Gardening Lessons Learned (2022)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- Every year brings new garden experiences and gardening lessons learned. Gardener Scott discusses some of the gardening lessons from his garden in the last year. (Video #403)
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Often, when small animals get our tomatoes and fruit, it is really for the water in them. Keep a small watering dish, in a spot you can can rinse and fill regularly. squirrels are the culprits in my garden. I noticed the damage is much worse during a drought. There are no puddles in the neighborhood for them to drink from.
What an innovative suggestion!
This is good advice, but it unfortunately wasn't the case for my garden. After I noticed the rodents getting my cherry tomatoes, I started leaving out pans of water for them. This did not work at all, as they were really looking for sustenance, not just water. My only real options are to set out traps, and train my cats to patrol the garden.
This has worked for me, for years.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 you can't train cats to just patrol your garden. As soon as you take your eyes off of them they are shitting in your neighbors garden and killing the tree frogs and carp that they purchased. Do you think they like losing money because of you?
@@y0nd3r One, the cats will be on leashes and harnesses. Two, I live in a suburban area in zone 7b with enclosed lawns. Three, none of my neighbors have anything like a koi pond. You make a lot of assumptions that seem to stem from a hatred of cats. By your logic, nobody should ever walk their dogs because of how many people dogs attack every year.
Thank you for your words of wisdom. My mindset was that I have been gardening long enough that everything should go smoothly. Thank you for reminding me that there are lessons to learn every year in the garden.
Hahaha! Mala, the cutest garden pest ever.
My Grandpa always told me he learned something new almost every day. At the time if his death, he had been farming/gardening for over 75 years. I'm currently making a list of all the things my garden has taught me this year, myself. 😊
I’ve learned how to squeeze more flowers and edibles out of my small garden without fertilizer. I give the credit for that to Gardener Scott and other YT gardeners. If you had told me pre Covid that I’d be gardening without fertilizer, I would have laughed at you.
If you live in a place where you can have chickens, their manure, mixed with brown matter ( I use the pine shavings from the chicken coop) composts into a wonderful fertilizer. 80% of what the chickens eat comes from my garden, so all of the not so pretty vegetables and fruits go into their pen. I don’t recommend that you let them go entirely free range, or they will destroy your garden. As pets go, they are easy to keep, and you get eggs.
I have also started an aquaponics garden because fish waste is a great fertilizer.
@@amymorales4622 I wish I could! I love watching “chicken tv” on Edible Acres channel. I volunteer at a barnyard rescue and bring home the alpaca manure and bedding, collect seaweed from the beach and can usually find arborist wood chip on Craig’s list. My brother lives in the suburbs and I’ve bribed his boys with cookies to bag their leaves for me.
@@AndYourLittleDog It sounds like you have worked out a great method. Happy growing!
@@amymorales4622 same to you. Hopefully, one day I shall get some hens of my own and we can share notes 🌝
My whole garden is fenced into "rooms". I have nine dogs, horses and the occasional elk. An almost five foot high, 2 X 4 welded wire fence has worked to keep the garden safe. Each "room" has developed its own little style. It's kinda fun.
That sounds really nice. Do you not have a problem with deer and raccoons and cats just climbing or jumping over the 5 foot fence?
@@y0nd3r I live on 65 acres so there are all sorts of critters out there but when you have 9 dogs there aren't too many that come in to the garden. My own cats go out first thing in the morning and hunt mice and they are really good at it so they are welcome in the garden. When you live out in the country you have to have cats.
Like someone else posted it seems like deer usually won't jump into small spaces. Elk are a bigger problem and they do jump the perimeter fence into the property but so far they haven't gone over or destroyed the small fences - so far. The biggest problem I have is with wood rats. I finally found a trap that works great at catching them. Got one every night for the last three days!
We also had a tomato-eating dog. He would only do it if he thought we weren't looking. Enjoyed the recap of your summer gardens. How true that we are always learning.
My dog loves accompanying me in the garden as well! I need to find a good way to prevent armadillo damage. They dig up grubs in the night, but also the veg roots. .. and trample everything small ... they are like small army tanks in the garden.
This is my third year using worm castings. Each year I produced and used more, with several applications and top dressings possible this year. For the first time, we had no aphids, leaf miners or other pests on our vegetables and even our roses and annual flowers. Amazing!
~ Sandra
I will be digging up some red wigglers from my girlfriends’ horse farm in the spring and they will be my worm pets. I haven’t had worms for years
I purchased a couple of wax paper cups of worms from a bait shop 25 years ago and I put them in the holes when I planted the trees. The trees did well, and every shovel full of soil overturned on my lot now has worms. This is amazing to me because it started as rock hard clay. Of course, I added a lot of compost along the way.
@@amymorales4622 Fascinating!
I think I made a big mistake because I have so much going on with my husband who has cancer. I lived in FL for 23 years. Made my own compost. Everything was great. I start reading about red wiggles but obviously not thoroughly cause I threw them right in my compost. Which I had in a metal garbage can with holes drilled in. I live in a houses divided into 4 apts and if I had open compost I would have to put it way in the back where there are tons of trees and no sun. It never got hot. I've composted before so I knew my materials were right and the moisture was right. It did compost down but never got above 70. So me being a dummy adds red wiggles. Now I had to drag the compost in the garage when it stays fairly warm but now I gotta got out and keep feeding the darn things. My husband said you really love those worms don't you. I said yes. It's been almost 2 months, they have almost doubled a some are fatties. But I'm like now what. I thought I could just throw them in the above ground bed next year with the compost. Then I'm like I don't think that will work. Am I supposed to lay a big tarp down, spill the contents, pick out the castings and start over. My mind is everywhere these days. Having a husband with cancer and the paperwork it involves in beyond anything I ever imagined. I thought starting to garden again would give me a mental health break. Let's just say that I literally thought about killing a squirrel. They got my tomatoes, green pepper, and a beautiful eggplant that I was going to pick the next day. I look and it's gone. It was a good size too. Normally, I will find things in the bed or close to it, but this fat eggplant was gone. And what's even stranger is it didn't shoe up on my camera. I keep the back one on all the time and if I see a squirrel even close I will put on my speaker and yell at it and it runs lol. Planning for next year. Budget it tight but I did best with my picking cakes and jalapeños peppers. I have a fence but it is killing my back bending over. I love the idea of growing them vertically. Those plants grew over 6 feet. I put up hoops but had to use netting and it started to become a chore. My back ending up hurting from bending over the fence and having to take all the clips off to take the netting off...omg I would end up out there and it would get dark and I would get eaten by mosquitoes. I am going to take this winter to look some things up as far as a better, yet inexpensive barrier that is easier to access. And it's perennials from now on. I spent too much money on annuals and had to replace half of them. And I am going to get grow bags instead of another bed. I need to find the peacefulness in this again. I have always grown from seed There's so much more satisfaction watching them sprout and grow. I am gonna add mulch to my garden next year. Probably just simple hay and I am going to order specific seeds. I started late this year so that didn't work in my favor. Now just gotta figure that out and what the heck to do with these worms. I don't even know what a worm casting looks like lol.
@@lindakoberna3465 It sounds like you have been wonderfully successful at growing worms. Personally, I would just move some of them, a cupful at a time along with their surrounding compost, into your garden beds. If you can’t do a lot of gardening this year or next, just focus on gradually building your soil. I know what it is to have too much on my plate. My husband has MS, and I have health concerns of my own. I have had to understand my own limits. I have to hire help for the big jobs. Gardening is no longer enjoyable if it leaves me in excruciating pain. I go outside and do a little here and there several times a day. If I can’t get it all done, I just have to let it go. Yes, the squirrels carry off a lot of vegetables. The birds eat my fruit, and some plants die of thirst. My house is usually a wreck and there are a lot of times when I use all of my energy doing other things and I can’t manage to cook supper. I just do what I can, and forgive myself for not being able to do it all.
I really appreciate, Jeff Bridges, taking the time out of his busy schedule, to teach us about gardening. 😜
😂 lol
Awesome lessons learned this year to make next year's crop stronger and better. We don't have deer or bunnies but mod get rats and mice though we have lots of backyard cats. Our biggest pest is the Cabbage moth ! The caterpillars row fast and are voracious and hard to find caterpillars as they match the color of the crop they are demolishing nibble by nibble. We have made good use of our organic b.t. spray to control caterpillars on tender turnips, radish, broccoli, kale and swiss chard.
Oh do i agree with learning every year.I hope next season is a little more stable. That’s what happens when I put in 5 new beds and have to go through all the trial and error.
Is anyone else just commenting to help Gardener Scott with the TH-cam algorithm?
I appreciate that, Lucas. But feel free to ask questions too.
Hey Gardner Scott 👋. #1, What I learned. A catagory 4 hurricaine that lambastes your area. Will “pretty much”, ruin your garden. HOWEVER...🤣 Your cattle panel hoops will stand the 145 mph wind gusts for 13 hours! I thank God my house was spared w/barely any damage at all. And am reseeding most my fall garden (NOT COMPLAINING). And I’ve done the same thing with the bird netting on the hoops. Really works! Thanks for another great vid, as always. 👍
I'm glad you and your house survived. Enjoy your "new" garden.
I learned that neighborhood cats love to roll around in my carrot patch. You would think it was catnip. Next year, I am planting catnip in the front yard so that they will have that and leave my carrots alone.
How lucky to still be gardening. I started gardening as a child. I remember weeding in the garden 70 years ago. That's when I had my first lesson in organic soil preparation . I now garden in half barrels on my deck but ii wish I could do more. And yes I learned a few things this year....
Something I have learned with trees and bushes is deer and other animals will graze or break them until they are at least 5 or 6 feet high. I learned to just put bird netting around them. You can either get a 6+ foot fence or use netting until they are big enough. Animals browsing on tree limbs are also the reason I don't have many dwarf trees. I just learned over time that even though having trees with fruit within reach sounds great it can be punishing too because it is within reach for animals as well.
Hope those challengers improve next season.
The mice might be eating the tomatoes for the moisture. Try leaving a bowl of water in the garden for them, outside the tomato cage. Bonus, they will be available to the cats and dog to munch.
Hi. Thanks for sharing these tips. It is always fun for me to learn more about gardening. It has been a year but I still consider myself as a novice. I developed an interest for gardening when I saw my neighbor's glass greenhouse. IT WAS SO BEAUTIFULLLLL! I got to know that they bought it from Mulberry Greenhouses and bought myself a polycarbonate greenhouse for sale.
This is why I love to garden, always learning from the successes and failures.
It's kind of funny, once you think you get something right, something else pops up that leads to even more changes.
PEEK A BOO!!!! Who lurking under the cherry tomatoes at minute 7:00? A doggy??? 😊
You could make an apple bonsai with the apple tree that got chewed on so much. It has been shortened, and it has lots of branches to work with.😃
Yes, I've been thinking about doing espalier with it.
@@GardenerScott yes, you would still get fruit from it.
Thank you. I learn new things from my plants every year, as well as the great info from yt videos and gardening books. Im sort of obsessed with wanting to know more about gardening because i get so much pleasure from growing a variety of plants.
In Colorado the tomatillos did super well in the greenhouse for me. Green beans and potatoes awesome in native soil outside :)
I like the way you frame challenges.. with explanations. It keeps you open to solve the reason of the challenge and to understand it .. instead of being stuck at why is this happening to me?
Some oddity happened in my garden 8A Dallas, this year. My tomatillo is now beginning to produce but is gangly and puny. Terrible drought combined with tap water and severe heat may be to blame, but it is just a sad sight for such a beast of a plant normally.
Greetings from Spokane. Looks like you’re having a nice warm fall as well. Fingers crossed there are still a few more weeks until our first frost this year.
Hi, Nate. My fingers are crossed too.
I learned that brassicas do better when started in the cold of early spring and late fall, not during the heat of summer. The best green to start in the heat of summer is amaranth, which is when it will outpace everything else. If you let amaranth seeds fall into the soil from last year, you're going to end up with thousands of them sprouting all over.
Enjoyed the video, TFS
Great reminder to assess how things went during the season. I always need to take notes and rarely do. This time I took my phone out and made a video and talked through it.
That's a great idea. I always intend to take notes but never do. I've taken photos but never did a "documentary" video. Will try that next year.
Our neighbor and us have had a hard time with deer this year eating our peppers, first time for all of us. We plan to build a fence around our garden to keep them out. Great lessons. TFS ☹🦌👍
My dog loves many of the fruits and veggies in my enclosed garden! When I'm working in it I really have to make sure she is not helping herself. I've had mice in my strawberries and chipmunks/squirrels (that came through a torn area) eating my peas and bean sprouts!! I put mice traps out.
After having to put up extra emergency chicken wire and fencing because of my groundhog issue, the pressure leveled off! Like most areas, Ct had extreme drought and very hot temps. 2 large bumper crops of tomatoes made me happy! As you ponder and analyze your corrections for next season, I have also. I'm getting ready for my next season, more planning is my #1 agenda! Thanks always for sharing! Blessings
My little garden dog is a yorkie with a big attitude. She is the boss and lets everyone know it. She has to be out there though
I was going to ask if you have a grasshopper problem (which I've had up in Boulder County), but then there it was! Crawling up your greenhouse pepper plant, a bit to the right of the foreground pepper starting around 10:37. So I guess you have them! At my old house in Niwot they bordered on a plague if not kept out with netting.
Yes. I almost included that as a lesson learned for this video. The grasshoppers were a problem, especially in the greenhouse.
It’s been lovely to see your garden so full and colourful and great to hear all the great tips from your year of growing. Here’s hoping they set you up for another fantastic year next year. ❤
I told you I was getting my feet wet in gardening in the new hardy zone 7b I'm from zone 10b were only 3 ft above sea level so I never had a issue with mole/vole grr. Anyway James Burke - Garden Of Eating- out. Be warm
Next year I’m adding an edible weed garden: dandelions, wood sorrel, lamb quarters, etc
Love these kinds of videos. It really is pretty interesting and fun even to analyze the year's garden, at least I think so. One of my big lessons also pertained to plants shading others I wasn't prepared for. Thanks so much for sharing. 🙋♀️
Also my best season ever for peppers and Also the most mulch and compose that I've ever done
A test bed of half as much mulch and compose and it does fair but the best results were the heavy mulch bed.24 bells and over 300 harvest here in my in ground bed in Columbus Ohio land of concrete hard pack clay soil that I've improved in 6 season.
I’ve made the same mistake two years in a row, I planned holidays Oct 1, thus I have a partially harvested garden and I noticed I got hit with frost last night. I enjoyed this video in Hanoi. Next year I leave Nov1.
Thinking over your current season us good! I keep running notes in a journal from one year to the next. What I grew, what worked, what didnt.
Deer also found my backyard garden for the first time this year. I covered as much as I could with tulle, but need to work on a more permanent solution!
You need a good fence. Scott has a video on this, but the short of it is that you should consider installing a tall fence that the deer cannot jump. If the fence is short and the deer can see through it, you can still deter them from jumping by putting a row of stakes behind it.
Thanks, for all lessons learned!!!!🤗
You are fantastic!
I got some new ideas seeing your cettlefence in the raised beds. Great! Enjoy your day🥰
This is my 1st year. Planted just a few things for practice. I have had great success with my jalapeños and herbs along with marigolds. My black beauty zucchini is 52 days in and no zucchini yet. Cucumbers are getting close I hope. I might have pumpkins by Christmas. Lol. Learning all the time.
I’m in zone 9b.
Ugh, I have a couple days in the forcast for a light frost. It is coming early this year for my area, central Alabama. I am going to cover the tomatoes to get them through it, the peppers will be okay, and I think the squash will make it through it. After those two days, iot will be warming back up. I don't expect a heavy frost until December, when I have to cover the raised beds with greenhouse plastic.The tomato plants survived ravenous horn worms, then started recovering and producing flowers, and a few fruits. Then I had a white fly infestation. I sprayed them with neem oil, but mixed he solution too strong, and burnded them badly. I cut the wilting and dead branches, and the plants have put out new growth and have started flowering and producing fruits. They want to do their thing, so I am going to do what I can to help them. I may yet, get a fall harvest.
Thanks for the video Scott. Learned a ton from you in a short time.
Great Gardener Scott, your lessons are very helpful, thanks for sharing your experiences. Autumn is heading into winter, with snow flurries already ! 🍃🍂🍁❄
Scott, The Arminian Cucumber is really a melon. Before giving up on them next year. Try planting 1 plant and allow the melons to grow to maturity. At the right time you will smell the sweet melon "smell". At that time harvest it. You get a melon (not the best but fun to grow). Ps I almost gave up on them also. This is the first year I grew them and didn't like them. I then accidently let one plant go to maturity. Lord willing, I will be growing one plant next year to see if I can produce a good melon. Ray Delbury Sussex County NJ zone 6b.
Nice garden!
They say deer can clear 12’ at a run. We have 7’ 2x4” wire fence on T-posts and have no problem. If the deer sense a small enclosed space or they can’t clearly see where to land helps to keep them from trying to enter. We had only 2 problems-once when there was snow and our entrance gate was lower than fence and baby rabbits can fit through 2x4”. I did add some chicken wire to the bottom and we changed the gate. I also added some 2’ chicken wire to partial stretches of 2 sides of property line as the rabbits and cats had a regular path and that kept our security lights from continually turning on so it must work.
Everything I plant costs money and time and I don’t have a ton of either so it all has to be protected. Some get depressed when winter hits, but it doesn’t compare to the feelings I get when and animal destroys my plant- Even cats that spray. I have traps for gophers and if I ever get a mouse problem. The upside is my plants are protected and baby rabbits don’t eat much 😊
Don't be fooled ! Baby rabbits can devastate young seedlings. They have cleared out all of my young bean seedlings. I now cover them with insect netting which does the job nicely. Good Luck.
@@carolparrish194 lol, forgot baby plants as I only seen them when the garden was more advanced. Maybe it wasn’t a cutworm after all 😂
Helpful vid 🤙🏼
Thanks
Thank you for the video!
Were those the Purple Tomatillo's from Baker Creek? If so, I grew those this season and they were incredibly bushy and prolific, took over half of one of my beds and just kept churning out more than I could harvest before pulling them to plant my cover crop. They were also quite tasty too, hopefully you have more seeds for them!
They were from Baker Creek.
Great advice, thank you!!
We learned this year that underground critters ( most likely voles) like okra roots. They killed them all. Any ideas on how to prevent this for next year are welcome. I learned not to plant more experimental/ fun varieties than I have old standards.
One of the reasons I grow in raised beds is because of my gopher and vole problem. With wire mesh at the bottom of the bed, they can't burrow up and eat my plants.
I’m missing the green already, not much green left now where I’m at. 🙈 Lol!
The squirrels have eaten about 90% of my larger tomatoes. They steal them green and I don’t even get to ripen them inside. Tried bird netting and they went right through. Might have to chicken wire next year.
I had a bad squirrel problem in the past. .I only have one squirrel problem now. I found out recently that my neighbor was trapping them and taking them to a park away from temptations. I told my neighbor he had more work to do.
This was such a helpful video!
Thank you for all the advise! I’ve learned so much from watching this channel:). What really sweet variety , thin skinned cherry tomatoes do you recommend? I would like to try them next year. I never knew that paprika came from peppers! Hahaha.. still learning …
Here are some of my favorites: th-cam.com/video/Pmwvw8prEtA/w-d-xo.html
@@GardenerScott thank you ! You have always responded so quickly! I greatly appreciate it:). The questions I have asked are always answered promptly and professionally!
One of the lessons I learned this year was how much the sweet potato vines stretched out. One of them rooted itself in a different garden bed. It’s not even attached to the mother plant anymore. Will it grow sweet potatoes or should I pull it so I can use that bed for something else? I’m in Zone 9
Once it roots it can grow sweet potatoes if there is enough time in the season. It can take time so you might be able to use that space for other plants in the season you have left.
Scott, could you remind me please of the smaller tomatoes you have growing behind you on YOUR right side? They look like cherry tomatoes
The cherry tomatoes are Sweet 100 and Sungold.
@@GardenerScott thank you so much
I had something eat some of Alma paprika peppers. The Alma are quite spicy fresh so whatever it is, it can handle spicy. 😅
Did you plant the wildflower seeds in the fall or in the spring?
I sowed them in fall.
Hi, can you tell me if you think I should start 4 new garden beds this year, to be ready for spring, or just wait until spring? I bought the dirt on sale a few days ago, bagged raised bed soil, and I have the beds ready to be assembled.
My concern is, does the soil benefit from bein put in early, or do the nutrients in it degrade over the winter? I also live in zone 5b. Will the soil be ok if left in the bags, or will it get moldy or have problems if left out? This was my first year gardening in 4 4x4 raised beds. Im still learning.
I think starting beds in fall is a better idea. It takes time for soil microbes to populate the bed and early beds give more time. It's the microbes that release the nutrients into the soil from the organic matter.
Sh'lum Scott,
My husband came across something which sounds odd to me, so I figured I would ask you because you have been a successful gardener for years.
The information my husband found said with Mellon plants the first fruits are false fruits which will never fully mature so we should cut them off.
This sounds off to me, it sounds like someone is trying to prevent gardeners from getting g a good harvest.
That sounds off to me too. Some times when cold weather hits me early the only melons I harvest are the first ones that formed. With a longer season, cutting off the first flowers and fruit can make a stronger plant for bigger harvests later.
I am considering a shade cloth for my tomatoes. What do you recommend? 30%, 40%, more or less.
I use 30%. It cuts the severe sun but still allows light in.
If I have soil in a container contaminated with tomato blight will the winter cold kill it? It's nice soil mix and would be a shame to waste it.
Probably not, from what I have heard. It might still be usable for growing nightshade family plants if you are okay with regular treatment with fungistats or fungicide.
Deer make us good fence builders
Hot sauce is a big help against pests big and small.
Then it rains 2 days in a row 😒
My tomatillos were filled with bugs this year.😢
That’s a bummer. I’ve had basically no pest problems with tomatillos, but this year they have been slow to mature and fill the husk. If i had another month of growing, I’d have tomatillos out my ears, instead of a ton of empty lanterns. I’ll learn!
@@ttb1513 - I had that issue as well. I put the plants into the old in ground garden and the soil just isn’t good - yet. Maybe next year will be better, especially if I can start the plants earlier. Last year I got a decent crop, so I can’t complain too loudly…but I will. Lol!
What are malla that you refer to?
Gardener Scotts dog, Malla.
my peppers did better this year than ever before, some type of rodent went through my beautiful row of potatoes and ate just a little of each one. so discouraged!!
Tomatillos are hard to yield fruit.
Tomatillos need a lot of warmth. I have had tons of them during summers with warm evenings. Most of the time, though, we have cool evenings , even after hot days. I am going to try them in the greenhouse next summer. They lemon and lime trees seem happy there, and they come from similar hot humid climates as the tomatillos.
Just spray your peppers with hot pepper juice. Deer hate it and my be dogs??
Is mala a cat? Maybe you show it in the , I was only listening as I was driving
Mala is Gardener Scott’s dog. She is so cute and active.
@@Gkrissy I didn't know dogs would catch mice
But your garden needs 'Tegrity ;)
Make sure the enclosure has a cat door. Unless the rabbits are smart. Rabbits are a scourge.