year. Last year was my first year growing Brassica of any kind. All bought from local stores got a few leaves of Cabbage but all the broccoli got a tiny head the size of my thumb and then bolted within a day or 2.
Yes, or try one of the sprouting broccolis or broccolinis. Purple sprouting broccoli does very well for us over our whole cool PNW growing season; you treat it like a "cut and come again" plant and it's super-productive for months.
Nothing better after a day of gardening than a broiled broccolini and fresh mozzarella sandwich with butter and lemon zest!
Living in Maine I can't imagine not growing rhubarb! There's so many options for cooking with it beyond just strawberry rhubarb pie: drinks like wine or shrubs; using cherries instead of strawberries for less sweet pies, cobblers, and jams; in marinades it's perfect for pork or turkey; and the leaves make good compost or lay them flat to suppress weeds. As an additional benefit when your bed gets too full, cull it down and give the plants as gifts (though, hopefully the recipient won't notice your eye twitching).
I do a lot of the same things, but I also use it to make the Filipino dish, pork adobo. I replace the vinegar with rhubarb and it makes an amazing sauce!
YAAASSSS! All of this! Rhubarb is maybe the most versatile crop I grow.
Yes, I love rhubarb lemonade as well, it's so versatile 😍
Here in Denmark it's very popular in jam, both in different combinations like strawberry or elderflower but also on its own. It's great as compote for "old-fashioned chicken" which is a whole chicken stuffed with parsley and pretty much lightly caramelised and then cooked low and slow until it's fall off the bone tender, served with potatoes, a brown sauce made from the juices, homemade pickled cucumber, and depending on the season either rhubarb compote or foraged mushrooms. With the rhubarb it's a perfect summer classic here. Rhubarb cake is also fantastic if you need a variation from the pie, and keeping with desserts the ultimate Danish classic summer dessert that we also use to torment foreigners with by challenging them to pronounce it, rødgrød med fløde. It's a variation of a compote served with cream according to the tongue twisting name although I personally prefer it with whole milk (which only adds to the linguistic torture as that's called sødmælk). Rhubarb syrup mixed with water, either still or sparkling, for a refreshing cordial is also quite amazing.
I use radishes as diversion crops to keep cabbage flies and other nasties off my crops. The bugs seem to develop a taste for whatever grows early, and losing a few 20-day radishes is a good trade for untouched bigger veggies! Elk ate my rhubarb down to the roots- oxalis acid-housing leaves and all!- 3 years running. Now in a broody gray marine climate where sun-starved tomatoes and peppers die of depression, but cold weather crops do well in my Eeyore raised beds! Fond of groundcherries, beets reach dental floss proportions here, and broccoli got leg cramps and didn’t get beyond 2-bite size. Looking forward to spring- my brassica crops grew through winter!
I grew in me cucamelon plant one year and ended up with so many! They are prolific. Took some to a group meeting and the one person who couldn’t stop eating them was the young teenager. I can see how kids would really like them. I think if you have little garden snack foragers who pick your garden clean, they’d be great. But you’d probably need 2-3 hungry kids who like them to keep up with their pace because they’re prolific to the point of almost becoming a weed.
They're a weed here in my area, we didn't know it was edible until I saw TH-cam video about, now I eat here and there since I like cucumber, still annoying weed tho.
...or squirrels. Decimated mine, and the tomatoes.
I love them, tastes just like cucumber to me, wish they grew like a weed where I am.
You guys always have great info but my favorite part of your videos is the great friendship that comes across.
I inherited two massive rhubarb plants when I moved into this house. Last summer I harvested 75 lbs!
We're going into our 7th year with all our raised beds here in Virginia zone 7A. We decided last year to focus mostly on the staples that we eat and preserve. The last 4 years have been very successful and we've been able to share the bounty with friends/neighbors. Beets do okay. Turnips do great. Collard does well. Pole beans and okra do fantastic. Squash does very well and I keep succession planting on them because they're a favorite. We don't eat much on the green leafy side as it doesn't set well with my wife's stomach, only small amounts of butter crunch. Keep Planting Folks!
I’m in your same area and we doubled the size of our raised beds to try more varieties. Hot peppers do exceptionally well here too, we have many many jalapeño plants among other hot peppers. Okra eggplant and other heat lovers do well in the summer here too. Mild winters and hot summers are great for gardeners here! Carrots are my not worth growing pick. Too much range of success, mostly tiny in my experience, and not worth the effort compared to the price of a bag of organic carrots at the store.
@@ilanaregan7507 Okra is one of our FAVORITES to grow and eat! My wife and I are both from GA, so fried okra all the way! We're growing in Spotsylvania County
@jacquesinthegarden If you are growing Rhubarb, you should try making rhubarb crumble ice cream! Also, another big hit with the family is my rhubarb, orange and ginger Jam.
Once cut it doesn't last long in the fridge before it starts to go floppy, so if i am not making rhubarb, apple and raisin crumble, i cut them in one inch pieces and freeze it.
It also needs cutting every 3 years during winter, when it is dormant as you need to cut off and separate the baby nubs to create new plants. i grow spinach next to it as when the rhubarb grows it give the spinach a bit of shade during the hotter months.
It is great freeze dried, too.
Pineapples grow very well where I live (Puerto Rico), but I had 2 grow beds dedicated to them for a couple of years and I decided not to do it again like this. Now I'm growing them on rectangular 1 by 2 feet pots (2 for every pot) and they grow even better cause I can move them around the backyard depending the time of the year. I have 4 fruits growing right now and around six more that are still without fruit. I did struck out with Broccoli. I will try again in the future following some tips from some agricultural experts of the UPR who have a channel dedicated to home gardens.
Hi! Or should I say, wepaa! What's the UPR channel? I'm from PR too!
I have a hard time finding resources about growing certain things in our grow zone.
Cucamelon is wonderful for me! Where I live cucumber beetles have been horrible for the past few years, and they've destroyed any cucumber I've tried to grow, except cucamelon. So I can get that nice cucumber flavor when all of my plants have wilted over from the disease those buggers bring.
My brother grew cucamelon's last year. They are such an odd fruit. The best way our family could describe them was that it was a cucumber that couldn't decide if it also wanted to be a lime or not. We didn't end up experiencing any soft of bitterness with them.
Yes, I was genuinely surprised that they gave cucamelons a thumbs-down. We grow them every year, we always get lots of them and they're delicious! I've never tried to peel them, I just give them a quick rinse and toss them in a salad. Sometimes I eat them straight off the vine. Ours are delicious and crunchy and I'm always a bit sad when the growing season is over (we're zone 5b). I've never noticed any bitterness either. Maybe it depends on the climate or the soil?
I'm one of those super hot pepper fanatics and that's nearly all that I grow, and there's a lot of reasons to grow them in my opinion! Not only do I really enjoy some of them raw like peach and chocolate ghost peppers, but I like to use them in sauces and dehydrated in my own seasonings. String them up on some thread and let them air dry and the flavor is totally undamaged by the dehydrator!
Chiltepin Peppers are my favorite hot peppers. Hot enough to add a serious kick but they don't last long enough to leave you with a burning mouth for the entire day. They're also really tiny like the size of peppercorns so that makes them very useful for seasoning food.
You need to make vids like these way more often. Really fun.
With ground cherries, I let them ripen a while indoors after picking (about a week or so). If they are at a certain ripening stage, they taste way better IMO. But it can be hard to find that sweet spot
I swore off brassicas after I tried growing brussel sprouts and fought cabbage moths for months to ultimately get nothing out of it. Last year I tried some faster growing broccoli and cabbage and had decent success. I think interplanting with my garlic helped hide them.
Broccoli side shoots are def worth it especially if you eat it immediately after harvesting.
I grow brassicas for the leaves. If I get a head..yay.
Yes, I look forward to cutting off those outer leaves as it goes so I can have a snack. Love it.
@@RobMyself Not the outer leaves. The secondary shoots that form after you harvest the main crown! They're the reason to grow your own broccolli. Absolutely delicious!
@@rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr1 Ahhh yes! Sorry, I misread that. I agree!
You guys always make me laugh. Thanks for sharing your friendship.
We have a couple rhubarbs on our allotment, and used to have one in our tiny 2m wide front garden, and they get huge, and you can harvest so much just from one plant. Rhubarb jam is really nice too
I’m in Michigan-My parents bought their house in 1991 and there was 3 rhubarb plants. Those same plants are STILL there and we couldn’t kill them if we tried. They have been run over by construction equipment, had the roots messed with, and neglected for years but still produce every year!
I live in southern Spain and have a teeny garden. I finally got a brocolli plant to survive but it never made a florette BUT the leaves and the insect loving flowers were very welcome
Pinapples. I'm in south florida so pinnaples are simple and tropical looking in the landscape. They are Bromilliads and require minimal resouces. Also they love to be overcrowded.. i plant mine 6-8 inches apart. So DON'T waste space putting them in your vegetable garden beds, but rather just tuck them into your landscaping. They even do well in dappled light / afternoon shade ( especially in the south florida summer heat). Every grocery store top finds a home in my yard.
I didn't know they can be so TIGHTLY grown. I bet you can make it well worth it with quality grow bags due to aeration of the roots or at least a heavy coir mix for almost the same effects.
@@rickytorres9089 the thing about bromilliads is the root system is more there as an anchor to hold the plant in the ground... most of its "eating" is through the top crown. This is the main reason why u can bunch them together.
@@stokelymarco8042 Ah that make sense now, thank you so much for explaining all of this to me. That further make sense that any of their pups that comes up, you don't need to be concerned of digging them up either.
@@rickytorres9089 no take those pups off and plant them...then they turn into parent plants.
@@stokelymarco8042 Understood, thanks for supporting me so much here! :)
I've been doing good with broccoli this year. I do companion planning, no problem with any pest. I'm in Orange county CA.
That's what I love about most brassicas: you can use the leaves like kale most of the time, and often even use the flower buds like a broccoli rabe if you time it right.
Interesting to hear all of the ways a plant might not be worth it for a particular situation. Beets and turnips around here have a hard time because of the micro-climate, supremely dense clay/rocky soil, and wandering herds of vagrant deer. So many factors play a part in whether a crop can be a worth it for any given area/person.
How about a plants that you didn't expect to do well, but actually did? I have a bunch of peach trees that I started last year, started from local orchard peach pits. (No stratification needed, just crack open the pit with a vise or a pair of pliers... carefully. Extract the almond like seed and soak between wet paper towels until the brown seed coat can be peeled off. Watch out for the growing tip! Then put them between some layers of damp, but not soggy, paper towels in an old plastic Chinese take out container, and let them sprout.) Now I need to figure out where to plant them and how to keep them trained low.
This year I’m doing peppers and tomatoes like usual, lemon squash, radishes, and huge sweet onions. Probably beans in the bed I used for sweet corn last summer.
But there’s a lot of other things that will be in the garden. I share it with my dad and he grows beets and potatoes.
In Wisconsin, my victoria rhubarb plant almost took out my overhead coaxial line. It is MASSIVE. Like the size of a car.
Super hot peppers are great in pickles. Will spice them up a decent level. Also drying and turning them into chili powder can tame them a bit.
Pineapples and pumpkins are the plants I should have done my research about with space being taken up. especially when you bring the pineapples inside for the winter. There is hardly any space to walk around and water in my plant room. And those babies will poke ya. His Challenge on trying to survive by growing his own food for a month is what really opened up my eyes on what's important and what isn't.
Last year was a disaster for growing gardens. Many around here and a few I know of in other states. I want to blame the hot, dry weather we had ALL summer. I have not heard of a good reason that this should be. All I know is that I obtained very little produce and my BIG tomatoes only grew as big as cherry tomatoes. I'm glad I have found this channel. It's already been a bit of help and the season is only just starting. I'm going to do everything I can to have a proper garden this year, dog gone it! 😊
I don't actually like raw tomatoes but I'll make stuf out of them, I have friends who love them, and I'm weirdly fascinated by growing them. :) I have a rhubarb plant that came with my house and it does it's own thing. I've split it a couple times every year and given people plants and it's still comes in huge every year! Sometimes plants are just meant to be where they are
I love ground cherries, they make a great salsa addition, I toss them in my pineapple salsa. I’ve also canned them whole with lemon drop peppers and Tabasco peppers to make a syrup like jam. I use that on so many things. You can make them sweet, use as a pie filling or fruit leather, or you can go savory. I’ve tried them on crostini with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.
I grow pineapple in SoCal 9b in fabric pots. I can (and do) drag them around to new locations if I need too. They are very neglect tolerant. I currently have about 15 in different grow stages that all came from one top.
I also have a hard time growing beets- they never form a full root but the greens always look healthy & are very tasty!
Rhubarb is almost a weed up here in Canada. It's almost impossible to actually REMOVE it from a garden here. If you don't get all of it when you dig it up, everything left behind will sprout as a new plant
Loved this! Would be interested to see the opposite video for underrated crop that everyone loves growing ❤
Aww, that's such nice idea! What crop would be your recommendation?
Basil! It’s literally the easiest herb to grow and you can keep them for the leaves first then let them flower. It’s beneficial for the garden while also having uses in the kitchen. Plus it smells so so so nice when you walk by them. I’m planting two whole trays this year just to have random basil plants in between crops where there’s room 🥰
Luffa gourd
Eat when little
Dish sponges in the fall
I hear you on the cucamelon, but it does really work for me. I an balcony growing, and I have 2 large trellises that I use for peas and beans in window boxes, but the boxes are not as wide as the trellises. I got some little dollarama pots to hang on the railing next to the trellises, and the cucamelons grew up the sides (and over the top, and back down....) and filled things in nicely, especially when my beans pooped out in early September. 6 plants and we got almost 1000 cucamelons. We got about 12 cucumbers before powdery mildew killed the plants.
I will always grow pineapple, I planted a three by 5 foot garden section and now five years on and we get about 1 pineapple a month throughout the year, they just keep pupping and spreading but still easy to keep in their designated space
Makes sense 🍍
Bought two seed packs in Sprouts today, from botanical interests. Good job!
I grow pineapples in SoCal. Love them. Easy to grow. Drought tolerant. Fruit is so much tastier than store bought. What more can you ask for? I grow them with my landscape vs. in the vegetable beds.
Plus just TRY getting organics, they are STUPID expensive even considering the "demands" of the plants.
Same here. I get fresh pineapples every year and don't have to do much but cover the bed with alfalfa hay once a year. I don't have a problem with overgrowth because I pull out the plant once it is done flowering and the new one fills the space.
@@hizzlemobizzle Very neat indeed. Your doing the alfalfa as frost cover for overwintering?
@@rickytorres9089 Use it as mulch. As it breaks down it makes excellent fertilizer and makes plants grow huge. There is something specific in alfalfa that acts as a growth stimulant. I use organic bales from tractor supply. I use it on everything.
@@hizzlemobizzle That's very much interesting, thank you so much for sharing that with me. :)
I don’t know, I’ll always grow broccoli. It’s one of my favorite vegetables, but also here in Seattle it’s not cheap. I also grew ground cherries for the first time last year, and I absolutely loved them. I’m planning to grow a couple more plants this year.
As a swede i was confused on rhubarbs being hard to grow, it's almost a pest (but a loved one) in gardens here.
Like if you have it, you can't get rid of it, and people will be giving them away by the pound.
Then you mentioned them being cold loving.
Glad we have one thing we grow well 😅
Cold loving could be a problem in San Diego where Kevin and Jacques are, but rhubarb also hates hot summers. That's a problem where I live (south central US). It easily gets cold enough for rhubarb here, but a couple of months of high temperatures from 30-40C and lows commonly above 25C and it's toast.
If it makes you happy, you should know that you can also likely grow potatoes far better than I can. It's hard to get a potato crop in during the four weeks it takes temperatures to swing from 30F to 30C.
@@bobbun9630 potatoes are kinda hard where I'm at to.
You could get a good crop, but also not. A bit 50/50
As someone who doesn't really eat much spicy food and definitely can't eat the super hots, I still love growing them. I have two Reaper plants that I'm over wintering right now and I planted a third Reaper for this season. I'll make hot sauces out of them (which I also enjoy making) for a couple friends who love super hot foods. It's a win-win.
Not for a boat, but for landlubbers, grow kale in the fall. The cool weather keeps the bugs away and kale doesn't mind the cold. In fact many vegetables are sweeter grown in the fall. Same for lettuce in my experience. In the summer my lettuce is infested with white fly, but if I just grow in spring and fall, it's clean as can be.
For me, I hate growing zucchini. I love cooking with it and I can even get a great crop for awhile but the borers make me feel like an absolute failure. I'm not wrapping stems in foil or bandages, and I'm not interested in eating bt drenched vegetables. Then along comes the powdery mildew to top it all off. My baking soda spray works great on that, but then I have to worry about the bees that I might be harming. At this point, the only way I would grow zucchini is with full tulle netting, in raised beds and hand pollination. It just seems like too much work when I can just go buy some at the grocery store. It's not like tomatoes and strawberries that taste so much better homegrown.
You guys are super entertaining, and I love the humor. I'm a pretty new viewer, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe Kevin's humor. Is it deadpan? In one video, Kevin explained the expression "chitting out", and said something like: "Interesting phrase. I don't use it often.". For some reason the way he said it made me laugh out loud, and I've been wondering for days if it's on purpose deadpan humor or not.
I have struggled with broccoli too. Mine is bolting right now in the greenhouse. I thought it would do ok over the winter in the greenhouse but too warm I guess on sunny days. I really like videos like this. Just watched the Q & A pepper one the other night and I laughed a lot! 😂
Plant the broccoli seedlings in September, they love the cold.
Yeah, depends on the zone, I'm south Fla 10b, some years I can plant late November, and it stays mild and cool until spring, other years it's barely noticeable that it's winter lol. I love broccoli though, so I plant it and cross my fingers it will do well, always worth it when it does!
Rosemary from seed fought hard with me for years. Proper vernalization was the key.
Shiso is doing the same right now, I am not a quitter. Thou shall yield Shiso.
I couldn't grow shiso in pots but I accidentally spilled some seeds in the yard in late summer I had more shiso than I wanted. I froze the rest. Apparently it has to be quite warm for the seeds to germinate.
Pineapples basically grow themselves in the part of Florida I’m from, we actually used to be the pineapple capital of the world 😂 It’s a nice set it and forget it plant for the side of your yard but be prepared to battle raccoons and squirrels for the fruit 😤 On that note, if you don’t like regular/pineapple ground cherries you might like Peruvian/Aunt Molly’s ground cherries. They taste more citrusy and not savory at all.
Ha! Raccons, squirrels and chipmunks are also hungry in Canada.
Their favourite food: anything unripe ;)
Try using groundcherry for salsa. That's the best use for them really, all the flavors, and nutrition, delicious.
That's good news on the Aunt Molly's. That's the seed I picked up this year! Hooray!
If you're in a climate where they're pretty low maintenance pineapple can be a pretty cool decorative plant, but they are definitely slow to produce and even if/when you do get a fruit it just takes one trespassing a hole for it to all be gone cause you're getting one fruit at a time, it's not like how trees take awhile to fruit but after enough time end up loaded with fruit.
I enjoy hearing about the struggles it always reminds me that I'm not alone when it comes to those one or ten that seem to give us problems 🤣 Cauliflower and Brussels are those for me.
Don't just grow what is popular. Find out what you like and what will do well in your location.
Add seaweed aka kelp meal to your soil if you have problems growing beets. I like a product with seaweed and fish emulsion combined.
I HATED the Aunt Molly's ground cherries, they had the weirdest taste, but last year I tried the Pineapple Ground Cherries and they were SO good, they were so sweet and delish. Try the Pineapple Variety! My kids loved them too!
Happily found out they make righteous jam.
I cannot wait for mine.
I like the Aunt Molly’s! Well, to each their own eh
I’ll have to try the pineapple variety! 🍍
Watching this now as I start my seeds❤️
I can't imagine not growing Rhubarb, probably because my grandparents grew it and my parents grew it and I'm growing it - all from the original roots. A few years ago I started some new varieties which are heirlooms -- they are Glaskin Perpetual Rhubarb which allows harvesting all summer long, right up until the fall frost.
I like growing the rhubarb and sunchokes because I have been adding more and more perennial food providers to my garden that also add visual appeal. I wouldn't bother growing amaranth for the grain. I grew a ton of it and got very little grain for the amount of work that went into harvesting it. The leaves, however, were delicious, so I will likely plant it for its ornamental value and grab some leaves from time to time.
Beets! I cannot grow beets but giving it one more shot this year! I LOVE beets! No go on sunchokes and kale for me. I don't care for cooked greens, I know, I know...never tried ground cherries but am this year. Broc!!?? LOVE it!!! I would have half my garden in it! lol Pineapple, if only. I watch Danny n Wanda and they have a ton in a small side greenhouse and I will try to go that route one day but know it takes forever....lol Great video guys! Oh and no go on hot peppers besides the big J's!
I would absolutely love too see you make a video about growing vanilla when you spoke about it it peaked my interest
In agree broccoli takes too much space in my small garden, but when I did grow it I had a lot of success. I grew it for the leaves and stalks only which I found delicious. It was a plant that kept giving throughout the growing season from the cool spring and rebounded in the fall.
I love that I am not the only person who has a bucket grow list. I always throw in 1 or 2 weird off the wall growing challenges a year. Some have more become must plant regulars. Ginger yum
You both as so good at the banter. Loved this video. I would agree with almost everything except the rhubarb. I'm Polish so I have to grow it 😁.
I have 3 young plants that I'll be transplanting to more permanent locations this spring and can't wait for the harvest.
Pineapple I have in its own dedicated bed. I am in Florida so as long as I can keep the occasional frost and freeze at bay, it is relatively care free. Home grown pineapple is like a home grown tomato, nothing in the store can quite get the same flavor profile. But, it is a long term investment crop and for me worth the investment.
I love topics like these and I love it when these two making episodes together! 💗 I live in Indonesia and I agree with the pineapple one, although it's actually one of my most favorite fruit, I will never plant them again. I got lots of scratches on my calves from their tiny thorns, too. Ugh. 😅
Pineapples are easy to grow in pots. I used a 5 gallon Smartpot and it has bloomed, made a store size fruit and made pups and continues to grow well.
Broccoli is one of my favourites to grow along with cauliflower and romanesco the kids love them and here in central catalonia, Spain broccoli grows very well as a autum/winter crop we normally get nice big heads and then plenty of sideshows. It's great boiled and then covered with olive oil, lemon juice and some chopped toasted almonds. 😋
I never eat ground cherry, but my chicken loves them. And they are prolific plants, providing chicken snacks all summer + fall.
Dr. Grinspoon in zone 5a southern VT. It's like growing a 16-foot apple tree in one season (seed to harvest) with three-pounds of apples at harvest. The "apples" taste great and they produce a desired result, but a 16-foot plant should yield ~10-pounds.
Otherwise, I'm not planning to grow apple trees, for real. We have so many sources of great apples in our area that planting more of them is redundant and a waste of space for a small grower of things.
Y'all be well! Thank you.
Well with the spicy peppers you can dry them to later blend them into a power to have seasoning of, that you can put in your dishes. If you keep the powder dry and away from sunlight it can last for 2 years. Also with a lot of ghost peppers or Carolina repears you can also make hot sauce out of them. Cook it very good and bottle it up, will last you 1-2 years if kept in a dry cool dark place, even more if in the fridge.
Some ways to have a lot of super spicy peppers put to good use from your garden.
The small cucumbers my Mother in law use to slice it length wise and fry it with garlic and onion. Until a little brown on the edges add salt and eat it with a flat bread that we call sada roti. But u can sub the flat bread with pita or flour tortillas. And we like things spicy so she would also add hot peppers. Like scotch bonnet or habanero. Or birds eye.
I love ground cherries, they were always my go to garden breakfast for those early mornings at my old community farm.
Foraging fact! Japanese knotweed has the exact same flavor profile as rhubarb without the strings! And it has a ton of vitamin C. I live in western PA and it is a horrible invasive that chokes out literally everything around it and is virtually impossible to get rid of. I harvest it in the spring and make a knotweed and strawberry cobbler and omg is it good.
Yeah. I tried growing pineapple from crowns and half of them rooted. Started planting them they were fine until the recent river rain. Many are rotting. If they all die, oh well. Meanwhile, the one plant I didn't care so much was the avocado plant from seed. It survived the cod, heavy wind and river rain.
One year my dad grew two full seed packs of broccoli in on 6×6 area. The wind had other ideas and as he was hand-casting them they went where they wanted and a couple of weeks later we had a hundred plants. Yes, I think they all germinated. Talk about broccoli 100 ways. Also, love ground cherries and rhubarb
Ground cherries are weeds with perennial roots, although they have a unique taste. I took a liking to Purple sprouting Broccoli I let some resseed and always have more than enough.
We grow and freeze rhubarb. It’s wonderful in pies with other fruits! Hint: it grows best under a shade cloth. I grow all the brassicas under shade cloth as well.
I’ve got 17 pineapples going right now. This batch, I set up 3 in a hydroponic system (basically ran out of dirt space). If I have a yard, I’m darn well going to have pineapples.
That's amazing...hydro pineapples!
@@epicgardening We’ll see how it goes. It was actually by accident, I left them in a container with water for 7 months(with refills as needed) while I tried to figure out what to do with the extras. They’re actually as big as the ones in dirt for the same period of time. I transferred them to a dedicated “actual” hydroponic setup last week so we’ll see. Some googling has found unsubstantiated claims that hydroponic pineapples not only work well but grow larger and faster…
@Epic Gardening just how cold is it there that you need a coat?! 🤔
Here in MN it seems like everyone has a rhubarb plant in their yard. They come back every year so it's really low/no maintenance. We had some on my parents' farm my whole life, but I don't think it was in the best location--on the north side of one of the barns. It finally died out a couple of years ago; either it got too old, I over-harvested it, or it got buried in too much horse poop. XD Pineapple is on my bucket list of things to grow.
hey kevin! i’m really excited to start my first year gardening myself. i work with students in a private high school and i would love it if you could recommend some simple gardening projects i could do with my students. love the channel, so excited to start my berries when my garden center gets them in :D
For the school, maybe herbs or small determinate cherry tomatoes. Or of course strawberries
I am all about the cucamelon, all the time. There's no better way to de-stress than to just harvest a half dozen and eat them right then and there. And I discovered Aspabroc last year. It's a game changer for me. The leaves are also delicious fried crisp in olive oil or butter.
p.s. I am planting both Fartichokes and ground cherries this year. I just love the stubborn privacy hedge of the Fartichokes with the beautiful flowers. And my husband has never had ground cherries. He has a sweet tooth and I don't. I am going to give it a try to see if he likes them.
Looking up aspabroc right now.....
We literally picked our Pineapple that we started growing from a store brought Pineapple at the beginning of covid 2020, yesterday arvo lol we have a sucker that started growing while the Pineapple is growing so we are going to re plant that. It took 2 yrs on the dot to grow in a pot plant
Rhubarb here in zone 4 canada is crazy. You don't have to do anything not even water it. Just the rain we get here where I am is a dry climate. It gets huge and is unstoppable haha
I’ve tried beets in different types of soil and fertilizer and can’t get beets to form. The first year all I got were greens. I give up. There are many other things to grow in that space.
You got beat by beets.
Took me a few attempts, but it worked.
Yep, same here, beets and turnips, i just cant grow. However. I dont really care cause i dont eat em anyways, i was only growing them as a "friend" plant to my other crops. To help keep away pests or lure other pests.
They grow best in Pennsylvania according to the office.
I have the same issue! I get really nice beet greens but the roots never form correctly 🤷🏼♀️
I'm in Michigan and haven't had trouble with beets. Maybe it's too warm where you are?
I love ground cherries but they’re over prolific. They are delish! I LOOOOVE FARTICHOKES! They’re best pickled.
Funny how often I hear trouble with growing rhubarb. It my most neglected and ignored plant 😆For me its the perfect shade plant and I’m in Northern Alberta, Canada. I have it tucked into a corner on the north side of my garage so it gets very minimal late afternoon direct sun in summer but it comes back huge year after year with next to no maintenance. Just toss the leaves around base when harvesting for natural mulch. And it is the perfect fruit for freezing because of the stalk strands almost every recipe calls for it to be frozen overnight first to break down the fibres. So I cube and freeze to have on hand when the berry season is done. But I do agree once its established it gets big with huge 1-2’ diameter leaves it takes up a good space and chokes out stuff around it.
New Zealand spinach if you enjoy the spicy slightly bitter flavor (good addition for mixed green salad) is a surprising win in my 7a garden. It's a fairly heavy producer, self seeds with vigor, and is damn near impossible to kill. One thing I loved about it was, it was one of the few vegetables that the ground hogs seemed to leave alone (along with peppers and tomatoes)... They love potato and squash greens, making those nearly impossible to grow in my yard.
Ground cherries are a great novelty for kids. The birds did the insisting that the ground cherries come back though. They helped it right along.
And I feel like my pineapple tasted SOOOOOOOOO much better than the grocery store. Mine was small, single serve, but the flavor was sweeter and more delicious. I was able to pick it when I wanted. the original plant does die back, but a new shoot comes off of the side(dont rip it out immediately after cutting). I love my pineapples near a fence or border. Pineapple is not inviting(especially 2ndgen) and that's usually what im going for along the fence :)
I like hearing peoples reasons for not growing these different foods though. good insight, and a joke helps you to remember why not a little better!!!
One plant I would add to the list is cantelope. I had many produced and they had very little if at all fruit inside. I spent a lot of care on them but they did not turn out well. They seem very influened by the amount of water and we had a very wet summer that might have affected the fruit.
Very happy with the direction of the show! Questions answered and more perspectives. Good job 👏
I’ve grown pineapple. Mostly in pots. It’s a joy to see the flower emerge as that means you’ll have a fruit in about 6 months.
This year I’ve got 3 pineapples getting flowers. I’m dancing. Fingers are crossed.
Although I’ll probably not grow them for a bit as they are a large chunk of time commitment. But I have enjoyed the challenge of growing them.
I've just started learning to plant and grow vegetables and easy to propagate plants like mint and I've been trying to grow Alyssum from seeds here in the tropics and so far no success. I tried growing it since according to you guys, its fairly easy to grow and has this sweet and beautiful flowers which I like but i don't know if its my soil or other factors making it almost impossible to germinate