WHAT IS THE PERFECT SIZE FOR A VEGETABLE GARDEN?

 so most everybody that watches our show knows we don't do it live we pre-record it and we  usually shoot this thing on wednesday afternoon but somebody has been out river ratting around  a little bit and so here it is thursday morning shooting it so instead of eating more of a lunch  or a supper meal i figured we'd have a little brunch with some fresh stuff i got going from the  garden i'll leave that covered for just a second so yeah this is a surprise to me because i've not  been uh privy to what we're fishing to eat okay so there's your cup you're gonna need one of those  you're gonna need your plate and fork now i didn't grow these so let's start off with this right here  let me bring this out let me bring these out so florida is known for their citrus but or used to  be or used to be but there's recently and i was i don't know how when it actually started but seen  a huge surge in this push for georgia citrus uh lately and satsumas is one of the things we can  grow here this is a satsuma if you've never seen one it it kind of looks like an orange but it's  it's not a the skin is not as tight on the fruit they're a little easier to peel real good we'll  show you one in a minute but uh there's been a kind of a surge in growing citrus in georgia  and a lot of there's a guy down the road we know that's actually doing some grafting and stuff and  what they'll take is really cold hardy trees or a root stock and then they'll graft the satsuma  onto it and you end up getting a citrus that can survive what little bit of cold we get down  here in south georgia the reason we're growing a lot of sat simmers up north here is because they  they had this i'm pretty sure i'm right about this they had a virus down in florida  called greening that really heart jumped on them hard and devastated the you know the citrus  industry down there so it moved up for the north in the thought process was that the virus couldn't  uh survive in our type environment it's been fairly successful at this point now they've  always had to worry about that virus coming up getting an area and taking this out too but  they've created these cold hearty ones that will survive and produce well in our air and we seem  to be catching on to do having a little something here yeah um you've got a tree down at your house  my wife's stepfather in his backyard he's got two lemon trees a grapefruit and a satsuma i think and  they are just huge loaded and so this past weekend i saw this on facebook and if anybody lives in the  south georgia area you may want to go check this out so uh not about 20 minutes from my house is  a little operation in o'clock new georgia called joe i don't know if it's joe nina or joe nina's  j-o-n-i-n-a farms anyway they were having this event and i think they're having it the next  few saturdays starting at one to like five called clip and sip and the reason they call it clip is  you can't just yank these things off the tree and so they give you these special little uh  pair clipper looks like a big pair of toenail clippers and you clip them off there because if  you just yank them off the tree you pull that stem out there and the fruit's not going to stay long  so anyway we went there me and the wife and titus and uh it's twenty dollars a five gallon bucket so  it's a little pricey but it was experienced they had about an acre of satsumas planted there  several different varieties and these trees were just loaded to the brim a good amount  of people out there you could tell it was her first time doing it but i think she's really  got something there um so we got us a bucket of satsumas and i also got this right here now this  stuff right here was pretty pricey i think it was ten or twelve dollars for this right here  and she had a commercial juicing machine out there she was waiting on her sons to pick or something  she was going to juice some but we left before that happened so i bought this right here and i  don't know that i've ever had satsuma juice but this stuff right here is mighty mighty fine now  like i said it was her first time doing this thing and she'll probably want to get her some branded  jugs at some point but uh let me see if i can do this without spilling it this stuff right here  is absolutely amazing as i say it's the cat's meow it is definitely the cat's meow a little different than regular orange juice yeah it's a different flavor different flavor  but this is this has got pulp and everything in it i mean that is good out of cure what else you so  let's show them what a satsuma looks like for might not be familiar so you got there's kind  of like this little air pocket in the top here it makes them real easy to peel and these things  don't have seeds tastes a lot like a a orange maybe a little different i don't really know how  to sweeter to me explain the flavor profile but as far as the ease of peeling them and the nose  seeds they remind me a lot of like them cuties you buy at the store the little clementines  they ain't quite as tangy as the clementines um but these here are mighty fine you know she had a variety there that made a real big one like a grapefruit and they ain't as good  i could small i could eat these in one sitting problem on the way home that 20 minute ride home  titles in the back there and i'd peel one and split it in half give it to him and i'd get one  and uh we went about made myself sick off of them i got probably a quarter of a bucket left wow but  they're pretty good say a little expensive i mean um and she said she was going to do the event do  they run out of satsumas she wasn't selling them wholesale or anything and they also had  trees for sale they had trees for sale they were about 25 a piece i almost bought one but it was a  cash-only deal i'd run out of cash um but she had trees there and she had several different  varieties and if i saw some people asking her you know which variety she liked the best  anyway i thought it was a neat little for her first time doing it she had a good turnout and um  really good little agritourism opportunity we see black as a blackberry patch you picked down from  my house we see a lot of you pick things around here first you pick satsuma operation i've ever  seen yeah those are good so if you live in the south georgia area know where o'clockney is um  it's about 20 minutes from thomasville 20 minutes from cairo makes a good day trip nice little day  trip this place is pretty easy to find uh don't go out there first thing in the morning like we  did well i didn't realize it didn't start till one we got our about 10 30 and um she said i have to  come back once we head right over to cairo mr chick and get some lunch okay so we got that  part of our brunch now let me show you this right here so that's pretty see if everybody can  see this right here so this is what we call a kale frittata that's one in large pans that i  ain't got that i've seen um let me pull these out right here this is gonna take a little story time  here so i got two types of kale getting ready out there we got our dinosaur kale which you got  and we got this blue ridge kale right here this kind of frilly kind now this  is a little faster growing than that is uh so i've been harvesting a little bit of this  now this kale frittata is something we make on christmas you and mama and them usually come over  to our house and we have like a brunch and this is something we always make i know everybody's gonna  want the recipe so let me give a little break down here what you do the night before you're  gonna cook this cookie some bacon take you some of this kale right here you can do the blue ridge you  can do the lacinato we've done it with both and you just wheeled it in a pan and some bacon grease  doesn't take just a second to wheel this stuff down excuse me wheeled it down with some bacon  grease cook your bacon the nut before and then put that in the fridge the next morning when you get  ready to make your frittata of course we've eaten these for supper before you just take you 12 eggs  three of the big spoons i can't remember what they're called tablespoons big spoons what i  call them yeah three those of heavy cream mix them together and then mix you some kale tear up  your bacon a little bit and then we've used goat cheese feta cheese is really good we used a brand  of sharp cheddar called tillamook some cheese i've really been liking lately in this one and you just  put it in the oven uh mix it all together put in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes 15 to 20 minutes  and you're good to go i think this is a 12 maybe that's a 10  you think it's a 10 or 12 inch panel i got a little pan you got there  yeah i've had this one since college um anyway so about 15 20 minutes until everything gets  nice and done there hopefully it's still warm so i'll cut us a little slice here clean your knife off here it's clean and when you're checking for it to be done you just kind of it's kind of like cooking  brownies or something you just stick your knife down in there if it comes out clean  you know it's ready do you put anything on your pan to keep from non-sticking  i spray it a little bit but if you got a good seasoned pan like this right here you okay you  okay i say that one can you fix the mess up let me get my fork underneath get your fork  i should have brought a spatula it's gonna stick a little bit but it ain't bad i suspect this  piece is mine isn't it you can have that one yep show them what it looks like from the side there maybe i need a little more oil on it anyhow this right here is a fine way to use your kale  there you go y'all can see that right there yeah and uh you can i'm not gonna give amounts on the  kale how much kale i put in there if i just say probably a cup or so cooked wilted them  you put as much kale as much bacon much cheese in there as you want  to you don't want your pan overflowing but 12 eggs a little heavy cream kale bacon  cheese you put whatever you want to in there but that's the way we like to do besides the bacon i  can make all this with my yard eggs and my kale and i need i ain't got no milk cow anymore if  you just use a little heavy cream you can almost pull this off as a all your own products in there  i'm being honest this is the first time i've made this by myself my wife usually makes it  and i cooked the kale and bacon last night before she left for work this morning i said  okay tell me how to do this and i'm gonna try not to mess it up and so i think we did all right yeah  it turned out good so let's talk about what's going on in the garden right now what's kicking  butt right now i got some corn i don't believe it's ever going to get ready i've had ears on  it and i don't know if it the daylight then got shorter messing it up i'm just got me worried  i had somebody the other day commenting on that they was worried about the corn and it's just  cold weather and short days uh i mean it's pushing it to make it this time of year and it's fixing to  be everywhere so we're uh we're right here at the time when we get our average first frost  and i've noticed even this morning it's pretty cool so our summer crop summer fall crops are  just about over just about through with we can start concentrating more on these winter crops  well i got some christmas lima beans i'm still waiting on but i got a heap of rattlesnake pole  beans i don't got them snapped in gallon bags i got about four or five gallon ziploc bags i got  a can this weekend yeah but if we get a 35 or 36 and a heavy frost they do they done they done you  always playing a little gamble with them christmas lima beans uh sometimes we can go to christmas  without having a frost so uh it's a little bit of a gamble but again why i'm willing to play  i got collards i'm gonna have collards for thanksgiving um did you get your rabbit  problem fixed i'm working on it so i uh i took a little mini vacation i got all my post set  and i'm working on fishing to get my fence up and we're going to talk about that a little later on  but i'm working on that obviously you're doing some kind of uh exclusion explosion report there  uh i'm a little too old i thought you had a fence around your garden no we're putting a rabbit fence  up but i'm doing we'll just talk about this a little later i got more to come on that  but uh i'm doing something different here okay so we had a couple people comment and email us  uh we were talking about pest control last week and we were talking about we talked about our  programs and we said if your worm problem gets real bad you can switch from the bt  and go to some spinosad we had some people emails that they saw on the label  that said you weren't supposed to use spinosad on brassicas in georgia you want to elaborate on that  a little bit yeah that was true i had to overlook that on the label so i did a little research made  a phone call or two and got some clarification on it what happened was a few years ago  they some of the entomologists in the uh when i say they i'm talking about the commercial  farmers that comes down around the uh the consultants and the professors entomologists  with uga thought they found some resistance to spinozad with the diamondback caterpillar  well when they did this the first thing they try to do is limit the use of that and the home  gardener always catch the brunt of everything so the first thing they did was go in there and put a  restriction on the label for the state of georgia for a spray of spinosad on some of these uh  worms and the brassica families the one they had a problem with was the diamondback caterpillar  they also found some some residual and some kind of rum factory or something somewhere else of  the spin said that didn't help matters any however the commercial guys still to this day use spinosad  or grass because they're able to do that because the label affords them to do that the label only  excludes the home garden and and so their their their thought was let's take the home gardener out  of the game and maybe it won't affect the home the farmers as much because the home gardener  really didn't have any pool with any of this in actuality probably wasn't a home garden causing a  product no it wasn't it wasn't and so we talked a little bit longer and i asked the guy i says  well if we're seeing this resistance it had to be in these heavily agriculture areas he  said yeah that's true he said the people that live in these urban areas where there's not a  lot of commercial farming going on we don't think this would be an issue but like where we live but  like we live it would be so and i haven't noticed it i haven't seen it at all but i'm not saying  that it's not out there so if you lived in atlanta or macon or wherever where there's not a lot of  i mean these thousands of acres nebraska's grown when we live  if there's not a lot of that more likely you're not gonna have a problem but here's the ticker  on that we go what georgia's what we call label loss whatever is on that label is law so you got  to abide by that or you need to abide by that and they did exclude the home gardeners so we  pretty much need to go buy that and exclude spray it uh spread spinosad for worm issues on brassicas  just in georgia just in georgia now i'm not saying that it won't work for you i'm not  saying that i don't think it won't do any harm i'm just telling you what the label says and we  need to go about that so everybody else you find yeah and i will go ahead and say this i've done it  and had good results from it yeah we believe that yeah yeah ignorance is bliss sometimes  yeah okay um one other thing i want to address we have a lot of people on our road by road group on  facebook talking about this and if you're not a part of that go to facebook.com i think it's  slash group slash row by row you can search row by row a lot of great gardeners in there with a  lot of great things to say and pictures of their crops growing anyway a lot of people were asking  about you know we've been talking about a lot this year about growing your own onion plants versus  buying plants and the results we saw last year with that and people been asking when they buy  their onion plants that the onion plant grower doesn't want to send even though they're in the  south and we tell them they need to plant them in november now the onion plant grower doesn't  want to ship them plants until january or so and so then they think well maybe i'm not supposed to  be planting them until january well what are these hoss boys talking about planting them in november  um my buddy wes from the naked hog he had a good comment someone had said that the lsu website  uh or their college of ag had recommended planting early you know january or so but wes said that if  you look at the uga recommendations they say to plant them like we do well he made the comment  even though he's a big lsu fan that he trusts the uga ag department a little better than the lsu one  that's a whole another subject anyway so if you look at the right recommendations it will tell  you if you're growing short day onions in the south to plant them in november i will tell you  and i know this because i've talked to these guys i'll tell you why the onion plant growers  don't like shipping you onions in november tell me why it puts them in a tight so the time from when  onions are grown onion plants are grown in the south and by the time you know they're able to  actually get those seeds in the ground when they're when they can germinate and then have  plants ready to ship to you by november it puts them on a pretty pretty tight timeline and if they  were to have any crop failure or any issues at all then then it's going to throw off that timeline so  they do that because they're giving themselves a little bit of cushion and that is completely  understandable sure just but i just wanted to clarify that so everybody knew out there yes if  you're in the south grow short day onions best to plant them in november your onion plant growers  will tell you a little different because they're trying to give themselves a little bit of cushion  yeah where we get a lot of information on onions is is vidalia georgia is probably about an hour  and a half from where we live and one of our sales reps sells uh a lot of the onion season there so  he's very knowledgeable about the process up there and we talk to him a lot and he gives us insights  on the varieties that are coming the way the the markets may be moving some new new varieties they  have a test station up there where they do a lot of tests in different varieties so we get a lot of  information from him and i'm going to tell you there's more onions growing in vidalia georgia  and they are the whole state of louisiana and they always plant theirs in the fall and they make them  big old pretty onions now they have different varieties they plant that will stagger and come  off at different times in the springtime they pretty much all plant them within a month's time  here in south oregon the fall of the year that's right and a lot of the varieties that they're  growing that's that's another way while we've been able to get some insight into some of these  commercial varieties that will also work good in the home garden and that's where we  you know have been able to acquire some of these varieties  that you can't find anywhere else that you're not going to find at your onion plant grower  just because they're they're more commercial varieties uh designed to make some real real  big onions my plethora onions the first ones i planted are looking great oh my god too  so seed potatoes is getting closer and closer that time of year when we start thinking about  sweet potatoes i know for us it's the end of february but we kind of have to plan ahead  we are seeing that there was a good crop made for availability on seed potatoes looks  good so far this year i'm proud about that because i was a little bit worried  but we look like that we're fishing to start placing our orders and we expect to have seed  potatoes in for our florida and south louisiana folks mid-january so they can plant theirs early  we hope to have ample supply going all the way through we're probably going to have a  variety a new variety of two this year so excited about that yeah so we hope to have  the most of the varieties we carried last year the samplers were really popular last year we're  going to do that again probably going to add two more varieties one to two more varieties  and we'll start taking pre-orders on the website for those early to mid december sometime once  we kind of realize what we can get we'll start taking pre-orders for those and then yeah if what  if we can get them in mid-january which would be ideal yeah i don't i don't see where it's going  to be a problem right now the problem is going to be if it was to strike off cold for a week here we  can't ship them in freezing we can't ship them to you if they're going to encounter freezing temps  anywhere along the way but that's usually not too big of an issue we keep an eye on the weather  well then when i say there's ample supplies to start with we're seeing apple supplies now  what's going to happen later on year i have no idea because it's been as we all know it's been  a crazy year and we've seen things sell a lot more particular things than we've ever seen sold before  so we think there's going to be a good supply of them i would tell you i'd go ahead and think about  it a little bit early to make sure that you get the ones you want to get the variety you want to  get maybe pre-order make sure you get them locked down and then we'll ship them to you within plenty  of time when you need to plant them in your area that's right okay been adding a lot of  new varieties to the site i'm going to talk about a few of those right here let me set my plate down all right let's start off with this one here so giant pumpkins is something that that's that this  uh sparked my curiosity lately and uh and we added we've added one variety to the side the atlantic  giant pumpkin we got this one here i'm really excited about growing this prize winner giant  pumpkin and this one is supposedly can make pumpkins up to 150 pounds which is a big old  pumpkin it takes a grown boy to go grab hold to a pumpkin because they ain't got no handles on it  and pick up 150 pound pumpkin i've tried grocery giant pumpkins before he's been pretty much  a failure for me gotta have a pretty good strategy behind these giant pumpkins yeah so me and some of  my youtube buddies have been talking about this uh so we did the giant sunflower competition last  uh this earlier this year and we may still do that again but i think it will be fun for some of us  youtubers get together and as always our customers can participate and post their pictures on social  media but think about doing a pumpkin giant pumpkin contest the only thing is we're gonna have  to do it in the spring not in the fall because well and our climate here in south does not  lend itself well to growing giant pumpkins yeah those people up in tennessee and north carolina  and that area have a lot better climate for growing them than we do so we're going to do we're  probably going to do a giant pumpkin competition and and we'll let people decide where they want  to grow prize winner or the atlantic giant look at the germ rate on those 99 on those so i'm excited  about growing these i've been in back of my mind and throwing around some techniques as far as once  once i got that one or two pumpkins out there that i'm really going to devote my resources to  if i want to put them on i thought about making me a little pallet covered with carpet or something  something to set them on top of uh in case the soils get too wet there's a lot of ways to do that  you also need to think about a little shade for them too especially in the middle of the summer  build them a little teepee yeah a little teepee so giant pumpkins there what else we got new variety  of pepper here called orange you sweet and we actually have a yellow and a red counterpart  to this one here it's hard to tell from this picture here but this is more of a pimento shaped  um pepper and it's kind of flattened this one only gets about two foot tall it's supposed to be  really really good for containers and uh from what the breeders told me the peppers that kind of hang  like little ornaments on a christmas tree really good for containers and we'll be adding the yellow  i think the i can't remember what the yellow one's called the red version is called right on red  i don't remember what the yellow one's called but if you you know i'm thinking i'm gonna plant at  least one of each of these side by side have the yellow the red and the orange really good little  sweet pepper supposed to have really thick walls on it really good for stuffing what else we got a  new cucumber i'm excited about this one this is a uh commercial cucumber variety called bristol  so that one's got 99 germ on it too 55 days to maturity yeah early maturing this one is known  for its straight perfect fruits it's the gynoisis variety which means all female flowers you want  to plant at least half this packet here and it's resistant to anything you could ever imagine uh  powdery mildew downy mildew papaya ring spot virus cucumber mosaic virus zucchini yellow mosaic virus  anthracnose fusarium just about anything you can imagine so this is going to be an awesome  slicer that's just going to produce like crazy for you and nice straight fruits nobody wants  crooked cucumbers you know what else we got here so one thing i and i mentioned this on my video  earlier this week that i kind of forgot to plant in all of my first round of fall planting is beets  i just it just kind of slipped my mind now i got some lettuce that's going to be finishing up the  next few weeks and i'm coming there behind that and get me some beets and this is the one i'm  going to be planting i like the merlin i like the kestrel a lot we got this new one called vulture  and this is a more cylindrical shaped beet but not quite as long as our solyndra bee is and this  one's supposed to have a little better flavor than the cylindra does so it doesn't get quite as big  but it's supposed to be a really really good flavor it doesn't get pithy when it gets larger  like the salinger can at times and i think looking at the shape of that i think that  would be a perfect pickling beet it looks like an egg yeah almost looks like an egg they get four to  five inches long about two inches in diameter so the vulture beat excited about that one  and the last one somebody on the show mentioned this and want to know why we didn't talk about  it we're starting to add some seedless watermelons here and when it comes time to plant these we'll  do a whole show kind of explaining the process here but we got one on the site and i've got  three or four more i'll be adding uh within the next few months this first one we got here is  called tailgate now if that ain't a perfect name for watermelon i don't know what it is  tailgate seedless watermelon this one is supposed to have one of the highest bricks ratings of this  sugar content yeah so super super super sweet now with the seedless watermelons what you get  in this pack here and these things are are not cheap no matter where you get them from  you get 15 seedless watermelon seeds and inside let's just open it up i'll show it so in here you get you those are your seedless watermelon seeds your tailgate seeds  you get 15 of those and then you get 10 of these in a little bag inside the packet and these are  your pollenizers and when we talk about these seedless watermelons we'll explain what all this  means got to have these guys this is an open pollinated variety and you got to plant these  in the same plot as your seedless ones to get your pollination every third plant three to one  ratio so you get 10 of these you get 15 of these we give you a little extra of these just in case  you don't get 100 germination so you're going to plant along the row you're going to plant  three seedless seeds or transplants if you transplant like we did and then you're going  to stick one of these pollenizers so it's really important if you grow these in the greenhouse and  trays is to keep a mark reaches which right so three to one along the row um we're right now  including the pollenizer we're including is the charleston gray and the reason i picked that one  is because it doesn't look anything close to what this one looks like i wanted to pick something  you i don't think you'd want to do crimson sweet as a pollenizer for this because  it'd be hard to tell which was seedless and which was not so now the good thing about this is is  you can also eat the pollenizer right so you can eat these polynomials the commercial guys they'll  they'll they're pollenizers you can't really eat well they've changed that a little bit  in a high high market you'll see them gather these pollinators pollenizers sometimes oh really yep  they used to they used to dip but the ones they plant now they plant them was kind of they did  this they served the same purpose but if they get a very high market they can also go in and gather  those also they also they always plant one that looks a lot different than the seedless ones so  that you can tell the difference in them now if it were me i would because these seeds are expensive  and you only get a few i would almost not 100 percent recommend transplant number two that  way you you grow in these plants in a controlled condition controlled environment everything just  put three seedless transplants one pollenizer so we use a charleston gray as a pollenizer right now  because it doesn't look anything like this you can tell them apart you could use whatever pollenizer  you want no you can't choose your pollenizer as far as what comes in this packet they're already  pre-packed with 10 charleston gray seeds if you do want a different pollenizer you can purchase  any pack of open pollinated waters melon seeds we got and do your own pollenizer if you want to  do that way if you wanted to do moon and stars as a pollenizer but you really want to mix a  yellow would you no i mean there's a red moon i know i'm sure you wouldn't you wouldn't want to  take a yellow polonizer on a red i don't know no i wouldn't think so now we are going to have  a yellow seedless watermelon a little icebox type that i'm really excited about but anyway so those  are on the site to order we'll be adding a few more varieties it tells you here on the pack plant  one pollenizer every three seedless watermelon seeds try to make that real clear  so somebody wants to order a bigger quantity or they going to be able to  yes at some point once we get we got to kind of get our duds in a row there  uh but like i said those things are they're pricey um but i'm excited about trying them  i've never grown a lot of people especially this younger generation they just want  seedless watermelons so there you go bam bam yeah at your disposal i'm gonna try me at least  a couple rows of them all right so on today's show we want to talk about something that we've  had a lot of people asking with this new kind of surge of people wanting to grow their own food  how big of a garden space do you need how much space do i need to feed my family  and also what is manageable you know how big of a garden can the average person manage and not  have it get out of control you definitely want to grow more you manage because then you just  end up with a mess of weeds not only that even if you've been gardening for a long time every now  and then you need to sit back and reevaluate is this the size garden that serves me well  and i'm in that stage right now to give you an example when you always growing up and  i say you all because there was four of us you know we had to uh we had to grow more we had to  put up more we had to put stuff in the uh in the freezer the last is more we just needed more food  now with just the two of us we don't need as much and we have some other things going on maybe i  don't have as much time to devote in the garden in the afternoon so you constantly have to reevaluate  where you need to be on your garden because let's face it we all have other things going on in our  life and we don't want this to consume us and get out of hand and get frustrated we want it  to be manageable we want it to be fun so to keep that garden size right so it provides you a lot of  good groceries it's fun to go out there doing it that overwhelm you it's something you constantly  need to be focusing on at least once a year you need to be re-evaluating right so there's a lot  of opinions out there online about how big of a garden a person or a family of four needs and  we've got our own thoughts on that we'll share so i did a little research online just typing in how  big of a garden you need how big of a garden does one person or family of four need and a lot of  sources out there would say a hundred square foot per person now that's just 10 by 10 and that to  me that doesn't seem like a very big spot yeah i did the same thing and i've seen it anywhere  from 100 to 200 but it's subjective to how intense you're going to garden what all you want to grow  what kind of soils you have how good of a gardener you are how much time you want to  spend out there so there's no cookie cutter answer to this problem that's the problem  is we always want a we want to answer so this is going to be something you have to kind of look  at and see what fits you we're going to lay out some guidelines what we think but don't take that  you know for everything it said think about how it would apply to you and then we'll kind of go  from there right so we're going to throw out some variables in a little bit that kind of  would change maybe that square footage or that road length  another i found this i don't remember what the site was called this interesting site where you  could put in basically how many people you have in family that would give you a suggested row length  for every possible crop you could imagine and some of these i would kind of agree with  some of them not so much so i figured we'd go through these real quick like  and uh just you know from what we know on how long a row of this particular crop how much it will  produce so let's start off with beans now we're talking about for a family of four family of four  okay so on beans they suggested a 40 foot row of beans now i can tell you from personal experience  with my rattlesnake beans i've got a 40 foot row 40 foot row of beans especially at pole beans  is a heap of beans you can put up beans i think we're going to be looking at putting up at least  20 25 jars of beans and been eating a good bit of them fresh so i would say 40-foot row of beans is  plenty now this is a fall crop for you so you've already grown a spring crop this is your second  crop of the year so do you need that many beans grown in two succession plants no i don't think  but i do a sorry job growing beans in the spring i do too i i just it it gets hot too quick on me  i just ain't good at it i see people on a road by road group beautiful looking beans but uh i do a  better job with boost beans in the spring yeah my bush beans did okay pole beans i just didn't uh  in the fall though i can grow the fired up but i would say that's about right  40 foot a 40 foot 140 foot row per year yeah okay and that's going to give you something to put up  broccoli a 30 foot row of broccoli uh that's a lot of broccoli problem with broccoli is it  comes off all at the same time so you do have to have some type of preservation method for it  well you can freeze broccoli and vacuum bags it does pretty good that way we have done it uh  but um i'd say that's close to being right that's 30 plants broccoli a lot of broccoli 30 heads of  broccoli uh cabbage a 40-foot row of cabbage now that is a lot of cabbage it is but cabbage  lends itself to being put up and preserved a little bit better than broccoli does you can  make that all famous sauerkraut out of here you can make sauerkraut and the good thing  about cabbage as opposed to broccoli is it holds better especially if you grow at this time of year  you know we don't have to go out there and commercial guys do the same thing  they wait they get a order and then they'll go out there and pick a couple truckloads of it  you don't have to worry about harvesting all one time carrots a 40-foot row of carrots now  i'm assuming this ain't mean in a double row so be about like a 20-foot double row  and i'd say that's about right on carrots if you plant them thick like i like to plant them  i'd say 20 to 40 feet there uh you're in business and you're going to have something to put up  cauliflower is the same as broccoli 30 foot same thing there you got to find a way to preserve  all that it's going to be hard to eat 30 heads of cauliflower coming all off at the same time  the next one here i thought was interesting is corn and they say 120 foot now the reason they  said this i'm pretty sure is they meant three 40 foot rows because you got to grow at least  three rows yeah i've seen that and this is one of the ones i think they kind of lowballed a little  bit for us now we love our corn and we always grow a little bit more corn than that and it  goes pretty fast so i i i would say that's a little bit on the low side for me on corn  yeah i grew for my family of four because we put up a lot of we've been eating it i grew two  plots of it with 10 or 11 30 foot rows over 600 row feet of corn already this  year i normally grow anywhere from four to six hundred and we  none of it goes to weights hard on the sweet yeah it depends on how much you like sweet corn  anyway i thought that was a little low uh considering what i grow cucumbers 20 foot  if you got a good producing cucumber variety like a max pack or a brush like that bristol we talked  about earlier you got them on the trellis that's a plenty you're going to pick five gallon bucket  full cucumbers every other day you'll have plenty you know to make pickles out of yeah now lettuce  here this one's a little strange 50 foot row of lettuce uh yeah that's a little much familiar now  we love salads love lettuce but i'm going to tell you we can grow the fried some lettuce yeah yeah  all winter long 20 foot of lettuce is plenty for us i mean especially you succession playing it  man i don't i think 20 foot's increasing i've been planting mine on about you know 30 foot  rows that's what most of my plots are and we'll knock out a decent bit for that 30 foot row but i  still always end up giving some away i think 50 is a little much there now this one i think is  is too low okra they said just a 10-foot row oh yeah we plant more than that because we love our  okra but 10 okra plants i mean you're going to get you got to think every time you harvest it you're  going to get say you plant jambalaya you're going to get two to three pods per harvest  uh on 10 foot that ain't that ain't a whole lot of okra by the time you cut  it up and cook it and okra don't hold that well to hold for a few days in the fridge  don't hold that well so you just be eating little helpings of okra here and there  um i would say you need closer to 20 to 30 foot that's normally what i plant isn't water 20 30  feet onions 40 foot i'd say that that's pretty close i would say if you got a good way to store  them you could you could easily do 80 or more on the onions just because they store so well pepper  is 20 feet now this one blows it out of the water for me i by no means need twins for the pepper  who just depends on what how big of a variety of peppers you want but man i normally just plant  i'll plant maybe 10 foot of peppers and have plenty of banana peppers make all the way just  about till to a frog i always overdo it on peppers summer squash they say 20 feet of summer squash  that's probably about right that's a lot of summer squash that's if you put them we usually put ours  three feet apart or so and that's that's a heap of squash now winter squash here this is going to  depend on variety a little bit this is 20 foot i would say you probably want to grow a little bit  more than that considering these things store so well it's such a valuable food source yeah they a  lot of these vines these room grows i'd agree with you and then this was the one that blew me away  it's tomatoes they said a hundred foot of tomatoes they don't grow tomatoes like i do  guarantee you if you grow fish food like we do you got a plenty to feed you the family  and the family next door and put up a hippo oh man that's a hundred foot of tomatoes man  i ain't growing 100 foot of tomatoes in a long long time  that is uh just last year i tell you what we grew that worked out pretty good there was two of us  we put up some weed all the matters we wanted we gave some away i think i had 20 feet of the  motors a 20-foot road no i had i had two because i did grow a different variety so i had two 20-foot  rows of tomatoes i grew uh another variety just just to test see how it was going to do against  my bella roses yeah i had two 24 hours and we had tomatoes go to waste i grew a bunch this  year because i was doing those trials i had three or four 40 foot rows of just home run producers  and then some kind of experimental stuff and uh well we must have put up 40  30 40 jars of tomatoes and sauce and everything we'll need for a whole year and then i gave away  until then there i had people wanting to put up some and i was giving away buckets at the time  so if you did i think a 20 foot row plenty of two feet apart and you're thinking determinants  like we've grown like a determinant is plenty for a family of two you don't want 10 of plants  yeah good producing determinants but you take care of them and treat them right  they'll be good to you all right so those those are signs of suggestions some we agree with some  we would vary slightly and like you said there's not a one-size-fits-all solution to this  there's a lot of different variables coming to play it's how much you're going to need  for your family and so i wrote down a few things to consider here that might vary from what we  just mentioned there about how much you would want to plant the first one here is how big of  a variety of crops or crop families are you going to be planting and the thing to think about here  is the lesser the variety the more difficult it's going to be to rotate and keep your soil  in good shape so if you're the type of person and i know plenty of people i can ride down the  road from my house and see somebody all they gonna grow every year is some corn some okra  and a few squash and in the wintertime all they gonna grow is some mustard and some turnips  that's all they going to grow and what happens over time if you go talk to them they'll tell  you that the garden kind of starts declining a little bit after five or six years just kind of  beating it down with the same crops not having a lot of diversity there so if if you want to if  you're the type person you just like a few things um that's going to become problematic over time  as far as keeping your soil healthy it's better to grow a wider variety it's going to help out with  rotation if you're in that situation one thing you can do is just every now and then move your  guard to a different spot right if you got room to do it there so you got to figure out  how much of this you want to grow do you want to grow everything we mentioned on that list or  just five or six of those things we mentioned on that list the more variety you grow the more room  you're going to need but also that's going to help you out with rotation down the line  the second thing here is we just we just went through a row length on these things  we didn't really talk about how much space each respective crop takes up so if you're going to  be growing crops that require a lot of space like winter squash or summer squash or pumpkins  uh you're going to need a lot more room as far as that overall square footage size of  garden also if you're going to be growing crops that require multiple rows for pollination like  corn you're gonna need a lot more room for that can't just plant one road corn right so uh space  hogs winter squash or pumpkins or corn uh are gonna gonna require a bigger garden  if you're growing a lot of those things and you ain't gonna grow much pumpkins or  corn in a ten by ten thousand square foot plot right number three and this is a this  is probably one of the biggest ones in my opinion are you going to be eating this stuff just fresh  or are you going to be trying to preserve some of the harvest yeah one of the figures i've seen is  if you want to grow enough food let's see here if you want to grow enough food for one person to eat  pretty much entirely out of that garden and that means you're gonna have to preserve a lot of it  you're looking at around four thousand square feet per person per year a four  thousand square foot garden that's basically like a 60 by 65 per person now we're talking  about you eating primarily out of this garden you're not gonna be buying a lot of groceries  so think about that you could provide a family of four you'd have to multiply times that uh four  so you're looking at what two what was four times two i mean four six to four thirty six three  hundred it would be 360 by three sixty six times four twenty four twenty four you talked about  doing an alabama math yeah a little bit about 24 you talk about 240 by 240 you talk about an acre  basically we could go with this particular projection you could feed a family of four  year round out of that garden if you preserved a lot of it that's a lot of gard that is a lot  of garden and going back to our beans example earlier we were talking about the 40-foot rural  beans if you just gonna eat them fresh you could go to walmart and buy you one of them little cheap  little wooden arbors things and plant you a few bean plants around cider make your little teepee  with bamboo and that'd be plenty of pole beans if you was just going to eat them fresh if you're  preserving that 40-foot road comes into play there if you're going to put up a bunch of them  now pretty much forget about giving any of this away it just don't work out very well now you may  have some mixture that you can give away but don't be planting any to be giving away don't worry  you're going to usually always have something to give you're going to have some giveaway if  you start planting something planning to give away you're going to be discouraged  because folks ain't going to come get it that's right uh number four thing to consider here is  are you gonna be growing one season per year two seasons per year or four or year round like we do  uh we don't we just we just are always planting will we do have a little break in september um  and august and september but we're pretty much growing year round a lot of people just come  playing a spring garden maybe because their climate only allows for that some people just  get tired of it in the summer and they don't want to fool with the rest of the year so how  many seasons are going to be growing here the more seasons you grow the wider diversity you can grow  and and personally fall garden is my favorite uh time to garden because nice and cool outside  the next one the last one here is has to do with kind of taking care of your soil and taking care  of everything are you going to be incorporating cover crops into this mix or letting some plots  rest if that's the case whether you're doing raised beds or whether you're doing subplots like  we have something to take into consideration are you just going to farm it hard or you're going to  have you excuse me a system set up so you can move things around take care of your soil a  little better yeah now one thing we need to talk about is you know we've always encouraged people  when they start gardening to start small and work your way up when we do that we're thinking about  a young family so let's take a young family of four they cut a couple of small children  they want to go out there and small start a small garden because they don't really know a lot about  what they're doing they're having to learn on the fly as they go which is great they start  off small they kind of get under the bed a little bit get some confidence and they make their garden  bigger every year as those kids grow up the you know the need for food and fresh vegetables grows  so you need to grow more of a year you start getting better at preserved and you start getting  more comfort when you start putting more things up so you need more room every year let's look  at the flip side of that just for a minute say you've been gardening for a long time as i have  and you get to a point where you start to get a little frustrated because you can't  tend to everything that you've got or you start making a lot more than what you can give away  or consume then start going about it the other way and this is where i'm at  start downsizing your garden instead of getting frustrating and quit just bring it back down to  a more manageable level so that you can look after and still provide a good amount of fresh  fruit and vegetables for your family and have it there bring it down and don't feel guilty about it  i'll give you another little perspective on that which i've been experiencing lately so i've got  10 plots and and the the reason the the primary reason i have such a big garden i have those 10  plots that are all about a thousand square feet is just for the channel um so we can just show you  all these different varieties all these different techniques ways to do things it's strictly for  the channel now we started a market farmer in operation because we had so much extra stuff  we that became time consuming we stopped that this year i'm keeping my 10 plots but i'm not using  that many of them at a time and what it's allowed me to do is to do a lot more cover  cropping a lot more rotation and kind of taking care of my uh soils better so  if you do have a big garden or a lot of plots and you want to downsize it doesn't necessarily always  mean you have to get rid of those existing plots you can leave them there and just kind of nurture  those plots and get on a better longer rotation and you're going to be successful when you do  plant in that plot so i'm doing the same thing so what i'm going to do is i'm taking 2 000 square  feet and i know that sounds like a lot but i'm an overachiever so i'm taking 2 000 square feet and  i'm on garden at 2 000 square feet and i'm going to let my other plots either cover crop or rest  pretty much put cover crops on them long-term cover crops and just let them stay out there  let them recoup let them regenerate somewhat so that i can move around but i'm gonna work out two  thousand square feet and i'm working intensely and i'm gonna do a better job looking after it  and i'm not gonna grow more than what i need i mean i have had a tendency in the past plant  way more than what we need you're probably gonna still grow a bunch of watermelons i'm gonna still  grow watermelons i'm gonna still grow corn but i'm talking about like the fall of the year  i mean do i really need 40 foot of broccoli no i don't you know you know we just don't need that  much so i'm gonna bring all of that back down bring it to a more manageable level and i still  got those plots i can use for my watermelons and my corn in the springtime but after that so we'll  let them left side and do do a better job so a few tips for success i wrote down here for  the the beginner the person that's interested in establishing a garden kind of try to answer that  question how big should your garden be we gave you a lot of variables gave you some suggestions there  so my first tip would be to start whether you're doing raised beds or what are you doing in ground  garden start with just a few raised beds or a single plot whatever your scale may be i think a  four by eight is a perfect size for a raised bed i do too just based on what measurements lumber  comes in he ain't going to waste any lumber not only that but it's accessible from both  sides if you got it four feet you can reach in on two foot on two sides right so it's ideal so  think about a four by eight raised bed or say a 20 by 20 or if you're a little ambitious a 40 by  40 in ground plot we like square plots or try to get them as square as we can so start with  just a few raised beds if that's what you want to do or if you do an in-ground garden start  with like a 20 by 20 and a 40 by 40.

And then what i would recommend doing if you've got land  when you do want to make your garden bigger build another raised bed or build you another  20 by 20 or 40 by 40 plot don't turn that plot into a 60 by 60 or 80 by 80 because  that's where things can get out of hand on you so just build you another plot instead of just  making that one plot bigger that way if you do want to break it back down or you want to take  some time off from garden and let one of them rest and just bring it back down to a smaller garden it  works so much better that way i can tell you from experience number two here and this is where uh  everybody jumps in too deep don't try to be good at everything all at once especially if  you're just starting out you not gonna there's crops that we stink at growing and we've been  doing in a long time you're not gonna be good at every single crop so you know take you a few  do your research study up on it and just try to master a few at a time if you just want to pick  potatoes corn and beans or whatever you're a brand new gardener just master a few at a time and then  kind of add to your repertoire i felt that's what we have done over the years um ourselves you're  not going to just home run every single crop every time as rewarding as i think as much as i love  to grow corn and watermelons i think that's two crops to begin a gardener with a small backyard  garden our 20 and 20 should probably stay away from what was that watermelon which one uh corn  i think green beans i think it's hard if you're a beginner gardener it's hard to understand the  nutrient needs on corn and to be honest with you especially on watermelons you need room  for the melons you need a general idea of how to do those they work a lot better transplanted  you need them on drill you know from the work well they have different fertilizer requirements they  require pollination so those are the two i would kind of stay away from if you're dealing with a  small 20 of a 20 garden stick with those green beans stick with those few plants of cucumbers  taters summer squash potatoes stick on those crops it's easy to grow that's going to be  really rewarding that you're going to be proud of yeah and tomatoes a lot of times tomatoes can be  tough for some people initially but but the reward is high always i mean right you get your one big  five well like a great beginner one is especially if you get one of these good diseases variety  a good trellis cucumber it's hard to mess that up uh you might have a little pest  problem but that's a great one to start with so don't try to just don't don't try to uh  be good at everything initially started you a few carrots i probably wouldn't recommend carrots for  a beginner they take a little finesse yep and the last one here focus on getting your soil right  in the beginning and the first year you grow in a new garden plot is going to be the worst year  you have in it it's just going to be tough uh experience that with my dream garden firsthand  first year in there it don't matter what you do to that soil it's going to be tough to get it  right just keep plugging away second year be better third year be better try to focus on  getting your soil right whether that's compost working on your weed seed bank before you plant  do you do diligence there yep all right so if you have any more questions or any suggestions as far  as what your however big your family is and how what size of garden you found it takes to feed  your family we'd love to hear that in the comments below please you know give us your input on that  we've got a few questions from last week's show here yep first one comes from gypsy billions  what are you supposed to say that word or just let's just call it b just b says uh what would  you suggest the first step should be after taking out a bunch of trees some pine some hickory to get  the garden area ready so this this egg weighs well from what was just talking about so we did  that with my dream garden we come in and pushed up a bunch of pine trees they weren't super big  that's about that big around and uh the first year growing in them was tough i didn't i knew this but  i didn't realize how much nutrients those trees were just sucking out of that soil i mean it was  there was nothing there uh as far as nutrient value and i didn't i didn't find that good gin  trash compost until after my first year in there i did put some manure down but the manure was  not uh complete and balanced like that compost is and uh had some just some serious serious issues  so if you're gonna do that give yourself plenty of time i was in too big of a hurry with mine  give yourself plenty of time find you a good bulk compost source put it down heavily get  you a soil test make sure your ph was right my ph was pretty good i just didn't have  any nutrients there it's unusual most time with a new especially if you have a hard woods on it  your ph is going to be real low so so the cheap way to fix that is do your ph  find out how much lime you need sweeten that soil up that's one of the first things i do plan  ahead of time there and then be ready to amend the fire that so be ready to fertilize heavily  i don't have to fertilize as much now as i did in the beginning be ready to kind of have to  pump the nutrients to them and baby those plants that first year or two but you'll get it right  number two is from es and es says great show with very helpful info what about surfactants  is it talking about our pest control products are they helpful is there a situation where  they should be mixed with the pest control products oh absolutely these places for them  now we don't use them a lot and the reason we didn't mention is we don't use surfactants  a lot with insecticides and fungicides we use mostly fatties with herbicides to get  them spread out on their leaves so it's not a huge issues with insecticides and fungicides  i mean if you got something that's got a real waxy build up on the leaf that has a hard time holding  it you may want to use it like a collard like a collard i could see we could use maybe you got  to be careful with them you will get some burn because they'll cover off and smother that leaf  but uh we just don't use a lot with this i can't hardly think of a reason why we use them  with insecticide or fungicide now herbicides totally different store we use a lot of them  they have a lot of benefits there but can't think of a lot of reasons to use them okay all right  next one says uh it's from eve eva evil ewa hey maybe says how long did the canary melon store for  i'm going to gross i'm going to grow it this coming summer just curious if it keeps for a while  says i i grow those canary melons and i'm really interested in trying some more melons this year  adding that to my repertoire that's one thing that stop the market farming has allowed me to to do  we grow those canary mounds we tried them on the show we had a couple that weren't quite ready and  then we had one that was pretty good i put them underneath my barn on my little storage rack and  now keep in mind i grew these during the middle of the summer and i was harvesting them i feel like  right in the dog days around here and i was able to get them to store for uh close to two months i  think if you grew them off if you plant them in the middle of the summer and you went for more  of a fall harvest they would store for much longer uh even underneath that barn it still  gets blazing hot uh sometimes so i i was able to get a couple months not out of all  of them i lost a few a couple months out of a majority of them but i would say you might  get longer than that if uh it wasn't so daggum hot mm-hmm number four is from sydney d brooks  and said uh greg saw the seedless watermelons on site what's your favorite watermelon ever what's  your favorite yeller meated watermelon uh thank you so much my favorite watermelon of all time is  crimson sweets and it's an open pollinated variety that's been around since i believe back in the 60s  it's got a nice thick rind on there it's got good flavor to it it is a seasoned variety goes back  to my childhood some i may be the reason i like it so well i don't know i've just known about  it forever i've grown it for years and years or years it's my all-time favorite however the best  watermelon i've ever eat in my life we ate on this show not too long ago and it was a yellow meated  watermelon called baby doll now i'm gonna grow me some baby i didn't grow that our our gene park uh  grew those and shared them with us man it was off the chain so i'm going to grow some baby  dolls this year and a little birdie told me we got something similar coming like that it's a seedless  one yeah so we got one coming that's um i thought unless something comes up and i'm not able to get  it when we got packets printed and everything we only called treasure chest which is a seedless  variety of baby doll um so you could you could plant baby doll as a pollenizer for it you just  wouldn't know to open it up whether you had seeds or not um but that baby doll was a small one yeah  this treasure chest is it's like what we call ice that might be what you want to try is personal  size ice box whatever you want to call it i'm going to tell y'all what now these things was off  the chain as i like to say it was the cat's meow now them saying griez you grew were pretty they  were good they were good but i mean i have to go i love that crimson suite sangria was was probably  a little bit sweeter than crimson sweeps was but that's just what i'm used to you know how we get  hung up on something growing year after year now some people did comment they grew that baby doll  and maybe we just got wrapped up how good it tastes they said that it had a lot a lot of seeds  in it relative to other watermelons and that might have it may have i didn't we it didn't uh bother  us any but we are we do hope to have the seedless variety uh and you can plant those next one comes  from joe hodges he says great show as always i've learned a lot from watching your shows and videos  i still have lots of bees and pollinators around what would be your recommendation  recommendation for applying pest control products to minimize harm to those pollinators  thanks true joe that's a great question yep so uh everybody's garden may not be as well lit as mine  is but i gotta we have to pay extra for it but i got a pole out by my barn with a big light on it  almost like a street light and uh even when it gets dark i can't see well enough to to go uh  you know sew a patch on my britches or anything like that but i can see well enough to walk  through the garden and not step all over my plants so i always recommend spraying right before dark  or in my case because i got kids to get to bed and stuff i usually go out there 8 o'clock at night 8  8 30 and i spray mine now i can see in my garden pretty well especially once i get out there and  my eyes get acclimated but i spray after dark you spray right before dark anytime there don't spray  the middle day when the pollinators are out right before dark or once it is dark you'll be just fine  or early in the morning you could do early in the morning gotta be careful with some of the products  spraying early in the morning because they sit on them leaves uh it could cook them a little bit yep where's my last page last one for you here's from linda estelle as you don't know which of  these tools would be easier for an older lady the push pull hoe or the stirrup hoe  hey linda that's a tough one right there now we have this problem periodically that we'll  have somebody order one of these products and they get it and they just cannot understand how to use  and always try to push them to a youtube story or youtube video to find out how you use those  i think the stirrup hoe would probably be better but the main thing is understanding how these work  and once you understand how they work it kind of clicks when you get it we have a lot of people use  the push pull hole i personally would go with the stirrup hole what's your thoughts on that  uh it depends on how strong you are i think the push pull hole is lighter uh and a little easier  to use the ster is a little heavier uh but it's just a different different motion you know with  the sterno you're doing more like this almost like a traditional hoe with the push pull hoe you're  doing this motion here yeah whatever one you're more comfortable with uh i would say go with the  push pull is lighter stro's a little heavier uh if it's real big nasty weeds the stir hoe  has got that spring steel blade on there as far as just maintaining stuff the push-pull works good i  had someone that though they asked me the question they were wanting to use they were wondering which  one they should get and they want to use them in mulch or wood tips or something in that case i  would highly recommend the push pull the stairwell is not going to work real good i don't know or if  you're working underneath mainline tubing or any hard to reach places to push pull works better  stir pose a great tool go find some youtube channels where they're using one of or both of  them kind of get an idea which one you think would work best for you all right all right all right  so hope everybody enjoyed that show tonight i'm subject to eat me some more of that here in a  minute and if you have any questions comments about anything we talked about please put those  uh in the comment section below if you enjoyed the show make sure to give us a big thumbs up hit that  subscribe button if you haven't already ring that little bell so you get notified absolutely every  time we come out the new video and if you did enjoy tonight's show check out these other two  videos right here i think you'll really enjoy those as well we'll see you next time take care