Like most gardeners, I have a ‘to-do’ list that’s a mile long- these are the vegetable garden projects I want to cross off that list in 2023.
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Related Videos:
How to Plant & Care for Strawberries: https://youtu.be/GQgcvKavyOs
Cool Season Gardening Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4zzslvkscX0DNlXMb4rGYbVxee3HpnmC
Garden Tasks by Month Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4zzslvkscX1g86hKHYHSQOqoELCGBmVb
My videos on hügelkultur: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4zzslvkscX1RlwSkq0X81wJxdR09toWQ
North Spore: https://northspore.com/?rfsn=7183314.56a01f&utm_source=refersion&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=7183314.56a01f
00:00 Intro
00:29 New strawberry bed
01:05 Changing the fence layout
01:37 Creating a new access point/gate
02:38 Wider garden paths
03:14 Redoing the raised beds
04:45 Green Chef lunch
06:21 Building new beds
07:57 Planning for season extension
09:10 Heating the greenhouse
11:36 Redoing beds near the house
13:34 Projects at mom & dad’s place
14:01 Dad’s food forest
15:55 Windbreaks
16:25 Overall soil improvement
18:21 More hügelkultur & thistle problems
#zone6gardening #ohiogardening
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I watched some of your videos very informative. especially since I also live in Ohio and have clay soil. Some things I already do, but you showed some things I was going to but will not now, basically you saved me a lot of time and money thank you.
Have you considered a walipini? Probably a longer-term project but I've heard good things– you bury half the green house underground to take advantage of the more stable underground temperatures. I'm interested in one myself but haven't found a ton of info about building them online.
Yes! you should absolutely get cold hardy kiwi, just not in that shady spot. Perhaps on your new entrance trellis, they like sun, also the chickens are big fans of the leaves. I think bulbs can be a good thing to plant in shady spots, especially if you don't want excessive maintenance. For berries, lingonberry and wintergreen could be nice. American cranberry can take the shade too.
In the fall I extended growing in my hoop tunnel by doing several things where I was vertically growing San Marzanos, no tables:
First, I put a brick path down the center.
Second, I clipped row covers completely around my plants just before the temps dropped for extra protection, and to preserve ground heat which rises. I moved some of my large planters in which contained heat mass/ carryover.
Last, I used one of those old fashioned radiator heaters that heats up water. It has 600 and 900 amp levels and a control dial, so I could adjust how much heat it put out. It would be ideal to run it on solar, if possible. I was surprised the difference even the lowest setting made, and I kept it on a timer. I have read about people using rocket stoves for risidual heat, though I have not. I'd like to find a simpler way to keep it heated, too, but this extended growing by 2 months.
84 Lumber used to sell redwood for less than cedar, and it lasts much longer. It would be worth a call, but they do have to order it, so plan a week ahead. Also, pull it apart, a friend of mine got some that looked worm eaten. They took it back and got him good boards, but who wants to haul wood home, unbundle it only to return it?
Im in portage county OH & have a harbor freight poly greenhouse with a floor made of pavers. We use a wood stove to heat our house so I put some embers/charcoal into a metal pale & place it in the center of the floor. It warms well but please be careful- its definitely a fire hazard. Hot water in jugs did not work for me
First and most important, thank you for this video. Might sound odd, but right now I don't feel quite so alone in my gardening ambitions.
Thanks very much for the wood/wood chips link.
Raised beds…. M'mm. When I started gardening, I ached with longing for those beautiful, wood-framed raised beds I've seen in books, magazines, and gardening videos, but my situation then (as now) imposed some constraints: urban/suburban, old neighborhood meaning built up, bounding the garden on four sides: house, and the three neighboring properties; and money, because at that point I could have built the beds, or I could have soil to put in them.
In the end, I opted for modified French-style raised beds, which don't use hard sides of wood or stone or wattle (thought wattle looks really, really cool, though!) I'd read that the French pile up the soil in their [narrower than ours] raised beds, thwacking the sides and ends which slope inward toward the tops of the beds good and hard with the back of a spade or shovel blade to firm them, and then keep them planted. One advantage is, you can plant into the sides which increases the surface area/planting space just a tad, and the plants' roots help to hold the soil in place.
It's in my mind (or in my imagination) that the wood sides could be added to the French style raised beds at a later time so you don't have to shell out that big wad of cash for cedar boards all at once if you'd prefer to replace the boards of one bed, and then the next one later, perhaps at the end of this season or the beginning of the following year's gardening season, or however it's convenient.
Thistles. Not bull thistles, I take it? Too bad, that. I've read that bull thistles can be eradicated by cutting them below the bottom leaf, leaving something like ten inches of hollow stem, and then filling that "tube" with water and keeping it filled which causes the plant to rot. Seems as if right here a "YMMV" is in order. I haven't tried this one; haven't had bull thistles===plenty of sow thistles—although a friend who is not a neighbor does and has had for decades, determinedly believing that a power mower will solve that problem.
My own projects for this season are…kinda puny, compared to yours, but goodness knows I'll be glad if or when I pull them off.
1) Shopping around for appropriate trellising for a pear tree which has yet to be purchased, and a second pear tree if I can figure out where it can be put. I'd like to espalier these because they need to be managed carefully and I need the space and can't have trees just doing their thing (reaching for the sky!), but I need an actual structure to do that.
2) Some serious, heavy-duty trellising for the two grape vines which are wildly and massively out of hand and out of control
3) Cold frame, and a hot bed, and these two might very well get put together.
4) A tiny, but level, even paved area right outside the garden shed to make it easy to get the lawn mower in and out of that structure.
5) A framework around one of the larger beds to allow for a hinged hoop over it; without actual, proper sides it seems silly to say, "Hinged hoop house" but season extension is sought!
6) At least one arched trellis over one of the paths; regrettably, cattle panels are out of the question, so another means must be found.
7) Bean tipis
8) Still planning to move the garden enclosure outward by only a foot and a bit in each direction, replacing the existing 4'4" tall mesh with 72" tall mesh.
9) There's a bed along one side of the house kind of like your flower beds immediately adjacent to your (it is *your*, yes?) house which needs attention and planning and some aesthetic improvement because right now it's filled with undisciplined rose shrubs, some very persistent English ivy, and an equally persistent grass that isn't lawn grass. I'd like to fill it in with garlic every year as garlic is supposed to be good for roses, preventing black spot (is that true?), but I might end up settling for a thick, thick mat of common chives which can be mowed on a high setting. Hopefully it'd look tidy and the chives, too, will keep the roses happy and possibly Japanese beetle free.
10) Permanent signs identifying each quadrant, as you and I have cyber-discussed earlier: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Fred. (Or Fritz? Frank? Floyd?)
And that's the list of good intentions, not prioritized. It feels as if every one of those "plans" is both the most important and the most urgent.
For the last task: I'm trying the hügel method as well, and my soil and Zone 6 weather conditions seem very similar to yours (even though I'm in VA). One video I came across said that hügel beds that are built by first digging into heavy clay soil can lead to poor drainage, and consequently lead to anaerobic conditions. Consequently, with super heavy clay it's recommended to built hügel beds atop the soil. Perhaps that could be a factor?
Although admitedly this is my first year with hügel – I'm still learning what works best for my area!
I use the electric oil filled heaters. Pretty efficient.
Oh my word we need a mushroom foraging video 👀
I’ve heard some folks say that a compost pile in a cold frame can help to heat it, but I’d guess it would have to be huge…and enclosed.
You and your folks have such beautiful places!
Great video. Ohio Prarie Nursery is an amazing resource for Ohio native perennials and they are a wealth of knowledge about specific sites. I'd suggest reaching out to them on your flower beds.
It's my first full season at my new house, so I'll be adding asparagus and strawberries this spring, hopefully building a trellis for an in-ground bed of brambles, babying my small blueberry plants I started last year, and planning out my mini-orchard for fall tree planting!!
Hey Jenna I have a passive solar greenhouse but there are aspects you could use in a smaller greenhouse such as heat sinks with thermal mass – mainly being water. If you have access to tidy cat buckets or even milk jugs. Fill those with water and place them all over the bottom levels of the shelves. They will warm up during day and keeping the inside cooler and then release the heat at night. Won’t solve your problem completely but I have a few 55 gallon drums I have filled with water and I place plants on top of those that I want extra heat at night. If the containers are painted black helps even more. Another thought is getting a solar generator like an eco-flow and a panel – soak up the sun during day to charge the battery and use that to run like a heat lamp at night. I did that and use it to run my grow lights after the sun goes down to give them a little more light as seedlings. Free energy! And when ya don’t need to it for greenhouse can be used for other things like camping.
My husband and I just finished two hinged hoop covers for raised beds. It has already made access so much easier, no more clip on and take off covers. I think more will be in my future.
One of our biggest projects is putting in a solar array in the goat pasture- we will have to fence it off from goats and we will be turning the area into an Ohio native meadow instead of grass – so little bit of color and beauty against the industrial look of solar panels.
Thanks for another awesome video. I started a second garden last fall and have been cautious about laying it out for long term use and not congest it – your videos definitely have helped. I also started indoor gardening with LED grow lights and for my first time starting seeds, I find it difficult to get the seedlings to grow past 1"-2" in the 72 plug trays. I used indoor potting soil and haven't started fertilizing as the seedlings I think are too small. I don't have dampening off issues but maybe not enough light. I did just increase the time from 12 hours to 14 hours. Maybe that will help. Schooner Farms is just down the road from me and Don is a great guy to work with. Thanks Again for the great videos.
Greenhouse heating. What can I say? My obession for the last 10 years. Its retaining heat energy that is most important. Generating enough BTU for a small greenhouse, let's say a 12 by 12 x 8 would be around 15000 btu to heat from around 20 F to 72F. That's slightly over a 1 ton unit of A/C. That takes into account that you do not have any heat retention with glass, plastic etc. Obviously all your surfaces should be double lined to maximize the loss. The truth is that double lining doesn't do much for you for retaining heat energy especially in your climate, Zone 8 and lower, OK.
Get on your knees if the greenhouse is a seedstarter. LOL. But no, serioulsy get on your knees. My latest greenhouse is cowpanel rolled with a roughly 4 and 1/2 foot height in the middle. The sun coverage does not change and the floor space remains the same but the heated space is reduced. Already cut your BTU usage 30 to 50 percent depending on your dimensions. Second make you a thermal blanket to cover the unit at night. I have used carpet underlay glued to bubble insulation available at your local home improvement stores. It doesn't last more than two seasons but it does work. I have a small electric unit like yours (10' x8' floor) and mine does not run constantly at night even when it is freezing. I run my greenshouse at night to 80 to 90 degrees for seed starting. Line your greenhouse ends on the north south of the sun. Why? Insulate them permanently on the ends because you are going to get your sunlight generally east to west during the day. Pay attention to solar farm layouts.
If you are really serious and you are young consider ground thermal heating system for your greenhouse. This does get into more calculations but they are out there. That's my goal. This brings your greenhouse or any other structure up to ground temperature depending on depth of thermal field. In my area if you go down about 4 feet you get 60 degrees year round. Heating up the house from let's say 50 or 60 degrees to the seventies with supplemental heater is a fraction of the earlier calculation of 1 ton.
This year I am making a thermal blanket by putting R19 insulation in a two sided tarp that I am going to sew together. I am hoping to get 5 years out of it. You can easily rig up a pulley system to get it and off. Love your videos.
I too am starting to rearrange my garden beds, I recently aquired a compact tractor with a 54" bucket so I need to make my aisles wide enough for my tractor. As for your upcoming raised bed hoops I've had a new experience with mine this winter. I have bug mesh covering my brassica beds and heavy snow and ice issures this year collapsed them 3 times. I'm considering making more ridged frames. The pvc tubes alone don't hold up to weight. Lastly, the cheapest and in my opinion the best option for heat storage woud be gallon jugs of water on the backside of your lower shelves. That area is difficut to reach so placing them there would be a good use of that space. Just put them around the entire perimeter of the greenhouse.
Wow you have so much going on! I’m jealous of all the space you have to use and experiment with in the two properties. The hugelkuktur reproduction of the serpent mound sounds rad!
I love how knowledgeable you are ❤️ We can all learn SOOO much from you!
I really hope you consider putting the hardware cloth under your new raised beds for rodent protection 👍
I would LOVE to watch you grow all kinds of mushrooms 😋
Near term projects for me: rebuild several rotted beds (pressure treated lumber maybe???), fix the soil in my one bed that always seems to underperform (got a bad batch of topsoil that evidently is clay soil), FINALLY get my lazy rear end to build a couple of cold frames. We'll see about that last one….
I have a 6 x 8 greenhouse and we just put a small heater in it today. It worked great last year. I tried so many things last year before putting in a heater but nothing worked, only the heater. We keep it set on low, just so it never drops below freezing.
A other plant idea for your “flower beds” is witch hazel. We are in the same zone and have very much appreciated adding witch hazel as an understory tree in our Japanese garden….
"and this kale that refuses to die", that made me LOL
Wow! Big plans! Looking forward to your progress.
Great video. You've really developed a ton of expertise, but it's cool that you put your mistakes out there for everyone else to see and learn from. Cheers to a great 2023.
Yo Jenna! Look at some video's on sand batteries. Ingenious idea for some real heat for not a lot of cost if you're clever… check it out… scalable as well
Hi Jenna, maybe you could put a cattle panel polytunnel over your existing green house(ses) – that would not change the available space on the insidie but put a rather big "air space" around it. I think, that would cut down the need to heat significantly.
Also, maybe you have room in a corner for something that actually produces heat: a compost pile. Sean from EdibleAcres has videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ks_Cgd9sb0&ab_channel=EdibleAcres and https://youtu.be/yMSCJdpl-CY) about one he made in his (much bigger) cattlepanel tunnel. In "the olden days" gardeners heated greenhouses by packing beds with layers of "hot" horsemanure. And in the spring they had the extra benefit of good compost for the gardens. And/or google "How to Make a Hotbed for the Earliest Sowings" 😊
On the soil/water issues on your parents place you might like to check out the "Ponds and Waterworks" Playlist (also by edible Acres) He has a very unique but seemingly highly functional way of directing the "too much" water into ponds, that he places where the water will tend to go (and stay…) anyway – and later in the year it can be used to water the gardenbeds. He also uses hugelbeds to get "the feet" of the plants out of standing water. So he would probably dig the pond exactly where you want to build the hugels – and make the hugels with that dug out soil right next to the pond 🙂.
And a few mor planting ideas for your shady "flower beds": Hostas and Hablitzia tamnoides (caucasian climbing spinach) – both edible, shade loving and very cold hardy. And as soon, as I ssave this comment, another great edible shade plant will pop into my head 🙃
… I knew it… Solomon Seal, Myoga ginger. Szechuan pepper for part shade…
What is the orientation of your raised beds vs your in-ground beds (North-South/ East- West etc) and have you found any differences due to their different orientation?
How many panels did you use for the arch! Love watching your videos 😊
Wonderful video, as always. I'm so glad to see you've widened your gate!!! LOL The cattle panel arch looks great!
Two thoughts…first, bravo on your dad for his "Wilderness." He is providing invaluable habit for insects by just allowing things to grow wild in that area. And second, if you are looking for ideas for the flowerbeds by your house, natives are the way to go. If you've not listened to any of the presentations by Dr. Doug Tallamy here on YouTube, those are very sobering and eye-opening. You could plant natives in your flower bed and add your flowerbeds to the map of the "Homegrown National Park" movement.
My list of projects for this spring pales in comparison to what you have going on. I will be redoing my 20X8 jumping worm infested bed. Will put up a couple cattle panel arches and the rest of the bed will be a key hole type of raised bed to allow access for weeding. In the front, my cattle panel trellis needs permanent beds, used straw bales the 1st year and grow bags last year. Going to try and use metal roofing for those beds. I also need to set in concrete a couple 4×4's to support my everbearing raspberries, I never knew they would grow to be over 7 feet tall.
Because the price for treated lumber has been so high and cedar is untouchable for me, I have been using house wrap to line my pine boards. It is only going on the 4th year, but no signs of decay so far, just a thought.
You have beautiful gardens! Enjoy your videos, Stay Well!!!
There is no way to get a perennial bed right from the start, but that's also what makes it interesting. It's all an experiment because every planting bed is different. My approach is: give whatever ought generally to do well a try and double down on what thrives.
Always fun to watch what others are doing and you have a lot of doing to do lol. I always have to replace a raised box each year to keep up with the decay but I've been using metal instead of cedar lately since the lumber prices increased. It's about the same price but the metals should last longer. And your outside the fence log beds is exactly what I've been doing the last couple years and using them for garlic , onions and potatoes. Nothing bothered the potatoes I grew in those beds last year so hoping to continue to get away with that. I only have a couple small projects planned for this year but I did order shortcake raspberries from Jung and also sweet potatoes for the first time from Maine potato lady so looking forward in seeing how they do for me. Good luck!
Fences! Gates! Clay! Oh My! 😂 Moving fence is an annual spring workout for us😂 I have many new varieties and huge amount of WS jugs and husband says, “Where are they all going?” Me, “Everywhere!” 😅
My suggestion is if you are want to continue using raised beds instead of in ground wide rows I would Not use wood again. We used reclaimed corrugated metal and my husband showed me that it can be scored and snapped to cut it for lengthwise, but we have to cut width for lengths. A PVC pipe can be fit to cover sharp edges or wood toppers.
Our lean to greenhouse is on our list to refurbish. We have reclaimed refrigeration building panels that are 4” thick that I will dig down and use for base and about a foot on sides above ground. Inside the pit will be laid 4” plastic drain pipe surrounded by heat holding brick/stone, whatever I come up with and fill in cracks with gravel of some sort to prevent wildlife nests. I plan to pump hot air from roof to floor to store heat. I might line the greenhouse shed with dark brick. There was an old solar project years ago that used aluminum cans painted black inside a box that allowed air to move through and it was attached to an open window so might fashion something like that to pipe hot air down to floor. New polycarbonate and vents with a few operable storm windows and door. The last touch would be solar and wind power bank to run fans, heater, lights.
This small greenhouse 6×8 is easy to heat, but need a couple more feet. Did water jugs ect and not worthy. No room for large anything and not doing smelly compost mess. Just want an easy to heat seed starter house.
For shade area I could see azaleas and rhododendrons. Caution about bramble berries.
Our poor husbands😂😂. Does yours say, “How much more?”😂😂
Just a low-cost tip on the greenhouse. Pile-up hay or straw bales around the greenhouse. All the way up the north wall, since you won't get sun there till the middle of the summer. And one bail high around the other walls. A greenhouse like that is never going to perform well in the winter. Just way too much heat loss and there's no real way to control it on a greenhouse like that. You can put in as much solar mass as you want but I don't think you really going to absorb enough energy to offset what is lost the poly panel's at night up to the sky. I'll try to post some pics of my passive solar greenhouse project on your Facebook page. I have figured out that winter greenhouse and spring/fall green houses need to be very different in our Northern climate.
About rejuvenating clay soil. My experience on clay soil is that I need to use a heavy layer of mulch in the winter spring and fall. At least a foot. This enables the microbes and worms to work more of the year because the soil is insulated and kept moist. I also shoveled the rows onto the beds first and filled in the rows with wood chips. They act like a sponge and decompose fairly rapidly. My soil is still heavy, but grew plants well, the first year. My soil was so hard that a walk behind rototiller wouldn't penetrate it. I had a friend flip the massive chunks of clay over with a fork lift. Thats when I knew I had a huge problem. 8 months later, I had an amazing garden. Try it.
I was really happy to see a new video from you! Projects for me here in western Colorado desert are always to do with irrigation water management. We use furrow irrigation from the local canal system, and I'm narrowing my row width from about 28" to something like 18-20". The other big project is propagating trees and shrubs to finish building the ~2 acres of mixed trees, shrubs, and wildflowers.
Love the videos, can't wait to plant! What does your tattoo on your wrist stand for?
Jenna, you mentioned in this video that using fabric was a mistake can you tell me why? and have you heard of using non woven on the top of the ground to prevent weed growth a good idea?