What is the Best Design for a Vegetable Garden?

 So you can cook this stuff and it's pretty good cooked, but I've been a big fan of eating it raw lately I've just been cutting it up a little salt and pepper just kind of like a cucumber like you got right there Well now I like it, too but uh, I've made coleslaw out of it But I bet you could saute this with some olive oil like you did them radishes and that be good, probably would With the coleslaw you just shred it up, shred it up, makes it good good coleslaw. That's good right there, got little bit more flavor to it than what your cabbages have got. It does That's one of the best tasting Vegetables in the garden to me right there. And as always you can eat the leaves.

You can eat the leaves. We should try that. They come in purple and in green that's about the perfect size right there to me they get a little bigger they can start splitting, splitting on ya yep and what you call that Kohlrabi, Kohlrabi anyways Hello folks and welcome to the Row by Row Garden show. I'm glad to have you with us tonight. I'm Travis and I'm Greg, and we've got a really good show planned tonight We're gonna talk about our garden plans for the year. We've got a lot exciting things going on Planning what we gonna plant. Where were gonna plant it. How much of it we're gonna plant all that good stuff so we each brought our own little sketch of our garden and we're gonna go through that and Kind of show you what we're planning on planting At least in the spring mmm Mmm, That's good So when it's cold days when you ain't got nothing to do and it's rainy outside That's a good time get you a ruler out and a piece of paper and sketch off and plan ahead What you gonna plant this year and what you're gonna do different.

That's right And we're gonna go over that. But before we do, let's get into a little bit. What's going on around here. We got our peppers, Tomatoes, and our eggplants all our nightshades. We got those started in the greenhouse. Our tomatoes is coming up good Peppers is starting to come up Yep We got a little bit of a problem in the greenhouse We got some Isis in there some rats, some mices, I didn't realize it till a couple days ago I was starting some stuff up there I caught something out the corner of my eye and I looked down on the ground and there was two mices looking at me Uh-oh But I got something for them this afternoon I'm or I'm gonna doctor them up a little later on today and take care of that issue You can't turn Tank loose in there I don't want to turn Tank loose he'll tear more than just those mice up, but uh, they've been eating on a pepper seed just a little bit I understand.

Yeah. Yes. I thought it was birds getting in there, no it's them mices whatever reason they ain't digging up any of the other seed they ain't messing with the lettuce or anything else they like and they must be um Mexican mices They must have some Latin descent they uh, they big fan of pepper seed So we got those going It won't be long before we start thinking about starting some okra and starting some watermelon transplants in the greenhouse too yeah Watermelons don't take that long. I'm probably going to next week start that and We'll get everything rocking and rolling. Some of the tomatoes is coming up good. The peppers are a little slow So things is rocking along today we had 34 35 degrees here On the seventh day forecast our lowest in the next seven days. It's going to be 58 degrees supposed to warm up That's our lowest is gonna be 58 degrees So it's gonna be 70s in the day time high 70s during the daytime So we fixing to have us a warm spell and I suspect this afternoon the feller might catch us cutting up some taters Very very likely that catches cutting up some taters if it can dry out just a hair I'm probably gonna plant some taters on Sunday.

Me too so got tater planting coming up you was talking about it warming up and you know this time of year everybody can't wait for it to get warm and plant and I've always kind of thought well the reason things are growing so slow up till now is because the It ain't been as warm but but I'm convinced that it's all about day length, it's all about day length. Once those days start getting longer man it I got some Lettuces growing 2 or 3 inches a day makes a big difference day length has a huge impact on weeds growing in your garden Weeds growing in the yard.

It has a lot to do with things mature and they're running along It's more important than we think it is. Yeah, the that's when things really start to kick off It seems like beets everything my shallots is coming up Out of the ground about this tall Yep, mine, too, and I needed them to come up cuz I right after I planted them we got a gully washer And I couldn't get in there and wheel hoe because I couldn't tell where my rows was because it Flattened it out, but now they coming up I can get in there do a little weeding yeah I actually got out there wheel hoed mine yesterday and they need it too so what I'm going to do and I've already hit them with some fertilizer one time I'm fixing to hit them again because my onions is looking good, my elephant garlic Garlic is looking good, my English peas is a blooming looking good So everything my radishes are finishing up So I'm gonna get in there and hit it with some fertilizer next day or two and get everything cleaned up and going again Cause I am getting spring fever and as soon as these onions and things come off I got big plans for that spot where they at Big big plans.

My onions I got some of them about a foot and a half top here now That's pretty tall, they they tall They tall, I got to hit my shallots with some fertilizer as soon as I can get in there and cultivate it. Did you side dress yours? One time and I'm fixin to do it again. Okay, let's talk about before we get into our main topics Let's talk about a few products. We've we've shown these on the show before and These are our Hoss Gardening Gloves and folks these is the best most comfortable gardening gloves you will ever wear Nice padding right here Like what you expect in a glove but this side is kind of stretchy So they fit real tight on your hands give you that dexterity you need Really good gloves, we've got these on the site where there's a little tab under our gardening tool says garden gear Gardening gear and they come in two difficult colors, two different colors. We've got the red and the green and four different sizes Great for women and men they unisex gloves and we've been using these things for four or five years now really like them So yeah, check those out.

We tested them pretty hard. I like those I used a lot of different gloves in my time goat skin leather and all that and those right there are my favorite by all means They easy to clean you can wash them off. They'll dry out real easy. They don't get crusty and stiff when they get wet real nice What else you got over there? well We've got a little something here that I've been working on for a while Little project, little project and we got some peanuts seed in you see there If you can see real close to the variety is called Wynne.

W-H excuse me W Maybe you should look at it, maybe I should look at it W-Y-N-N-E, Wynne Peanut, and I'm gonna show you the backside here you can you see there now We're gonna talk more on this later mmm But I just want to give everybody just a little bit of heads up what we got here Peanut seed and these are your roasting you know bowling peanuts. These are the large kernels these make a big peanut and this is a highly breed Open pollinated variety this variety I believe was bred up by the University of North Carolina or somewhere up in North Carolina And it's got a very high oil content to it But it's disease resistant really disease resistant and it makes these real nice big kernels now Here's the key.

I did a lot of work on these right here. And we're one of the only companies that I know out there That's got these peanuts untreated a lot of times They'll treat these peanuts with needs neonicotinoids and we don't believe in neonicotinoids and I was able to acquire Some of these seeds untreated so we're proud to have them in here, if you ain't never grown no peanuts and you thinking about it or it's just kind of got your curiosity up We got them in one pound and five pound containers and we're probably next couple weeks gonna do a pretty detailed show on these peanuts Yeah around here is a ton of commercial peanut production But if you ever dig in them peanuts and eat them you got to you gonna be there awhile before you finish, their a peanut butter peanuts and that's a different variety called runners Yeah, and there small these are more your boiling peanuts and boiled peanuts I know up north it might not be a big deal, but around here boiled peanuts a big thing in the summertime You ain't got to drive five miles either way for you see somebody on the side of the road selling boiled peanuts and roasting peanuts them kind that you buy at the ballpark That's roasted them kinds you like to eat and crack open and sit there while you watch the ballgame Same type for peanuts.

Yeah, and I'm excited about giving those a try It's not a flat running they call it a semi flat running but it's not a real flat peanut, but it's not an upright either so it's kind a in the middle there the way the growth habitat is now peanuts do take Habit of it I said habitat, growing habit, growing habit, they do take about 140 days So you need five to six months of warm weather But definitely check those peanuts out there on the site with all of are other seeds there under the peanut category alright, so This week we're talking about garden plan and garden layout and we've talked about this a little bit on previous show But now we're bout to show kind of some real pen to paper kind of what we got planning So last this past weekend, we talked about my new spot We dug up all the pine trees got them piled up and we got out there with a harrow And was trying to level that out and cultivate it and it was a rough go at first.

It was bumpy Wet and we didn't you even said when we first started you said I don't believe you gonna plant taters out here this year but it cut up a Lot better than I anticipated We got that harrow We got it a little smooth out and we got the harrow kind of Digging down deep and got it going and then you took that chisel plow, which helped out a lot and got it ripped up yep, and Got it looking good. I feel better about it now. It looks real good, I feel real good about it And I took the harrow disc and straighten them out and got it nice and level I got it kind of compacted down one thing I've noticed especially with all this wet weather this winter If I till my soil then we get a hard rain. It takes forever for it to dry out The soil is saturated more than it's been in many many many moons And my soil ain't as quite as sandy as yours It's a little darker dirt and it holds that mositure better it will hold water a little more.

So We got that area cultivated Then we had to layer off. I show you a picture what it looks like here. So it's a rectangular area Where the actual gardening space gonna be is about 125 By 80 and we've talked about this before if you got a garden space regardless how big it is Don't try To farm it the whole thing this way or this way because it's going to make your crop rotation almost impossible So what you want to do is you want to split this thing up bust it up in different sections is what we do now I had a little time starting out trying to square this plot off a little bit. I was trying to eyeball it and I caught some sense into me and run me a string Calculated out their hypotenuse, hypotenuse. Is that cosine? No. No, that's just a hypotenuse for a right right triangle, okay What's the cosine? The cosine has to do with these other sides, ah will leave that alone there. Yeah will Anyway, so if you're squaring something off Calculate that hypotenuse and run youa string right there a string there and there And it will all square up just right nice for you.

So we did that and then we Split her up So we've got six spots Plots that are equal. Yes So each of these squares are there almost squares there 30 by 35 and I like around a 40-foot size a Plot there, I like squares because Corn pollination does good. They're just it's easier to for me to figure up stuff things go better for pollination. So we got six Squares that are equal size there. We've got our pathways here which are 10 foot wide which are little wider than yours are that gives me room to get my buggy and my tools in between there and I'm really excited this. I've been kind of dreaming about having more laying in bed awake at night thinking about it uh This garden layout and I've still got the other plots as you see me do a lot of videos on this is gonna really help My rotation allow me to do a lot more cover cropping so Your garden plot is a similar design, but it's a little different I have more rectangles in mind and I got mine busted up in different sizes.

Now my permanent right here I got blueberries and asparagus in it so This one stays the same all the time these others I rotate around as of right now I got cover crops on all of them with the exception of my potato one right here that I've already Worked my mustard into so I'm about ready for my taters is about perfect. The others have cover crop still on them Then I'm fixing to start working off and corperating into the soils so I've really been Concentrating on putting these legume and these cereal grains and these ryes and all in there to build my soil up more Mustards and I worked them in and I'm getting really prepared for springtime As far as the pathways go to touch on that again Now I'm probably going to put seed mine with some centipede grass there Other people I've seen use the woodchips and they do that at the expo my problem with those is they don't stay in place real well, they washout On you pretty bad, they washout you have to constantly kind of rake them back into place So I'm gonna go with grass there and I get me a little push mower.

I can I can work in between there I don't want to really be blowing grass in my garden plots I've done that with mine my walkways I seeded them with our seeder with centipede grass works. Perfect. A problem I My walkways are about 6 foot and that in hindsight could have been probably a little bit larger. I'm not able to get my Side by side, my mule in there and I which is okay But I have a little bit of problem with my lawn mower getting in there my corners the actual width of it's okay But it's when you start making the turns that six foots a little tight on ya, yeah tear up a little dirt because your turning radius is a little too tight. So Folks regardless of this is a kind of a proven design. We did it at his garden at the expo regardless of how much land you got this here is about a quarter acre, but even if you just had a tenth of acre Whatever you can split this thing up into little pieces And I promise you you'll like it a whole lot better and be a lot more manageable It's easy on your rotation easy on your rotation easy to you ain't gotta say man I got to go out there and wheel hoe that whole quarter acre this afternoon You can say well, I'm just gonna do these taters today and I'm gonna do something else tomorrow Yeah, same thing with water and fertilizing and all that you can bust it up and it makes a lot more management Compartmentalize, compartmentalize That's right.

Mhm-mm you notice how I'm repeating them big words. Yeah, and you doing good. Okay so what I'm going to do this year that's a little different cause I'm bad about trying something different every year is I'm gonna plant Rattlesnake beans, which I've never planted before. I'm gonna plant them on a trellis show them up there Rattlesnake beans, I love a good flat bean and I'm gonna try them this time of course in my same spot there beside it I'm gonna plant okra Which I plant every year and I plant the jambalaya and the red burgundy.

The reason I plant the two varieties is the jambalaya is my favorite for frying and Stewing and things like that. However, the red burgundy is my go-to okra for pickling It's the perfect perfect variety in my opinion for pickling So I grow those two different ones and to touch on okra real quick From our experiences these two are pretty equally productive The jambalaya will start making a little quicker, but once they get going very productive Two varieties of okra there then I'm gonna move over in my next little spot here I'm gonna plant winter squash and summer squash and it's and I'm gonna do a little something different on my winter squash now I got into growing these about five or six years ago and they have become one of my favorite things to grow and I'm gonna grow This one right here that I've never grown before you see that there it's called blue bayou Supposed to be really good to eat its PM and DM resistant PM, powdery mildew and DM, downy mildew, downy mildew Well, that's good at it.

And it's 110 days So I ain't got to worry about when I plant them near my summer squash with cross Pollinating or nothing like that because that won't happen My summer squash will be on this side and I'm gonna plant the goldprize and the Sun Sunburst not sunburst. Yeah, sunburst we got some sunburst there So your summer squash, summer squash This one and my regular old yellow squash I'm gonna plant together in that right there and these will come off real quick 50 days and sometimes I can roll them quicker than that So these will come off about half the time is what that one is the winter squash will So the winter squash you we'll plant those a little a few weeks later. You got to wait till it warms up pretty good and then these would be harvested around July But then they'll store we keep them dry and they'll store on into fall yeah And it's easier for us to grow them in the spring than it is the fall Now I'm not gonna plant as many tomatoes this year because I have been planting them for years and we have got more put up than we can Use so I don't need to anticipate putting any up this year much So I'm just going to trial me a little small Spot with Bella Rosa and I'm gonna plant the Brickyard and I'm gonna plant at that mountain glory Side by side and just trial them three varieties next to one another and I'm gonna plant the Sun Gold which I've never planted before I'm not gonna plant yellow pear this year and then I move over to here I'm gonna plant me a big spot of this, honey Select sweet corn.

This is a new variety for me right here. Yeah, that's a triple sweet, triple sweet We're gonna give that a try there and then move over here and I love to grow watermelons I do it every year but I've never grown the moon stars I have grown crimson sweet for years, but my granddaddy grew these moon and stars and I'm familiar with them so I'm gonna switch up this year and I'm gonna grow the red we've got them in yellow and red I'm gonna grow the red variety of moon and stars there then I'm gonna move down here and I have my potatoes here and I have my Cucumbers which is my calypso and my pick, which is a pickle variety, right.

So these two these are our Gynoecious cucumber, gynoecious Which produce almost all female flowers and means they're really really productive and if you never planted these before you would be Absolutely stunned how productive they are Now the only thing I would say about Planting these is you got to be careful going out of town or on vacation Because you'll have more than what you know what to do with, you need to pick them about once every two days They'll make a little bitty bush and just a bunches and bunches of pickles and cucumbers We got the slicer which is a Stonewall and then Calypso which is the pickling variety Of course, I'll plant me some peppers I like to grab me a few poblanos and sweet peppers and things like that and you always got to have a habanero or two And down here I'm gonna grow my potatoes and there's my cucumbers there.

So that pretty much winds me up of where I'm gonna be on my spring planting now Keep in mind a lot of this is gonna come off pretty quick And what I'll do there is go right behind it with me some zinnias and sunflowers. Mm-hmm So soon as my potatoes or sweet taters and my sweet taters will be in june/july Yeah, they'll come July I'll normally plant them first of July so my corn More than likely will be done by then I may go back behind my corn with my sweet potatoes but I like to plant my zinnias and my sunflowers behind some of these early crops Alright Let's take a look at What we got slated and I didn't include my four other plots because in those I got onions I got some collards. I got a lot of lettuces growing and I'll probably let them areas rest once those things come off So we're just gonna talk about this new area right here So we got our sweet corn up here in this top left corner, and I'm gonna grow these this incredible variety And I think this year I'm gonna squeeze in I've been doing just two sweet corn plantings one in spring and one in fall I think I'm gonna try to boom boom boom and Get three or four in.

Ehh, you'll be pushing it you get a lot of insect worm pressure on those later later crops I say you can get two in pretty easy. You're gonna be you're gonna be stretching on three or four, but We gonna try it Up here. I got my peppers and my eggplant I like to plant my kind of trellis stuff together It makes a little easier and then I'm gonna do me some more of those rattlesnake pole beans those did really good for me last fall Over here.

I've got my summer squash and my cucumbers and We're gonna do the spineless beauty, which is a zucchini Where'd it go right here and then the goldprize Which is a straight neck and then the Sunburst which is really productive we like that patty pan there and then the cucumbers like we mentioned like he's doing The stonewall and the Calypso I like to have a slicer and I like to have a pickling variety Here we're gonna plant this whole plot here in taters. So we're gonna do Several rows each variety the adirondack blue the Yukon Gold the German butterball and the red norland, I'm doing the same thing Down here we're gonna put our tomatoes and I'm gonna grow I didn't grow as many tomatoes as I like last year and so I'm my think about doing a row of each of Brickyard, mountain glory and The Bella Rosa and I usually do a row of cages with indeterminate tomatoes.

So I might try that Jubilee that yellow Bigger one we got and some Sun Gold and then I got my okra right there and then on over here on the other side I got my winter squash and Ones I'm growing there Is I've got the small wonder spaghetti squash talk about that one just a minute So we've got a video on that one right there if you you go back Sometime last year. We I talked about those. I've been growing those for a couple years now and they make a a Personal sized spaghetti squash they're about this big Good enough for two folks and you won't to talk about productive I grew one 60-foot row last year and harvested over 200 fruits off of it and they store real well We put them in the on the rack just like we do our onions and we got an exclusive on those right there Yes, so not You won't really find those hardly anywhere else But talk about productive once they get going they're not a lot of maintenance because the vines are spread out kind of control your weeds for ya and then Come June-July when the plants start dying back just harvest them all at one time Put them underneath the barn 90 days on days to maturity So that's a awesome awesome spaghetti squash and then this one here, which is an exclusive to us It's called this it's a variety a kabocha squash called Hai, H-A-I and we've tried we've grown Some varieties Kabocha in the past and kabocha is regarded it's kind of one of the better tasting winter squashes out there, I would agree and umm This is a really nice variety Really nice yellow meat there 95 days to maturity and we can grow that one side by side the spaghetti squash cause those are two different species.

We don't have to worry about cross-pollinating and they're hybrids too so That's what we're gonna do and all these plots and like I said, they're 30 by 35 and Really looking forward to getting this area I'm gonna have to till it up one time before I plant but then I should be able to wheel hoe it from their own out yeah, you need to get that pH check pretty quick too, that's right do us a soil test and Get that checked. Alright, let's get into our questions this week And the first one comes from John TenBarge And he says he had a problem last year with Tomatoes splitting anything he can do to prevent the splitting We had that problem last year too lot of water last year was a very unusual year in adequate or inconsistent water can cause cracking on tomatoes also There's certain varieties that are more prone to cracking then there are others these newer varieties are not near as prone to cracking is your our old heirlooms are so What I would say, there is grow you a variety that is the new varieties that are bred to counteract this cracking also Watering if you get rain like we got last year there's not a whole lot you can do about it, but just be consistent with your watering and that will help a lot with your cracking if you're Consistent with your watering and you get two weeks of just flooding.

You're gonna have some cracking problems ain't nothing we can do about it but in a normal year if you're Consistent with that and you lay that out there like you should be it's gonna help a lot if you grow a good variety those bumpier heirloom tomatoes are a little more prone to split just because they're The way the shape is you're more around Hybrid ones are a little less prone seems like, oh yeah lot less. Okay, so Chris Polk Give us a question here. What's your favorite weaving trellis steak Materials I've been using 1/2 inch conduit But always looking for better options cheap and long-lasting are the keys to my heart I hear you Chris So he's talking about using the Florida weave on the tomatoes We do it on peppers and eggplant too the way I do it is I use T-posts and I use wooden stakes and I have somebody asked me the other day where'd you get wooden stakes from? We a lot of times get farmer scraps around here.

There's plenty of farmers staking the tomatoes and other stuff So if you can find some farmer scraps, but those things can be fairly highly valued. I need to get me Some of mine need to be replaced. They'll last you two or three years of wood stakes will the T posts are gonna last you forever Yeah The best investment you can make is and you can get these any of the big box stores tractor supply Any places like that farm supply stores is buy you some of these T posts that's used to put up with fence They'll last you a long long time They're not the cheapest option the first year, but if you take it over the period of years They'll last you that's probably the cheapest option out there is the metal fence post yeah, so yeah the way I do it is I put a um a T post about every 5 to 7 foot along the row and then I put a wooden stake between each plant Some people I think you do a wooden stake every two plants, but you can vary it I found between every one plant gives me a little more support so T posts every You know 5 or 7 feet keep some wooden posts from leaning if they get your soil gets real wet and then a wooden post Every one that allows you to wrap around all of them and do that nice little weave there Yeah, I think that is a lot better than the conduit, conduit don't seem like it be very stable Yeah, we'll have a little flex in it so if you can find you some wooden stakes Go with that, you'll find yourself using those wooden stakes for a lot of things laying off rows all kind of different things.

Yep Alright. Well that is gonna do it for today. We're gonna get back at shipping out all these orders and Probably gonna try to cut up some taters this afternoon. Yep I got it on my mind big-time big-time you and tank sitting down cutting up taters Yep gonna get my sharp knife out sharpen it and just sit down there and have a me me and tank take time cutting up taters So hope y'all have a great Valentine's Day out there and we will see you next week. Take care..